I’ve been to the mountain top, I text my parents, resting against the hotel headboard as I look over pics. Of the 10,000 feet bristlecone pine grove. But also of the last two weeks. The dark red sun setting over the endless forest of Kings Canyon’s bright orange sequoias. The…

I’m driving north on 395. Lake Isabella is behind me. Red structures of the volcanic Coso Ridge are to my right. And to my left, jutting out of the brown grass fields along Owen’s Valley, is the towering granite of the Sierra, climbing higher than any other mountain range in…

We shall not cease exploring. And the end of all our exploration will be to arrive at the place where we started and know the place for the for first time. The poet’s words flow through my left headphone as I drive along the right lane. 42 miles per hour…

I follow the smoke across the mountain, towards the Great Central Valley, scaling down the side of the Sierra, along Highway 49, through Bullion Knob and Indian Mountain, Bear Valley and Ponderosa Basin. …

At first, I think the eruption is a gunshot. An explosion. A semi-truck collision. But it’s the middle of the night? What could possibly be this loud? Then I recognize the unmistakable cry of the wind, like an unleashed floodgate, an invisible chariot of horses, galloping across the moonlit forest…

The Sierra Nevada: the most divinely beautiful of all the mountain chains I have ever seen. I think about John Muir’s 150-year-old words, from his book My First Summer in the Sierra, as I come towards the end of a 4,000 mile journey across America, in search of the divine…

The maple leaves in Seward Park haven’t started to senesce, but the Tai Chi regulars are bundled in sweaters and the high schoolers are back-to-school, huddled around the trash bins with New York hip hop — the type I might run to but am no longer cool enough to name…

The heritage oaks lining Henry Street block the August sun as I sip a morning coffee. Behind me, a woman with white hair scoots on a walker up the sidewalk. Across the street, a woman with blue hair dashes with a terrier through the crosswalk. …

“His name was Spike. He died last year. In a house fire.” She sighs into her chair, adjusting her purse on her empty table as she looks down Ludlow. I want to ask what happened, where, how, but I don’t. …