Hike the High Sierra, See the Future Unfold

Science Fiction Writer Kim Stanley Robinson’s Visions of a Changing Climate, and World, Run Through California’s Great Mountain Range

Do you want to develop the superpower of seeing decades, even centuries, into the future?

Then start hiking the High Sierra.

That’s the inescapable conclusion of a surprising new memoir from California’s greatest living science fiction writer, Kim Stanley Robinson, about how he has structured his life around backpacking in his state’s great mountain range.

The High Sierra: A Love Story is as sprawling and full of ups-and-downs as the Sierra Nevada themselves, those majestic mountains defending more than 250 miles of California’s eastern flank. The 560-page memoir offers fast-paced and highly readable …

California’s Eastern Sierra Reminds Us There’s Life After Disaster | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

California’s Eastern Sierra Reminds Us There’s Life After Disaster

In the New Memoir Miracle Country, a Preview of Our Windblown, Fiery, Beautiful Post-Apocalyptic Potential

How will Californians ever recover from this year of apocalypse and conflict, of pandemic and fire, when landscapes and lives were broken, seemingly forever? Where can we find a miracle?

In …

How We Discovered the Sierra Nevada Snowpack Is at a 500-Year Low

By Measuring the Widths of Centuries-Old Trees and Collecting Deadwood, My Team and I 'Read' the History of California's Climate

In 2005, I moved to the U.S. from Belgium to study the influence of climate on wildfires in the Sierra Nevada over the last five centuries. As part of this …