Gathering Chips
One of my favorite photographs hangs in my bathroom.
At its center is a wheelbarrow, with wooden handles, braces, and legs. The ten-spoke wheel is iron. Cow chips – dry dung – are stacked two feet high in the tray. …
Culture
Adirondack, Conservation, Culture, Forests
John
This summer I walked behind John in the woods. I followed him as he followed the trail. “Flies are getting bad,” he’d grumble, reaching for the tobacco in his pocket. I quickened my step whenever John puffed on his pipe, …
Conservation, Forests, Place, Rivers
In town
I followed my mother down a winding forest path.
The trail head peaks through the trees that line the softball field down the street from my house. You wouldn’t know it was there if you weren’t looking for it.
Gnarled tree …
Agriculture, Place
Stacking Wood
This piece was originally written as part of a larger poetry and prose project that explored the author’s relationship with his family’s farm in Tennessee. Over a month-long span, he reflected daily on the lessons that the place and its …
Fracking, Place
Boom: Fossil Fuel Collisions
Fracking | Accident
The driver of the frackwater truck swerved because there was a little girl walking along the highway. She was walking eastward early that morning, not precisely on the shoulder, swerving in and out of the edge line the way …
Activism, Place, Waste Management
Beyond the Landfill
Every day, roughly 8,000 tonnes of rubbish are collected from the capital city of Jakarta before ending up at Bantar Gebang, the largest landfill in Southeast Asia. Just two decades ago, the area was covered with paddy fields before it was bought by the state and later converted into a landfill. Being in Bantar Gebang for the first time, I wasn’t …