Once, I was traveling through Qamani Tuaq in the Kivalliq region of what is now Nunavut, the former Canadian Northwest Territories. I met an Inuit native there whose name was Ikutaq (or some close approximation). He might have been twenty or seventy, the elements chiseling their harsh breath on [...]
Cradled between three birch trees is where they will find me. I look at my rifle. A bolt action 30.06 manufactured by the Savage Arms Company of Connecticut. It has a Redfield 4x telescopic sight and is accurate to 200 yards. It can kill anything from prairie dogs to [...]
Imagine waking up one day, and being faced with another new environmental crisis… say, saving the beavers, who might be faced with extinction. Imagine that you call attention to the plight of the beavers, and scientists do some research to uncover the causes of the beavers’ demise. Then people, [...]
When you are twenty, you go into the desert to find yourself. When you are seventy, you go to see what’s coming. South of Island in the Sky, north of the Needles and west of the Maze. The canyon lands of the west are desert. I spend the morning [...]
Most of my friends are apoplectic over actions taken by the current administration toward the environment. They can’t understand why anyone in their right mind would remove stream protections or “OK” the Dakota Access Pipeline. To them, that makes no sense. In my last post, I talked about frames [...]
In my last post I talked about failure of the environmental movement’s messaging. It’s no secret that the other side, the fossil fuel industry, is investing in think-tanks to shape public policy. Since energy policy and the environment are complex issues, you may not even be aware of the [...]
There’s an old adage that says you should never be the first one to tell someone their baby is ugly. Yet, someone has to be first. The messaging of the environmental movement is failing. There, I said it. It’s just an observation. I know it sounds like a criticism, [...]
It’s called the basement of time. I am eight miles and five-thousand feet down the South Kaibab trail at mid-day. The temperature hovers close to 105 °F. My knees ache, and my body is tired. There is a rest house on the trail at this point, but it’s at [...]
I am on a journey through the Southwest. Looking for a little solitude in the desert. The solitude is offset by my conversations with strangers. Where are you from? Isn’t the earth amazing? Which eventually leads to… How do you see the environment? Today, I met Ranger Pete. I [...]
Drawdown, Edited by Paul Hawken, is likely the most important book on climate in a decade. While its title sounds slightly self-congratulatory, the book lives up to it. Hawken and his team have created a comprehensive review to answer the question, “What do we need to do in order [...]
