https://lawrencemillman.com/newsletter/ Writing from Lawrence Millman on Substack — place, species, and whatever turned up in the field. https://lawrencemillman.substack.com/p/a-most-valuable-utensil https://lawrencemillman.substack.com/p/a-most-valuable-utensil Mon, 19 Oct 2026 19:00:07 GMT Wherever I happen to go, I always take a pencil with me. Write down that damn story immediately, the pencil I have in my hand will declare, and I feel obliged to obey its request. Sometimes I’ll scribble the story in… https://lawrencemillman.substack.com/p/kuujjuaq-project-report https://lawrencemillman.substack.com/p/kuujjuaq-project-report Mon, 12 Oct 2026 15:58:06 GMT To the best of my knowledge, no one had ever given serious attention to the fungi (i.e., mushrooms) of the Kuujjuaq region before my August 12-18, 2007 visit. During this visit, I collected ~ 60 different species… https://lawrencemillman.substack.com/p/the-monster https://lawrencemillman.substack.com/p/the-monster Sun, 04 Oct 2026 16:19:48 GMT Once upon an earlier time I was a prisoner war at an academic institution. Behind metaphoric bars, I was obliged to teach remarkably ambiguous works of literature. Likewise I was obliged to attend meetings the main… https://lawrencemillman.substack.com/p/a-luddite-lexicon-available-july https://lawrencemillman.substack.com/p/a-luddite-lexicon-available-july Fri, 02 Oct 2026 03:57:40 GMT A Luddite Lexicon is a dictionary of words and phrases that speak out against the technological matrix currently enveloping our planet. Inside that matrix, a mobile phone is a religious object, and a television is an… https://lawrencemillman.substack.com/p/meeting-an-ancient-creature https://lawrencemillman.substack.com/p/meeting-an-ancient-creature Fri, 02 Oct 2026 03:56:12 GMT So there I was, swatting mosquitoes on Victoria Island in the Canadian Arctic. I didn’t come to this relatively remote island because I wanted to engage in that vigorous activity, however. Rather, I came because I… https://lawrencemillman.substack.com/p/outsider-my-boyhood-with-thoreau https://lawrencemillman.substack.com/p/outsider-my-boyhood-with-thoreau Fri, 02 Oct 2026 03:54:10 GMT Credit unknown. I am excited to share my latest book, available at better bookstores everywhere. “Thoreau, I think. would have wanted you to carry Outsider in your hip pocket, to be mulled over in small bites while… https://lawrencemillman.substack.com/p/bad-doggy https://lawrencemillman.substack.com/p/bad-doggy Fri, 02 Oct 2026 03:51:15 GMT Hardly anything, not even an infant asleep in a stroller, raises the oxytocin of certain people to such Everest-like heights as the sight of a wide-eyed, round-headed Canis familiaris, otherwise known as a dog. Words… https://lawrencemillman.substack.com/p/why-i-dropped-out-of-the-explorers https://lawrencemillman.substack.com/p/why-i-dropped-out-of-the-explorers Fri, 02 Oct 2026 03:49:26 GMT Once upon a time the Explorers Club was one of the most prestigious organizations on the planet. Its past members included such eminences as Richard Peary, Thor Heyerdahl, Charles Lindbergh, Peter Freuchen, Tenzing… https://lawrencemillman.substack.com/p/paradise-found https://lawrencemillman.substack.com/p/paradise-found Fri, 02 Oct 2026 03:47:10 GMT Thanks to the unabashed tourist meccas of Nassau and Freeport, the word “Bahamas” calls up images of mega-gambling casinos, no less mega-cruise ships, package tours, and hordes of sun-reddened figures lying on a beach… https://lawrencemillman.substack.com/p/a-walk-on-the-wild-side https://lawrencemillman.substack.com/p/a-walk-on-the-wild-side Fri, 02 Oct 2026 03:44:40 GMT So there you are, walking along the Atlantic City Boardwalk. The crowds are oppressive, Nature seems to have disappeared, and there’s nary a spouting whale in sight. You’d still like a boardwalk experience, so what do… https://lawrencemillman.substack.com/p/sir-john-franklins-lost-diary https://lawrencemillman.substack.com/p/sir-john-franklins-lost-diary Fri, 02 Oct 2026 01:26:23 GMT On September 9, 2014, Parks Canada discovered the remains of the HMS Erebus, explorer Sir John Franklin’s remarkably newsworthy flagship. Among the artifacts retrieved from the ship was a Fortnum & Mason jar labelled… https://lawrencemillman.substack.com/p/mystery-writer https://lawrencemillman.substack.com/p/mystery-writer Fri, 02 Oct 2026 01:16:45 GMT One of my finest moments occured at Na-Bolom in San Christobal de las Casas, Mexico, in the fall of 1992. I had just given a talk about the Labrador Innu in the hacienda’s library, and when I sat down, Trudy Blom, the… https://lawrencemillman.substack.com/p/an-encounter-with-terana-caerulea https://lawrencemillman.substack.com/p/an-encounter-with-terana-caerulea Fri, 02 Oct 2026 01:14:11 GMT Not so long ago, I was visiting a stamp-collecting friend, and I happened to see the corticioid species Terana caerulea on a recent Macedonian stamp. A corticioid fungus on a stamp?? I was beside myself with… https://lawrencemillman.substack.com/p/santa-claus-is-a-mushroom https://lawrencemillman.substack.com/p/santa-claus-is-a-mushroom Fri, 02 Oct 2026 00:09:28 GMT Christmas is nearly upon us, and I can’t help thinking of a certain mushroom. Specifically, I think of Amanita muscaria , a large, often obese red-and-white species that plays a part in the composition of Santa Claus. I… https://lawrencemillman.substack.com/p/sixteen-reasons-why-giant-madagascar https://lawrencemillman.substack.com/p/sixteen-reasons-why-giant-madagascar Fri, 02 Oct 2026 00:06:34 GMT 1. They do not bite you, scratch you, or leave dead mice on your pillow. Nor do they confuse your leg with a sexual partner. 2. Their slow, indeed downright torpid movement can induce a zenlike state in the observer. 3… https://lawrencemillman.substack.com/p/an-unsung-hero https://lawrencemillman.substack.com/p/an-unsung-hero Fri, 02 Oct 2026 00:02:54 GMT In honor of the excessive media coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings, I’ve decided to write this bog posting about an Arctic explorer named Paul Bjorvig (1857-1932). What does this virtually unknown Norwegian have… https://lawrencemillman.substack.com/p/bibliodeath https://lawrencemillman.substack.com/p/bibliodeath Fri, 02 Oct 2026 00:01:01 GMT Bibliodeath, by Andrei Codrescu Poet, NPR commentator, novelist, literary magazine editor, travel writer, English professor, polyglot, gentleman farmer, and raconteur Andrei Codrescu is a veritable heterogenius whose… https://lawrencemillman.substack.com/p/a-true-mycophile https://lawrencemillman.substack.com/p/a-true-mycophile Thu, 01 Oct 2026 23:58:20 GMT It’s been so disturbingly dry and bereft of fungi here in the Northeast that I feel a strong sense of foreboding. At any moment, I expect to see the Five Horsemen of the Apocalypse galloping down the road toward me… https://lawrencemillman.substack.com/p/north-of-siberia-part-2 https://lawrencemillman.substack.com/p/north-of-siberia-part-2 Thu, 01 Oct 2026 23:56:08 GMT Still on Wrangel Island (red arrow) For those of you who read my previous bog post , I still haven’t left Siberia’s Wrangel Island. In the island’s tiny cemetery, among several rows of Russian Orthodox crosses, I… https://lawrencemillman.substack.com/p/north-of-siberia https://lawrencemillman.substack.com/p/north-of-siberia Thu, 01 Oct 2026 23:52:12 GMT The more remote the destination, the happier I am, so in the summer of 2003 I joined a Russian expedition to Wrangel Island, a 5,180 square kilometer chunk of Arctic real estate several hundred miles north of Siberia…