I’m indiscriminate in my love for flowers. There are few that I don’t like, and many that I love. But there is something about my feeling for irises that sets them apart. Which is interesting, because I don’t find them to be the prettiest of flowers, or easy to deal with. As garden plants, they […]
Beautiful, wild, intelligent: loving iris Read More »
I was forty-six when I first saw the desert and I’ve never been the same since. The lush, green landscapes I had known all my life peeled away. What was left was spare in all ways. Few plants, few colors, nothing to impede light, air so hot it became a presence, a sky so blue
Born in the desert Read More »
I live on a small mountain next to a larger one. Both are modest as mountains go, but at 2600′ Mount Tamalpais reigns over the area like the queen she is. My apartment is halfway up one of her foothills. If I walk up a steep fire road for a quarter of a mile, I
The King in winter Read More »
I could have brought to Alaska a passion for fishing, or for mountains, or volcanoes, glaciers, mighty rivers, wildlife. If so, I might have chosen a different icon. Salmon, Denali, the Matanuska Glacier, the Yukon River, a grizzly bear, moose, or bald eagle. But, though I treasure all of them, my passion is for wildflowers.
Fireweed: Alaska’s glowing icon Read More »
This was a year measured, in part, by the interconnections of flowing water. At the beginning, in Reweaving a River, I described a trip to an area of the Klamath River in northern California that was due to have four dams removed. One of the connections is my own: two of the dams were built
Songlines 2024: interconnections Read More »
I turn once again to the millions of people who are sowing clover all over the world. The subtitle of Paul Hawken’s book Blessed Unrest is “How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming.”
Blessed unrest: sowing seeds into the whirlwind Read More »
“The forest is the root of all life; it is the womb that revives our biological instincts, that deepens our intelligence and increases our sensitivity as human beings.” ~ Akira Miyawaki ~ Much of Earth’s land area would like to be forest. Not in the aridity of deserts or grasslands or the sogginess of wetlands.
Tiny forests, big miracles Read More »
Between any two trees, there is a doorway leading to a new way of life.~ John Muir ~ Trees are among the most powerful beings on the planet. Solid and magnificent, they cover and hold together a third of Earth’s surface. Their cooling, oxygen-laden breath insures the existence of the rest of life. They are
The majesty of trees: celebrating the Season of Creation Read More »
To the degree that we are able to draw closer to Nature, to heal this broken primal relationship, our lives — mind, body, and spirit — take on a harmony, a grace, a wholeness, and an endlessly resourceful, gentle, and indomitable power.~ Peter London ~ For the past year and a half, I have been
Drawing closer to nature Read More »
Last June I was distracted by the joy of seeing my son, Luke, and my daughter-in-law, Genevieve, get married on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Oregon. That wedding was an immediate family affair, so this June our families gathered en masse — 60 of us! — to celebrate. Which means I’ve been a