When I was a small boy, my family lived in Phoenix. Every once in a while, we’d have a picnic breakfast out in the desert. On one of these trips a friend of my father advised me to kick rocks before picking them up, in case a scorpion was sheltering underneath. I immediately started kicking rocks, looking for scorpions – I’ve been kicking and looking ever since.
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I’m an outdoorsman who is aware of, and fascinated by, the landscapes, communities and systems I move through. Some of the ways I’ve moved through the world include:
- A bike trip from Vancouver BC to Boston MA.
- Winter hikes/camping in the Presidential Range of New Hampshire’s White Mountains.
- Canoe trips in northern Maine and New Hampshire and saltwater canoeing all over the coast of New England.
- A northwest to southeast backpack traverse of Zion Natl. Park.
- A river trip down the Middle Fork of the Salmon River.
- A winter’s worth of backcountry ski mountaineering in Colorado.
Just wandering around in the backwoods isn’t enough – at least not enough for me – if you want to learn what the world has to say you need listening skills .
- I’ve been a birder since I was a child.
- I’m fascinated by wildflowers, especially native orchids and carnivorous plants.
- I love to fly fish and am mesmerized by the world on the other side of the ripples. Fishing inquisitively is an opportunity to learn about aquatic communities: what makes a stone fly different from a mayfly different from a caddis fly, where and how sculpins live, what stimulates a sea worm mating swarm…
- I like to forage – an activity that’s impossible without some sense of the wild community around you.
- I can identify scat by taste.
- My dog training and falconry practices are this sort of listening writ small – dogs and hawks can tell you a great deal if you are willing and able to hear them.
We stand on the shoulders of giants; I’ve been reading books with trees in them since I learned to read. The history of our knowledge of and interaction with wild systems is a key element if one wishes to understand where we all are today – there are finger smudges and footprints everywhere. Favorite authors include Gary Snyder, E. O. Wilson, Stephen Bodio, Sy Montgomery, Norman McLean and James Fenimore Cooper, among others.
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“Nature is not a place to visit. It is home.” – Gary Snyder
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