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I have always loved forests. I don’t know where that comes from. But whenever I’m in one, I feel as though I can finally breathe in the way I was meant to breathe, deeply and fully. Being among trees refreshes me in a way that nothing else can.
Watch this video, which illustrates how words associated with the natural world are disappearing from a children’s dictionary and why we should be concerned.
Encounters between people and wildlife in our national parks can sometimes go wrong. That’s why the National Park Service is enlisting some very special rangers. Gracie is just one of this new “breed” of park employees. She works at Montana’s Glacier National Park, is only two years old and walks on four legs.
Hummingbirds may be small, but they certainly pack a lot of appeal. Iridescent, colorful and capable of helicopter-like flying maneuvers, they enchant almost everyone. Hummingbirds were given their name because their wings flap so fast (about 80 times per second) that they make a humming noise.
There’s a type of trip you can go on anytime you want. It doesn’t cost anything, and it’s guaranteed to spark your creativity and to give you all the refreshment afforded by a typical vacation. It’s called daydreaming.
Across the globe in the past few decades, an invasive chytrid fungus has been devastating amphibian populations. While scientists aren’t sure how the frog-killing form of Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis swept the planet, many suspect it traveled by the importing and exporting of amphibians for food or the pet trade.
Science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson authored a trilogy of futuristic eco-thrillers that I really enjoyed reading.
Lionfish, a colorful native of the South Pacific and Indian Oceans (the Indo-Pacific region) have now taken up what could become permanent residence in the Atlantic Ocean—from North Carolina to Florida, in all Gulf of Mexico states and in the Caribbean. That isn’t good news.
When the world gets to be too much, when we get too tired of hearing constant messages and always being tuned in, there’s nothing like heading out to a natural spot for some peace and quiet, right? Maybe not. Nature, it turns out, is a noisy place. We rarely achieve true silence when we’re outside.
The end of 2016 marks the closing of the National Park Service’s centennial year. For the past 12 months, we Americans have been appreciating, celebrating and visiting all of our 413 national park units, large and small.
Almost every single one of you has had that “nature moment”; the instant when an animal encounter or a sighting of a natural landscape or phenomenon takes your breath away. The power of those brief minutes is so strong that you remember them for the rest of your life.
It’s Thanksgiving morning 2016, and many of you are probably looking forward to enjoying a rather bountiful lunch or dinner later today. For a lot of you, the starring item on the menu will be a big turkey.
