“And now that’s done,” as Blind Pew said to Billy Bones. No, I haven’t been distributing black spots. Today I got the garden planted, and it feels good, aching knees and all. One and a half planting beds of tomatoes, weighted heavily to Early Girls; half a bed of basil; and three rows of okra. For me, my annual garden is, as they say of second marriages, the triumph of hope over experience. Read More
Living and Writing in the Natural World
Celebrating St. John's Birthday
April 17, 2013
April 21, this coming Sunday, is the birthday of John Muir. Appropriately enough, the next day is Earth Day. Muir, called the father of the American environmental movement, gave us two great gifts. First, he taught us that time in the natural world heals humans by connecting us to our roots. And second, he initiated Read More
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Washington, Jefferson, Madison: Founding Gardeners
April 10, 2013
We often assume that the environmental movement in America began with Henry David Thoreau and John Muir in the latter half of the 19th century, but a recent (2011) book by English author Andrea Wulf shows that the roots go further back—to Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and Madison, in fact. Read More
Only the rain abides
April 3, 2013
I awoke night before last, sometime after midnight, the sound of spring rain pulling me up to consciousness—to a sleeper, it’s more of an echo or a vibration than anything, but I know it and it draws me. I got up and opened our bedroom sliding glass door and drank it in. The full sound now, composed of the rain hitting both the roof and the trees outside; and best of all the sweet smell of rain, not as pronounced tonight as I’ve smelled before, but still there, clean and intriguing.
Back in bed, I lay listening and smelling, the night “far too precious for sleep,” as Li Po said. Another poem came to mind, Read More
Back in bed, I lay listening and smelling, the night “far too precious for sleep,” as Li Po said. Another poem came to mind, Read More
Waterfalls and Hanging Valleys
March 27, 2013
With my buddy Cal and our sons, home on spring break, I hiked to Feather Falls in the rugged Feather River canyon country southeast of Chico (northern California) this weekend. The nine-mile round trip wound through lower montane habitat with gorgeous Canyon live oaks spreading their twisting limbs over hillsides, and unusual patches of California nutmeg trees and reddish-barked madrones. The 640-foot waterfall, billed as the sixth tallest in the contiguous U.S., did not disappoint, especially viewed from the splendid overlook perched on a rock spur facing the falls head-on across the canyon, barely 100 yards away. If this is number six, I wondered, what are the five taller? Read More
The reign of light begins
March 20, 2013
Today and tonight mark the Spring Equinox, the most exciting of the four “backbones” of the year in the traditional Chinese solar calendar. With daylight length finally catching up to night (“equi” “nox” in Latin is “equal to night”) the planet is again at equilibrium so far as life-giving daylight is concerned. Starting tomorrow the reign of light begins, to last until the fall equinox in September. This matters--a lot--because on our planet at least, sunlight powers Read More
Yoghurt, attics, and the joys of broad, flat rocks
March 13, 2013
The American environmental movement is sometimes criticized as being overwhelmingly white, with the ethnicities conspicuously under-represented. That may or may not be true for “card-carrying” environmentalists, but this last week reminded me what I've long known, that appreciation for the wonders of the natural world cuts across ethnic boundaries, to judge by my encounters with the South Korean couple that own the local yoghurt shop, and a pair of Mexican-American laborers who blew insulation into my attic. Read More
On the shoulder of Mt. Whitney
March 6, 2013
I passed Chico’s new music store yesterday, a neon guitar gleaming in the twilight. It reminded me of Guitar Lake in the Sierra Nevada five years ago, an exuberant band of Boy Scouts, and a resulting interminable night wheezing thin air at 13,400 feet elevation on the shoulder of Mt. Whitney with my teenage daughter Ash and her buddy Maya. Did I mention we only had half a liter of water among us? Let me explain. Read More
The mood of the universe these days
February 27, 2013
Today we got in the mail an envelope postmarked simply “Buckingham Palace” with an enclosed card from the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, aka Will and Kate. On my walk through Bidwell Park the grey, leafless oaks were accented by scores of bright cream and pink flowers of intervening Prunus wild cherry saplings. And on my way to the grocery I listened to Jon Miller and David Fleming on the radio calling the plays of the San Francisco Giants first game of spring training. What do all these things have in common? Read More
Lazarus species 2: "Dawn" Redwood
February 20, 2013
A swarm of redwood species blanketed the Northern Hemisphere from 100 to 20 million years ago. In 1948, most were known and studied only as fossils, the leading authority being Professor Ralph Chaney of Berkeley. He was particularly interested in extinct members of the genus Metasequoia, the last of which had disappeared 30 million years ago. The San Francisco Chronicle’s science writer, Milton Silverman, was in Chaney’s office in January of 1948 when Chaney opened a bulky package covered with Chinese stamps from the day’s mail. Out tumbled a recently-living branch with green needle-leaves, the opposite arrangement of needles identifying it as—Metasequoia! Chaney promptly fainted onto his desk. Read More