In the past few weeks, I have driven nearly the length of California. Not long after I crossed the Oregon border, I encountered the devastated landscape of the Delta Fire. Before the blaze was contained, it had consumed over 50,000 acres of Trinity National Forest. It burned so hot that highway guardrails melted. I drove […]
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Waves of Change
Over the past year, I have worked with a talented filmmaker named Amy Allcock. Together, we have created a brief summary of my epic journey to rainforests across the west. Funded by a grant from the Columbia-Kootenay Cultural Alliance, this work has helped me develop a unique perspective on the changes underway. You can view […]
Full Flowering and the Columbia River Treaty
The last time my life was as busy as it has been this spring was the year my second son came into the world. That sunny, damp day in mid-March 26 years ago set off a whirl of caregiving for family that only began to abate in 2002, when my first book emerged in the […]
The ghost-presence of John Muir
John Muir is widely viewed as the father of the national park system in the United States. A conservationist, naturalist and writer in the late-nineteenth and early 20th centuries, he was most at home in places where trees outnumbered people. Muir is best-known for his successful effort to save Yosemite National Park from development, and […]
Leaf harmonics at Harrop Creek
The 19th century mathematician Jules Henri Poincaré was also a physicist, engineer and philosopher, aptly qualifying him to be a polymath, someone who knows a lot about many and varied things. In his writings, Poincaré spoke of a form of beauty that he believed to be more profound than that which strikes the senses. This […]
Thank you, Mr. Sun
Today is the longest of the year in the northern hemisphere, the summer solstice. When I stepped out onto my deck, a small sun greeted me in the form of a Zinnia flower. I have been watching it for several days as it tried to open its bright face to the world. What a perfect […]