Nehaveigur

Notes on reading, science and the outdoors

Field notes

Things that happened to me. Sometimes also photos.

  • The Thing About an Apple

    Here’s the thing about an apple: it sticks in the throat. It’s a package deal: Lust and understanding. Immortality and death. Sweet pulp with cyanide…

  • Trains: Part of the American landscape

    Trains are different in America. Like so many other things (people, portion sizes, cars, ambition), they’re bigger here than they were in Europe. The part…

  • The River: Drowning

    Most winters, the ice was strong enough for skating, as long as you avoided the fast flowing sections where it was much thinner. As a…

  • The River: Boats

    For Christmas, I wanted a kayak. For months, I had been poring over the catalogs of various suppliers, comparing specifications and accessories and looking at…

  • The River: Power

    The mansion was built with the money the factory made my ancestors, and the factory was next to the river because it couldn’t have been…

  • The River: Turks

    For hundreds of years, the Habsburg and Ottoman empires waged war, a conflict that had its roots in the Crusades. The Ottomans besieged Vienna in…