After I write this, I’ll be guiding five fourth and fifth grade girls in fresh snow. On walkabout, we’ll focus not on the cold, but the stories we encounter in whiteness, letting the natural world fill and propel us for an afternoon.
Binoculars will fuel curiosity.… read more →
I see an orange flash amid the mowed green clover and brome, roadside. Fox. Dead. Fur, still like down fluff. Its form is lithe, not yet bloated. Heading to a favorite fishing hole late in the day, I can’t stop. Can’t do both. I’ll come back tomorrow.
Yvon Chouinard’s favorite quote about entrepreneurship is “that to understand an entrepreneur, you should study a juvenile delinquent. They’re both saying “this sucks and I’m going to do it another way.” You have to break the rules and prove that your way works.”
My entrepreneur spirit… read more →
A conversation has opened within hunting as more people of infinite diversity have entered its sacred realm: What is an appropriate photograph when we “fill our tags?” “Bag” our animal? Secure clean food in fair chase for our families?
A thousand words cannot capture the moments… read more →
Stumbling through riverbed boulders and log jams, the beams of our headlamps were lightsabers, slicing erratically through black night. Snowmelt sloshed in my 20-year old waders. My friend George shivered, soaked up to shrinkage. Neither state though, dampened our mirth. Out after dark, we felt like kids at… read more →
In this week’s Mountain Journal, a nonprofit journal centered on Yellowstone National Park, I read an editorial about the packed trails locals are experiencing in Livingston, Montana under the shadow of Bozeman’s population explosion amid COVID-19.
I felt their angst over… read more →
As I write this, I am pulling my head up from a miasma of research. I don’t like data, or black and white — things without wiggle room or a fudge-factor paralyze me. Gray areas are usually my comfort zone. And I don’t like professional jargon; it intimidates… read more →
Barefoot, I step quietly through waves and drifts of green.
I can hear heavy birds scratching in the underbrush. With one wary eye at a time, they peer about, swiping their beaks back and forth through the decomposing duff. Concealed within a filagree of aspen leaves,… read more →
With a lifetime of working in nature, I feel like a “holder of secrets” at times.
My second favoritest job ever was as an arborist, working for my friends Mickey and Susan as an undergrad. Each morning at a new job site we’d step into… read more →
Merriam-Webster defines “symbiosis” as an interaction between two different organisms living in intimate association, typically to the advantage of both. Think of Nemo, impervious to the sting of sea anemones, taking refuge within its tentacles. In thanks, Nemo scares off predators of the anemone; his wastes nourish… read more →
