If you want to see something interesting in nature, it’s always a good idea to look where the people with big, fancy binoculars are looking. At least, this is how I spotted my first sea otter one sunny fall day on the Monterey Peninsula. …
Dogbane: Apocynum Cannabinum. Photo by Stan Shebs. Copyright note. A closer look at a plant with many stories I can think of a half dozen reasons to despise dogbane. Its milky sap causes blisters, it can kill dogs and sicken livestock, every part…
How saving the monarch could help save us, too When I walked into the Pacific Grove Monarch Sanctuary one fall day two years ago, I didn’t see a single butterfly. At least not at first. The low wooden fence, Monterey pines, towering euc…
This week, a listener asked me to put together a list of books by podcast guests. Since most of us listen to podcasts when our hands are busy folding towels, drying dishes, or gripping the wheel of a car, this struck me as a great idea. By the tim…
Or how I found love at 9,500 feet Two weeks ago, hiking around Mammoth Lakes in the Eastern Sierra with my family, I encountered the whitebark pine for the first time I can remember. The tree was so omnipresent that my chance encounters with it th…
Photo by Charles Hood. At dusk, the bats begin to stir. Long shafts of golden light peek under the roadway and into their concrete roost, making halos of each crest of pale fur. A dozen or so pallid bats cluster together here, both s…
California Poppy Eschscholzia californica “These too are of a burning color–not orange, not gold, but if pure gold were liquid and could raise a cream, that golden cream might be like the color of the poppies.” -John S…
Gifts for the outdoorsy, the hikers, and the nature lovers in your life Happy Holidays, Friends! Still need a gift for your outdoorsy friend, partner, child, or parent? Or maybe you’re the outdoorsy one, and your loved ones have asked …
Michelle at P-22 Day with one of the ORIGINAL puppets used to care for baby California condors in the late 1980s. It's been four days since I drove back to Sacramento from LA, and I'm still buzzing. This year marked the 8th annual P-22…
If you’re anything like me, you can’t actually put a number on the wide array of hobbies you’ve accumulated over the years. If I listed all of mine here, we'd be here all day, and we'd still never get to talk about nature journal…
All morning, you tugged on my nerves and ran around the corner to hide, giggling to yourself at my red face and lumbering gait. You scattered library books across the floor, toppled the laundry, bit the fleshy part of my arms th…