Turns out our new superintendent was a troublemaker when he was in school. In a recent interview with Nancy Udell of Santa Fe Stories, Joel Boyd describes how he frequented the principal’s office until his high school wrestling coach, of all people, helped him get on track.

When the nights finally turned colder, I hated to close my bedroom window for the season. I’ll miss waking in the night to the syncopated yowls of coyotes. On some primal level the sound alarms me—emergency! wake up!—but after a second or two, that tight tunnel of adrenaline swells into some mix of happiness and gratitude.

I’m dancing with my friends in Taylor’s living room, singing along with Stevie Wonder, and delighting in the smell of Topanga Canyon wafting through the windows.

I give my carry-on and the bin holding my desert boots and water bottle a shove, and wave down the pasty TSA agent manning the body-scanning machine. “I’m opting out,” I tell him.

In the second presidential debate, on Oct. 16, the men who would rule our nation uttered the word “children” just once in 90 minutes—when Romney declared we’re all “children of the same God.” They said “job” 100 times and “tax” or “taxes” 76, but “education” was mentioned only 13 times, generally as a footnote to comments about the economy or gun control.

Jean Ossorio recalls the first time she spotted a Mexican wolf. It was 12 years ago this month. In the spring of 2000, biologists had released two adults and three pups into eastern Arizona as part of an ongoing program to restore wolves to the Southwest.

The hot springs were as much an Iceland draw as the elusive and as-yet-unseen aurora borealis. So, after two days spent tooling around Reykjavik, I’m itching to get out into the countryside and into a geothermal pool.

For years after becoming a classroom teacher, I wondered if I was truly a professional. People said I was a professional, but I didn’t get paid all that much and, unlike my lawyer buddies, I never had time for a game of tennis at lunch.

In 1996, with a gold Honda hatchback full of books and camping gear, I moved to New Mexico.

It’s rush hour and it’s raining. I’m on my way to Trader Joes to forage for dinner when my car decides to slip into a coma (note to self: stop buying cars at places that sell über-crappy, budget jerry-rigs).