We were walking on the short bluff above the Little Colorado River on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona, looking for archaeological sites. Though surrounded by empty desert, we scoured the surface and found plenty of evidence of past occupants. Pottery shards littered the ground among the greasewood wherever the sand had been blown off down […]
Monthly Archives: October 2015
“There is more life in dead trees than there is in living ones.” Old Ecologists’ Aphorism, quoted in Feral by George Monbiot The mouse lay in the middle of the trail, desiccated and flat. It didn’t appear to be eaten; it was relatively intact. The ants weren’t finding much to drag away, so it just […]
“…the fairy tales are more powerful than the facts.” George Monbiot, Feral The big bad wolf blew down the little piggies’ houses. He also ate grandma and terrorized Little Red Riding Hood — not to mention Peter, the boy who cried wolf. TV shows and movies present wolves as the ever-present danger in the woods. […]
The Naturalist’s Axiom: You can’t do just one thing. Law of Successful Tinkering: Save all the parts. Corollary: Save the instructions. Roderick Nash The brown head was just visible above the ripples in the water. We watched it cross the tank (what we called a farm pond) and disappear into the weeds at the […]
“Weeds are flowers, too, once you get to know them.” A.A. Milne “But these are weeds,” Melanie exclaimed, “We pull these up in our yard.” “Yes, but this isn’t your yard.” Paul noted kindly, looking out over the prairie. We were collecting native plant seeds on the former Rocky Flats Nuclear Plant site to […]
Writes of Nature 