On Sunday, 4 October, more than 200 people (at last count) will be starting out on foot for a shared adventure -- the 2020 Climate Marathon. From our homes on six continents, in different climates and in different seasons, we are coming together to walk and run 26 miles each week throughout the month -- … Continue reading Our Climate Marathon
February is my birthday month, and it seems like lots of people have been raising money for charities and other great causes for their birthdays. I've decided to do something a little different. Instead of fundraising, I'm raising vertical gain! For 2019, I've taken on the goal of reaching 400,000 vertical feet of human-powered ascent, … Continue reading (Virtual) Glacial Climb Challenge!
It's hard to believe that we’re already halfway through the fall semester, snow has fallen every day this week here in northern Vermont, and only now do I feel like I’ve gained enough distance and perspective on the incredible days I spent in the Faroe Islands at the end of July. How fleeting the weeks, … Continue reading Faroes Seven Summits
On our last full day in Svalbard, Orion and I made a wide arc across the ridges east and south of Longyearbyen yesterday, covering the summits of Sukkertoppen, Gruvefjellet, Trollsteinen, and Lars Hiertafjellet, while arcing across the ridge behind the glacier, Larsbreen. The skies were the clearest of our week-long visit here, and the views were … Continue reading Melt: Dispatches from the High Arctic
During my run north along the Arctic Trail in August, I will pass through substantial sections of Norway, Sweden, and Finland en route to Kautokeino from Sulitjelma. The trail's 500 miles, which traverses much ofSápmi, the homeland of the Sami, can be divided according to countries, border crossings, biomes, topography, habitations, and, maybe most interesting, by reindeer … Continue reading Reindeer and Climate Change
Amid the political, social, and emotional tumult across our national stage this year, I have treasured my time training as a time to step outside the web of tweets, truths, media blackouts, funding cuts, posturing, and 'alternative facts.' Maybe to help me find some solid footing, during my hours (and hours) running, I've spent a lot of … Continue reading Facts and science in a complicated world
I am very excited to be working with Adventure Scientists to continue providing samples for their ongoing global microplastics project to create a database of microplastics proliferation throughout the world's marine and freshwater environments. During my time in Scandinavia next summer, I hope to sample freshwater sites along the Nordkalottleden to send back to the U.S. … Continue reading Adventure Science!
I am reading two things at the moment: Donella Meadows’ “Dancing with Systems" and Pope Francis’ recent Encyclical Letter, “On Care For Our Common Home.” Disparate as these texts are—the first a reflection on decades of work with ecological systems by perhaps our leading evangelist of systems thinking, published in the year of her death, 2001--and the second, … Continue reading Everyday Ecology
We've finally arrived in Iceland and settled into an Airbnb apartment in Seltjarnarnes, a few minutes from the city center. It already seems as though we've been gone from Vermont for many weeks, although it's only been just nine days of travel, training, work, and food (!) in Norway, Denmark, and Sweden. A tour of Scandinavia … Continue reading Dispatches from Iceland #1: We are an expression of forces
The Icelandic landscape has long held a fascination for me--from my first visit to Reykjavik in the 1970s when I was a young boy through the field course I taught there in 2007. It is a place where the land is most often laid bare, and geologic history is written (and volcanically rewritten) on even the … Continue reading Why Climate Change Matters in Iceland
Climate Run 