“What future race of ant people or anemones will dust you off and wonder what you are? You have to discard the question. You shouldn’t think too hard about the audience. Do your finest work for the sake of the art itself.”

“Reluctant to give up the exclamatory joy of seeing, I have built a life at the untranslated point of an outstretched finger.” Roxani Krystalli writes about exploring the Scottish landscape and learning to see differently.

“My Christmas wish is for an end to these fires. For no more loss of life. And for rain.” As many in the Northern Hemisphere celebrate a white Christmas, Australia-based Lee Mylne mourns the devastation brought about by wildfires.

“There she was. Amali. In all her splendor.” At Big Tiny World Travel, Brianna recounts her adventure searching for big cats in Namibia’s Okonjima Nature Reserve.

“It’s been said that no species can fully imagine its own extinction. Our inability to imagine ours may ultimately be the source of our undoing.” Kelly Hayes, the writer at Transformative Spaces, reflects on ecological collapse and the future of humanity and our world.

“These old-growth forests are not renewable. They’re not coming back after you log them.” Dive into this longread at The Narhwal about a rainforest deep in the interior of British Columbia that is being clear-cut as fast as the Amazon.

“I’ve come to believe that a long hike has a biological cycle. Like almost everything—life, relationships, civilizations, songs, stories, stars—it is born in explosive uncertainty.” At Appalachia Journal, Ben Montgomery writes on divorce, loss, and taking his kids on a 244-mile walk to make sense of it all.

From David at Incidental Naturalist: “The bird is beautiful at all times, but the blaze, that only shows when struck by sunlight at the perfect angle, takes it to a new level. . . . Add a few droplets of sun and magic occurs.”

“We knew 5 days would be a short time to explore the unreal landscapes Iceland had to offer, but any and every second spent on that magical land is bliss.” At Mute Life, Filipe Varela shares stunning images from Iceland.

Musings at Richly Evocative on the Wandle in London: “Walking next to a river, perhaps especially an urban survivor like the Wandle, is the chance to connect with something beyond ourselves. Where the river goes and how it turns, or loops back on itself, meanders and twists, is often nothing to do with us humans.”

The Salton Sea, California’s largest lake, is a dying ecosystem — but it has a strange and sad beauty, and residents who hang on.

Dr. Kaeli Swift studies the intelligence and behavior of crows. On her blog, Corvid Research, she’s fostered a community of people from all over the world, joined by their shared fascination for these birds.

“The solution isn’t to say the Outside is great and the Inside is terrible. Maybe it’s to find a way to rub out the line between them, before it does even more damage to our sense of being in the world… ” Mike Sowden muses on our love of the Inside.

Bengaluru, India-based yogi and writer Bernie Gourley captures the city’s volatile monsoon weather in a series of free-form haiku: “trust old people | with umbrellas more than | the blue in the sky”