Noah Hoskins with a tankful of liquid gold: human urine for his fields,
Rich Earth Institute: In Search of Liquid Gold
Roads & Kingdoms
May 2024
On a hillside in southern Vermont, some six miles outside Brattleboro and two miles from the Connecticut River, farmer Noah Hoskins points to one of his snow-covered fields. “We’re probably putting out eight thousand gallons a year,” he says, “but we could use ten times that. There’s just not enough supply—yet.” He’s talking about urine. Pasteurized, nutrient-rich, human urine.
I wrote a freelance story about this remarkable effort—to recycle human urine and use it for farm fertilizer—for the Anthony Bourdain-led publication, Roads & Kingdoms. The magazine won a 2018 Primetime Emmy and a James Beard Award. I like their focus on ecological solutions.
More employee than pet, Camas, a seven-year-old German shepherd, sniffs with precision. After hundreds of hours of training, she can distinguish between wolf and coyote scat, find endangered tortoises the size of a half-dollar under rocks in the Mojave Desert, and identify the scent of elusive black-footed ferrets (Mustella nigripes) in the midst of a hectic prairie dog town.
Sex has always been rather troublesome for plants. Pursuing a mate is hard when you have roots and no brain. When the first bees came to be, perhaps 125 million years ago, they took flight as botanical matchmakers—and remade the world. (My story and photos.)
Team Builds First Living Robots That Can Reproduce
Scientists have discovered an entirely new form of biological reproduction — and applied their discovery to create the first-ever, self-replicating living robots. I wrote about it for UVM Today—and hundreds of other media outlets, from CNN to USA Today, picked up the story. (Photo: Doug Blackiston & Sam Kriegman)
“Oh yes, we have a ton of beetles here,” says Stephen Trombulak, “we’ve got crickets, some slugs—I hate slugs.” My profile of an iconoclastic biologist for the Middlebury College Magazine.
Can A Walk in the Park Put You In a Holiday Mood?
A study of Twitter shows the greener the urban green space, the more cheerful people become when they go there. I wrote about it for the National Recreation and Park Association’s magazine. (Photo; Andy Duback)
Talking With Jonathan Safran Foer
Do something. With climate change now breaking and remaking much of what humans have taken as given for thousands of years, it can be tempting to duck behind bleak despair—or to whistle, motionless, on the brittle surface of cheerful denial. Jonathan Safran Foer, the author of Eating Animals, would like you to consider that your feelings might not matter very much—not compared to your actions. Not compared to what you choose for breakfast. I spoke with him about his book We Are The Weather and what he’s eating these days.
Meteorites are hot rocks. In this story for the Boston Globe, I spoke with collectors and scientists about these extraordinary extraterrestrial objects—and how the hunt for them can yield insights about the universe—or a prize worth millions of dollars.
A Milestone for Millstone Hill
I took a terrifying bike ride on a roller coaster of a trail—in a forest that was once a marble quarry. And I wrote about it for Land + People, the magazine of the Trust for Public Land.
I got into a running race with Bernd Heinrich—and some Pleistocene ghosts. That was after we went looking for flying squirrels, ate chestnuts from his yard, and discussed the dubious merits of yoga. I wrote a story and took photos of him—a world-class biologist and world-record-setting ultra-distance racer—who lives by himself in a cabin with no road or running water. He’s near 80 years old and his shower is a watering can tacked up to a tree.
Researchers Find 3-million-year-old Landscape Beneath Greenland Ice Sheet
One of my photos from Greenland—and my story about new research in the journal Science—were picked up by NASA and published on their homepage. The upshot: scientists found ancient soil, probably millions of years old, frozen and unchanged on the bottom of the Greenland ice sheet. Even better: Jimmy Kimmel made fun of this on his show: “scientists have discovered…dirt.”
Study: It’s Hard To Bring Down the Electric Grid
I wrote a story that was syndicated by the National Science Foundation—US News & World Report picked it up.
Ancient Tundra Discovered Under Greenland Ice Sheet
I traveled over Greenland with a team of climate scientists and geologists looking for clues about what might be in store for this huge ice-bound island in a warmer future. Then I co-wrote the script for a video news story the Wall Street Journal published—built with my video footage and photos.
Species Spotlight: Grasshopper Mouse
As an editor and, later, as the staff writer for Wild Earth, I was a regular contributor to the magazine’s one-page “Species Spotlight “ department. It was a joy to give some attention and ink to many of the lesser-known, but amazing, species that live on Earth. In this entry, the subject is Southern Grasshopper Mouse— ferocious predators the size of your thumb. (artwork: Rachel Ivanyi)
I splashed my way up rivers in the montane rainforest of eastern Madagascar with three spider experts and two local guides. We were looking for Darwin’s bark spiders—and insight into the biological secrets of their silk. With their nearly-magical fibers, these creatures make webs that can span rivers. (My story and photos)
In Leicester, Vermont, up a rutted driveway off Route 7, Kevin New cobbled together a sugarhouse out of an old goat barn and plywood. He boiled a lot of sap this spring, long after most sugarhouses had gone dormant. In fact, he boiled into April, close to when the leaves came out. For his labors, he points to a neat double row of mason jars he has for sale along the back window of his shack. They’re filled with rich, red, birch syrup. Yes, birch syrup.
Carrie Dyer sits near the playground in Battery Park in Burlington. With one arm she’s holding her three-month-old baby, and with the other she’s sipping water from a bottle. I’m chowing down on French fries from Beansie’s Bus. I skipped my lunch to go running and now the salty, fatty fries taste great. Dyer turns to encourage her seven-year-old daughter who is working her way across the monkey bars. Then she brings her baby into a close embrace, and continues talking. “I started smoking when I was eight years old,” she says. I wrote a story about Dyer—and the challenge of overcoming addictions—for Vermont Medicine.