I remember the time on the Top of the World Highway in Alaska when I was on a ridge, and could see...forever. I turned off my vehicle, stepped out into the calm morning, and the silence was so deep, it pulsed…
“To me, glaciers seem like immense organic beings, not just lumps of ice. This notion, hatched in Alaska, was confirmed on a visit to the world’s largest non-polar icefield in Patagonia at the tip of South America. Glaciers have moods, and good days and bad…”
“Imagine my surprise, to discover that I live smack-dab on the North Country Trail. This happy realization occurred when I joined some friends who were chipping away at the NCT in 10-mile segments through Kent County in 2019. Although I had intended to join them multiple times that year, I only made it once, on a steamy-hot summer day in August.”
“Flowers seem to be everywhere. Even in cities, there appears to be great effort to bring the color and beauty of flowers to the streets… I am a flower geek. I don’t know all their names, or how they like to grow, and that’s fine. But I often (ok, daily) take the time to stop and really notice the flowers I come across with humble and deep appreciation.”
“We come today to the north shore of Lake Huron, near the eastern tip of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Waves lap in a relaxed fashion onto the cobblestone beach just a few feet away.”
“I have never regarded myself as a “birder” – not in the sense of someone who spends hours, binoculars in hand, gazing high into the trees to discern avian activity… And yet: I do love birds. What I love is the way they are so gloriously free and unfettered. I never tire of their restless activity as they fly, swoop, and soar nearby.”
“I arrived in Namibia after dark on a July mid-winter evening. On the flight north from Johannesburg, I sat by the window and had a preview of the light shows I would see in the coming month… The horizon was a straight line dividing earth from the celestial ethers. I could not look away.”
“Walruses! These giant, bushy-‘stached, improbable creatures with those enormous canine tusks erupting from within their fleshy mouths have always intrigued me. They especially captured my attention when Fridtjof Nansen wrote about various walrus encounters in Farthest North around the same time I learned I was joining a small group in the Arctic waters of Svalbard in June 2020.”
“After a frustrating stutter-start of two years (thank you, Covid), a group of twelve like-minded souls set off at last on a small ship in the far North. We shared the common goal of searching for polar bears living in their own authentic world on and near the tiny archipelago of Svalbard… It is amazing how such a tiny dot on the map could be so stunning. How easy it would be to get lost in its immensity.”
“I am only one person. What difference can I make?” It’s a phrase that knocks around in my head every time I broach the idea of somehow combating the scourge of plastics. How could I possibly make any difference in the tsunami of plastic waste which is already in the world and increasing every minute?”
“Every morning, I trudge out the side door of the garage and make my way across to the rain gauge posted at the edge of the nearby field. My rain gauge is more than yard art. It is a tool, because the precipitation it measures goes beyond mere curiosity. I have a job to do: to measure and report to a national database what amount of rain or snowfall has arrived to nourish my little patch of land in the past 24 hours.”
“All year, day by day, I’ve torn a page from the 365-day calendar that was a Christmas gift from my brother. The topic? Moths… Before this, I would have said a moth is a moth is a moth. But I feel changed by 2021's daily glimpse into that world, if only because I am driven to wonder, “who came up with all these crazy names?!”
“A man I knew years ago named David Rankin once wrote, “ I refuse to wish away the winter.” I am reminded of his poem whenever someone complains about the weather. How can we really justify wishing away what we have right here, right now, before us? The easy things are a comfort, true, and deserve appreciation. The harder stuff? It always has its own gifts and lessons.”
“I found myself on the high plains of north-central Montana, near a town called Choteau… the Freezout Lake Wildlife Management Area. With its 11,350 acres under state management, it is host each spring to more than a million migrating birds of some 200 species.”
“I journeyed out of my cocoon this week, all the way across town to the Grand Rapids (MI) Frederick Meijer Gardens, where the annual “Butterflies Are Blooming” event was in full sway. Touted as the “largest temporary tropical butterfly exhibition in the nation,” it is, indeed, a rite of spring no one should miss.”
“As summer receded, and the sun on the deck for time with friends backed away from the cocktail hour, and warm layers were increasingly warranted, it occurred to me that we—my circle of friends, all of whom are very COVID-careful—would need a safe gathering place on into the grey tunnel of winter. What better thing, I thought, than a fire circle?”
“Then there are the Dorado Days of my native state of Colorado. “Dorado” is the Spanish word for “golden,” and each aspen leaf has the wonderful appearance of being like a gold medallion. At times, the aspen leaves blanket the ground such that walking through them is deeply enriching and a little magical…”
“One of the lovely lessons of this year are those delivered by things I usually appreciate largely in passing. Instead of glancing at something pretty, I stop now, and really take it in. There’s time… And in the passing of time, I have begun to see the evolution of brief lifetimes. So it is with the lotus in my fishpond.”
“Endearing” is a very apt word for penguins. The memory of visiting their southern, antarctic realm and witnessing the lives they lead is a pleasure. Sharing some of those distant opportunities (just last November: eons ago!) is perhaps a welcome distraction from the unending onslaught of COVID-19 news.”
“The variety and vastness of the ice of Antarctica is humbling, haunting, and naturally powerful to me. Ice in Antarctica is like nowhere else on earth. The “Frozen Continent” is defined by it.”
“Seldom has the raw power of nature asserted itself on all my senses as did two mornings on elephant seal beaches in South Georgia…”
“It’s something special to pause under a stand of quaking aspens, eyes and ears drenched in overload from the natural beauty of it all.”
“Our approach to St. Matthew Island was tantalizing, as a draping fog slowly lifted to reveal a vivid green jewel with thousand-foot cliff faces, craggy and crowded with seabird nests.”
“Under the ice are vast mountain ranges and sprawling plains, crushed to elevations measurably depressed by all that massive weight on top.”
“To use one word—ice—to describe the predominant feature of an entire continent can lull a person into a terrifically limiting frame of mind.”
“…I joined a group of strangers to descend the Alsek River—a remote river at the upper end of Alaska’s southeastern panhandle.”
“We come today to the north shore of Lake Huron, near the eastern tip of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Waves lap in a relaxed fashion onto the cobblestone beach just a few feet away.”
“Last night, Checkpoint 13 thwarted me—again. It is my second try at the Land Navigation night test in the woods and hillsides surrounding Hall Lake…”
“Being a big believer in listening to those quiet whispers in your soul that serve so well as guides, I found myself driving yesterday to Frederick Meijer Gardens for a bit of Gray Tunnel Relief”
“This is that day, the one you know is coming for weeks, the one when you know it’s over. You are on your road thinking about the day when you realize: the color is gone.”
“I understand the wisdom of wearing multiple layers in the mountains, where the full range of weather can crop up any time. But in my sweet, safe, predictable lower-peninsula Michigan? In August? It just doesn’t somehow seem right, or fair, to feel cold.”
