Category: Uncategorized
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Olivia
At 5am when we set out to find her, the beach in Costa Rica was still dark, a few days before the new moon. Our guide illuminated the way with a dim red beam, translator Patricia explained how white light frightens the turtles, turns them back toward the water. Our group of eight followed closely,…
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Biophilia
West beyond the downtown waterfront and placid-blue Elliott Bay, Bainbridge island welcomed the setting sun yet earlier on this November day. Alaskan Way hummed as commuters headed home, and the sidewalk was sparse of pedestrians, unlike in summer when throngs of tourists populate this pocket of Seattle. We breezily found a parking spot alongside the…
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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 my little legs at the time. She was carrying a bottle of some sort, and I was following closely. About halfway,…
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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 while the other appears almost unaffected by the birch bark beetles that have afflicted nearly every birch in our area, feasting…
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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 class, and how important I believe the curriculum is in helping us all understand the causes and consequences of biodiversity loss.…
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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 was happy to go along, letting go of a leaf from the tip of a limb, feeling it tickle on its…
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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 to do about it, it can make us feel helpless. We’re already trying to be good at everything else! There’s no…
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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 intrinsically cared most about, and therefore would feel the most fulfilled doing? If we answered comedian, did that mean our purpose was…
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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 second floor, a feature that immerses the person looking out in the beauty and serenity invoked by the giant sequoias, cedars,…
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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 stop the tears. Someone I sought out for inspiration and hope, who by simply being alive brought me peace of mind, was gone. I typed in my PIN…
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