Nature - Texas Outlaw Writers

History's Saddest Birthday Party

"69 percent of Americans believe the signers of the Declaration of Independence would be disappointed in the way their democracy turned out. We have arrived at the birthday party, and nearly seven in ten of us are already sorry we came."

environment

The First Cowboy Song

A ribbon of chip seal traces the U.S.-Mexico border through an archaeological landscape almost beyond time. Here, where civilization in North America arguably began, the federal government plans to build a wall — an insult to the history embedded in every layer of stone along the Rio Grande.

Travel

To Look for America

I blamed America for unkept promises of fairness and equality and opportunity, but I still loved my country and believed it might one day live up to its founding promises. These days, though, I have too many reasons to be skeptical.

personal stories

A Summertime Dream

"It's hard not to feel hopeful on days like this and it is just as difficult to avoid thinking about how little America has changed since that Dallas gunfire took us off course. We have had our victories, but they feel now as if they are dissolving in the old anger and we are back where we started."

Natural World

Racing the Sun

"An eclipse, like all of nature’s majestic endeavors, can fill a soul with edifying conclusions. Eclipses are rare and those with totality are even more scant and scattered across history’s timeline."

Indigenous People

The Brink of Extinction

“The American Buffalo” meanders through centuries of an unbreakable connection with Native Americans of North America, and the unspeakable depredation visited on both by European invaders. Hearing, reading, or seeing history can be horrible, hence the effort to whitewash it in some quarters.

wildlife

Turkeys Gone Wild!

Time for a turkey tale and this one has it all: protagonists, antagonists, laughter, sorrow, and death. A tale of revenge or horrible misunderstanding? Wild turkey season opened in Texas this month, the turkeys seem to be the ones doing the hunting in other states. Turkeys don’t mess with Texas…

personal stories

Cowboy Down

“One cannot be pessimistic about the West. This is the native home of hope. When it fully learns that cooperation, not rugged individualism, is the quality that most characterizes and preserves it, then it will have achieved itself and outlived its origins." - Wallace Stegner, Western author

national politics

Why I Went to the Woods, Too

The gears of our democracy, oiled with the blood of patriots, are being jammed by liars and theorists who no longer believe it works, and no outcome, other than one that pleases their constituents, is to be believed.

Nature

A 13-Billion-Year-Old Perspective On Things

The James Webb Space Telescope reminds us that our problems don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy, glorious universe. For that matter, neither do we.

wildlife

Pollinators in Crisis

Ruled by a queen, they have five eyes, the females do all the work, and the males have one job: to mate and die. Sound like your deadbeat cousin’s family? It’s not. It’s the lives of bees. And we need to protect them.

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