This winter, having resolved to become better acquainted with our wild neighbors, I bought a trail camera. We’d been renting a cabin along a creek in the Arkansas Valley, and mink and foxes occasionally scuttled past our sliding backdoor. Who knew what other faunal wonders were traversing the property under cover of darkness? When I […]
Animals
One morning a week or so ago I was at a park on the north shore of Lake Washington. The park has a long pier, and I was standing on the pier’s end when I heard a harsh shwarrk off in the distance. I perked up, strained my ears. There it was again: Shwarrk! Shwarrk! […]
Assateague The waves curl in and lave the shore, drop their cargo of shells and polished glass, then withdraw, clawing back the sand. Sanderlings scatter, poke and pick, flee incoming waves, chase them back out, reverse, repeat. I stand on spongy sand, solid enough if a bit shaky, sea foam washing my feet. Somewhere to […]
Last weekend I went to the zoo, something I hadn’t done in at least two years and probably much longer. A friend was visiting with her kid, a zoo enthusiast who’d been looking forward to it for weeks. While at the zoo we saw many wondrous things. Two Asian elephants. A number of surprisingly giant […]
A few days ago, a friend texted me that a red-flanked bluetail had been spotted a couple of miles from where I live. I had to look up what a red-flanked bluetail was. Turns out that the red-flanked bluetail—also known as the orange-flanked bush-robin—is a small songbird with red flanks (or orange flanks, I guess, […]
Many of my poems are not autobiographical, but this one is. I can still remember that moment: the early-morning air, the flash of blue. The pang I felt. In the intervening years I’ve gotten to know blue jays much better as a species and as individuals. I’ve spent endless hours reading about them, watching them, […]
On March 1, 2022, Yellowstone National Park celebrated its 150th anniversary. I was privileged to work briefly for the Park Service there after college, and Elise and I make a point of returning every year; our honeymoon even revolved around a backpacking trip up Slough and Pebble Creeks. Until we visited last February to cross-country […]
In 2019, a forest caught fire in Sussex, England. This would not have made international headlines, except that the forest in question was Ashdown Forest, the real-life inspiration for Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin’s beloved Hundred Acre Wood. As the fire spread, dry-eyed forest rangers explained to reporters that the blaze and the little […]
