The Wilderness Inside Us All

Dick Ambrose (above the fold in the newspaper, of course) and I have carried on a conversation or two about wild places, about wilderness, and the experiences we have had with them.  We talked about coming to winter—a time to contemplate wildness.  The bottom line of...

Parent-Kid Hunts and Our Outdoor Legacy

I spent last weekend in the rain and weather on a straight up and down hillside not far out of Colville.  With the permission of the couple who own the ground, I was looking for a whitetail buck.  The buck and I have crossed paths a time or two over the last couple...

Our Ground and Our Responsibilites to Guard It

Some of my fellows think those of us who keep pushing to maintain and protect public access to our public ground are simply wasting our time. Case in point: the last First Friday Art Walk, and a conversation I had with a couple homeys.  Somewhere in there, I no doubt...

Shade Grown and Our Neotropical Song Birds

The Old Man called it “mud.”  To Uncle Ed it was “Joe,” and to Aunt Evy, it was Java.  They all agreed, however, on the use of “cuppa,” and about as close as any of them got to its origins was “Hawaiian,” “Columbian” or “mountain grown.”  Today, we enjoy our “coffee”...

All about the Mule Deer of Paradise

Deborah Essman, Arvilla Ohlde and I spent Tuesday in a hearing room in Mount Vernon, with a hundred of our new best friends.  Senator Kirk Pearson was chairing a Senate Natural Resources & Parks Committee work/study session on subjects near and dear to our hearts...