The El Nino storms hit Klamath, California hard on Thursday. La Tortue trembled in the force of the wind. Rain pounded on the roof, waking me in the dead of the night. Miraculously, I lay warm and dry. (Thank goodness I am getting too old for tent camping.) For the next several days, I watched […]
Landscapes
Redwood Majesty
I parked La Tortue beside the pristine Smith River in Jedediah Smith State Park last night, a preserve of old and second-growth redwood trees. Today, I walked in a grove where fire had swept through hundreds of years ago; many of the oldest trees were scarred by the flames, but continued to adapt and even […]
Sending more green to our eyes
This is the Arrow Lakes Reservoir, where Columbia River water is collected and held in Canada under the Columbia River Treaty, for use downstream in the U.S. One of the tell-tale signs of a reservoir is trees having fallen like soldiers along the unstable shoreline from the raising and lowering of the water for hydro-power […]
A remarkable encounter
I came across this bear skull set on a cedar stump in a selectively logged forest in July, 2015. Over a foot long, the skull’s front fangs are gone. The back molars, made for chewing up berries, grubs and vegetation, confirm the jaw of an omnivore. The stump and the skeleton may both be […]
A summer office beside Kootenay Lake
I sit here in early morning, watching the swallows dance across the water’s surface, dipping close to harvest bugs, rising up again to deliver them into a waiting nest of young.
Fairy Bells
On a springtime walk, along a path I have followed so many times, I came across a lush, knee-high forest of Fairy Bells (Prosartes hookeri), spreading beneath the shade of an evergreen forest. How could I have missed this charm and beauty, all these years?