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Ritchie shut his eyes and tuned his bandmates out. He thundered his sticks along his tom-toms and broke out into a full-on drum solo. Luiz’s customers caught on—some visibly disturbed by the swell of heavy music on stage, while others whooped and gave approving nods.

Last fall, the release of the sixth report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was—or should have been—a wake-up call.

He stumbled out of the woods with a book pressed under his arm the day I was explaining to Lacy about the particular loveliness of California ladybugs. Blue faded to white in the legs of his jeans, boring holes in the knees. He had amassed more dirt underneath his fingernails than I had ever dreamed of preserving.

In demanding a new dog, I broke my mother’s cardinal rule, which was to be content with everything I had. She told me that I was lucky, that other children from broken homes grow up with absent parents, or get sent to orphanages, or become juvenile delinquents, she yelled. She told me to accept my lot in life, and I tried, I really did, but I could not stop the gurgle of longing from rising in my throat. It shocked me sometimes, the strength and physicality of my desire.

Too late to join a walking tour at Cedars of Lebanon State Park in Tennessee, a naturalist finds herself lost in the glades.

With the aid of a painting by J. Jay McVicker, an Oklahoma outsider considers historic curios, queerness, red politics, and scissortail flycatchers.