The dusky seaside sparrow was a small songbird once abundant within a small range in Southern Florida.

The dusky seaside sparrow was a small songbird once abundant within a small range in Southern Florida.
On a cool October morning in 2019, I visited Babu on his small plot of farmland, now a lush patchwork of vegetables that his wife sells at weekly markets in nearby towns.
In August 1938, nearly 12,000 majority-white New Deal laborers employed by the federal government began clearing land, relocating communities, and erecting a forty-two-mile system of dams and dikes under the direction of the South Carolina Public Service Authority.
Going on a research stay entailed long days in the archives, poring over medieval accounts written in hard-to-decipher script until my eyes were dry and my fingertips dirty with centuries-old dust.
Surrounded by a highly biodiverse desert ecosystem, the Rio Grande River creates a desert oasis. Yet the land around it is dry and vast, nationally contested and controlled, and scattered with ruins that span centuries and tell stories of the past.
I am walking in a Wardian Case. Above the historic West India docks, above the newly opened Elizabeth line, yet dwarfed by the skyscrapers that crowd the dockland horizon of east London.
The tactile power of the moist black mountain soil that has nourished the coffee estate for nearly a hundred and fifty years ran deep through the cold veins of my bare feet resting on the earth.