I leave Topanga Canyon at dawn. When I pull over and step from the car, the call of birds litters the dimly lit scrub forest. Lights from the densely populated LA Basin twinkle in the distance. On the cusp of day and night; metropolis and canyon, nature is alive. I head north on I-5, climbing […]
Water
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 […]
An Eagle’s Eye
Last week, I travelled south of the international boundary, to Kettle Falls, Washington. Standing on a bluff overlooking the Columbia River, I watched the reservoir pool around a land mass exposed by low water. The indigenous word for this place is ksunkw, “island.” Sinixt and Skoyelpi fishermen, their families and the Salmon Chief once spent […]
Planting Seeds
Redfish Creek flows into the West Arm of Kootenay Lake, close to where I live. This aptly named creek has long been a spawning grounds for the region’s kokanee, a sockeye species identical to the ocean version, except that it adapted to live in freshwater only when it was stranded here long ago by melting […]
Finding the headwaters
I cross into Montana and head west, drawn by the allure of Headwaters State Park, about 30 miles west of Bozeman, Montana. The second-longest river in North America begins here, tucked into a wetland east of the Rocky Mountain divide. Every river begins differently. The Missouri’s alpha is actually the confluence of two rivers, the […]
Missouri River Marshlands
The name Van Meter State Park in northwestern Missouri predicts nothing about the park’s remarkable gifts. I approached it on state road 122, rolling La Tortue through undulating farm fields that were broken only by occasional brush and trees gathered in wet draws. Mostly, this was engineered habitat for soybeans and corn. We had our […]