All wild waters have a different flavor. The North Fork of the Flathead River, the river near the off-grid cabin I stay at most often, is wide, and fast enough I wouldn’t risk trying to swim across it. Its headwaters are in Canada, and it has so far been saved from toxic selenium levels by [ ]
Somewhere between 112,000 and 121,000 years ago, a person walked along the muddy residue of a lake that today is so long gone it might be found only in myth. And maybe not even there—the oldest known story of humankind reaches back only 100,000 years. Whoever walked those shores, whoever it was who pressed their toes in [ ]
My father recently sent me a photo from outside the apartment he and my stepmother share in Moscow. It’s a tiny one-room flat that once belonged to my stepmother’s grandmother, Anastasia Tsvetaeva. Anastasia’s sister, Marina Tsvetaeva, is still one of the most beloved poets in Russia; it was lesser known that Anastasia wrote poetry, too, but [ ]
Recently, I stopped at the county landfill to tip my recycling into their dedicated bins. The region I live in doesn’t have much recycling. Cardboard, paper, and aluminum cans. No plastics. We used to have glass recycling but the person who owned that equipment got ill, and nobody else has been able to find enough [ ]
or none Nearly two decades ago, I had a premature baby. “Had a baby” is a strange phrase, isn’t it? It sounds so simple, like having a loaf of bread, or an itch. Whereas even in the best circumstances there is nothing simple about “having a baby.” My son’s and my circumstances were hardly the [ ]
A few days ago, I was sitting by this river, near a U.S. Forest Service cabin where I went recently for a sorely needed offline, off-grid, off-network recalibration. It’s been too long since I sat in the woods by myself for a few days. Late October, the larch trees have yellowed, turning mountainsides bright and [ ]
When I was in sixth grade, ten years old, my family moved briefly to Chico, California. My father, then an electrical engineer, had gotten a job there after being laid off from his firm near my hometown—Belgrade, Montana. I was only in school in Chico for two months, but my teacher, Mr. Davis, made a [ ]
Some years ago when I still lived I upstate New York, I began working at a sawmill. I had two very small children at the time, and had never intended nor desired to be a full-time stay-at-home mom, not to mention be one and working at the same time (due to the full-time stay-at-home mom [ ]
“Oligarchy is based on the notion that those who are unequal in one respect are in all respects unequal; being unequal, that is, in property, they suppose themselves to be unequal absolutely.” –Aristotle, Politics, 350 BCE My last year of college, I applied for a coveted internship at a relatively prestigious literary magazine in St. Paul, [ ]
To new subscribers—welcome to On the Commons! To those of you who’ve been around a while, welcome back! I recently wrote an essay for Psyche/Aeon’s “one thing that changed me” series that’s probably the most personal thing I’ve ever published. If you came here from that essay, I’m very glad to see you here. This newsletter is [ ]