2024 books

The Nature of Oaks by Douglas Tallamy

Putting Ourselves Back in the Equation by George Musser

The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (re-read)

A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis

How to Eat by Thich Nhat Hanh

A City on Mars by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith

Not the End of the World by Hannah Ritchie

Supercommunicators by Charles Duhigg

Exercised by Daniel Lieberman

The Wayfinders by Wade Davis

Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane

In Love with the World by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

The Wager by David Grann

Synchronicity by C.G. Jung

Drive by Bob Harig

Feeling and Knowing by Antonio Damasio

All About Love by bell hooks

Lotus Girl by Helen Tworkov

The Will to Change by bell hooks

Night Vision by Mariana Allesandri

Sailing Alone by Richard J. King

Big Sur by Jack Kerouac

The Wide Wide Sea by Hampton Sides

Life as No One Knows It by Sara Imari Walker

Sandwich by Catherine Newman

In My Time of Dying by Sabastian Junger

Thirst by Mary Oliver

The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac (re-read)

Big Sur by Jack Kerouac (re-read)

Stand By Me by Allison J. Applebaum

2023 books

Ikigai by Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles

Fen, Bog & Swamp by Annie Proulx

Daybook by Anne Truitt

This Isn’t Happening by Steven Hyden

A Silent Fire by Shilpa Ravella

Devotions by Mary Oliver

Starry Messenger by Neil DeGrasse Tyson

The Plant Based Athlete by Matt Frazier and Robert Cheeke

The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo (audiobook)

Journal, Volume 2 by Henry David Thoreau

David Smith by Michael Brenson

Planta Sapiens by Paco Calvo

Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy

Under Prairie Skies by C. Thomas Shay

Nourishing Waters, Comforting Skies by Stephen R. Jones

The Future of Life by E.O. Wilson

The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac

Godel, Eshcer, Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadter (re-read)

The Creative Act by Rick Rubin

One Square Inch of Silence by Gordon Hempton

Quiet Street by Nick McDonnell

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

The Guest by Emma Cline

The Girls by Emma Cline

Homegrown by Jeffrey Toobin

The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking) by Katie Mack

The Adventurer’s Son by Roman Dial

The Song of Significance by Seth Godin

Animal Farm by George Orwell

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (re-read)

The Little Book of Aliens by Adam Frank

Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard

The Lost World of the Old Ones by David Roberts (audiobook)

Dust by Jay Owens

2022 books

Walking by Erling Kagge (2018)

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling (1997)

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling (1998)

Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson (2021)

American Primitive by Mary Oliver (1983)

A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth by Henry Gee (2021)

Matrix by Lauren Groff (2021)

A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella Bird (1878) (read aloud with H) (re-read)

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling (1999)

Where the Sky Began by John Madson (1982)

Bewilderment by Richard Powers (2021)

The Great Plains by Walter Prescott Webb (1931)

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling (2000)

The Thunder Tree by Robert Michael Pyle (1993)

Stand Out of Our Light by James Williams (2018)

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling (2003)

Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World by Barry Lopez (2021)

Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman (2021)

The Holly by Julian Rubinstein (2021)

Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski (2021)

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling (2005)

Don’t Trust Your Gut by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz (2022)

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling (2007)

The Coddling of the American Mind by Gregory Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt (2018)

Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen (2021)

The High Sierra: A Love Story by Kim Stanley Robinson (2022)

This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub (2022)

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield (2002)

The Real Work by Gary Snyder (1980)

The Back Country by Gary Snyder (1971)

Felicity by Mary Oliver (2015)

1984 by George Orwell (1961) (audiobook)

The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter (2021) (audiobook)

Journal, Volume 1: 1837-1844 by Henry David Thoreau (1982)

Wild New World by Dan Flores (2022)

The Oldest Cure in the World by Steve Hendricks (2022)

2021 books

The Overstory by Richard Powers (2019)

The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson (2020)

On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder (1937)

Atomic Habits by James Clear (2018)

The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann Wyss (1812) (read aloud with H)

extraterrestrial by Avi Loeb (2021)

The Practice by Seth Godin (2020)

World of Wonders by Aimee Nezhukumatathil (2020)

A Children’s Bible by Lydia Millet (2020)

Wolf Willow by Wallace Stegner (1955)

The Remains of the Day by Kuzuo Ishiguro (1988)

Where the Buffalo Roam by Anne Matthews (1992)

We the Jury by Wayne Miller (2021)

The Silence by Don DeLillo (2020)

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (2005)

The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas (1844; translated from French by Jacques Le Clercq) (read aloud with H)

Planting in a Post-Wild World by Thomas Rainer and Claudia West (2015)

Billionaire Wilderness by Justin Farrell (2020)

I Hate Running and You Can Too by Brendan Leonard (2021)

Monogamy by Sue Miller (2020)

Raven’s Witness by Hank Lentfer (2020)

A Sense of Place, a Sense of Time by John Brinckerhoff Jackson (1994) (re-read)

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro (2021)

Suburbitat by Jim Tolstrup (2021)

Freedom by Sebastian Junger (2021)

Nocturnes by Kazuo Ichiguro (2009)

The Tallgrass Prairie: An Introduction by Cindy Crosby (2017)

Sorry for Your Trouble by Richard Ford (2020)

Grassland by Richard Manning (1997)

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard (1974)

Helgoland by Carlo Rovelli (2020; translation by Erica Segre and Simon Carnell, 2021)

The Ecology and Management of Prairies in the Central United States by Chris Heltzer (2010)

On Time and Water by Andri Snær Magnason (2019; translated from Icelandic by Lytton Smith, 2021)

Funny Weather by Olivia Laing (2020)

Great Plains by Ian Frazier (1989) (re-read)

Mortality by Christopher Hitchens (2010)

Powder Days by Heather Hansman (2021)

Food Rules by Michael Pollan (2009)

Humankind by Rutger Bregman (2019; translated from Dutch by Elizabeth Manton and Erica Moore, 2020)

This Is Your Mind on Plants by Michael Pollan (2021)

Prairie reading list

Since starting a shortgrass prairie garden in our yard in 2017, I’ve gone back to these books for reference and inspiration. I’ll update the list from time to time. If you have any to recommend, get in touch!

~~~

Plants and gardening

Jewels of the Plains by Claude Barr (1983)

The Prairie Garden: a step-by-step guide to creating a shortgrass prairie garden by Rick Brune (1991)

Low-Water Native Plants for Colorado Gardens: Front Range & Foothills by the Colorado Native Plant Society (2016)

Low-Water Native Plants for Colorado Gardens: Prairies & Plains by the Colorado Native Plant Society (2016)

Edible Wild Plants of the Prairie by Kelly Kindscher (1987)

Medicinal Wild Plants of the Prairie by Kelly Kindscher (1992)

Messy Ecosystems, Orderly Frames by Joan Iverson Nassauer in Landscape Journal (1995)

Bringing Nature Home by Douglas Tallamy (2007)

Prairie Up by Benjamin Vogt

A New Garden Ethic by Benjamin Vogt

~~~

Field guides

Prairie: A North American Guide by Suzanne Winckler (2004)

Peterson Field Guides: The North American Prairie by Ruth Carol Cushman and Stephen R. Jones (2004)

The Tallgrass Prairie: An Introduction by Cindy Crosby (2017)

~~~

Natural history

The Prairie World by David S. Costello (1969)

The Shortgrass Prairie by Ruth Carol Cushman and Stephen R. Jones (1988)

Grassland by Richard Manning (1997)

Prairie: A Natural History by Candace Savage (2004)

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Fiction

The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder (1940)

Plainsong by Kent Haruf (2000)

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (1985)

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Narrative nonfiction

Great Plains by Ian Frazier (1989)

PrairyErth by William Least Heat-Moon (1991)

A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold (1949)

2020 books

Books I read in 2020:

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer (2013)

Existence by David Hinton (2016)

Autumn by Ali Smith (2016)

Fire Making by Daniel Hume (2018)

Great Plains by Ian Frazier (2001)

Uncertain Path by William Tweed (2010)

Grass by Joe Truett (2010)

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng (2017)

Six Degrees by Mark Lynas (2008)

Art + Objects by Graham Harman (2019)

The Progress of This Storm by Andreas Malm (2018)

Coyote America by Dan Flores (2016)

Hunger Mountain by David Hinton (2012)

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne (1872) (read aloud with H)

Eventide by Kent Haruf (2004)

The Call of the Wild by Jack London (1903) (read aloud with H)

Prairie: A Natural History by Candace Savage (2011)

Bringing Nature Home by Douglas Tallamy (2007)

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O’Brien (1971) (read aloud with H)

Nature’s Best Hope by Douglas Tallamy (2020)

The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch (2011) (re-read from 2019)

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (1952) (read aloud with H)

A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold (1949)

My Antonia by Willa Cather (1918)

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (1883) (read aloud with H)

O Pioneers! by Willa Cather (1913)

Alien Oceans by Kevin Hand (2020)

American Cosmic by D.W. Pasulka (2019)

This Is Water by David Foster Wallace (2009)

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi (2016)

East of Eden by John Steinbeck (1953)

A New Garden Ethic by Benjamin Vogt (2017)

The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram (1997)

The Prairie World by David Costello (1969)

The Book of the Bivvy by Ronald Turnbull (2001)

Why We Can’t Sleep by Ada Calhoun (2020)

The Wooing of Earth by Rene Dubos (1980)

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (1719) (read aloud with H)

PrairyErth by William Least Heat-Moon (1999)

Black Elk Speaks by John Neihardt (1932)

The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder (1940)

North American Prairie by J.E. Weaver (1954)

Caste by Isabel Wilkerson (2020)

The Planet Remade by Oliver Morton (2016)

Artist residencies of the Great Plains

[Updated October 28, 2020]

Below is a list of artist in residence programs on the Great Plains, as defined by the green area on the map below (excluding urban settings). The longer I live in Denver, the more I appreciate the beauty of the the Great Plains and how undervalued this region is aesthetically.

If you have one to add please leave a comment below!

Agate Fossil Beds National Monument, Nebraska

Art Farm, Marquette, Nebraska

Badlands National Park, South Dakota

Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts, Saratoga, Wyoming

Cedar Point Biological Station, Ogallala, Nebraska

The Chinati Foundation, Marfa, Texas

Fort Union National Monument, New Mexico

Homestead National Monument, Nebraska

Jentel Artist Residency, Banner, Wyoming

Prairieside Outpost, Matfield Green, Kansas

Roswell Artist-in-Residence Program, Roswell, New Mexico

Tallgrass Artist Residency, Matfield Green, Kansas

Ucross Foundation, Clearmont, Wyoming

Photo captions for Whatever Moves or Makes Noise

In Whatever Moves or Makes Noise, my photo essay of the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica, I decided to leave photo captions out of the book. I wanted to focus on the beauty and ambience of the place, less like photo journalism or documentary photography. But understandably many people asked for this info! So here they are: captions for each picture in the book. If you have any questions, leave a comment below!

1. Looking across Taylor Valley over Lake Bonney (steep glacial valley; the lake occupies the valley floor)

2. Rocks buried in sand dunes, wind action on the sand, Victoria Valley dune field

3. Ice stalactites in an ice cave in Taylor Glacier, Taylor Valley

4. Aerial view of an ice field/glacier, McMurdo Dry Valleys region

5. Rock wall in Upper Wright Valley, within "The Maze"

6. "Moat ice" on the edge of Lake Bonney, Taylor Valley; the perimeter of each frozen lake has several meters of this smooth, transparent ice

7. Eroded boulders near the summit of Mount Falconer, Taylor Valley

8. Footprints and wind action on sand dunes, Victoria Valley dune field

9. Air bubbles in frozen lake ice

10. Sun (lower left) and upward-cast shadow on Mount Falconer, Taylor Valley

11. Silhouette of my friend Cliff inside one of the huts operated by New Zealand in Wright Valley

12. Cracks in lake ice

13. Sand over lake ice, various cracks and ripples

14. Lens flare looking down at moat ice

15. Sand and gravel slope with, trails of moisture and/or rocks, Bonney Riegel (a sort of ridge exposed by glacial erosion), Lake Bonney, Taylor Valley

16. Rock buried in gravel in an area called the “Zen Garden" above Lake Bonney, Taylor Valley

17. Don Juan Pond, Wright Valley (stays liquid water at 40 below due to high salinity)

18. "Popcorn ice,” nickel-size snow balls, Garwood Valley

19. Silhouette of Cliff walking at dusk, Taylor Valley

20. A vertical wall of ice, actually the end of a glacier, with a baseball-size rock, exposed to the light, melting the ice around it

21. Another rock in the Zen Garden, eroded and sculpted by wind borne particles

22. Ice cave, Taylor Glacier, Taylor Valley (look closely, it is occupied!)

23. Boulder, Wright Valley (what's interesting is the top of the "face" is titled 60 degrees toward the camera)

24. Sand waves, Bull Pass, Wright Valley

25. Aerial view of glaciers and exposed rock/soil on the edge of the McMurdo Dry Valleys

26. Cracks in lake ice

27. Bonney Riegel, Lake Bonney, Taylor Valley

2019 books

The books I read in 2019:

Desert Cabal by Amy Irvine (2018)

Spiral Jetta by Erin Hogan (2008)

Ulysses by James Joyce (1922; 1986 “Gabler edition”)

The Revenant by Michael Punke (2002)

Encyclical on Climate Change and Inequality by Pope Francis (2015)

Staying with the Trouble by Donna Haraway (2018)

Running After Antelope by Scott Carrier (2002)

Survive the Savage Sea by Dougal Robertson (1973)

21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari (2018)

We Are the Nerds by Christine Lagorio-Chafkin (2018)

Path of the Puma by Jim Williams (2018)

Florida by Lauren Groff (2018)

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (1937) (read aloud with H)

The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch (2011)

The Sun is a Compass by Caroline Van Hemert (2019)

Horizon by Barry Lopez (2019)

The Unpassing by Chia-Chia Lin (2019)

Old in Art School by Nell Painter (2018)

She Wants It by Jill Soloway (2018) (audiobook)

The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle (1999; 2004 edition)

How to Love the Universe by Stefan Klein (2017)

Genesis by Edward O. Wilson (2019)

Falter by Bill McKibben (2019)

Boom by Michael Shnayerson (2019)

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens (2018)

Wild at Heart by Alice Outwater (2019)

Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne (1864) (read aloud with H)

Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution by Lee Smolin (2019)

You & A Bike & A Road by Eleanor Davis (2017)

Deep Creek by Pam Houston (2019)

Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist and Other Essays by Paul Kingsnorth (2017)

Commander in Cheat by Rick Reilly (2019)

The Absent Hand by Suzannah Lessard (2019)

Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart by Carrot Quinn (2015)

Underland by Robert Macfarlane (2019)

What Art Is by Arthur Danto (2014)

The Strange Order of Things by Antonio Damasio (2018)

Making Rocky Mountain National Park by Jerry J. Frank (2013)

A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle (2005)

The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells (2019)

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain (1875) (read aloud with H)

No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference by Greta Thunberg (2019)

Carrying the Fire by Michael Collins (1974)

Blowout by Rachel Maddow (2019)

Recycling by Finn Arne Jorgensen (2019)

Symbiotic Planet by Lynn Margulis (1998)

The Future of Packaging by Tom Szaky (2019)

Down to Earth by Bruno Latour (2018)

Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann (2019)

2018 books

The books I read in 2018:

A History of Pictures by David Hockney & Martin Gaylord (2016)

Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari (2014)

The Immense Journey by Loren Eiseley (1959)

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris (2001)

Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari (2016)

The Lost Grizzles by Rick Bass (1996)

Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadter (1999)

Principles of Chinese Painting by George Rowley (1970)

No Immediate Danger by William T. Vollmann (2018)

No Good Alternative by William T. Vollmann (2018)

The Traveling Feast by Rick Bass (2018)

Why I Came West by Rick Bass (2009)

Play On by Jeff Bercovici (2018)

Cloudbursts by Thomas McGuane (2018)

Golf My Own Damn Way by John Daly (2007)

Object-Oriented Ontology by Graham Harman (2018)

Dark Ecology by Timothy Morton (2016)

Being Ecological by Timothy Morton (2018)

Humankind by Timothy Morton (2017)

A Hologram for the King by Dave Eggers (2013)

The Shortgrass Prairie by Ruth Carol Cushman and Stephen R. Jones (1989)

How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan (2018)

Your Art Will Save Your Life by Beth Pickens (2018)

Barbarian Days by William Finnegan (2016)

The Seasons Alter by Philip Kitchner and Evelyn Fox Keller (2018)

Plainsong by Kent Haruf (2000)

Here by Richard McGuire (2014)

2017 books

The books I read in 2017:

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry, 1985

Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew B. Crawford, 2010

American Serengeti by Dan Flores, 2016

Barkskins by Annie Proulx, 2016

Borderland by John R. Stilgoe, 1990

The Beast in the Garden by David Baron, 2005

American Eclipse by David Baron, 2017

Agnes Martin by Nancy Princenthal, 2015

The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (translated by Ken Liu), 2016

The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu (translated by Joel Martinsen), 2016

Death's End by Cixin Liu (translated by Ken Liu), 2016