The Missing Migrant Program is meant to prevent deaths. Instead, it may be causing them.
Desert
What to make of land art in the era of LandBack
‘City,’ a massive outdoor sculpture in Nevada, took Michael Heizer 50 years to make. Today, it is met with a mixture of scrutiny and awe.
Learning how to live and die with long COVID
The late artist David Wojnarowicz’s work has brought me back from the dead.
Audio: The Joshua tree-yucca moth link
These desert species wouldn’t survive without the other. Can they weather climate change together?
Reflections on Barry Lopez
Terry Tempest Williams contemplates her friendship with the late author and what he left behind.
The desert’s Radical Faeries
How a gathering of gay men in the Sonoran Desert started a worldwide movement rooted in nature.
How Green River celebrates its melon farmers
Thousands turn out for Melon Days, but the future looks uncertain.
The National Park Service’s efforts to protect Quitobaquito Springs almost destroyed it
‘Indigenous presence is vital to the stewardship of the land.’
What are the real impacts on Burning Man’s playa?
Viral attention on Black Rock City’s annual festival highlight environmental consequences.
Scene from a Mojave oasis
Our reporter’s notebook from a stretch of road in the Nevada desert.
A weed is swallowing the Sonoran Desert
The invasive Stinknet plant fuels wildfires, irritates lungs and smothers native flora. ‘It’s everywhere’ and removal efforts in Arizona can’t keep up.
Why are Saudi farmers pumping Arizona groundwater?
A conversation with Natalie Koch, author of ‘Arid Empire: The Entangled Fates of Arabia and Arizona.’
Witness to the Cold War in the desert
Terry Tempest Williams on Emmet Gowin’s unflinching photos of the Nevada Test Site.
poem after a poem by césar vallejo w/ a nod to donald justice
A poem by Jay Hopler.
Searching for the lost: The people called to find missing migrants
Many Aguilas del Desierto volunteers once crossed the dangerous desert in the Borderlands themselves.
A hallucinogenic toad in peril
How a Sonoran Desert species got caught up in the commodification of spiritual awakening.
In Nogales, joy endures
The Borderlands may be militarized, but for writer Alberto Ríos, it’s still home.
The alternatives to Instagram-ready desert art
Popular installations often frame the desert as austere and inhospitable. But there are artists who look at the land differently.