“With climate change increasing, drought increasing, and more high rainfall events, I think there’s more of a need to incorporate permanent vegetation into agriculture systems.” Susan Stein, Director of USDA National Agroforestry Center In the movie Interstellar, the near-future world is being consumed by climate change, and one-by-one the monocultural crops that feed the world […]
Category Archives: nature
I have a Fort Theory of Ecology, Fort Theory of Conservation. Every ecologist I know, every conservation biologist I know, every conservation professional I know, built forts when they were kids. If we have a generation that doesn’t know how to build a fort, we’ll have a generation that doesn’t know how to care about […]
It was cold and windy at the top of Glen Canyon Dam, and most of the fledgling engineers huddled against one of the massive concrete supports. I stood on the reservoir side staring into the distance and wondering what it had been like before the water covered it. Looking over the other rail, the narrow […]
We are stardust, we are golden, And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden Joni Mtchell, Woodstock One version has it starting with a big bang. Out of the void, a massive explosion spews matter and energy to form the universe. Another has a benevolent spirit creating the universe, then the earth, in […]
… It is not a sentimental but a grimly literal fact that unless we share this terrestrial globe with creatures other than ourselves, we shall not be able to live on it for long. Joseph Wood Krutch The other night our big cat, Betty, sat by the closed French door staring out through the glass. […]
Every fall when I rake the yard, I get distracted by the detritus among the leaves. Across the street there’s a giant horse chestnut tree that produces interesting brown nuts that roll when you try to rake them. The squirrels vie for them, and often I find one in the street. The nuts are about […]
“It is past time to broaden the discussion of the human future and connect it to the rest of life.” Edward O. Wilson My view from the light rail car was instructive. All along the route, new condos and apartments were replacing old, tattered single family homes and shabby duplexes. As we crossed to downtown, […]
“A food system organized around subsidized monocultures of corn and soy … guzzled tremendous amounts of fossil fuel … and in the process emitted tremendous amounts of greenhouse gas. … the types of food that can be made from all that subsidized corn and soy … bears a large measure of responsibility for the steep […]
They flew in a ragged formation above the beach, but something seemed off. “They’re flying backwards!” I realized. A strange sight — but a familiar feeling. We were dealing with the aftereffects of a Pacific typhoon along the Oregon coast; the waves were huge and the winds terrific. A rare tornado touched down in the […]
I grew up in a family that hunted and fished and valued the natural world. My father was an amateur naturalist and passed those tendencies on to us kids. As an attorney, he had a close relationship with many of his clients who were ranchers and farmers, and he shared with us what he understood […]
Writes of Nature 