2019–2026
1,354 posts
2026 129
October 2026
- Osettai
- Ewers for Heifer & Heifer
- Sounding It Out
- Life Keeps Walking
- A Sestina for Songbirds
- My Neighbor, Me, and a Grand Principle
- She began to dream again
- A Village to Feed a Fawn
- Unsound Minds in Charge
- Jumping Spider Courtship Is Dazzling, Dangerous Business
- Tale of the Tape
- Is It Grief? It Feels Like Grief. Still.
- Go Ahead! Drink the ’61 Cheval Blanc From a Paper Cup
September 2026
- Snapshot: Glorious lichen
- The Frog and the Fly
- Make Prayers to the Sky
- Golden Boy
- Nobody Was Here
- Make Me Like a Tree, and Leave Me
- A taxonomy of toddler jokes
- Will the real women in science please stand up
- Rail Trails, Towpaths, and Other Great Trails Along Failed Transportation Routes
- Every Map Starts with a Lie
- A Little Night Music (Revisited)
- A baleful tale of the snails in Hayle
- Snapshot: The best bug, August edition
August 2026
- Songs of Home
- Fear of Mountain Lions
- Are Jumping Spiders Capable of Innovation?
- Baltimore in August
- Summer skies
- Tremors
- Debunking Hollywood: Human Hibernation
- Categorically Yes … and No
- Perfect Things
- Happy Final Weeks of Summer Camp (to all who celebrate)
- The Mountains that Matter Most
- Look up
- Birds of the District of Columbia
July 2026
- The Round of Introductions You Didn’t Ask For
- One Damn Thing After Another
- In Search of Low Carbon Joy
- On Boundary Conditions
- Consent & the Afterlife
- Lost in Curiosity
- TIL, for Today I Learned, Is the Best Acronym. What Have You Learned Lately?
- Crouching Spider, Hidden Tiger
- Coffeeshop Science
- Ode to the Brown-Headed Cowbird, Again
- Go Sit in a Forlorn Chair
- Spiders, far away and at home
- This Post is About Porcupines…Again
June 2026
- Sleeping in Space
- Sounds of Silence
- Storia 2
- The wisdom of a summer afternoon
- Trump Meets an Indigenous Movement
- Motherhood: Two for One
- The HPV Vaccine Is 20 Years Old. Let’s Celebrate! With Glitter.
- I’m Off to Thrillsville
- Leading the Bedtime Rebellion
- Everything Is Bad, But There Are Baby Deer
- Voice Mails from the Great Beyond
- Bringing that spirit home
- Home/Not Home
May 2026
- Submission
- Branching
- Uncle Bundy and the Technically Sweet
- Leaving / Imprints
- Haircare in the Viking Age
- Written in the Stars
- What’s Truly Beautiful
- Why Do People Hate Spiders?
- Loving Explosions
- Too Little, Too Late, But Better Late Than Never?
- Hello Birdie
- Snapshot: Funny little ferns
- Standing at the Shoreline
April 2026
- Guest Post: Chemistry & the Students from Elsewhere
- Passion Fruit Diplomacy
- Low Info
- Watch the grass grow
- Migrations
- A Baffling Curio
- Messy Hospitality, Party Ideas, and Icebreakers
- What a spectacular worm
- The tiniest frogs . . . eeee!
- To the Moon, Our Moon, and Back
- Birthday Celebrations
- So many wonderful plants!
- Mind the Gap
March 2026
- Wanting to Be a Bird
- Snail Season
- I Don’t Know What the Crows Are Saying
- The Harrier
- Nobody’s Thing
- Echoes of an Unbroken Voice
- In Praise of Secular Saints
- Auklets and Islands
- The Stone Collector
- Redux: The Molt
- Let It Snow — Please, For the Love of All That Is Good
- Ice Skating: an Overanalysis
- Listening to My Surroundings
February 2026
- Snapshot: Interpreter of America
- The Warmth of Frostlines: A Chat with Author Neil Shea
- Arroyo Acoustics
- I Can See Clearly Now/The Rain
- And Now It’s February, Same Same
- Passages from unknowable stories
- Storyteller’s Remorse
- Write like you’re in the 1500s
- Five Pieces of Work Advice from an Agony Aunt
- Lunch with a Jumping Spider
- Redux: The Once Soft World
- Snapshots
January 2026
- I Have a Cold
- Why I’m so excited about the weight loss drugs I’ll never take
- Lessons From Mr. Nobody Against Putin
- I like stuff
- They’ll Be Back
- Life and Death by Mountain Lion
- Stuck in the Middle with Oystercatchers and You
- It’s Still January
- what else is love but
- Ice Dreams
- After the Gold Rush
- Bad Things Are Fast, Good Things Are Slow
- Redux: Remnant of Eden
2025 158
December 2025
- On Short Break – Be Back Soon
- The Gifts That Keep on Giving
- Saint Rock
- Redux: Trip Schooling
- Immersion Research, Central Pennsylvania
- My Favorite Books of 2025
- Along the River
- Watch, Rinse, Repeat
- A Note on the Type: WTF
- Redux: Of Heisenbergs and Beethovens
- Why Cats Are the Way They Are
- Wind/Break
November 2025
- Autumn Woods
- Notes from a Workmanlike, Highly Consequential Life
- How to Say Thank You
- Guest Post: Silicon Valley’s Monstrous Quest for Immortality
- Buried Treasure
- Redux: Star Party
- Singletrack Is Awesome. Why?
- Why Science’s press team won’t be using AI to write releases anytime soon
- AI is Full of Bullshit. Now It’s Faking Science
- Guest Post: Woof. Woof woof woof. Woof. Woof.
- Little Dog Big Heart
- Infectious Diseases in the Wild
October 2025
- Neighborhood Hauntings
- Alternative Realities at the NRO
- Well THAT Smells Warm!
- Trump, Caribou, and the Road to Nowhere
- I Know What the Fox Says
- Science Vacations Are the Best Vacations
- Screaming Parties
- ROAM: an interview with Hillary Rosner
- The Black Locust
- Did You Know
- The Stubborness of Women
- Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!
- My Hard-Won, Useless Knowledge
- Thank You For Your Resume. Never Contact Us Again.
September 2025
- Male Rain
- Water Year
- She began to dream again
- They’re All Just Waves
- The Tales Teeth Tell
- Executives Dysfunctioning
- How Can We Sleep Through All This?
- The Necessity Defense
- Join me in escaping from reality
- Up in Smoke
- Grief As Ecotone and As Pantone
- Orb Weaver
- It’s Roasted Tomato Season, Motherfuckers
August 2025
- A List from the Past
- My Brain on Gaeilge
- We Get Around to Introducing a New Person of LWON, Neil Shea
- Getting Out of the Jail of Time
- Snapshot: Squirrel Season
- Baltimore in August
- Landscape Painting
- Little Rivers (& What Lurks Within)
- Teaching as a form of friendship
- Weird Things You Learn About Food When You Garden
- Crazy for Capybaras
- The Road Not Taken
- Rejoice, for Mars Retrograde Is Finally Almost Over
- Slow Touch
July 2025
- Discovering What’s Possible at CERN
- Snapshot: Approaching fig season
- My Corvid Friends-to-Be
- Spirits at Home and Abroad
- Zee Lady
- Resilience: Bug Nuts or Not?
- On old dogs
- Celebrate the 100th Anniversary of the Scopes Trial by Screaming Like a Furious Monkey
- Immediate Family
- Worm Sex
- Snapshot: Fate and the Follow-Up
- Happy Fourth of July?
- Summer snapshot
June 2025
- Attention & Executive Function: Beware
- Find the words about hiking
- Not Every Mind’s Eye Can See
- The Body is a Compass
- Rocket, Maybe?
- Farewell My Fun Friend: A Tribute to Donni Reddington
- Grace 3
- When Deer Attack
- The Benefits of Tiny Friends
- Reclaiming my time
- The Forgotten Volcano
- I Am the Eggdog
- One Last Sweep
May 2025
- How I Became A Bird Spy
- Snapshot: The best thing on my phone
- Inhale. Exhale. Hopefully, Repeat.
- Under an Old Growth Sky
- Feel the Burn
- I am a hand turkey
- Garwin Died
- We Need to Remember Problems We Solved
- Another New Person of LWON: Laura Helmuth
- The Personalities of Jumping Spiders
- New Person of LWON: Betsy Mason
- Desperately Seeking the Unforseen
- The Other Side of Silence
- Sinking Feelings
- Ice Skating: an Overanalysis
April 2025
- Spring: The Season of Hope
- Wait, is life just hard?
- Gen-X-istential Dread
- Escape from the Wonder Killer
- Guest Post: A golden rule for publicity seeking aliens
- Brittany and the Beavers
- Arrivals and Departures
- In Praise of Minor Bulbs (Updated)
- Log of everyday resistance
- The Mental Load of Packing Lunches
- Redux: Rare Birds
- Consider The Rocks, and You Might Feel Better
- Science Poem: Farewell Transmission
March 2025
- A taxonomy of internet demons
- Stop and Experience A Moment Of Wonder
- Snapshot: Flower season
- Sky Squirrels
- Every Small Action Magnifies
- A Voice in the Sandstorm
- By the Spoonful
- The Fallacy of the Last Move HA!
- Leaving / Imprints
- Redux: Fear the Deer: A Comprehensive Ranking of Cinematic Roadkill
- Winter Stupid
- Deer Cheyenne Mountain
- Science Poem: Volvox Minuet
February 2025
- Where the Streets Have Two Names
- Experiencing Joy While the World Burns
- History is Long and Things Change
- Guest Post: Why Ice Speaks Slowly
- Animal Love
- The Youth Singularity
- Something Nice and Small
- The Idiocy of Second-Guessing Order
- You Can Still Find Stars
- Behavioral Observation
- Be Like This Tree
- Nature Poetry: Heron Suite
January 2025
- A Sevenmile Stream Story
- Winter Sunsets Are the Best Sunsets
- Snapshot: A Walk in Our Nation’s Capital
- What Would I Save?
- Escaping the Flames
- Forest gardens are the coolest gardens
- Orchid Care for the Uncertain
- So Long, and Thanks for All the Canids
- Science Metaphors (cont.): Touchstone
- Composite
- Oh Wow: An Exercise in Certainty
- By the wind sailors
- Maybe Good Things Will Happen – II
- Maybe Good Things Will Happen – I
2024 160
December 2024
- Not Everything Is Terrible, Poetry Edition
- Not Everything Is Terrible, Volume 2
- Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays Uponst Us All
- Parts of It Were Pretty Bad
- My Favorite Books of 2024
- Snapshot: Moss
- This, Too, is a Dog’s Life
- The Archaeology of You
- Cavewomen with Backpain Take Revenge
- Our Moon
- Thanks for Basking
- Moon Not Shining of Its Own Light
- Dancing in the streets
November 2024
- Rosa and the Lighthouse
- Needs washed
- Season of the Snood
- Snapshot: Farewell, Stump Mountain
- Snapshot: The Penguins at Twilight
- What Happens in the Wild
- The Canadian Canoe Museum
- What Could Go Wrong?
- A Brief Tribute to Karsten Heuer
- Conversation: Richard & the Pillars of Creation
- You Can Still Find Stars
- In the Pocket
- A Leaf on the Wind: On Election Terror and Golden Trees
October 2024
- Cross-Country Skiing: A Halloween Tradition on Grand Mesa
- Wish Ewe Were Here
- What the Kids Are Doing
- Released
- Synchronicity
- Voice Mails from the Great Beyond
- Once Upon a Phylogeny
- Snapshot – Er, SnapVideo: Post-Spawn
- The Evidence of the Senses
- Look up
- Infantile Amnesia
- I Did It Dad! I LOVE This!
- Redrawing the map
September 2024
- Out of time
- My Brilliant (ADHD) Friend
- Something I Ate This Week
- Spirit of Rage and Madness
- Weather the Weather
- Mustelid Madness
- Beth Willman Really Does Have a Galaxy
- Composite
- Guest Post: Where Do Cicadas Go When They Die?
- Snapshot: Shiny (Non-Alive) Fish
- Animal/ Vegetable/ Ecosystem/ Nuisance/ Pet
- Is It Grief? It Feels Like Grief.
- Stars are Born
August 2024
- The Makapansgat Cobble
- Green 2
- I STILL Wish I Could Have One
- Baltimore in August
- Tracks
- Voice Mails From the Great Beyond
- Snapshot: My Pothos, My Muse
- What’s in a (gene) name
- SNAPSHOT: This Horseshoe Crab
- Where We First Blew Up the Bomb
- What to expect when you’re transforming
- Small 2
- Oh God, Another Meaningless List
July 2024
- Spotted Lanternfly Epiphany
- What water gives
- This Is the Coldest Summer of the Rest of Your Life
- Snapshot: A Sun Shower
- Flying Ant Day: the Q&A you didn’t know you needed
- Heading Downhill: Another One of Those Lists I Do
- Pollinators in Dangerous Times
- Frogs are cute and useful: Let’s save them.
- To America by Boat, Sans Columbus
- Visitation From A BirdCam Blue Jay
- Science Writers on Twitter: Comforted By the Dying Universe
- The Kind of People Who Make Neighbors Sad When They Move Away
- The Word Y’All Need
- The Future Remaking Itself
June 2024
- What is an internal world model anyway?
- Another Post About a Bug
- Scaturalist
- On the luxury of deep thinking
- Volunteer
- Redux: How Baby Snoots Became the World’s Most Famous Manatee
- Father Things
- Don’t Eat This
- The Tentative Nature of Science
- Snapshot: Look at this violet!
- Is that when you decided to remove your implant?
- Things That Went Wrong in Nature This Week
May 2024
- Hard Times in the Younger Dryas
- Living in a Non-Ergodic World
- Cloud Cover
- The Brilliance of BirdCam
- GRANDMOTHER? Really? and Subsequent Thoughts
- Look up
- Fruit dispersal, the wrong way
- It is now safe to move about the cabin
- Rescued
- Dog Smart: An Interview with Jennifer S. Holland
- My Mom on the Bering Land Bridge
- Color Theories
- Bloom Where You’re Planted
April 2024
- Another Chapter in the Roadkill Chronicles
- Guest Post: A Killer Whale by Any Other Name
- Green is hard
- I wrote a eulogy
- The Dream Camera
- A New Age of Brightness
- The obstetric dilemma
- Earth at Night in Color
- Ode to the Brown-Headed Cowbird
- Eclipse
- There Goes the Sun
- Why Am I Not There?
- A Toddler in Totality
- On the Path of Totality
- Not Even Looking Up
- Why the Last Eclipse Mattered and This One Will Too
- The Weight of the Eclipse
- Eclipse Week 2024
March 2024
- Time Will Tell
- Lugworms? Why, Certainly!
- In Praise of Minor Bulbs
- On Winthrop Pond
- Peak Bloom, By Night
- Redux: Vanishing Points
- Toward a theory of cuteness aggression
- This Is Not a Snake, Though It Is Snake Shaped
- Science Poem: The Birds of Hyde Park
- Space Is Real
- The Queen’s Speech
- Amphorae
- Any Chance You Have Time to Read This Post?
February 2024
- Snapshot: The Raccoons of Jewel Key
- Nobody Was Here
- Lady of the Lake
- Birding – PUBLISHED, Finally
- Sleep Talk with Me
- Remnant of Eden
- Well THAT Smells Warm
- Kate Versus the Meteorite
- Redux: I Saw Them Standing There
- N is for Norman, eaten by a lionness
- Getting Gravid
- Stuck In the Middle With Oystercatchers and You
January 2024
- A Sevenmile Stream Story
- Under the Kitchen Table is One Option
- The moon in my skin
- Free the Tree
- Chasing the northern lights
- The internet and the overmind
- Our Moon
- Guest Post: I Went Searching for Rattlesnakes and the Most Dangerous Thing I Found Was My Own Urine
- Bat Facts (Kate’s Version)
- Along the Urban Ecotone
- The Completion Portfolio
- Train Time
- Number the Days
2023 153
December 2023
- Day Tripper
- Not Everything Is Terrible
- The People of LWON Tell You What to Watch
- The People of LWON Tell You What to Read
- Redux: A Grayling Visit
- Guest post: A plunge into the artificial sweat industry
- The physics of melt
- Science-ish Poem: Right Then
- Live-Tweeting🚀the🛰️Space💥War😠
- Puppet shows for the AI
- What’s the Story?
- Lessons from the Witch Tree
- Swing and a Miss
- Preserved Cognition in a Twinkling
November 2023
- The Stubbornness of Women
- How to Visit a Natural History Museum
- GESUNDHEIT
- Snapshot: Identify the Roadside Critter
- Science Writer Goes Off the Rails
- The Bird Flu Chronicles
- The Hidden Risks of Snot Sucking
- Feast your eyes
- AI is a Terrifying Purveyor of Bullshit. Next Up: Fake Science
- Scat
- To My Companion Who Has Faithfully Returned
- On Sticker Charts and Shoddy Science
- Under Bortle 1 Skies
October 2023
- Catch me if you can’t
- Bos Taurus
- The Best Bugs
- Neighborhood Hauntings
- Snapshot: A Colossal Castoroides
- What the Kids Are Doing
- Overflow
- The Weird World of Amazon Book Reviews
- It’s Raining Baby Oak Trees
- The Iniquity of Candied Orange Peel
- There’s No Pleasing Some People (Foundational Texts in Reverse Order of Likability Edition)
- Evening with a Geyser
- 10 Years, 10 Questions
September 2023
- Orb Weaver
- Drama at the beach
- Cameron wrote a book!
- Finding the Beauty in Roadkill
- Outright Gifts
- Leaving/Imprints
- Regarding INC5760131 or How to Navigate the Reply-All Apocalypse
- Music in the Air
- Mentally Vacationing In Lower Summer
- Window: White Pine
- Why We Went Back
- The Best Laid Plans
- Guest Post: A Glimmer of Good in a Time of War
August 2023
- Lookit This Tree
- Zee Lady
- Redux: The Lookout Cookbook
- The Boundary Conditions Being What They Are
- Puddleglyphs
- The Wolverine That Wasn’t
- Ma? It’s Martin.
- The Fall of a Sparrow
- The New Greatest Story Ever Told
- Redux: Giving History a Finger
- Abortive Suckers: The Mystery of the Cypress Knees
- Why the desert looks this way
- Celebrate the Infeasible
July 2023
- Canoe Stashing with Craig
- Guest Post: Berlin Boar Pheromones
- Beach
- Cohabitation
- What water gives
- Johnny and Oppie
- In the Doorway
- The Melody of the Mountain
- There are Two Kinds of People: Those Who Make Their Beds and Those Who Don’t
- Snapshot: Overthinking lawn decor
- The Trifecta, Or, How to Haunt Yourself for Years to Come
- Small Rhythms
- An adventurous reunion
June 2023
- Snapshot: Mulberries, Sidewalk
- June Gloomier
- Snapshot: Roadside Lupine
- Spring rain
- Dog Stuff Coming Out
- Redux: From Here to Eternity
- The Real Houseplants of Colorado Springs
- American Breakdown: A Conversation with Jennifer Lunden (Part 2)
- Smoke snark
- Writing in Analog
- Counting Sheep
- Backcountry Door Dash
May 2023
- Listening for the Birds
- Caterpillars Go Marching
- Screaming Parties
- What We’ve Completely 100% Changed Our Minds About
- Free
- The Molt
- The Death of the Moth Would Be Just Fine By Me, Thanks
- Island Mom
- Motherhood: The Second Child
- “People need to know we’re here.” A Conversation with Jennifer Lunden
- Bring the World to Its Senses
- Podcasting
- A Handful of Frog
- A Neighbor’s Shrub, or The Passage of Time
April 2023
- Penspective: Looking up
- Redux: Total Immersion
- The Ur-Trees
- On Winthrop Pond, Part 2
- Counting Backwards
- OH NO!! Dust On Snow!
- Y’all Need this Word
- To Volcanoes (at Gmail), with Love
- Science Poem: Darwin’s Finches
- The Children of Floods
- Thanks, Tips
- By-the-wind-sailors
March 2023
- On Winthrop Pond
- Tomato Tomato
- “I Want People to Know That They’re Not Alone”: A Solastalgic Conversation with Paul Bogard
- The Problem with Good People
- Science Poem: Same Lobster, Different Death
- Star Party
- Science +/vs Religion
- The Case For Ignoring All Online Advice
- How the Pandemic Turned Working Moms into Mommy Pig
- Felicia, the Fermilab Ferret: Micropoems
- Thanks for All the Snow
- Postcard from a great height
- The Corvids in Your Neighborhood
February 2023
- On the occasion of a century
- Two Tapirs
- The Uses of “Hand”
- The physics of melt
- Submission
- Winter Sunsets Are the Best Sunsets
- Ask Mr. Cosmology
- plant wisdom
- Science Poem: To the Sylacauga Meteorite
- A Shooting, a Storyteller
- The Abominable Mystery
January 2023
- Bee Lines
- After the Rain
- Ratched Down
- January Is Not Our Friend
- Overflow
- Happy 10 th Birthday Finkbeiner Test!
- where ideas come from (wrong answers only)
- Hope for the Alarmed: An Interview with Madeline Ostrander
- I Hate This Canyon. But I Love That Other One. Why?
- Roaring Lion Uncaged
- The moon, right there
- Number the Days
2022 155
December 2022
- The Best Dam Year-End List
- Walking Into the New Year
- Signs of the coldest season
- My Year in Books
- Snapshot: Sandhill cranes
- 2022 wrapped
- “I am at peace with the gap.” A Conversation with Sabrina Imbler (Part II)
- In Utah, Out of Service
- Moccasins in Sandals Country
- Size Matters
- Snapshot: Executive Function
- Plunge 2
- An Inordinate Fondness for Grasshoppers
November 2022
- Guest Post: Poet yells at newspaper article
- Like Groundhog Day: the Mammogram Story That Won’t Die
- The Marshmallow Test is Wrong and Bad
- The People of LWON Are, In Spite of Everything, Grateful
- consider the toothpaste
- “A year later, I was still thinking about this octopus.” A Conversation with Sabrina Imbler (Part I)
- A Shape in the Woods
- When society imitates fiction
- In the Pocket
- 100 Days, 1 Dress
- Time Will Tell
- Snapshot: Persimmon tree
- Conversation with Science Writers about Whatever Is Going On & Whether It Matters
October 2022
- Apocalypse, in costume
- The Last Goodbye for a Good Girl
- Hell is (too many) other people
- don’t get on the bus
- Writing in the Sky
- The Iceman Cometh Not
- Flora, Fauna, Funga
- Bug On My Window, Having a Tough Day
- House Rules Rule
- Guest Post: Don’t kill the miller moths
- In Praise of the Bean Man
- The many languages of dog
- Look, It’s A Bear! Again!
September 2022
- The future is a myth that is true and false
- Mid
- Les ruines Thomas “Carbide” Willson – Chelsea, QC
- Ballooning Spiders
- Snapshot: Very Big Tree
- The Last Word on Poop
- A Quasi-Empathetic Case of Psychosomatic Canine COVID (Or Something)
- Short, and on the Battle of Maldon
- The Seven Deadly Sins: Greed
- The Lexicography of Skunks
- The worms under the English Riviera might save your life
- wikipedia wormhole: the donner party
August 2022
- Here I Am
- Montreal wants my stuff
- 9 9 8
- Snapshot: My Neighbor’s Figs
- Fig of my Imagination
- Redux: Floater
- Baltimore in August
- It Was So Hot
- A Neighborhood Beaver Pond, Gone Too Dam Soon
- The Scientist in the Garden
- Make Me Like a Tree, and Leave Me
- The Fog and the Flock
- Summer Feet
- The Rites of Summer
- Live, Laugh, Shun
July 2022
- Free AI Lesson Plans
- Summer Bliss
- Birds, Singing, Everywhere
- Zee Lady
- On My Way to Burning Man
- Helen and I Smack Down Unhappiness
- The forbidden boat
- queen bees and geniuses
- Redux: Nominative Determinism
- Summer Break! Go Sit in a Forlorn Chair
- She Speaks for Protection
- Location, Location, Location
- All Delight We Cannot See: Epilogue
June 2022
- Hello Siberia, it’s Emily Underbite
- I choose what grows
- Food is All Around
- Ear to the Ground
- Of Beavers and Cranes
- Oh Spring!
- Lady of the Lake
- my BFF (birthday-inspired friend fiasco)
- Have you had a zoom reality glitch?
- The Pleasure of Finding a Word for It
- This Is Just To Say . . .
- Cutting Through the Mustard
- All Delight We Cannot See
May 2022
- Tender Days
- If I Were a Shar Pei, My Wrinkles Would Be Delightful
- Guest post: Writing types as the Bristol stool scale
- Snapshot: My favorite bugs
- Battle of the Bay: A mild argument that ends with mint lemonade
- Carcass Cam
- Science Metaphors: Caustics
- The Scarlet Letters
- Loss
- Faqs
- Murmuration: The poetry of the morning walk
- Where Stories Lie Down
- Red, Right, Reterning
April 2022
- Guest Post: Permanent Impermanence
- Why Grandmothers Even Exist
- The Confluence Project
- Rearticulation
- Naked, at the zoo
- Nothing More
- A Space Elk Named Monique
- ♀ vs. ♀
- Spring rain
- instructions for a permission ceremony
- The Ultimate Wedding Planning Checklist
- Life’s Seasons Change
March 2022
- Rare Birds
- Science(ish) Poem: Right Then
- Sick, Tired and Tyrannical
- Bad Science Poet
- Waiting for deepfakes
- Walking Home From Work
- Bloom Where You’re Planted
- A Serendipitous Song-Dog in Yellowstone
- Attention & Executive Function: Beware
- The Weird World of Amazon Book Reviews
- What do you call someone who doesn’t drink?
- When Wordle Gives You Icky Words
- Why I’m Smiling in a Megadrought
February 2022
- The Shoulders of Giants
- Science Poem: Wildfire, Hundred Acre Wood
- the lake
- The meaning of patience
- Science Metaphors: Hysteresis
- Helen & Cameron Talk Pandemic Life
- Maybe more than you wanted to read about hearts today
- Guest Post: Flexible Flying
- Conversation with Mary-Frances O’Connor on the Grieving Brain
- What’s in a (gene) name
- From the Edge of Beringia
- an ode to my moleskine
January 2022
- The Artifice of Mondays
- Lost Lake
- LWON Exclusive: An Interview with the Ocean
- Finding Delight in a Terrible Year
- TWITTERFIGHT #don’tdoit
- The Waiting Game
- A (Mostly) Indoor Sunday
- Courage and Kazoos
- Some crowd-sourced reflections on E.O. Wilson and Tom Lovejoy
- Guest Post: My Other Pandemic
- The Lion Sleeps Tonight
- 2022: Resolutions & Aspirations
- 2021: Bragging
2021 154
December 2021
- First Do No Harm
- Snapshot: Streamside Snake
- List of Delights
- Sam Sells Seashells By the Seashore
- Snapshot: Anti-Christmas Tree
- What We’ve Liked: Everything
- What We’ve Liked: Films/TVs
- What We’ve Liked: Books
- Science Poem: Watasenia Scintillans Addresses the New Graduates
- Golden Boy
- What Do We Owe Our Octopus Teachers?
- Following Shadows Around the Room
- Remember to breathe
November 2021
- Live-Tweeting🚀the🛰️Space💥War😠
- X-ray Vision
- Poem: Parking Lot, Deception Pass
- Finding My Friend’s Unwritten Poems
- Pamela McCorduck (1940-2021)
- An Empirical Audit
- Goodbye, Tree
- Powder Days
- Snapshot: Spider Man
- She 2
- Waiting for a plane
- Kiss of the Assassin Bug
- The Sea, the Sea
October 2021
- Some say love, it is (an atmospheric) river
- the Beanie Baby bubble
- Telegrams to my publisher
- Science Poem: The Death of the Lobster
- Nature stuff I saw from the car on Sunday: A list
- Bird on the Street
- Somebody Needs to Write a Book About the Political Economy of the Colorado Potato Beetle
- Just Have Lunch
- Welcome to the brain disco!
- Visitors from Far Away
- Why I Will Never Be A Good Photographer
- Science Poem: Darwin’s Finches
- A New Person of LWON
- It’s 50/50
September 2021
- Anatomy of an Ice Road
- Oak Logic
- Where Have Figs Been All My Life?
- Touchphone
- Snapshot: Dog Day
- To Make a Renaissance
- Homeward bound
- Days of September 11th
- Portrait of a Marriage
- on resilience
- Shitty robots and their shitty blog posts
- The Caldor Fire Donation Center
- Doom and the dogmometer
August 2021
- Fig of My Imagination
- Mystery Treats
- Guest Post: the Vastness of a Chord
- And yet still grow
- fire season
- Someone else’s problem
- Just Keep Swimming?
- The cicadas’ parting gift
- Summer Feet
- Rivers of Noise
- Science Metaphors (cont.): Resonance
- Snapshot: Butterfly
July 2021
- Mushroom Misadventures
- blackberry season
- Hugs, Interrupted
- Notes from a constituent
- About a Shell
- Bee Hunt
- Snapshot: Habituated ground squirrel
- Science Metaphors (cont.): the Ideal Gas
- June Gloom
- I Know Astrology Is Bullshit, But I Can’t Stop Reading My Horoscope
- hot and cold
- No Privacy for the Dead
- See that bird?
June 2021
- Guest Post: In Praise of Phases
- Our Herd
- Guest post: Becoming People on the Playground: Observations of Young Humans in their Native Habitats
- Guest Post: The Whimbrel
- magicicada
- Why are quiet cars reserved for trains?
- Gut Feelings
- I love these darn bugs
- Inside Out
- In Search Of
- Snapshot: Tree
May 2021
- Uncle Bundy & the Technically Sweet
- Labyrinths and Mazes
- Grace 2
- Y’all Need this Word
- The cicadas arrived
- Sci Fi lives on in the people it created
- Three Stooges vs. Revelation
- Cmon, cicadas
- Penspective: Looking up
- Snapshot: Uncommon Dolphin
- Snapshot: CoralShroom
- Grief: Complicated, Not Complicated
- Throw Your Clock Out the Window
April 2021
- Spring rain
- Learning to Think Like a Scout
- The goodest boys
- Coming of age
- That Bird!
- Guest Post: Part-Time Vegetarians
- All of the scissors in my apartment
- Bloom Where You’re Planted
- How Baby Snoots Became the World’s Most Famous Manatee
- Snapshot: #Vanlife
- Guest Post: A Donation from the Heart, and the Bladder
- In Praise of Minor Bulbs
- An Invisible Wrong
March 2021
- Puddleglyphs
- Voice Mails from the Great Beyond
- Redux: A Photo By Any Other Name
- Relearning
- Quick, Call This Number Right Now
- Amphorae
- One year of this
- Beloved Beasts: A Q&A with LWON’s Michelle Nijhuis
- The Semiaquatic Martyrs of East Foster Creek
- Redux: H.G. Wells’s Advice on Science Writing
- Still In There
- Alternative Realities at the NRO
- Shaman Balls Penspective #2
- To wayfind
February 2021
- Winter Sunsets Are the Best Sunsets
- Stander’s block
- Redux: Places of Worship
- How Snow Falling on Pines Changes the Forest
- Path vs. Forest
- Our Best AI Transcription Bloopers
- Plunge
- The Nudi Is a Creature Odd
- Things I’ve Bought During the Pandemic That Haven’t Cured My Existential Dread
- Anastomosing Rabbit Holes
- The Shape of a Horse
- Landscape painting
January 2021
- 24 Reasons to Ignore Best Places Lists
- Live, Laugh, Shun
- Redux: La Vie Souterraine
- Snapshot: Mystery List
- Surviving Climate Change Where the Forest Ends
- Skunk Woman
- Coming Back to Life
- Number the Days
- I Am the Eggdog
- COVID-19 Stole My Father. Then It Gave Him Back.
- Snapshot: Petals
- Why to Love Winter
- Knot Person
2020 182
December 2020
- Snapshot: River
- Automatic subscription
- ‘Twas the ning before Christmas
- Flight of the Chukar
- Happy Solstice! Look Up and Feel Your Place in the Universe
- Bos Taurus
- What an Evening
- Bookends
- The revolution will not be fertilized
- If I Were a Shar Pei, My Wrinkles Would Be Delightful
- A Dimensional Sky
- Towers in the Desert
- Wind/break
November 2020
- The Weird World of Amazon Book Reviews
- Accidental intimacy
- From Last March, Happy Thanksgiving
- Tidings of Comfort and Joy
- Good Bones and Weltschmerz
- The Death of a Star As Told to the Trees
- Hungry Birds
- Looking Up
- Redux: Whatever Trees
- The Lookout Cookbook
- The Great British Baking Show Versus the Election
- Science Plus/Versus Religion
- Penspective: what bird is this?
- Yoga & the Bullshit Prevention Protocol
October 2020
- The poetry of the morning walk. Murmuration.
- How are you?
- Mounting evidence to the contrary
- Guest post: Waiting for the End
- The Fall of the Giant
- Gold Fever
- Snake Hands
- Neighborhood Hauntings
- Arguing with the Finkbeiner Test
- I Can Take It With Me
- An Odd Thing about the Pandemic
- Knot-person
- Homologies
September 2020
- Plant wisdom
- Extinction Debt
- The Parents Are Not Alright
- What the Bears Say
- Life Lessons From the Animal Penis
- Halflives
- Mosquitoes can bite me
- Short, and on the Battle of Maldon
- Interlude
- Distractions Finale
- Tin Ear
- Pandemic Art (on Zoom)
- It Was So Hot
August 2020
- It’s Roasted Tomato Season, Motherfuckers
- Once a Wolf
- It ain’t what you see it’s the way that you see it
- Motherhood: A postscript
- Just Keep Swimming
- Ice Man’s End A Memory of Konrad Steffen
- Summer Feet
- A Grayling Visit
- Distractions III: These Froggies
- Stuff Chris Found
- Give a Slug a Pen
- Pocket of brittle wings
- What to Do During a Pandemic? Go Occupy Those Forlorn Chairs
July 2020
- What Didn’t Happen
- Kaolin & Morphine
- A Real Bag of Worms
- Light, far away
- Hoot
- Distractions II: This Stunning Dragonfly
- A Carless Biergarten
- Why Potsherds Matter
- What the Kids Are Doing
- The many languages of Dog
- How to Live with Uncertainty: Find Joy in Elephant Heads
- The questionable ethics of Animal Crossing
- Saccorhytus coronarius is Your Weird Cousin, Too
June 2020
- Sleep Talk With Me
- Kitten Brain
- The Babies Are Cute, But Watch Out for the Parents
- Connectivity: A remembrance of Michael Soulé
- Distractions 1: This Bug
- The Idiocy of Second-Guessing Order
- Grace
- Brittany and the Beavers
- Truth Hurts
- Q: Nationality? A: Pollish American
May 2020
- Guest Post: Science Education
- Surrounded by birds
- Birdwatching for Fun and Profit
- LWON Anniversary Postcards: Day 5
- LWON Anniversary Postcards: Day 4
- LWON is 10 Today!
- LWON Anniversary Postcards: Day 2
- LWON turns 10! We wrote postcards.
- Guest Post: The Cat & the Coronavirus
- My Father Isn’t
- Guest Post: What It’s Like to Peer Through Hubble
- How to Become a Fossil
- Landscape painting
- 2035
- ‘Meow’ means ‘Woof’ in cat
April 2020
- How the Pandemic Turned Working Moms into Mommy Pig
- Antarctic Stare
- Pandemic Moments
- The Soundscapes of Silence
- Dear Spleen, How I Miss You
- One Voice, Many Vaccines
- Accidental closeness
- Clovis and the Virus
- Guest Post: How to be alone
- Making a Renaissance
- The Year Time Stood Still
- - The Last Word On Nothing
- I’m Not Myself These Days
March 2020
- A Note to Our Readers
- Watching and Waiting
- Holding space
- Migrants
- The trolley and the psychopath
- Rewilding
- Talking On and On
- Microdosing Hope
- Love in the time of COVID-19
- Pandemic Diary: The Self-Quarantine Edition
- Redux: 30 Seconds in the UAE
- A Merry Heart
- Pandemic Time
- Alligator Awesome
- Fear the Deer: A Comprehensive Ranking of Cinematic Roadkill
- Bad homonyms, or, things not to say to a British person
- Redux: A Baffling Curio
- Speaking of the Trees
- Once a Wolf
- Antack!
- New Person of LWON: Jane Hu
- Scooped
- Freeman Dyson Has Died
February 2020
- Trivia Friday
- Sunrise in the Caribbean
- Life is a Seed Highway
- The Polymorphic Spree
- 11:59:59:59:59:59:59….
- Asking the Big Questions
- A = B, B=C, so A=C. Right? Right?
- Alaska Calling
- Pocket of brittle wings
- Flipping the Script
- Ask Mr. Cosmology
- Update: Underwater Photography
- The Ungovernable Rodent
- Sweaty Monkeys
- Actually, Frankenstein was a baker
- Dinner at the Nursing Home
- Guest Post: Weird Rock, Weirder Story
- Variations on a Vegetable
- The many languages of Dog
January 2020
- Technically, the Moon is a Boulder
- On the Bottom of the Pool
- Below the Snow
- Parasite Is Great Cli-Fi
- The Sun in January
- Swan Songs
- Imminent Invasion (Local)
- Rain on Other Worlds
- The Screamers of Artist Point
- A Clean Sweep
- Bad Science Poet
- Nominative determinism and its discontents
- Number the days
- Salmon in the pines
- Running Out of Air
- Watching the Watchers
- Exercising Time
- Leaving / Imprints
- The Things We Carry
- Airplanes and Bees
- We’re not in Kansas anymore
- The salmonid industrial complex
- Words to leave behind
2019 263
December 2019
- Day Tripper
- I Honestly Feel We’re Not Paying Enough Attention to Betelgeuse*
- Waterpocket, Tinaja, Kissing Pool
- Children Like Sand
- End of Decade Viewing
- End of Decade Reading List
- Ice skating: an overanalysis
- A Little Storm Crosses the Mountains
- Golden Boy
- A year in marsupial review
- Eel communication
- LWONers Wonder Politely if Their Books Might Make Good Gifts
- “A Note on the Type” WTF
- Like Poetry for Science
- Homologies
- Field Trip to Louis Pasteur’s House
- Energetic Oak Trees
- Dog Days
- The revolution will not be fertilized
- A kind of ghost story
- The Desert Fields of Imperial Valley
- Tears of the Warrior
November 2019
- The Things We Hope To Leave Behind
- LWON Looks Ahead to 2020
- Diagnosing Grief
- This is Why We Come Out
- Love letter to you and me as teenage girls
- The Gravity Steps
- Spider Dysmorphic Disorder and Me
- A Letter to Persimmons
- Dispatch from De-Energized California
- Still life with dumb phone
- New Person of LWON
- AI takes a village
- Make Me Like a Tree, and Leave Me
- Manifesto of a Wasp Scientist
- Is Hot The New Normal?
- The Sooner You Make It Yours
- Lesser Rites
- Ode to materialism
- The Anarchical Absurdity of Mary Poppins
- Wouldn’t It Be Lice?
- My Two-Decade Sunglasses
- Auditing Astronomy Class
October 2019
- On Vulnerability
- Stop Underestimating Chickens
- How to Fail the Pre-K Entrance Exams
- Confessions of a Caveman
- You Cannot Prove A Negative. Does That Mean We’ll Search Forever?
- Winemaking Is Like Book Writing
- Viewshed
- Apocalypse, in costume
- Science Writers on Twitter: Comforted By the Dying Universe
- Window Tree
- Old Art, Older Animals
- Fig of My Imagination
- Montana’s Buffalo Conundrum
- It All Depends Where You Look
- I Reserve the Right to Be a Miserable Old F*$%
- It’s Ok to Opt Out of Mammograms
- Quantifiable Poetry: P. James E. Peebles
- Interview with the Author
- Wind / Break
- Helping Out Instead of Building Alligator Moats Might Help You Become A Better Person
- Courage and Kazoos
- Listening for the birds
- Beach Walk
September 2019
- Who’s Your Momma?
- A Loss for Words
- I have to go write my book
- Grickle Grass
- Physicist Makes Movie
- Hypocrisy, Hope, and Kids These Days
- The Rooster and the Puppy
- Second synesthesia
- In the Muddy Shallows, the Frogs Are Singing. Is That OK?
- End of Summer Prize
- Two and a Half Months of Milkweed
- Lonely Abalone
- Infected and Imprisoned
- The Journal of a Middle-Aged, Middle-Management, Sub-Atomic Particle
- Waking Up is Hard to Do
- Songs of Home
- Guest Post: Christine’s Killing Fields
- Actually, Twitter is a biowaste gasification facility
- You don’t have to be
- Pets Are Supposed to Make Us Happy. So Why Am I So Worried?
August 2019
- The Problem with Stories
- I Finished An Abandoned Craft Project (So Proud)
- Summer Feet
- The Misadventures of Garbage Dog
- Flora sapiens
- Some Web
- Chris Arnade’s Book: Dignity
- A real cancer hero
- Whispering Walls and the Nature of Acoustic Geometry
- Wind, the uninvited houseguest
- To the Moon, With Tardigrades and Knowledge
- I Had a Hamster. I’m Pretty Sure He Killed Himself.
- Sounds of Summer
- Strikeout
- This week
- Love City
- Slow comet
- Gesundheit
- I Know What the Fox Says
- 10,000 Hours of Midlife Crisis
- Farewell David Corcoran, Dearest of Editors
- Savor All the Pieces of Moment
July 2019
- #YouHaveToYell
- Rearticulation
- Hoverflying in Plain Sight
- Zee Lady
- Snark Week: Otterly Vicious
- Snark Week: Literally the Most Terrifying Creature on Earth
- Snark Week: Every Other Creeping Thing Besides Us
- Snark Week: People are Bitching about My Emotional Support Bees, and It’s Hurting My Feels
- Snark Week: Skunks Don’t Stink
- It’s Snark Week.
- Toxic Beauty
- Searching for the First Americans in the Smithsonian
- The ritual: When science feels like elegy in advance
- How To Win Friends And Influence People, According to My Dog
- Richard & the Trouble with Gravity
- The Surprises of Coming Back Home
- No-Sky July
- Drawing for My Nerves
- Be Ashamed of Your Hard Tears
- Do Not Be Ashamed of Your Easy Tears
- The ocean mummies
- Life on Another Planet, The Atacama in Bloom
- Oh, To Follow the Road That Leads Away From Everything
- How I Spent My Summer Vacation (Winter Edition)
- Finding the words
- It’s ATACAMA WEEK! (Because we can.)
June 2019
- A Little Less than Free
- The Invention of Invention, and Vice Versa
- Could We Make Conferences Less Sucky?
- Tale of Two Boulders
- The Oregon Trail Game
- Come on Babe, Why Don’t We Paint the Town / With All That Swag
- The best place to live on the moon
- My Evil Octopus
- Dioramas Return, With Teensy Inhabitants
- Can You Hear Me Now Question Mark
- Where Should Research Chimps Grow Old?
- I Don’t Like Parenting
- Designed with today’s fast-paced world in mind
- I Still Don’t Know How I Got Caught Up in This Puzzling Scam
- The Iniquity of Candied Orange Peel
- Don’t Eat This
- Lost notes
- Make Prayers to the Southern Oscillation
- Ruining the World By Seeing It
- Intermittent fasting, but for Twitter
May 2019
- A. Wellerstein & the Death of a Patent Clerk
- Japan, Twenty Years Later
- Outmoded Diseases: Spermatorrhea
- Guest Post: Bright Buggies, Bright Futures
- The Youth Bulge
- On Competence
- All Hail the Diatom
- Abstruse Goose: Witch Hunt
- Conversation: Erik Plays Chess with Squirrels (UPDATED*)
- Once-Feral Cat
- The day I tried to love ticks
- The Marshes of America’s Space Program
- Your birthday is bad for you
- The Anvil Song
- The Zone of Proximal Development
- Our Planet: Under Threat
- In which I might learn the difference between baking soda and baking powder
- My Kid is a Genius. Kind Of. Maybe.
- Trillium, a spring flower that lives as long as we do.
- The End Can Be Like This
- The Once and Future Canadian Disease
- OK Google, Search: My Life
April 2019
- A bird in the hand
- The Neolithics of Stony Run
- Science Metaphors: Hysteresis
- Cathedrals on Fire
- Out for a walk in Big Sur
- An interview with Helen about drawing!
- Spring Break
- Parks without people? A response to Jason Mark
- Pyramids, Hidden Tunnels, and All the Best Mysteries
- Litterbug
- This is a Post About Porcupines
- Beetles, Time Travelers
- Freeman Dyson is 95
- Color Theories
- Redux: Unintentional treevotee
- All Systems Go, Brace For Landing
- The First Problematic Robot
- A Sweatshirt, A Memory
- Sour Grass
- Controlling Cancer with Evolution
- The Calendar Made of Earth
March 2019
- Moby Peep
- Redux: Every decision my kids made me make in one day
- Redux: Jewish TMI
- Less Harm
- Redux: Blown-Down Trees on the Dark Side
- Eloise at the Château
- Strawberries in the blast zone
- Thinking About Water At The Waterway
- Update: Fear of Sleep
- Hello Siberia, it’s Emily Underbite
- Looking at Giants
- DNA to RNA to Protein
- Redux: Water in Yomibato
- Robin Season
- Guilty, We
- How to lose a good name
- Science Metaphors (cont.): Isostatic Rebound
- Small Quakes
- Spring; arrival
- It’s Getting Hot in Herre*
- Redux: Dolphins–Largely Unexceptional
February 2019
- Please don’t rage against the dying light
- A Little Piece of Someplace Else
- A Lick and a Prayer
- How Are You? A meditation on death
- Good Journalism, Crap Journalism, and Everything in Between
- Redux: The Xenotopian Impulse
- Redux: Another Kind of Coming Out Story
- Redux: The Last Battle
- I Have a Cold
- Desert-Googling
- This Valentines Day, say it with grubs
- In the Primitive Garden
- The Fraud Finder: A conversation with Elisabeth Bik
- The Abominable Mystery
- Scuba Diving: I Finally Get It
- Colder than Antarctica?
- Redux: Baby Steps with Baby Words
- Good to Go
- The End of Anonymity
- This Frog
January 2019
- Bow Chick-a Bed Bug
- Redux: The Theorist, the Tundra, & the Forbidden Crystal
- Sleeping with Bears
- It comes upon you suddenly
- Redux: A Vocabulary for the Almost-Lost
- The Internet Protection Agency, Content Moderation Division
- Canada Goose, American Dream
- Redux: The Wonderful World of Oz…and Science
- Orchid Care for the Uncertain
- Impossible Feats of Strength and Endurance
- The Journal of a Middle-Aged, Middle-Management, Sub-Atomic Particle
- Redux: Old Bone Song
- We Need More Than A Tweet
- Lugworms? Why, Certainly!
- Redux: Science Metaphors (cont.): Arctic Resignation
- Abstruse Goose: Wretched Intellect
- Second synesthesia
- Year of the Cat
- Can’t Find It
- How To Make Friends And Influence People, According to My New Dog
- Ice skating: an overanalysis
- New Person of LWON
- 2019: Not Totally Garbage So Far
- Redux: Naturalist Without a Notebook