I never met John Gierach, but I feel like I know him as well as you can know anyone from their books and he had… Continue reading
It’s early fall and we sometimes enjoy seeing fuzzy orange and black caterpillars trekking over the trails on their way to better foraging or a… Continue reading
Community members, agencies team up to work on trail with nearly 150-year-old history
Skip Ambrose has floated the upper Yukon River almost every year since Richard Nixon was President. Back then, in 1973, only 12 pairs of peregrine… Continue reading
On a dark and dismal day in late September, I cheered myself up by remembering some pleasing observations in recent weeks: • On the dike… Continue reading
“I’m so tired.” I had no idea how to reply. As a basketball coach you tell players to push through. As a high school teacher… Continue reading
People often think of fungi as dietary items or as agents of rot and decay. Fair enough, but those are only two small windows into… Continue reading
Their staccato voices can make a muskeg bog as loud as a city street, though most are so small they could sit in a coffee… Continue reading
In late August I went on a day cruise to Tracy Arm. The weather was good for observing: gray, overcast skies to reduce the glare… Continue reading
The alpine deer cabbage was yellow and gold, a sign of the coming fall. From a distance even the leaves turned brown seemed to take… Continue reading
On a gray morning in early September, with no cruise ships in town(!), I wandered up Basin Road and the first part of the Perseverance… Continue reading
I haven’t seen much bird activity along my mid-August trails recently, but here at home there is always something going on. The suet block, seed… Continue reading
This essay was launched by reading an almost unintelligible (to me) scientific paper about chiton eyes. Nevertheless, that paper led to others, and here I… Continue reading
LACK RAPIDS OF THE DELTA RIVER — If we climb high enough above this tumble of gray water, we can see a wedge of blue-white… Continue reading
Mid-August and the berry crops of wild currants are ripe. The stink currant (reportedly so-called for the smell of crushed leaves) sometimes bears large crops… Continue reading
I hadn’t been over there for several years, and it was time to refresh some old memories of forest walks and boat or kayak trips… Continue reading
Now as quiet as wind whispering through grass, a plateau rising from the flats of northern Alaska was for thousands of years a lookout for… Continue reading
Light rain fell as I left the Valley but, as usual, it fell more heavily as I neared the downtown area. Fog lay thick over… Continue reading
My wife and I had just moved into the Forest Service cabin and perpetual motion sent me to the lake where there were fish to… Continue reading
There are more than 20,000 species of ants, including such noticables as picnic ants, sidewalk ants, carpenter ants, and so on. Less noted by most… Continue reading