Species Parade, Week Four

In my twenties, I worked for two summers as a field researcher in Michigan and North Carolina. My job was studying Indigo Buntings, finding their nests, catching and banding the adults, as well as the young. Buntings like to nest in secondary growth – tall […]

Mountain conversation oddly civil

While my Maine friends lobby to have Governor LePage impeached and the Pine Tree State stays mired in a certain degree of discontent, discord, and intransigence, folks in Utah seems downright ducky and team-spirited. It might have something to do with the pro-business environment and […]

Species Parade, Week Three

At night, outside my window, there’s an intermittent beepy-buzzing. It’s not one of the familiar goatsuckers (nighthawk or poor will). It’ll keep me guessing, I’m guessing. That’s the fun of getting out and seeing (or not seeing) animals. They keep you guessing. They’re like […]

Backpacker as a museum piece

“I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.” John Muir Reality is scary and boring. Wilderness is beautiful and tiresome. Getting Out is serene and challenging. Getting Out, […]

Exploring the divide: Inside Outside

I always figured folks viewed the wilderness like I did: A place to cherish and protect. A place for quiet observation and reflection. A place where humans could be brought to their knees by the elements or by simple wonder. As I get older and […]

Species Parade, Week Two

I’m reading Wallace Stenger’s Beyond the 100th Meridian, John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West. In 1883, Powell was telling Westerners and prospective Westerners: “Gentlemen, you are piling up a heritage of conflict and litigation over water rights, for there is not […]

A rare pair: Women and Fire

My first journalism job was as a sports reporter for the Providence Journal-Bulletin in Rhode Island. I was the only woman in the department. At games covered by multiple papers, I was always the only female reporter. Decades have passed. Women now make up […]

Species Parade, Week One

“Wilderness. The word itself is music,” wrote Edward Abbey in Desert Solitaire. There are songs of wind and of light and shadow. There’s a fabulous rhythm to animal movement. And, of course, there are the more literal songs of birds: buzzes, chips, whistles, screeches, caws, […]

Brilliant Backyard Booze

Rain and gardening neglect have given me scads of mint, which might have been planted intentionally at some point, but now grows weed-like in our yard. With semi-arid conditions and ledge for soil, it does well where next-to-nothing else will. (I miss my Maine garden, […]