Border Wall in Big Bend
So Trump is stupid enough to spend billions building a border wall through the Big Bend region. The Guardian has an article today on this. Big Bend was the first national park I worked at. Ten years ago, I wrote … Continued
A Compare and Contrast
It’s evening of a compare and contrast day that’s made me contemplative. I want to write it quickly to try capturing the contrast while it is still reverberating. This morning we went to the No Kings rally in Redding. It … Continued
Snippets 3/2026
In terms of seasonal markers, the flowers of Shooting Stars (Primula clevelandii) are right up there with the first bird songs in early January from Oak Titmice. When the light from the first Shooting Star’s magenta petals strikes my retina, … Continued
1492 – The Letter
On this Columbus Day, I share the story of Christopher Columbus’s letter. For years, royal courts had rejected his proposals for an expedition to get to the Far East by going west across the Atlantic. The royals’ advisors knew about … Continued
Staying Found on the way toward a Commons culture
This post contains two follow-ups to my September, 2024 essay,Toward a Commons culture. My essay, Toward a Commons culture, led to an invitation from journalist, Lucas Tauil, to be the first guest on his podcast, Entangled Futures. Lucas is a … Continued
Mount Shasta Sunsets
A section of road we drive is exactly aligned east/west. During the equinoxes, we drive straight into the blinding sun rising due east and, in the evening, straight into the blinding sun setting due west. After the Spring Equinox, we … Continued
A Wetland Filling
At the end of May I went kayaking in the Warner Wetlands with two friends. (Some images below) One thing I enjoyed was watching how their minds started wrestling with the same thoughts I wrestled with the first time I … Continued
Micro-climate Example
When we started thinking of buying a piece of land to live on, we read a book that recommended walking on the land several times and camping on it before making an offer. So we did. The evening we camped, … Continued
Some Politics
I tend to blog about patterns in nature and the wisdom of working with them. I tend to avoid politics in my blog. But Trump’s presidency comes from such a different set of patterns that I feel a responsibility to … Continued
Stories of Relationships
Dad’s Walnut TreeIn the early 1970’s, The Wall Street Journal reported on a machine developed in Japan that peeled sheets of veneer so thin that a good walnut tree trunk was worth $10,000 in early 1970’ dollars. Dad read that … Continued