Biodiversity

Revisiting Poetry Cove

August 2023. In my last story, I wrote about revisiting the tidepool at Middle Cove of Cape Arago on the central Oregon coast where I’d done some of my doctoral research. On that trip I also went back to another
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Revisiting the Great Tidepool

Sunday, August 13, 2023. It was a decent low tide, less than a foot below the MLLW (mean of lower low water), the “0” of tide tables, but still low enough to easily get into the mid-intertidal zone. And at
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Walking the Cape with Henry

Cape Cod, Thoreau’s last book, begins with “Wishing to get a better view than I had yet had of the ocean…” and the final sentence concludes “A man may stand there and put all America behind him.” It was published
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The View from Limuw

The indigenous inhabitants of the island called it limuw, “in the ocean.” A prosaic but apt geographical name for the place. The name has a very matter-of-fact, here and now implication. But the Spanish who explored the Chumash Channel and
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The Art of Ecological Restoration on Santa Cruz Island

The large fabric print hanging on the west wall of the dining room of the Santa Cruz Island Reserve research station caught my eye immediately. A tangle of creatures drawn in detailed black covered the white background, intertwining in almost
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Evolutionary Ecology on California’s Galapagos

Sunday, October 24th. Our reservations for the trip to Prisoners Harbor on the north shore of Santa Cruz Island had been made months ago. But the weather during the past week had forced Island Packers, the commercial concessionaire that provides
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Ecological Explorations at the Edge of the Continent

June 2021. At about the time the coronavirus pandemic struck in the spring of 2020, I was preparing my application for a writing residency at the Mesa Refuge in Point Reyes Station, California. It was an exciting opportunity I had
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Planting Chestnuts at Sky Meadows

March 22, 2021. It was a beautiful morning as I drove west on I-66 and turned north toward Sky Meadows State Park. From the Crooked Run Valley, the meadows sweep up to the old farm and on toward the ridge
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A Decade of American Chestnut Restoration on Timber Lane

September 2020. In my last story posted here, A Decade of Monarchs and Milkweeds, I described how a decade ago, just as I was leaving a job at an international consulting firm where I had worked for about five years
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Coronavirus, Human Hubris, and Life in the Coevolving Biosphere

The novel coronavirus is holding up a mirror for our species, giving us an opportunity to consider our place in the evolution of life on Earth and question our anthropocentrism. What I’ve missed during this pandemic and shutdown of our
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