This is the second half of a long article of mine which was published in a literary journal last year. It’s the story of an urban oasis of wild things and how I think about places like this – seeing opportunity rather than wasteland. (Part one Here) Migratory birds rest and feed […]
Read more "Libertarian Park Part 2"“Libertarian Park” is a long-read article of mine that was published late last year in the literary journal Confrontation. It’s a Pittsburgh story with broader implications, I think; presented here in 2 parts. Chalfant Run seeps to the forest floor in a tangle of underbrush between blocks of planned housing in east Pittsburgh. […]
Read more "Libertarian Park Part 1"I’ve been reading a lot on the history of northern Maine lately. I have a connection to the place – it’s where I spent my adolescence – and my thoughts often run back to its wilds. Maine shaped my view of the world as a wild place ripe for exploration, a view which I carried […]
Read more "Trade Offs"The blog you’re now reading is named after my 2016 book, “The Dying Fish (A Sojourn to the Source)” In 2007 I began hiking north from Dawson County Georgia along the spine of the Appalachians. I would attempt to walk through the entire native eastern range of the brook trout which would […]
Read more "The Dying Fish"I write a lot on The Dying Fish blog about minimizing government’s role in conservation, rather than thinking of the EPA and state agencies as the only bulwarks against environmental ruin. I also write a good bit about the danger of coming to think of public lands (state game lands, state parks, national forests, etc.) […]
Read more "Stewardship"I took my snow boot liners out for washing and the boots themselves went in the shower. The sled’s about to be locked away in the basement. This week the tip-ups and jig lines will be worked over in preparation for next season. All in all, I’m just saying that the ice fishing season has […]
Read more "Reflections on Ice"Well, here’s a topic I could write on and on about indefinitely. I’ll try to keep it short. I’ve never understood the term “rough fish” nor do I like it. We’ve been refining a pretty good system of fish nomenclature over the last couple of hundred years in the western world and this […]
Read more "Fishing’s Rough and Resilient Future"Many of us were suspicious of global warming theory from the time we became aware of it, likely around 1990 for most of us. People on the political left would suggest that our misapprehensions were due to our blind faith in America and the free market, or just our fear of strange new theories. On […]
Read more "It’s not About the Environment After All"I stumbled downhill through the persistent snow that still blanketed the forest floor here on the lake’s south slope. It wasn’t really easy to get the big sled down here without a trail but that’s what keeps this spot mine alone all winter long. I had little light left and I would reach […]
Read more "Serenity Now"I’ve been preoccupied with politics a lot since the beginning of the year, maybe too much. It seems like everyone is. The tone has grown shrill but the words ever more ineffectual. Late last year I found myself thinking about the often ineffective semblance of dialogue we carry on, talking past each other […]
Read more "Our Moment On the Earth"
the dying fish 