*Note that some stories may have become paywalled.

Selected writing

I teach & give talks about writing.

Vanishing Caribou

National Geographic / December 2023

Ramadi Nights

Virginia Quarterly Review / Fall 2008

The Other Iraq

National Geographic / February 2016

Borneo’s Lost World

National Geographic / March 2019

 Africa’s Last Frontier

National Geographic / March 2010

The Talking Season

Virginia Quarterly Review / Spring 2010

Under Fire

National Geographic / July 2008

Losing Afghanistan in Translation

Foreign Policy / NPR / August 2010

Wolves of Ellesmere Island

National Geographic / September 2019

Walking Tokyo

National Geographic / April 2019

 A Gathering Menace

The American Scholar / March 2012

To Fly Forever

National Geographic / March 2015

Last Rites for the Jade Sea

National Geographic / August 2015

From the Frontlines to the Homefront

National Geographic / December 2006

What the U.S. is Leaving Behind

Foreign Policy / March 2011

Scenes from the next Cold War

National Geographic / August 2019

Letter from the Barents Sea

The American Scholar / Spring 2020

The Revolution Is

Virginia Quarterly Review / Winter 2009

Subway Rorschach

Virginia Quarterly Review / Spring 2017

Paris Underground

National Geographic / Februrary 2011

Madagascar’s Stone Labyrinth

National Geographic / November 2009

Law, Order and Reality in Iraq

World Politics Review / January 2007

Short/True: essays on Instagram

For a long time, I’ve loved the creative constraint of the caption block. It’s where writing (and photography) is fun.

How long do old ghosts last? How long do they have the power to speak to us, to haunt us? I’m wondering this today on the wedding anniversary of Thorstein Ólafsson and Sigrid Björnsdóttir, who were married in Greenland on tod
Early June, 55 degrees, near total silence but for the Lapland longspurs singing for mates. I traveled to the Utukok River on Alaska’s North Slope in what was probably that last trip I’ll take for the massive caribou project I’ve be
On the frozen sea, ten miles from land, Paul tells me not to worry. It is near midnight on Friday the 13th and the sky is still bright: the western horizon smolders in a pale citrus tone that matches almost exactly the fuel warning light blinking on
Photos by @salvarezphoto photo | PARIS — In a roomful of riches we all looked shabby and tired. Perhaps it was the glow. The way the sad fluorescent light fell evenly over everything but on the gold’s fine surface it seemed not merely ref
A few views of Alaska’s Jade Mountains. These watched, loomed, presided over my visit to Kobuk Valley National Park in late October. From those mountains long ago came jade beautiful and strong enough to be shaped into axe heads by Iñupi
Gifts before the wilderness—paniktak, or moose jerky, and a folding saw. Today I head out to Onion Portage in Kobuk Valley National Park, and along the way it’s small gifts like this — practical, beautiful things — from people
Joe Zoe and I sit beside a stone hearth that has been cold for at least 100 years, probably more. It’s two or three feet wide and made of six stones that have been stood on their edges to create a rough cooking platform where steaks of tro
Three years ago today this guy came in for a closer inspection. Arctic wolves generally live short, intense lives. I wonder if he’s still up there, roaming. — #nunavut #ellesmereisland #arcticwolf #wolf
In Canada’s barren lands I learned never to call a bear a bear. Here, the Tłı̨chǫ people taught me that in the treeless country, where every being has language and any one may be listening, names have power. Saying a name can be nearly the same
At the wharf Pete Enzoe is slapping down whitefish. Quick with his knife, down through the belly, out come the guts. Crunch, squish, slop while his dog, Wolf Rain, watches from a bed in the stern. He won’t eat fish and so is bored. But the fish
Late one frigid afternoon in 2017 I sat in silence beside an Inuit elder in the Arctic hamlet of Gjoa Haven, listening to an east wind beat at the walls of our borrowed house. Jacob was a giant, a celebrated hunter of the Netsilingmiut, ‘the pe
Ben, with his .223 and his wolf-skin gloves and the parka his wife made, finer than anything stocked in a store. I still think of the parka and even more of the gloves which, in this photo, look like the paws of a yeti. Ben would hunt yeti, if they w
On clear nights up come the lights, the aurora, green flame out of the westward mountains. These photos were taken by @jeremiah_the_great24 , an 8th grader at the Nunamiut School. I met him a few days ago when we gave a presentation to his science cl

* If you’re interested in reading something that’s no longer accessible, please get in touch.