According to experts surveyed by the Sacramento Bee, the weather pattern known as La Niña is back again this year, and it's likely to bring us a third year of drought. This year's La Niña looks stronger and longer-lasting, said Bill Patzert, a climatologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. "The dice are prettyContinue reading “La Nina is Back: Drought Ahead?”
Category Archives: the land
A Day for Firewood
A chore I secretly enjoy is gathering firewood. Especially at this time of year, during dry periods, when it's relatively warm, bug-free, gorgeous amidst the fallen leaves and the weathered stones. Spent the day stomping around the creekbed, sectioning a fallen sycamore trunk with brief bursts from a roaring chainsaw, carrying the sections up intoContinue reading “A Day for Firewood”
Richard Halsey: Chaparral is Not for Burning
The Los Angeles Times is quite literally not what it used to be. Just five years ago it employed a thousand or more editors and writers; now it's down to about 600, according to former staffer Kevin Roderick's LA Observed. The daily paper weighs about half, often less, of its older, richer self. One canContinue reading “Richard Halsey: Chaparral is Not for Burning”
Thanksgiving
We all have many blessings to be thankful for. For myself, family and friends most of all, But today I am going to be thankful for the rain we had over the last couple of days, which has made our property on the creek rich with the smell of the leaves and the land…oaky, damp,Continue reading “Thanksgiving”
And Now for Something Completely Nonpolitical…
From a fascinating book to come out in January 2009 by Roger Deakin, called Wildwood: A Journey Through Trees: Two days into my first camp, on 26 April 1959, we heard the first cuckoo and entered it into the Tomes [his diaries]. Under the strong influence of Robert Frost, I was moved to write aContinue reading “And Now for Something Completely Nonpolitical…”
Here Comes the Storm
The Houston sky before the arrival of Ike, from Flickr photographer Dredrk,
Hurricane Felix, As Seen from Space
As Ike whirls towards the southwestern coast of Texas, we must regret the chaos and destruction it has brought the lands and people of the Gulf of Mexico, but also stand back in utter awe at the enormity of these storms…here’s a photo taken from the International Space Station of Hurricane Felix last year, asContinue reading “Hurricane Felix, As Seen from Space”
Sunday Morning on the Planet: The Problem of Describing Trees
The aspen glitters in the windand that delights us. The leaf flutters, turning.Because that motion in the heat of AugustProtects its cells from dryingout. Likewise the leafof the cottonwood. The gene pool threw up a wobbly steamAnd the tree danced. No.The tree capitalized.No. There are limits to saying,In language, what the tree did. It isContinue reading “Sunday Morning on the Planet: The Problem of Describing Trees”
21st Century Ghosts
Ghost is a word field biologists use to describe a species near the end of its time on earth. Often these endangered species are birds, but in a spectacular essay in a nature writing-themed issue of the English literary journal Granta, Robert MacFarlane expands the meaning of the word slightly. He visits an obscure regionContinue reading “21st Century Ghosts”
Kit Stolz 