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Oswald Schmitz and I met early on a May morning at Greeley Memorial Laboratory...

When it comes to sports, the mantra is simple: you play to win the game. Think...

Silver Lake is not made of silver. It is a body of water whose surface is...

I. The Forest, Undisturbed? Figure 1: A stable deciduous forest community...

In my home state of Maryland, Chesapeake blue crabs are not just an animal....

We’re parked on the side of the highway a couple miles south of Crescent City...

The first book I bought from The Book Cellar was Salvage the Bones, by Jesmyn...

At the end of Poplar Street in New Haven, next to the banks of the Quinnipiac...

When December prompted ice and gasping gusts of Lake Michigan wind I kept...

A fisherman reels slowly. Between casts, he wants time. Time to sit still, time...

I’m accelerating. I know that I am because the wind is running through my hair...

The first time I saw Halloween, the sight of Jamie Lee Curtis walking down a...

Today, Taunton, Massachusetts, isn’t much more than a bunch of nearly...

You can touch a devil in Hahamongna Park. Most people don’t know. They don’t...

In September 1913, Ephraim Hoffman arrived in Galveston aboard the S.S....

If I were to try to diagram a breakdance set it might look something like a...

We drove up north on I-93. As my friend Daniel dozed in back, I pressed my nose...

It has been somewhat difficult to find a middle ground between my strong,...

Large yet intimate. Chaotic yet comfortable. The city of Santa Ana does not mold...

Erected at the height of the Gilded Age, The Breakers mansion in Newport, Rhode...

I. MEMORY My first memory of Los Angeles is one of mispronunciation. I am in our...

The desert would look a lot nicer if camp wasn’t here. You can’t miss it,...

Wyoming is the least populated state in the nation. Less than 500,000 people...

These are the days I like, When what’s inside has yet To rise. Softly—...

The steel grey pontoons brushed the water, connecting awkwardly with the...

It starts with rain-flecked windows on the metro north, Oily-thick river water,...

On May 15, 2016, Brandon (26 / Harvard Law School / Case Western Reserve...

My parents flick paper footballs back And forth on the table top. A folded...

Some glad morning when this life is o’er I’ll fly away We pull up to the...

At the end of my run, I walk from the road down to the Daughters of the...

People, especially in college, often assume I’m from New York City. It happens...

There is a box of old photographs under my bed. Toned black-and-white or sepia...

Awash the world in wisps of rain and gray wet pavement, green and greener trees...

Fairbanks, Alaska: Everyone I meet seems to be on the run. The taxi driver nods...

I’ve never seen the homestead with a fresh coat of paint— the wind strips it...

The valley was on fire When you asked me how to save the world And I told you I...

Is Baltimore in the South? Sure, if you’re in the North. A border state,...

The last time the rain fell this hard I wasn’t in Florida at all,   we...

Socorro County, New Mexico got its name because parched men were given water at...

Blue Bathroom This past January my parents told me and my brother that they...

I sat on the strip of lawn between the sidewalk in front of my family’s house...

“Mind if we pick your apples?” The request isn’t as strange as it might...

I’ve been making field recordings in subway cars in a number of...

Where are the lovers, the priests, the souls of the cities?...

Today is a long-run day....

Alone at a bar of piled stones and driftwood, a grey fisherman tends to his...

I. You’d be hard pressed to find a man who’d say the name correctly on his...

The folks up here have granite in their souls and faces hewn from rocky seaside...

Megan is moving or talking to me or picking the broken glass out of her hands,...

Few places are as patriotic as Coronado, California. Few communities have given...

The Appalachian Mountains were just hills. I was a painfully shy eight-year-old,...

It was heading east, our way, but we had other things on our mind. There had...

I never thought California would become a habit. The promise of eternally sunny...

New England winters are beautiful at their beginnings. People always laud autumn...

You were high in Gothic air in Summer, And I was low in Gothic sky in Spring,...

It was skin-burning hot, and Ann Charlotte could hear cicadas in the dry brush....

The letters have let go ...

Each state has its customs, its traditions, its ways of thinking and modes of...

“Everyone says you can eat the little ones.”...

Night is settling over the farm, and my milking shift is almost up. I hunch my...

Though it’s the state capital, there are almost no direct flights to Lincoln,...

In fourth grade we took a tour of East Rock Park, though everyone in school had...

Harriet Quimby, drama critic and aviator (1875-1912) I lift off, climb above...

“YOU HAVE EVERY RIGHT TO BE SAD,” the twelve-foot billboard along the left...

My relationship with West Virginia has always been strained. I’ve lived most...

Mémère and Pépère’s potato farm sits at the end of Bradbury road, three...

It’s the day after Christmas and I’m moving to Bethel, Maine, in what feels...

When my aunt turned forty and I graduated high school, we celebrated our...

I could see the Rockies as I biked to work. They loomed on the horizon, peeking...

When we moved to Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, everything was as white as a...

When Charles turned eighteen he asked if I’d cook for his birthday party....

I wasn’t born in the Oklahoma hills. The Guthries’ lyrics rang truer in high...

I love Tennessee’s old-time fiddle music. It’s just something people do......

From as early as I can remember, until I was eight or nine, I managed a chain of...

My hometown is something of a movie star. Glencoe, Illinois, has been featured...

In winter, the lilacs broke. Licked with ice like jewelry, the branches too...

I grew up a mile away from a compound of three prisons. My parents both...

The water smelled like sulfur and the ceiling panels of the toolshed housed...

There is a Florida that performs. A Florida of King palm instead of saw...

The car wasn’t mine, but I loved it recklessly. For six weeks, Jonathan and I...

Moving after college presents a special set of challenges—especially when the...

I was standing in the dark on a grim concrete dock just below DC’s baseball...

Growing up in Nashville, Tennessee, as the kid of a New York Jew and a New...

They were counting wildflowers when the curtain opened and a snow breeze rolled...

Feast your eyes, ears, fingertips, noses, tongues on the third and freshest...

Near the middle of her book When Women Were Birds, Terry Tempest Williams stops...

Like many road-trip stories, this one begins with a vehicular breakdown. The...

New house. New horse. New bed. Everything smelled of fresh chops and chips. One...

There is a book you cannot purchase in any store, on any website, or from any...

My Detroit is in my grandparents’ house on Barchester Drive, in the...

  I live on the mountain top.     In between the gaps of the...

The summer moments I enjoyed most were those when I could stow my familial ties...

When I first wrote about being from Iowa, I opened with this: “My roommate is...

It’s the last day of camp. In years past, this would have been when I was...

Over six weeks this summer, I studied the food system of Nashville, Tennessee....

Everything was slower in the South. It gave us time to digest not only our...

“Grab yo’self a piece… right here, take that… giveta try, it’s...

I arrived in New Orleans on the tails of Jack Kerouac. Promised shotgun houses...

We didn’t go on many trips and I think I remember them all except for the...

My father was born in San Antonio, Texas. It isn’t a grand city, but then...

Clarksdale, Mississippi is known for two things. The first is its importance in...

APPLICATION FOR WRITING COURSES IN ENGLISH COURSE: AT HOME IN AMERICA …...

I press my foot firmly against the gas pedal, giving my car free reign to hurtle...

Here on the left you’ve got Astoria Park. This space alone is three million...

When St. Louisans meet each other for the first time, “What high school did...

Gaudeamus igitur, Juvenes dum sumus; Post icundum iuventutem, Post molestam...

When I give my college friends a tour of San Francisco’s Mission district, I...

Remembering second grade, when I lathered my palm with glue and closed my fist....

I have realized, in this second-to-last semester, that my time at Yale has been...

In the Tetons, dawn breaks.  Night does not tiptoe its way closer to sunrise by...

Mrs. Marrion’s eyes clung to the coffin For some time before deciding To...

This essay was originally published in The Yale Daily News Magazine on...

This essay was originally published in The Yale Herald on October 5, 2012....

Washington is calling me. I do not mean, “Pardon me one moment; I must answer...

On any day of the week except Saturday between March 15th and October 15th, you...

I’m standing at the edge of Two Medicine Lake, casting a tiny Copper John...

come on, jaunt through louavull: gateway to the south. louisville? gateway? from...

Last spring, there was a suicide in this pasture. Rodney Patrick*, a native to...

For the first twenty minutes or so, everything is familiar. These roads are the...

This is a hodge-podge of photos I have taken around my hometown of Birmingham,...

Sometimes, I forget I am from the South. But when I do, I recall a day trip to...

The first recorded sentence in the English language was written in runes in 480...

It’s hard for other people to use my camera. I have a Canon 40D, and when most...

The Horizon: Out west, southwest, in Arizona, in Utah, in New Mexico – you...

After government entomologists discovered the beetles, Mary Knittle got used to...

Ricky Ashby is not an easy man to track down. He has no phone, no office door,...

Moving three miles uptown, from southern Harlem to Washington Heights, meant...

I stood atop Angel’s Landing in Zion a month ago, my heart beating like a...

The Amazon came to Chattanooga in May, a brown sheet of water that sprawled...

If you’ve never been to Key West, you probably don’t know anything about...

I can only drive when my skin knows the way, wrinkles and pores smudged up...

My aunt’s soul lives on a bridge—a small bridge tucked away in a cove at one...

Before we even walked inside the Wal-Mart, I spotted the bed on the sidewalk in...