Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
One morning this past May, on the second of our two annual point counts for the Bald Eagle Ridge Important Bird Area, I was pleased to run across a couple of these brown, porcupiney things in the middle of our Laurel Ridge Trail. American chestnut husks! We looked around for the tree of origin, but …
The past two mornings I’ve awoken late, and haven’t gotten out onto the front porch until well past daylight. That’s O.K., though, because both mornings I’ve had the unparalleled pleasure of listening to a winter wren sing while I drank my coffee. It’s a liquid, seemingly endless burble — appropriate for a bird that spends …
If you’d gone for a walk up the hollow this morning, you might’ve noticed this beech tree right around the first bend, on the other side of the stream. It’s right above the little three-foot waterfall on Plummer’s Hollow Run, which is flowing pretty well because of the all the melting — on the sunny …
Who does the grouse think she’s fooling, leaving a line of arrows in the snow that all point back in the wrong direction? What makes the bark of a growing maple lose its smoothness in concentric rings? What do porcupines think about when they see the sun scale the sky? Is that why they’re mostly …
The weather’s been warm over the past few days, and the snow’s been melting fast. This morning, though, with below-freezing temperatures overnight, the snowpack was firm enough to support me on snowshoes. I was able to crunch along on the surface without breaking through, stepping over the shallow graves the sun had dug for dark …
BIOLOGICAL MATURITY: In stand management, the age at which trees or stands have peaked in growth rate and are determined to be merchantable. FOREST INVENTORY: A survey of a forest area to determine such data as area condition, timber volume and species, for specific purposes such as planning, purchases, evaluation, management or harvesting. LAND RECLAMATION: …
There’s a popular software plugin for WordPress blogs that closes comments on posts more than a month old, thereby cutting down enormously on spam. But I really enjoy the few comments that do come in on archived posts. Just the other day, for example, someone dropped an appreciative comment about my piece on flowering dogwood …
Up at 5:30 a.m. for a bit of moonbathing. I take my chair and thermos mug of coffee around to the southwest side of the house, in front of the portico. A couple minutes after I settle in, a cat-shaped, detachable shadow trots down the driveway; even from ten feet away, I can’t hear a …
When the leaves come off the trees, it’s not unusual to find men and women sitting or standing in them, holding very still. Do not be alarmed. They are merely practicing a locally popular form of spiritual exercise — hunting meditation. Archery season for white-tailed deer in Pennsylvania began on September 30 this year, and …
It was a strange virus, not only in its intensity, but in its effects, as well. One writer at the New York Observer referred to it as the emo flu, because of the unaccountable feelings that lingered for a week or more after all other symptoms went away. It was the strangest [flu] I’ve ever …