lichen

Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer

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Braiding Sweetgrass is a collection of thematically-linked essays by Robin Wall Kimmerer, an environmentalist, academic, and Native American. The themes that unite them are plants, the human relationship to the natural world, and love.  I’ve read Kimmerer’s essays in Orion before, but there’s a sort of literary force multiplier when you get a whole book … Read more

Lichens on Morrison sandstone

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Picking up from Saturday’s post about ripple marks and cross-bedding in Morrison sandstone from north of Shell, Wyoming, let’s scoot away from the purely geological content for a moment, so that we can appreciate some beautiful orange/yellow radial lichens growing on one rippled sandstone slab: You can make that one bigger by clicking on it, … Read more