My plan was to spend the 50th Earth Day up in Alaska. A college in Fairbanks had invited me to give a reading this week, and I’d hoped to extend my trip and spend a few extra days on a nearby lake, staying alone in a rental cabin with a deck—maybe one near lots of trails where I could spot eagles, otters, and moose.

These are the kinds of experiences I’ve always subconsciously connected to Earth Day: Watching from an airplane window while the planet beneath shifts from biome to biome and then landing in a place with unfamiliar fauna. Maybe it was all those filmstrips and videos they showed in grade school every April—of howler monkeys or racing orca pods