Enskyment
To have one’s bones picked clean by vultures and live on, with wings. While this reincarnational idea is more poetic than a statement of my personal future expectations, it is just one among many pondering points in an essay by…
Category Nature
Out of the Cold
Well, not quite. Ann left to spend yet another night at the workplace so she’d be sure and be able to open up the pharmacy at 6:00 this morning. We’ve had just enough accumulating snow showers and strong winds to…
How Cold Was It?
You know it’s cold when the rhododendron leaves go tubular. As one of the few broadleaved plants still in leaf over winter, extra precautions are needed. On the plus side, this evergreen mountain shrub can remain metabolically active all winter…
Traces in the Snow
After it first falls, thick and smooth, deep enough to cover gravel and ground and all traces of autumn, I go out hesitantly into the new snow and leave the first blemishes in the unbroken white. In the beginning, there…
Nature Imitates Art
I rushed frantically to reach the high clearing for a shot of the late afternoon light through a blue fog that lift out of the valley. That, I thought, was my reason to be there. With great purpose and focus,…
China Hot Dish
“Skating has been banned on the melting ice of Beijing lakes, trees are blossoming early and people are shedding their heavy clothes as China experiences its warmest winter on record. Magnolias are blooming in Beijing as if it were April.”…
Wounded Wood
Back when we first moved to Goose Creek, I was chatting excitedly with a woodworking friend about my idea to grow walnuts on our land as an investment crop for our children’s future. Walnuts make exceptionally beautiful pieces of handcrafted…
Plants and Music
Of Mountains and Molehills
Just so those from *off won’t think life here is unrelentingly lovely, I felt compelled to show you the dark side of country life, with a snippet from a little essay under construction. Our dog, who scares away more potential…
Dead as a Duck
Test results are pending to explain this puzzling and disturbing die-off of mallards along a small, remote Idaho creek. Bacterial or fungal agents are said to be suspected, but why only mallards susceptible? Migratory mallards from Canada and their local…