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Oysters and Acid
I was four when me and my mother were walking home from our neighborhood hardware store on a warm San Fernando Valley morning. Our path crossed twelve blocks or so, a long ways for…
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Shifting Baselines
Outside my kitchen window two mature birch trees have grown side by side for some sixty years, an old married couple whose roots entwine such that their separation is impossible. One has been ailing…
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Learning to Save the Planet
After recently completing a Conservation Biology class through the University of Washington (my alma mater), I was interviewed about my experience for a newsletter. In the article I express how much I appreciated the…
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She Tree
Through the hours of a quiet afternoon, I watched her transform. Blushing from sun-kissed gold to smitten crimson, in love with autumn. The cool and liquid air spoke her language, coaxed her metamorphosis. She…
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Our Butterfly Effect
We’re all doing the best we can with the information we have. Trying to be good citizens, neighbors, workers, parents, humans. So when we see what’s happening around the world and don’t know what…
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The Salish Sea
What do you want to be when you grow up? When we answered this question as children, too young to calculate future expenses, did our answer actually represent our life’s true purpose? What we…
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Life-Saving Windows
My bird collision monitoring route is a ten minute shuffle around one side of a building, the speed at which you’d search for lost keys in grass. Above us are floor-to-ceiling windows encircling the…
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Jane
The day she died, the cashier at PCC asked me how my day was going. Welling up, I shook my head and shrugged away the question to block the tears. Someone I sought out…
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Back to the Books
Is it delusional to go back to school at age 52? Is it naïve to re-enter the workforce at 54? As I begin a two-year plan in hopes of working in conservation and restoration,…
