Native Fishermen Square Off Against Factory Trawlers

Why should an industrial fishing fleet be allowed to waste millions of pounds of Bering Sea halibut each year? I dove into the contentious issue of bycatch for National Geographic by talking to the St. Paul, Alaska fishing fleet, a group of Native fishermen going up against out of state trawlers. These massive ships toss over board as bycatch more halibut than this local fleet is allowed to keep. Read the story here.

 
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Killer Blooms of Climate Change

I went to the eastern Aleutians for The Atlantic to see firsthand the impacts of harmful marine algae. Warming temperatures are spurring these algae—which produce one of the most potent neurotoxins on Earth—to bloom in northern places where they’ve never been a problem before. We’ve always known they could make humans sick from eating tainted clams and mussels, but now researchers are finding them across the food web…in seabirds, walrus, and whales. Read the essay here.

 
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Thanks for all the fish: A wild salmon story

This is a love letter to wild Pacific salmon written for The Economist’s culture magazine, 1843. The fish we love to catch, eat, grill, smoke, can, salt, and gorge on—salmon embody our relationship to the rapidly changing natural world. They force us to ask the hard questions about our lives. What are we willing to sacrifice? What are we willing to lose? Read the essay here.

 
 
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Diving into the Deep

The Race to Alaska is the Iditarod of the sea, a competition of speed, smarts, and survival in some of the most remote waters on Earth. And all with no motors. The women of team Sail Like a Girl won the race and made history. Read it here.

 
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Courage Before the Thaw

In Alaska, climate change isn’t abstract. It’s personal. Over the course of a year, I spoke with Alaskan mothers, grandmothers, Native elders, commercial fishermen, scientists, firefighters and other women whose lives are altered by warming temperatures.
This essay appears in the Spring 2018 issue of The American Scholar alongside beautiful photographs by Anchorage-based photographer Ash Adams.  Read it here.

 
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A Fleeting Resource: In Praise of the Deep Cold

What is it like to live in a frigid—but warming—place? This is about ice, snow, silence, and the way that cold shapes the smell of a landscape.

Named one of 100 notable essays of the year by Best American Essays 2018, this essay was anthologized in This is the Place: Women Writing About Home, which the New York Times called “far-reaching and compelling.”  You can buy the book from Powell’s or Amazon and read the essay here.

 
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Raising Girls of the Natural World

Children are our field guides to curiosity. They hold the maps of the imagined world.
I wrote this essay for REI, as part of their Force of Nature initiative.  Read here.

 
 
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Wading Back Into the Muck of Life

Where I grew up, just out of earshot of the Beltway, spring revolved around our neighborhood pond where green globs of frog eggs entranced me. They held potential.  Read more.