I’ve noticed mischief is a common theme in your books. Have you ever had a begrudging ghost or roommate problem? MF: Yes! The ...

So when I published an essay during the summer of Barbenheimer that braided my nuclear obsession with my past grief, ...

AFTER ABOUT A YEAR AND A HALF of dating, Sam and I decided he should move into my house. We had each lived with partners before, but those moves had been swayed by financial stress and global ...

ON A MID-AUGUST SUNDAY in that bleak pandemic summer of 2020, the air near central California’s Big Basin Redwoods State Park felt muggy, almost tropical. Weird, thought naturalist Christian Schwarz, ...

A MOTHER FINDS IT USEFUL sometimes to step outside her life so that she can look back in. To see her home and the things inside it more clearly without the barbed attachments of purpose or emotion; to ...

I’d like to say that my feet know the narrow dirt path better than they know my socks. The path leads through a birch grove floored with ferns to a cabin beside a stream. Inside the cabin I sit at a ...

Reflections on time, aging, and Monet's cataracts5. WATER LILIES AND LOTUS FLOWERS —the way they rise through the mud, opening into beautiful blooms—symbolize transcendence and rebirth. I read ...

ONE WEEK IN HEAVEN THE CHINESE CHARACTER for silkworm (蚕) is composed of the symbol for sky (天) and the symbol for worm (虫). They are heavenly worms. China’s Sichuan Province, a damp, landlocked ...

IN OUR FREE TIME, WE DESTROY TREES. Hundreds of them by now. Five years ago, soon after I bought the place, I gave my partner a Husqvarna 450 Rancher for Christmas. Since then, he’s had to replace the ...

THE HISTORY OF the plastic carrier bag—the kind so often found caught on a tree branch and flagging in the wind—is a story of persuasion. But in the United States, the paper grocery bag proved far ...