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Hi folks, Kim here. So, some personal news: I’ve moved cities and newsrooms. Over Thanksgiving weekend, I drove 11 hours from the Bay Area in my new old car to Phoenix, where I will be an environmental reporting fellow at The Arizona Republic. I’m excited for a new life, and I’ve already formed several impressions about the new metropolitan that I will be calling home for the new year. Maybe that’ll be its own newsletter someday. But before I look forward, I want to look back on what I left behind. Specifically, today’s newsletter will be a valediction to my steadfast writing companion while I was in the Bay. Earlier this year, I settled into a new apartment in Walnut Creek (moving seems to be the story of my life these days). I was a little dismayed that smackdab outside my second-story window was a towering redwood, so tall that I couldn’t see its crown, just mostly its russet trunk. The view was more close-up tree than the people and pets below. Despite the significant shade the tree would cast into my room, I still placed my desk at my one and only window to make the most of the natural light. At first I resented the tree as the world’s most inconsiderate photobomber. But later I realized that it contained a world of its own, and everything else revolved around it. Under both our gazes, neighbors walked their dogs along the footpaths. I became visually acquainted with the neighborhood’s free-roaming cats that sashayed under its boughs. Squirrels defied gravity and scampered up a tree, close enough to touch if not for my window, and the trunk afforded me an intimate peek of these critters’ jumpy antics and lively expressions. Steller’s jays and hummingbirds wove between the redwood’s leafy fingertips, performing dazzling aerial shows that were never one and the same. It was under the watchful eye of this tree that I wrote and wrote, and wrote. During uncomfortable stretches of writer’s block, the tree would be my sounding board. It was an ever attentive listener, always curious with what I had to say, so wizened that it never seemed to judge. Once some landscape workers spent several days cutting down a neighboring redwood. When the first chainsaw growled, I was up in arms, ready to stage trouble if the same workers touched my tree. They didn’t. Now, in Phoenix, my window overlooks a paved-over parking lot. I don’t dare put my writing desk to the window, though, because I can imagine that come summer, I’d want to stay away from the sun. I miss my nameless, ancient writing companion. I might not see much greenery outside my window here, let alone a redwood. But the Sonoran desert has its own botanical natives that aren’t too far away. A Tucson-based colleague from my former newsroom introduced me to the evergreen creosote. Once I learnt how to identify it, I began noticing that it’s everywhere, giving off a resiny scent and waving its fluffy seed capsules like cheerleaders at bystanders.  A creosote on Camelback peak. In early December, I did my first hike, up Camelback Mountain that’s a mere 20 minutes east of downtown. Apparently it’s an annual tradition for a guy to dress up as Santa around Christmas time and hand out candy canes to hikers. Camelback Santa also arranges for some helpers to haul a real Christmas conifer — a distant relative to the redwood — to the peak no less. When I dropped in, I was less taken with the manufactured Christmas scene than I was with the vibrant creosote bush that adorned the top, giving me their own friendly Phoenix welcome and holiday greeting long before humans ever came up with the same idea. What are your Christmas traditions? We’d love to hear from you at hello@sequencermag.com! In the meantime, happy holidays! Best, Kim  Phoenix's very own Santa Claus! P.S. Do we have any Phoenix or Arizona based readers? Please say hi! What are some restaurants and hikes I should check out? Email me at kim@sequencermag.com. What we’re consuming: Maddie: Guys, I have no one I can talk to about this. Tony Hawk Nutcracker performance. The photos are iconic. And just a genius way to innovate on a number whose traditional performance is obviously racist. And Kim, I love Camelback mountain!! I am fairly sure (and my family subscribes to the newsletter so they can let me know if I’m misremembering), but hiking Camelback and tripping when I was a toddler is why I have a barely perceptible scar on my forehead :) Hope you hike it with a solid pair of shoes. Max: Friend-of-the-pod and Sequencer subscriber Celia Ford dropped a banger of a newsletter on Transformer recently: The very hard problem of AI consciousness. I spent a weekend at an AI welfare get together — and left with more questions than answers. It’s insightful. It’s well reported. It’s funny. I give it five big booms. And it’s that time of year again: Big Bear Bald Eagle Live Nest - Cam 1 Please send me some of your recs! What we’re producing: Kim: I published a short and an art-filled piece for Sequencer: And my first story for The Arizona Republic doesn’t have a paywall! Check it out here: Max: Facing my fears on the big walls at my climbing gym. I’m more of a bouldering guy, because I don’t have to worry about a rope saving my life & limb. But I’ve been trying to do more rope climbs and I’m learning that it’s not so easy to really trust the auto-belay machine when I’m 40 feet off the ground. Baby steps… Here’s something dumb I put together based on a recent visit to my local museum’s mineral exhibit: And closing up shop for the holidays! I had dinner with a friend this weekend and mentioned to her that freelancing sometimes feels like a grown-up version of playing house. I’ve got my little business and I’m the boss and the employee and sit at my computer and pretend like it’s all real-life. Well even those of us with made-up jobs deserve a holiday, so I’ll see you on the other side of it 🫡
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