I’d never heard of southeastern Utah’s Bears Ears until President Obama declared that enormous landscape a National Monument last December. As Jeff and I planned our spring break trip, the thought of this just-protected place intrigued me. For the last four years, we’d been getting to know the marvelous red rock country protected in the Beehive State. Those wildlands are so different from our pine forests and emerald Gulf waters, and I find that … Continue
On January 13, I offered these brief thoughts to the attendees of the Mickee Faust Inaugural Bawl. in Tallahassee I hope you will find them of use. Imagine yourself on a gorgeous, wild island, maybe the most beautiful in all the world: St. Vincent National Wildlife Refuge. Imagine that from dawn until sunset, you have tramped the beaches and the forest and the marshes, searching out every kind of bird you could identify and count, from the largest eagle to the … Continue
Dear Friends: On Sunday, December 18, 2016, this report on my brief visit to Standing Rock will be featured in the Tallahassee Democrat. I’ll be sharing Part 2 of what I learned at Standing Rock after the holidays. During the first week of December, I traveled with my niece Erin Canter to a snowy, stinging cold North Dakota prairie south of Bismarck, where encampments at Standing Rock have evolved into the longest running protest in modern history. In … Continue
Last weekend, a series of impressive king tides, swelled by the full moon, rose our Gulf waters a foot or more higher above normal. In south Florida, sea water ran deep in the streets. But along our lightly populated coast, I noticed only submerged docks, from Lanark to Eastpoint. On St. Vincent Island, the king tides carved two long swales and filled them with salt Gulf water. The pool closer to the dunes was deeper, and had apparently entrapped an … Continue
I never expected to see a flock of shorebirds amongst the high peaks of Montana’s Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness last week. Golden eagles, yes. Elk and mule deer and marmots, yes. Single spotted sandpipers, sure. But there they were, in a synchronous flock, spinning like snowflakes over glacial Dewey Lake, more than 9000 feet above sea level. I don’t carry my excellent binoculars backpacking anymore. In my 60s, I aim to shoulder the lightest possible weight on our seven-day hikes (somewhere in the neighborhood … Continue
St. Vincent Island: An Anthem Last May, New Mexico composer and singer Becky Reardon and Florida’s beloved songwriter and performer Velma Frye joined me for a week to explore St. Vincent Island, on the northwest Florida coast. The island, a National Wildlife Refuge, became both inspiration and subject of an anthem written by the two musicians. I was the privileged observer of their creative process—the only observer, besides the dolphins and the wild birds. My contribution was to introduce the … Continue
I wish I could juggle a camera with a good close-up lens along with my binoculars, spotting scope, bird book and lists, so I could share with you the beautiful beings I was amongst, these last two days. But I’m not that good. Instead I’ll paint you a picture with my words. Imagine standing on the lip of Tahiti Beach, with the West Pass, a warm gale and the rising sun at your back, and miles of … Continue
On a Friday night in early August, Jeff, our eldest son Casey, and I pitched our tents on the meadow-y shore of Becker Lake in Wyoming’s Beartooth Range. A low pressure system had delayed our seven-day hike by 24 hours, but now the weather had broken, and we’d decided to go for it. At 5 a.m. the next morning, we woke to the sound of drizzle stinging against our tarp. It might have been sleet: too dark to see. By … Continue
One evening in June, I launched down the Munson Hills trail on my old green bike, hoping to out-ride the fury and the helplessness that had settled in my soul. Usually when I’m riding or walking in the woods, I’m moving towards things I love. Wildflowers. Gopher tortoises. Solitude. But that night, my mind was all tangled up with the evils unleashed by people with too much power and no good manners. A plan to hunt and kill black bears … Continue
It had been a pleasure-full day on the water, three hours or more swimming and meandering among batfish, a couple rays, a green sea turtle, schools of small fry, several puffer fish. A time of solitude and little sound, only the harshness of breath through snorkel. The Gulf was warm, benign, amniotic, nothing to fear. We had dawdled over lunch, even agreed to slide back into the water and make another pass for scallops. The air had been so still … Continue