Every spring, several Stinkhorn mushrooms appear in the tree lawn on our block. They are repulsive-looking and smell bad, hence the name. A tall white shaft rises several inches through the soil, and becomes capped with a black, gelatinous tip, containing the spores. The rotten carrion stench attracts insects, and the the spores stick to […]
As reported by the media, it was a real mess. The US Environmental Protection Agency was conducting clean-up activities at the Gold King Mine in Colorado and accidentally caused a spill of a million gallons of contaminated mine water into the Animas River, turning it bright orange. This contamination represents a case of natural materials […]
I know a guy who collects minerals. He’s retired and has a place in the mountains where he can wander out to old mine dumps looking for likely stones. Sometimes he sieves the waste rock piles to find interesting stones. Often he’ll use an old Civil Defense Geiger counter to help sort the rocks, since […]
Writes of Nature 