This World and Me

A red-winged blackbird I photographed in Canmore, Alberta (near Banff) in 2023 One sunny day during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, my parents and I went on a walk in a nearby park. As we strolled on a boardwalk that went alongside the vernal pools characteristic of the wetland park we were visiting, my mother gasped as she noticed a small bird that landed on a cattail next to us. When I looked as well, I couldn't help but smile. The bird shook his jet-black feathers a bit, then cried out his distinctive call, as if he were saying, "Look at me!" The most striking feature, however, was the color of the feathers along the front edges of his wings, near what you might describe as his shoulders: they were bright red. My mom asked what kind of bird it was. "A red-winged blackbird," I replied. My mother, who was walking in front of me, turned around to smirk at me. She asked if I had just made that up. I laughed. I didn't blame her for asking that. The name ...

On the first day of my freshman orientation for undergrad, my orientation leader gave us icebreaker questions to answer. One of them was "what is your favorite animal?". I thought for a second. Since elementary school, I had a particular fondness for grizzly bears because there's something incredibly charming about the intersection of fluffiness and clumsiness. It would also be a particularly relevant choice, since my university's sports team is called the California Golden Bears. However, as I thought about how to respond to this question, I realized that one animal has since overtaken the grizzly bear as my favorite animal. It was one that I had read about, wrote about, and actively admired. After all, the creature is the  fastest animal on the Earth , and its continued existence today is among the greatest triumphs in the history of environmental protection. Confident in my decision, I smiled and scribbled down my answer and returned it to my orientation leader. ...