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July/Aug 2022 • Vol. XLIV No. 4 |

My Valley

I’m in a porta-potty in Death Valley. There’s blood in my underwear.

I’ve fallen in with a group of people whose idea of a good time is to rent 4x4s, drive many hours into the California desert, drop acid, and climb one of the Eureka Dunes just before sunset. The hike takes about half an hour. By the time you get to the top, you are good and high and good and high.

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Photo of Anya Kamenetz
Anya Kamenetz is a correspondent for National Public Radio and the author of five nonfiction books. Her forthcoming book is The Stolen Year: How Covid Changed Children’s Lives, and Where We Go Now (Public Affairs, 2022). She and her husband are founding supporters of the All You Need Institute, a permaculture experiential learning center located on 111 acres of occupied Chahta (Choctaw) land in the Gulf South. She also supports the Climate Emergency Fund and the Climate Mobilization. Kamenetz is cocreator of a forthcoming podcast about the climate crisis for young children and their parents. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their two daughters.

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By Shara Lessley

Purged in the fire of the cauterizer—proteins hard as metal shards pulverized by drill in the longed-for, mourned-for eye, stray lash glued under the lid a casualty midprocedure—across the dark […]

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