eliza stein

The Long Fall

In a Wilderness First Responder course, a handful of topics are introduced with: “Hopefully you’ll never have to do this, but in a worst case scenario…” What Sumner and I did next was one of those cases. Paul had a possible spinal injury, which meant that he needed to remain immobile. If we moved him, we could damage his spinal cord, potentially paralyzing him for the rest of his life. But if he stayed in the creek any longer, he could die of hypothermia.

It's In Our Bones

Four and a half billion years ago, a camera began recording. It captured images of faces, footprints, fingernails. It saw the first proteins strung out piece-by-piece; it saw microscopic, single-celled masses absorbed by their neighboring blobs of life; it saw families trekking across grasslands in search of food. This camera ran for billions of years, from angles all over the planet, capturing the sky, the trees, predators, prey, insects and bacteria. And after each frame, the film was discarded on the ground, where it would be covered in mud, land and vegetation, maybe for the rest of time.