This essay originally appeared online in Emergence Magazine on August 28, 2025.
“These artists didn’t just try to capture what they loved—they left a warning. One motif in prehistoric cave art, Blaise said, was to paint the most dangerous, violent animals in the deepest part of the cave. We were not allowed to travel deeper inside of Earth to see them: Font-de-Gaume, this museum of prehistoric art, was re-discovered in 1901, and already people had destroyed too many paintings. The animals in the very back were a woolly rhinoceros, a lion, and the profile of a human face, on which a tear appears to fall.
“Maybe, as reindeer herds dwindled, the artists were expressing their sorrow and regret. Perhaps the face is saying: if we are not wise, our loves can lead down hideous paths.”
“During storms, as I laid in bed, the wind sometimes sounded like giant fingernails scratching the side of the building. The wind screamed. Which deity, I wondered, is outside in the cold? Like those who encountered Antarctica before me, I assumed the god was female. Snakes of snow sometimes slid around my boots. I’d seen crevasses, cracks on the snow’s surface, that resembled the stretch marks on my hips. I’d walked among ice flowers, tiny rosettes, as a nearby seal breastfed her pup. About fifty miles away, a glacier appears to menstruate by oozing rusted red liquid, which comes from a remnant of an ancient ocean.”
“Antarctica-as-she, a microcosm of Earth-as-she, has the power to shake us out of complacency, with this important twist: Antarctica is not your mother. She’s neither your grandmother nor your sister. She is complex and refuses to be reduced to a binary role: a Madonna or a whore. She owes you nothing, not even a smile. Instead, she demands reciprocity.”
“As the sun embarked on its journey into the underworld, so did I. But to the northwest, a white slice of the waning moon lingered over the horizon, hiding behind the clouds. Sometimes, ancestors are not who you expect them to be.”
This essay originally appeared online in Sierra Magazine’s on October 18, 2022
“The Post op-ed also uses the phrase “zombie ice,” to describe ice that is no longer being replenished, and will likely disappear as a result. Like “doomsday,” why the word “zombie?” What does wrapping glaciers in such apocalyptic narratives say about us? It says we’re afraid—and that’s OK.”
Antarctic Coast. Photo credit: Matt Palmer via Unsplash
“Water harbors many kinds of life, takes many forms. Glaciers, humans, bacteria. Something yet to be. Thousands of miles and many years appear to separate us from Thwaites, yet we are a strange junction, an eventual meeting of waters.”
This essay originally appeared online in Kosmos Journal’s Summer 2021 Edition, “Realigning with Earth Wisdom,” on June 26th, 2021.
“Glaciers are skin. Layers of layers. Oceanic. Mesmerizing faces that hold depth itself. Skin: membrane, shell, hull, rind, fur, husk, bark, exoskeleton, crust, rocks, snow, mile-thick ice, a continent. Skin camouflages—and reveals. Skin is epistemology, a way we know. Skin protects—or tries to. Wounded, skin becomes scars. Scarred—especially scarred—skin is alive.”
“We live in intersecting worlds, whose centers are nowhere and circumferences are everywhere, but I cannot go where she can go. I live only on the surface. She descends into profound waters: her darkness obscuring her in the shadows from predators above; her iridescent lightness blending and absorbing her into the ice, the sky, and the light to predators below.”
This essay first appeared on August 6th, 2016 in the 54th Issue of The Behemoth
“People come to Antarctica for as many reasons as there are types of ice. Most come for the adventure. Some seek scientific truths, or other kinds of truth. Others want a challenge or an escape. Some pursue the unknown, self-revelation, answers, peace. A few go just for the penguins or simply because they can. All of these reasons echoed in my heart, but there was something else: a call, a pull toward the ancient Ice that I cannot explain.”
This article first appeared on Feb 2, 2016 online in The Antarctic Sun, the official news site for the United States Antarctic Program.
“Brisk winds blew through a bundled-up crowd, as they collectively bobbed their heads and swayed along to live music. Even though it was close to midnight, there was no need for stage lighting: the sun was still high overhead. The musicians played below large blue cutout letters that spelled out “ICESTOCK,” McMurdo Station’s annual New Year’s celebration and the world’s southernmost outdoor music festival.”
