This is a tale about trees, trails, turbulence, and time. It’s about today’s news and tomorrow’s hopes. It’s about what we bring and what we leave behind. John Muir once said he walked with trees and felt taller. Kath and I walked a trail with tall trees this week, and I felt smaller. I felt like a blip in time, a shrimp in space, and fodder for the next generation. But at the same time, I felt refreshed, empowered, emboldened, and more alive than ever. How is that possible?

Before it was Big Rock, it was Yudwasta.  Legend has it that there was a woman who lived in the land of the stars with her husband. But she needed to flee her unhappy marriage. Her older sister helped her escape to Earth by lowering her on a rope through a hole in the sky. When she got to Earth, the older sister dropped the rope. Its coils formed the rock Yudwasta, which means, “in the heart.”  The woman later gave birth to a son, Star Child, who would grow up to light the wo

My high school marine biology teacher, Mr. Quackenbush, looking up a critter at a rocky beach on one of our field trips. Yeah, that's me on the left, sitting on my butt in my hip waders When I was a teenager, my best friend wanted to be a zookeeper. He raised snakes and frogs in his bedroom, and crickets and other critters to feed them. On a high school field trip to Sucia Island one spring, he and I slipped away at night to find more Pacific chorus frogs for his growing mini

Up from the mud it arises "I read in a book once that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but I've never been able to believe it. I don't believe a rose WOULD be as nice if it were called a skunk cabbage." — L.M. Montgomery No respect. It just gets no respect. Skunk cabbage is one of the earliest plants to announce that winter is nearly through. Along with osoberry flashing its white flags of flowers, skunk cabbage rises from the mud long before bees have returned