I haven’t come close to spending months alone in the wild since the years written about in The Dying Fish but I manage to sneak in a few days and nights even while chained to Pittsburgh. The woodlands immediately east of the Allegheny Reservoir on the NY border have been intriguing to me for years […]
Read more "Back to the Wild"Last week found me immersed in humanity, selling my wares on the streets of Greenwich Village – the cultural heart of New York City as I understand it. I was out of place here, certainly, but I value the stretch this provides for my powers of adaptability. If I can survive Greenwich Village, I can […]
Read more "Wilderness Visits the Urban Core"I’m late posting anything about my recent expeditions but I had an exceptional one a few weeks ago that I thought I’d share. With all the international turmoil in the world, all our domestic troubles surrounding the presidency and even my own pressing book events, it was good to lie down and sleep on a […]
Read more "Back to Basics"I’ve been back from an engagement at the Heartland Institute for nearly a week and haven’t found time to pen anything about it, until now. However imperfectly I might have rendered my presentation (I seem to be my own worst critic here) I went away happy and fulfilled. I guess that goes along with having […]
Read more "Heartland"Over the course of five years I walked over 4,000 miles through the woods, studied dozens of trout streams and largely found my own path. I answered to no government official for what I was doing or why (well, almost never). America is one of the only places where this could have happened. Thirty eight […]
Read more "The Art of America"My book, The Dying Fish, features a lot of walking – about 4,400 miles of it. And while walking that distance around a high school track may sound tedious, the journey through the Appalachians, Adirondacks and mountains of New England was anything but monotonous. I’m a runner – it’s just how I stay in shape. […]
Read more "Walking"The book I wrote and built this website for is about a more optimistic picture of the eastern environment, one that doesn’t begin by condemning humans for past and current abuses of nature. And it was easy for me to present this optimistic opinion after my long-haul traverse of our recovering eastern forest. It’s […]
Read more "Critters A’ Plenty"I haven’t written much online lately and today’s post won’t be much either – mostly some photos from the last several days I’ve spent with Susan in Orleans County, NY. It’s idyllic this time of the year – just a really nice place to spend time and not as harsh as the icy and treacherous […]
Read more "Adventures in Western New York"I spent a day in the field late last week with Malcolm Crittendon of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection looking over stream restoration work at an undisclosed location in the central PA highlands. It was a pleasure and a privilege. I’d only expected a brief meeting with Malcolm at DEP headquarters but Malcolm had […]
Read more "Parts Unknown"Interstitial habitat has become a preoccupation of mine in recent years. “Interstitial habitat” is just how I describe the little strips of wooded or otherwise unpaved space here in the urban world. This might seem odd, coming from a man who’s just written a book about the wildest, most remote places but perhaps it required […]
Read more "Out My Back Door"
the dying fish 