Birding While Black with Drew Lanham
Drew Lanham is a different bird. And he’s known that to be the case since, back in the day in Edgefield, South Carolina, he leapt off buildings and trees with cardboard wings, umbrellas and parachutes made of garbage bags. One time he broke his collarbone...
‘Nature Keeps Me Grounded’
It’s hard to say how or why Chevon Powell was granted a rebirth so close to the beginning of her life. She was only 5 months old when her family’s Houston apartment burned down. She was rescued after suffering first- and second-degree burns on about...
Birding Is Booming. So Where Are the Black Birders?
Tiffany Adams grew up in the Chelsea-Elliott Houses, a sprawling, low-income housing project on the west side of Manhattan. There, cookie-cutter brick buildings are separated by modest courtyards with benches and tables. Trees and grassy yards enclosed by black, wrought-iron fences dot the fringes of...
Birds of Incarceration
On an air-conditioned bus to Tule Lake, we fold shimmering sheets of colored paper into delicate, mystical birds. The weight of the shared ritual makes my fingers fumble. It’s been decades since I made origami with my immigrant mother, and I feel pressure to reprise...
No Right Way to Be Outside
The first time I tried my hand at astrophotography (shooting the stars, as opposed to shooting stars) was on a clear night just outside Mount Rainier National Park. I was renting a cabin with my wife and her family, a trio of sisters from Colombia...
WE ARE OUTSIDE!
One of my favorite places in the outdoors has multiple trails, several different habitats, and offers spectacular views of a major snow-capped peak. There is an old-growth forest where, among the mossy trees, you are serenaded by the rat-ta-tat-tat of pileated woodpeckers, hoots from barred...