The natural world, life, and dogs.
No, Woolly Bears aren't large, furry mammals like black, brown, panda, or polar bears. The Woolly Bears I'm referring to are insects. They're the adorably fuzzy black-with-rust-band caterpillars that appear throughout the U.S. and parts of Canada and Mexico every autumn, usually in September. I remember being delighted spotting them as a child growing up… Continue reading Woolly Bears: A Sign of Autumn
Maybe, like me, you endured school essay assignments where you had to compare and contrast something. Who knew that skill could end up being a useful blogging tool? Each day as I explore my new environment in Vermont, I can’t help but compare what I experience here to what I knew for the first 48… Continue reading Reinvention, Part Three: Comparing and Contrasting
I'm referring to the large, fuzzy, pollen-collecting bumblebees, of course. Not some synonymous "blunderer, botcher, bungler, butcher, fumbler, sad sack, stumbler." These bumblebees love the columbine and lupine growing in my wildflower garden beside the house. Last year they appeared much earlier in June, so I was concerned, wondering if I'd see them again, but… Continue reading The Bumblers Have Returned
My last post described the twin events of spring in the forests of Idaho's central mountains: blooming wildflowers and prescribed burns. By pure happenstance, the Forest Service decided to do prescribed burns in my two favored locations for springtime runs and hikes with my dogs: in the forest just a mile above my house, and… Continue reading Prescribed Burns
The morning of May 12th I awoke to the smell of smoke in the air, that pleasant sitting-around-a-campfire smell. At daybreak, I could also see it, hovering over the ground like a thin, dirty-white veil, wrapping my house and everything on the valley slope as it slowly rose to meet the forest. The feature photo… Continue reading Spring in the Forest: Blooms and Burns
I continue pursuing emerging wildflowers as spring progresses in Idaho's mountains. I'm obsessed. I dream of a quiet man who explains nothing and defends nothing, but only knows where the rarest wildflowers are blooming, and who goes, and finds that he is smiling not by his own will.Wendell Berry A friend, Karen S, recently recommended… Continue reading Point of View
It hardly looks like spring here in Idaho's mountains. The ground is still covered in well over a foot of snow. Many in more temperate climates are already greeting crocuses and daffodils, and cherry trees are blossoming. She turned to the sunlightAnd shook her yellow head,And whispered to her neighbor:“Winter is dead.”A. A. Milne Not… Continue reading Happy Spring Equinox!
More foolishness fills our days following the previous post about spring, or more precisely, the "fool's spring" that tempts people living in the mountains into believing that winter is over. Fool's spring is a tease. But a delightful tease. If the past few days are representative of "fool's spring" in the mountains of Idaho, then… Continue reading A Fool in Love (with Nature)
Living in the mountains, one quickly learns that predicting weather in March is a fool's errand. For several weeks, the swings between winter and spring are wild and seemingly random. Nature teases with warm days of sunshine, melting the long winter's snow pack on the ground and inviting you to step outside without jacket, hat… Continue reading Fool’s Spring
Snow and icicles are winter's bonded pair. Icicles are beautiful. Ephemeral. Tough yet brittle. Marvels of nature's mixture of warm and cold, temporary sculptures tickling our senses while reminding us that nothing lasts forever. Winter giveth the fields, and the trees so old, their beards of icicles and snow.Henry Wadsworth Longfellow It's not only the… Continue reading Icicles
Wild Sensibility 