I took a hike with a couple of friends several years ago along Slippery Rock Creek here in Western Pennsylvania. He was a long time friend and a native-born American. She was a native of the former Soviet Union as one might have guessed from either her appearance or accent. She clearly loved to not […]
Read more "How We Know Our Woods are Healthy – a Plethora of Critters"There aren’t any. Let me just get to the point. I don’t know of any perfect places. The outdoors is what we make of it as we pursue our individual pursuits. If we read writers like Thoreau, Muir and Nessmuk, we come away from that writing with the definite perception that so much […]
Read more "Perfect Places"From April through October, mushrooms brightened my 2019. Within a few weeks of stowing the ice-fishing gear, I was cutting pheasant backs and hoping for morels. In retrospect, it’s striking that I’ve wandered around the woods of eastern North America for 35 years or so, hardly taking notice of the bracket fungi, cap-and-stems and puffballs […]
Read more "A Fertile Fungal Forest"I didn’t recognize Anthony at first. I was looking for a guy in a Jeep Renegade somewhat over six feet tall, hyper-athletic and sporting a wolf’s head visible tattoo. But this wasn’t Anthony. The day we met, Anthony didn’t have a look that said he snowboards off trail, runs ultra-marathons or spear hunts wild boar […]
Read more "Triumph of the Archer Hero"At the close of the Eighteenth Century, the nation of France went through decades of violent upheaval that we generally remember as the French Revolution. The old guard was no more and altruistic fellows like Monsieur Robes Pierre grasped the reigns of power. Change was in the air and a distinctly French vein of liberty […]
Read more "Seasons in the Forest"