The water was dark and murky, nearly black in the dense shade. The surface, nearly still, slightly rippled by unseen small fish or insects, and vegetation crept out from the muddy shore. A small flat wooden bridge spanned a twenty foot reach of the swamp, connecting rutted dirt roads. The jungle vegetation and likelihood of […]
When we pried up the rotting board, there was a small gooey orange blob in the wet duff beneath. The cold rain had soaked everything, and I gently scooped up the unmoving creature. Only visitors to the Portland area, none of us knew the local fauna. It might be a small salamander; someone suggested a […]
The old Inuit man stood at the airport gate wearing his caribou hide jacket and pants, mouton vest, seal skin boots, wolverine fur hat and bearskin mittens over caribou skin gloves. The Aleyska pipeline representative looked him over to verify that he had the appropriate gear for the North Slope before he could fly north […]
“Nature is not always benign.” Mark Tercek and Johnathan Adams, Nature’s Fortune When she went to pick up the pile of laundry, she discovered a rattlesnake hidden underneath. Slowly, she dropped the laundry back in place. Married to a rancher and living on a ranch for years, things like that didn’t worry her too much. […]
