Let’s say we wake up and find out that Jackalope are going extinct because they are being eaten by Bigfoot. After all, they are a favorite delicacy of Bigfoot. What do we do? We probably start a Save the Jackalope campaign... of course. We have to make people aware [...]
Walking through the forest, I am at peace. A soft carpet of red pine needles mutes my footfall, while my eyes follow the trail ahead. It turns and twists organically following the Cascade River valley a hundred feet below. I grew up as a feral child. Like Tarzan, I [...]
(This post first appeared in May of 2015 on Linkedin as part of a national project. Since it’s the new year and many of us take time to reflect, I thought I would offer it to my friends who are fighting for climate justice.) I was setting up camp [...]
I love words. I listen to their songs for hidden stories. Like the sounds of water laughing over rocks. The forests speak to me. Yellow aspens chatter. The pines whisper. White clouds are clean and pure. So in the environmental movement, why do I often hear, “We catch more [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
What’s the life of a single golden eagle worth? It’s an unfair question, but the one I ask, Steve Slater, director of Hawk Watch International (HWI) in Salt Lake City. There are two answers he says. The first, is that there is value in all life. The second, is a [...]
I have always been fascinated by maps. Imagining what places may look like from their names. I am heading west in search of the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands. What I believe to be a vast area of tall prairie grasses waving in the steady breezes of South Dakota. Endless [...]
Are we above God? Sunrise on the south rim of the Grand Canyon, light reflecting in pinks and rust, purple clouds slanted to the west. My daughter and I are cold as we start down the South Kaibab Trail. But something stops us. Looking out across the canyon, our eyes [...]
