In 2005, several of the centuries-old ponderosa pine trees on my 15 acres (0.06 sq km) of forest in the northern Rocky Mountains in Montana suddenly died. I soon discovered they were being brought down by mountain pine beetles, pernicious killers the size of the eraser on a pencil that...
Oh, those voices in our heads! You know the ones. They whisper words of judgment and doubt. They ask us, “Who do you think you are?” and “How could you possibly be so clueless?” They are masters at making us feel as if we’re just not good enough. And before...
A little over a century ago, anyone looking out over the water on the eastern edges of Amsterdam on a clear day would have seen Dutch fishermen hauling their nets from the sea. Today the view is very different – more than 200,000 people now live in a spot that...
During the summer of 1883, a caldera in the Sunda Strait, located between the islands of Java and Sumatra, became increasingly turbulent, releasing huge plumes of ash and steam into the sky. Then, on 26 August, an underwater volcano ejected approximately 25 km3 (six cubic miles) of debris, hurtling pumice...
I am dazzled by the rural beauty of France’s Basque Country, where the untamed coast and rolling green hills are dappled with red tile-roofed villages and surrounded by clouds of white sheep. Walking through these towns, I’m always on the lookout for a singular wall, measuring approximately 16m wide and...
On 3 August 1958, the commander of the world’s first nuclear submarine made an extraordinary, if somewhat tongue in cheek, entry in his logbook: “Embarked following personage at North Pole…” wrote USS Nautilus commander William Anderson, “…Santa Claus, affiliation: Christmas.” It was the final sentence of a celebratory record of...
In a tranquil side room of the Covid-19 vaccination centre in Rambouillet, a small French town around 30 miles (50km) south-west of Paris, a soft blue light emanated from a row of cylindrical tubes. Members of the public who received a vaccine last year were invited to bathe in the...
“Some of us think holding on makes us strong, but sometimes it is letting go.” Herman Hesse I often write about finding lightness in life. It can come from an unhurried but effective day at work or from uncluttering your home. Or from learning how to let go and move on...
As a neighbouring country, we know very little about Myanmar. The media of our country covers only the political issues of that country. Thanks to the political instability, it is not a popular tourist destination, although there are some long and beautiful sandy beaches. In this article, we are trying...
The onset of spring brings relief in more ways than one to Delhi. The air is cool and crisp, and with the milder weather come light showers that make the vegetation more lush. Around April, south-westerly winds sweep through the region, and the blanket of acrid smog that covers the...
During Ramadan we celebrate the Qur’an. This is fitting owing to the close association between the month of fasting and the Qur’an. Allah mentions in the Qur’an, The month of Ramadan in which the Qur’an was revealed (2:185). Perhaps this association is connected to the fact that during the month we...
Tiny bits of plastic, or microplastics, have been showing up all over the globe. As they move through the environment, some of these pieces can wind up contaminating food or water. That’s been a concern, because many of these plastic pieces pick up toxic pollutants, only to later release them....
For centuries, indigenous groups in Meghalaya of India have crafted intricate bridges from living fig trees. Now this ancient skill is making its way to European cities. In the north-eastern Indian state of Meghalaya, just above the Sylhet division of Bangladesh, there lies a village named Tyrna. It is very...
Earthen piles built by a chicken-like bird in Australia aren’t just egg incubators — they may also be crucial for the distribution of key nutrients throughout the ecosystem. In the dry woodlands of South Australia, sandy mounds rise between patches of many-stemmed “mallee” eucalyptus trees. These monuments — big enough...
I was seven years old when I started to learn to read, as is typical of the alternative Steiner school I attended. My own daughter attends a standard English school, and started at four, as is typical in most British schools. Watching her memorise letters and sound out words, at...
“Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.” – Buddha There is only one time and place where you can be and have any control over. The present moment. But most of us still spend a lot of our...
The first time that Marcus Maeder stuck a noise sensor into the ground, it was on a whim. A sound artist and acoustic ecologist, he was sitting in a mountain meadow and pushed a special microphone he’d built into the soil. “I was just curious,” says Maeder, who is working...
In 2004, a tsunami triggered by a 9.1 magnitude undersea quake off Indonesia decimated coastal communities around the Indian Ocean, killing at least 225,000 people across a dozen countries. The huge death toll was in part caused by the fact that many communities received no warning. Local manmade early warning...
Ana Morales stepped through the shrubbery, scanning the airwaves with a radio receiver. The device had picked up a signal from a transmitter that she and colleagues had previously attached to a Swainson’s thrush, a small brown and white speckled bird native to the Americas. The same signal had popped...
Just off the north coast of Northern Ireland, in the chilly waters of the Atlantic, lies a tiny, L-shaped island called Rathlin. It is home to around 160 people. Mains electricity only arrived on Rathlin in the early 1990s, with the construction of three wind turbines. One islander enthused to...
Recent Comments