What I learned writing about climate change and the US south for a year

I crisscrossed a region - my own - that is mired in a culture of denial and delay. The conversation on the climate crisis has not changed fast enough

It's 96 degrees in downtown Beaufort, North Carolina, a place where I spent much of my childhood. The sidewalk is too hot for dogs to walk on. The iconic wild horses, visible on Shackleford Banks, wade in the marsh, munching cordgrass. I've been watching the horses since I was in elementary school, and now I'm sharing them with my elementary school-aged daughters on summer vacation.

My girls love them, as I did. The legend is that the horses swam to safety from an old Spanish shipwreck. It's moving to watch the small, strong horses grazing on the dunes. For now, they've survived the latest big hurricane, and they're free.