Fog Lifts “In this weather, you’d step on a moose before you’d see one.” Larry Benz was standing with his hands on his hips, squinting out the glass doors of his hand-built cabin at the northern boundary of Chugach National Forest, Alaska. The usual, sweeping vista of yellow and chartreuse pines was veiled in a […]

Erik and I recently returned from a desert and Death Valley vacation that included sailing on Lake Mead at sunset, enjoying the sights, sounds and zaniness of Las Vegas, and experiencing the profound quiet, haunting beauty and splendid isolation of Death Valley National Park in California. It really was like visiting two different planets on the same vacation, and […]

This June day, I spent the morning squatting in a clearing just off Upper Terrace Road at Mammoth Hot Springs in the northern edge of Yellowstone National Park, hand-digging Russian knapweed (Acroptilon repens). A hermit thrush serenaded me as I worked, its fluting song echoing through the nearby grove of Douglas-fir trees: first a long clear […]