Author

Leah Spence

Dispatches & Outdoors

11+ years experience

Leah writes the long dispatches and most of the outdoors desk. She drives too far for most stories, keeps a thermos in every bag and believes the best interviews happen while waiting for something else.

Covers

  • small towns
  • winter
  • road trips
  • wildlife
  • A flat blue road drawn across a frozen river between two small towns

    The ice road that appears every winter

    Each January a highway forms on a frozen river. By April it is gone again, and the towns along it plan their whole year around those few months.

    Leah Spence 12 min read

  • A calendar with days crossed off beside a frozen shoreline

    The long wait for the bears

    Every autumn a small bay town fills with visitors waiting for the water to freeze and the bears to walk out onto it.

    Leah Spence 13 min read

  • A magnifying glass over a falling line chart

    The town where the ground is thawing

    A historic northern town was built on frozen ground. Now the ground is changing, and its buildings are starting to lean.

    Leah Spence 10 min read