[I’m sure we’ve all seen prey birds freeze and flatten; attract as little attention as possible when faced with a threat. When a man walked through the trailhead parking lot I was bedding down in, sighting his rifle in ways that contradict firearm safety and peering in the windows of other parked cars, my response …
The prairie birds are up—but I’m not actually certain they ever slept. Not last night, with the clear skies, the full moon, the solstice just three days past. Right now, I think, all our sleep is a little addled. I tried: I parked up, then bedded down, on some level ground by a cattle guard. …
Thought I’d give you all a little Valentine’s Present in the form of Smith’s Longspur reproductive methods. In Indiana, where nearly two-thirds of the state is agricultural land, billboards become, in two ways, high points. The signs, garish and attention-grabbing, are one of the few things I look forward to when I have to pass …
This passage is a little scene from the road between the prothonotary warblers that thrive in the cypress swamp remnants of southern Illinois and the Henslow’s sparrows that have colonized former strip mines in southwestern Indiana. April 2021. When you’re in Southern Indiana and Illinois, driving north, mid-April, the things we always assumed were true …
The hen sooty grouse stood on a downed spruce that gave her a vantage above her five mostly-grown chicks. I can’t imagine the stress of mothering such a brood, and that so much of her family had survived to this stage was no small accomplishment. When you are a grouse, most everything wants to eat …
Outer world: Up north in Michigan, the sugar maples are blaze orange. So are the hats on the dashboards of everyone’s pickups. Harvest time. Further south, towards the state line, the land flattens and most of the forest’s cleared. There, clouds of red-wings, starlings, and grackles ripple over fields—black, like the diesel belches blasting …
Ooof, since my last post about the Gila, I have shoveled my driveway, twice. I think this undertaking involves moving at least a ton of snow each go–good thing that clearing the driveway is also good for clearing the brain. Today’s shoveling wasn’t because I needed (or wanted) to go anywhere, but because I wanted …
Many of you know this by now, but I’m currently in an Upper Peninsula cabin. I’ll be here for several months, distilling the 2021 explorations so many of you followed–and supported–into something that more closely resembles a manuscript. I’ve been up since early January, and each day, the routine and the writing come more readily. …
When I saw the Long-tails last, it was May; they wore spring: the colors of tundra muck and tawny grass that’s still awaiting vernal resurrection. They flew by day; they flew into the night; I knew this because during the eclipse, I sat at the borderlands—beach and Superior; day and night; the world known to …
01.01.2022: Duluth, Minnesota “Not a winner…not a winner…”–woman buying lottery tickets at the Holiday till. I was buying a large coffee, a large lemon-lime gatorade, and didn’t exactly feel like a winner either. There were several reasons for this. A -35 windchill; the lingering effects of New Year’s Eve celebrations, namely a bottle of sparkling …