An exceptional Alaska lit mail day! I’m heading to #AWP26 (my first AWP!) later this week, and am very excited about my travel reading.

Midway through the three feet of snow that came to Providence in the last 24 hours, overtaking the Blizzard of ‘78 record. My

The world is so very bad, but this week we hung in our house a tapestry my mother wove, my father made the wooden hanger for with salmon-shaped hardware my brother cast out of copper, based on a photo I made on the middle fork of the Koyukuk River. It feels like the confluence of many homes.

"Industry, for the growing European middle classes, first meant freedom from want—from the real tyrannies of hunger and cold—and then freedom to want. Consumption itself became a kind of liberty." Beautifully about Svalbard and the world by @brdemuth.bsky.social hakaimagazine.com/features/foo...

"Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait" by @brdemuth.bsky.social, Dean's Associate Professor at IBES and @brownhist.bsky.social, has been selected as the 2025-2026 Brown University Book Award 📕🏆 👏 Learn more: insite.browntextbook.com/BrownBookAward

I can endorse working with @greenleejw.bsky.social for maps if you’re looking! He helped with a whole series of custom maps for an edited volume on rivers coming out in about a year — all sorts of scales and details

@brdemuth.bsky.social's essay in @grantamag.bsky.social on time spent in the Yukon piecing together oral histories of the Russian empire. Read it to the end; no spoilers! granta.com/where-the-la...

“I heard her say, ‘The love is there. The love is there. The love is there. Babe, the love is there. The love is there. The love is there.’” - Laureli Ivanoff

Tanacross #Dene #Language #Alaska Saa Dzé’edeex Dé’ "Winter Solstice"; literary when the sun divides Wunenh Nach’ehjedh "December" Nach’imbâal Dzeen "Christmas"; refers to an old custom of giving/receiving gifts at the darkest time of year. Dzeen Chox "Christmas" post-gold rush term

I feel like this is the nightmare we all dread in the US — an active shooter in your community. Brown University is still in shelter in place 3 hours in, with 2 confirmed deaths, 8 in critical condition, and no shooter(s) in custody. One of my students had to run from the scene. Horrified.

Thank you for all the suggestions in the replies! It’s really expanded this syllabus-in-progress

"Rivers are messy: Beyond the water bias in research and management" — A new article co-authored by @brdemuth.bsky.social combines historical and natural science ways of thinking about rivers to argue for the importance of understanding them as more than simply channels of water.

Favorite recent or classic readings on the history of environmental movements, 19th and 20th C? This is for a senior seminar, US and Europe as geographical focus #envhist

This pretty much sums up why I’m reviving the plan B’s I had in grad school. www.currentaffairs.org/news/ai-is-d...

A lovely piece on the Greenlandic photographer Inuuteq Storch, who has such an eye for movement and light and what lies beneath surfaces www.newyorker.com/culture/phot...

A reminder of late summer from doing much overdue photo backups today. Caribou bull in west Denali National Park. Tundra about to turn, velvet about to shed.

I'm opening up a Black & Indigenous environmental art gallery @umterps.bsky.social to help students navigate climate anxiety & other stresses that come with learning about environmental injustice & environmental racism. Please consider donating & coming to our fundraiser @framebridge.bsky.social!

Exactly a year ago, Ellen Wohl, @parriblue.bsky.social and I spent two days in Providence thinking about #rivers and how we conceptualize them & live with them. Here’s the result of history and fluvial geomorphology teaming up. #envhist doi.org/10.1371/jour...

Exactly a year ago, Ellen Wohl, @parriblue.bsky.social and I spent two days in Providence thinking about #rivers and how we conceptualize them & live with them. Here’s the result of history and fluvial geomorphology teaming up. #envhist doi.org/10.1371/jour...

I’m so excited and honored for this upcoming talk & events at Oxford, some with an amazing lineup of other Arctic folks!

So far, the administration's Alaska agenda is still a lot of bluster and not a lot of action. Great reporting from @loisparshley.bsky.social for @grist.org

I’m so excited to talk about this great book with Joseph Lee tomorrow. If you’re in Providence, come by!

In case you’re free in July and want to spend a week on the Yukon… freeflowinstitute.com/product/rive...

Last week, western Alaska was hit by the powerful remnants of a typhoon. Recovery is just beginning for communities an airplane away building materials & other support. PBS has a good overview of this social-climate disaster. Ways to support linked below. m.youtube.com/watch?v=t5kz...

“what happens if we also reconnect with the mule? What can mules teach us about the black history of land and violence in the United States?” A terrific piece of #envhist on mules, labor, and how “empire doesn’t always win” from @roguechieftan.bsky.social www.sciencehistory.org/stories/maga...

This year I wrote a book about how Columbus colonized the Caribbean in 1492 - not what is now the US mainland. My book DARK LABORATORY celebrates Kalinago survivance and the African agrarian x aquatic traditions people like my ancestors, who were enslaved, brought to the region.

I’m very lucky to work with Myles, and am so excited to hear him talk about his amazing new book in a few weeks!

Something good: a new, nonprofit newsroom run by some wonderful, experienced folks (core crew from Outside mag's glory days) dedicated to journalism about American public lands! Looks like the plan is to collaborate a fair bit with other outlets.

Alaska reentry has its ups and downs but amazing reads are an up.

“The Yukon River has a right to feed its own animals & its land.” Alaska Natives are fighting for the right to manage the Yukon River & save the remaining salmon stocks for future generations, before their way of life dies off with the salmon, Alyssa Choiniere reports.

Alaska Natives, barred from king salmon fishing, fight for their right to manage the Yukon River, reports Alyssa Chioniere for @prismreports.org via @alaskabeacon.com

I guarantee that you're not going to do anything better today than to carefully read this essay on dogs, salmon, and mushing (which, like all good essays, is really an inquiry into existence) by @brdemuth.bsky.social in @nyrb-imprints.bsky.social. Extraordinary. www.nybooks.com/online/2025/...

Bathsheba Demuth @brdemuth.bsky.social on the future of sled dogs in the Yukon River valley

Beautiful writing. Important message. From @brdemuth.bsky.social for @nybooks.com www.nybooks.com/online/2025/...

Really beautiful piece by @brdemuth.bsky.social. www.nybooks.com/online/2025/...

“Deep relationship is a sensation of the particular, held in the eager tilt of a lead dog’s ears before a run or the feel of an old scar left by a salmon’s tooth.” An essay on the mighty but sometimes overlooked chum salmon & dogs & rivers & love #envhist #rivers www.nybooks.com/online/2025/...

“Deep relationship is a sensation of the particular, held in the eager tilt of a lead dog’s ears before a run or the feel of an old scar left by a salmon’s tooth.” An essay on the mighty but sometimes overlooked chum salmon & dogs & rivers & love #envhist #rivers www.nybooks.com/online/2025/...

It’s a strange time to be in Alaska and yet here’s the morning run view

SOON!! Getting antsy for Alaska rivers. So glad to be teaching on the Yukon again this year.

This interview is the second in a set— I had the huge pleasure of talking with Gabe Rosenberg before he interviewed me, about his work on industrial agriculture. Still thinking about the feathers he’s found in archives. www.publicbooks.org/public-think...

New at PB: In the latest in our Public Thinker series, Gabriel N. Rosenberg interviews Bathsheba Demuth (@brdemuth.bsky.social) about her book "Floating Coast," which narrates the Arctic not as an edge, but as a center.

What looks like an amazing book by a brilliant Indigenous scholar is on sale through the link below (and blurbed by the greats @hiokinai.bsky.social Hi'i Hobart and @brdemuth.bsky.social Bathsheba Demuth). Arctic governance and colonial administration are the most fascinating topics!

“In ecological terms, their presence makes the land home to more life, in both kind and quantity. A beaver lodge marks a diffuse, vital abundance.” Loved @brdemuth.bsky.social’s account of the echoes of the Yukon fur trade. granta.com/where-the-la...

Today in daylily

Fortunately this seems to be a badly communicated change to parking lot access, not to the archives themselves.

This is grim: On “July 7, 2025, the National Archives at College Park, MD, will become a restricted-access federal facility with access only for visitors with a legitimate business need. It will no longer be open to the general public.” “Legitimate” is not defined. www.archives.gov/college-park

In whale news, orcas have been spotted grooming each other with kelp. Researchers saw “a whale remove a 2ft section of bull kelp, balance it on its nose and then approach another whale to wedge the kelp between their bodies and rub it between them.” 🐋 www.theguardian.com/environment/...

In England “wood with beaver facets [were found] in multiple human constructions, along with extensive networks of ancient beaver dams and channels that had been integrated into prehistoric settlements.” A fascinating piece by Sarah Newman on how animals inspired culture 🦫 aeon.co/essays/did-a...

Art by Ray Troll, sentiment by millions…..

My entire strategy for dealing with These Times is ripping up sod and planting wildflowers, and the Sinners soundtrack. And dogs.