The Ptarmigan wheel up and flush low, white on white, sharp-edged wings tilting and slicing across bare willows. I pick a bird, swing through his flight path and when I shoot he cartwheels and falls, plowing a furrow into the snow. The snow is cold, but the bird is still warm and supple, white except…
All posts in Nature
Sketch: Snow
Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow? Job 38:22 Student: Teacher, what is snow? Teacher: Snow is part of the hydrologic water cycle that is essentially ice mixed with air. Supercooled droplets of water freeze into microscopic crystals, then these crystals conglomerate into a flake, forming one of six unique shapes of snowflake in accordance…
Not All Who Wonder are Ignorant
Sketch: Saturday morning, 5:30, Kenai River flats, 32*F Sandhill cranes, long legged and musical, pitching into the mud with stilted legs outstretched. A flock of several hundred White-fronted geese, these with a watery cackle, circle once and come in. The sky is alive with birds: Lesser Canada Geese, Pintails and Mallards, a wigeon, some Northern…
The Last Adult in the Woods
A lone raven, surfing a wind that is skimming the far side of the mountain, croaks and appears over the ridgetop. He pivots until he is facing the wind, but carried backward by it, like an Olympic skater skating backward while retaining forward momentum. He pivots again, pins his wings close, razors off around the…
The Young and the World
A tongue of fog flanks the mountain at its midriff, rising slightly to stream over the knob where the mountain tapers into the flats. It is flowing like a river suspended in midair; air currents made visible. The sun rises and paints it yellow, briefly. It’s going to be a good day for mountains. We ascend…
Sketch: Falling Woods
Took to the woods bright and early long before first light. Drove the Jeep down to the ford by Claywells’s field and couldn’t make it up the other side, it being a one-legged jeep, so I just dropped the Grumman in right there. I discovered my mistake instantly but was too stupid to admit it,…
Sketch: Springing Woods
Now, when I step out onto the porch to check the thermometer, I listen for it as the light reaches several hundred candlepower: A gobble, which makes spring official. He is at the head of the small hollow, two-thirds up the side of the ridge, probably in the branches of some beech. His neck will…