Bird of Passage

Katahdin Woods & Waters National Monument, mid-September. Mushrooms color the ground, warblers the trees. The woods are full of little flocks, and the flocks feel like an end-of-summer mixer of locals (chickadees and Hairy Woodpeckers) and seasonals (the neotropical migrants.) The chickadees are loud—drawing attention, almost, to the warbler departure. “It’s time to say goodbye!” …

09.13.21: Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument Read More »

Woke up yesterday with murrelets again; ruminated on the way they bring the ocean to the forest in voice, in the anchovies they carry to their young, in their excrement’s marine remnants—fertilizer. Wondered if they notice the clear-cuts and eroded soil and tree-farm monocultures when they’re journeying between land and sea… Took a barefoot walk …

08.03.21: Suislaw NF, Oregon Read More »

This is a Mountain Quail in the G-O Road—a road that (note the toaster-oven sized boulder) will probably be drivable for just a few more seasons. It was cut in the 1980s, when the USFS decided that the extraction of 928 million board feet would be a productive use of the Siskiyous. But the high …

07.29.21: G-O Rd., CA Read More »

I’ve always been drawn to border places—the meeting of land and sea; salt and fresh; night and day… in physical as well as less tangible senses, they’re fertile grounds of shifting demarcations. They speak to me. Last week, Tripp (probably sensing I needed a respite from fires/record heat/the consequent emotions) sent me to a stretch …

07.26.21: Northern CA Coast Read More »

I have wanted for a very long time to see the redwoods, and a few days ago I finally did. They are utterly overwhelming. In fact, my first night in their presence, it felt wrong to take pictures or even try to tame feelings into words. So I didn’t. I lay down on a footbridge …

07.25.21: Redwoods, CA Read More »

“Our compassion eroded faster than the topsoil, and when we began to notice the earth changes, the drought and the warming and the die-offs of the animals, the hole in the ozone layer and the epidemics of strange diseases that showed our own immune systems faltering, when we still had a chance to save so …

07.23.21, California Read More »

The last couple days, watching White-throated Swifts slice the heat shimmer and smoke haze has been a cherished joy; the sudden, sharp drops and rises of the swifts match the landscape they call home. They defy gravity, something I’ve been fighting the last few days. Yesterday, it was 105*F where I was–20*F above average. I …

07.10.21: Dinosaur Read More »