Nature Notes Previous Episodes

“You can never hear enough sound of wind in the pines,” the writer Gary Snyder says in a poem. It’s like a vast breath, enthralling as crashing surf. In West Texas, that sound, and the presence of the towering evergreens, … Continue reading →

It is – to put it mildly – a fraught history. Thousands of Native American burials were exhumed in the 19th and 20th centuries, by white scientists and collectors – the human remains displayed in “bone rooms,” or used in … Continue reading →

It’s a time in the Earth’s history that speaks clearly to our own.  The Eocene Epoch began – some 56 million years ago – with massive greenhouse gas emissions. Temperatures rose – the planet’s life was transformed. But the epoch, … Continue reading →

Our region’s Native American legacy endures in communities and living cultural traditions – and in countless emblems and traces on the West Texas landscape: in images on cave walls and boulders; in pottery and shards of flint from stone-tool making; … Continue reading →

There are few things as magical as flowing water in the desert. Such places refresh both the body and the spirit, and in a land like ours, their presence can feel like an unearned gift. We immediately sense such places … Continue reading →