My Own Finding Everett Ruess

“Somehow, I am very glad not to be home, where civilized life thrusts the thought of money upon one from all sides. With an adequate stock of provisions, I can forget the cursed stuff, or blessed stuff, for days and weeks at a time.” – Everett Ruess
Artwork by Everett Ruess

It is Christmas eve and my thoughts are about as far from home and the holidays as they could be. My mind is on an adventurer, painter and writer from the early 1930s, Everett Ruess. My obsession with Everett Ruess developed much like when you learn a new word and then find that word everywhere or learn a new bird song only to start hearing it in every forest. I was a fan before I knew his name. It is through his adventures in the early 1930s that I come to feel that I have come to better understand my own journeys through the landscapes of the desert southwest.

My first exposure to the life and death of Everett Ruess was through an NPR story on Finding Everett Ruess by David Roberts. The report talked about how others had compared Everett Ruess to legends in the sphere of nature writers such as John Muir. I could not believe I had never heard of him. Upon reading Finding Everett Ruess, I found out that he had been an artist, poet and avid letter writer as he learned a love of the outdoors in the Sierras, Arizona and Utah in the early 1930s.

Everett’s credit for adventure belongs to his jaunts in and around the southwest. Everett went on three different tours in the American southwest. The most impressive of which was in 1931 on a trip with almost the sole purpose of searching for beauty. Everett spent 10 months traveling to some of today’s most iconic western locales such as Monument Valley, Tsegi Canyon system, Canyon de Chelly National Monument, Zion National Park and Grand Canyon all at the age of 17. In three years time, Everett would last be seen in the canyons outside Escalante, Utah.


Many of these places have come to mean a great deal to me. Zion was one of my first experiences with the beauty of southern Utah. The Grand Canyon remains a place where I could stare for hours entranced and never failing to find something new in the landscape. The area Everett last explored, the canyons of Escalante and Glenn Canyon, had enticed me with their ruggedness before I ever knew their connection to Everett Ruess. Even today, the solitude provided by the challenge of getting around in the canyons is almost unmatched in the lower forty-eight states.

I soon leave for the southwest and mainly Arizona, a state Everett spent a great deal of time exploring. I plan on hiking near Escalante, Utah before making my way south. The place where I will live is in the same mountain range Everett passed through on a trip in 1931 from Prescott to Mesa, Arizona. Like Everett before me, I look forward to the time spent away from cities and in some mountain range or canyon with flowing water below and a blue sky above. I will wonder from time to time if I am setting under the same juniper or looking out over the same vista Everett Ruess did so many years ago.


Everett Ruess disappeared at the age of 20 years in 1934.

“These days away from the city have been the happiest of my life, I believe. It has all been a beautiful dream, sometimes tranquil, sometimes fantastic, and with enough pain and tragedy to make the delights possible by contrast. But the pain too has been unreal.” – Everett Ruess

Everett Ruess playlist on spotify

Dan Ashe Opening Statements to Congress

If you ever wanted to know what challenges face Fish and Wildlife Service, the agency responsible for implementing the Endangered Species Act, this video is your answer.

Social networking the environment

Despite the echo chamber problem of social network filtering, sometimes it's awesome to log into Facebook and see so many friends are into environmental issues:

"Who Cares About This Planet?" is a spoken word poem that expresses this conflict between concern and ignorance for our planet, written and performed by Made Wade. From Emily.

The James River Basin Partnership has been working on creating newsletters using a Wordpress blog format. Really it's lovely. From Holly.

An artist makes art with wood. Beautifully. From Matt.

And of course, the baby sloth video preview of an Animal Planet show has made the rounds. The second time today from Amy.

Who Do You Love - Townes Van Zandt [download]

"What's the temperature outside?"

I asked this today after sliding my back door closed. Nick and I were leaving for a hike.

"It's good," he said. We smiled. His voice took on a Sixties activist tone. "I can't quantify it, man."

Weather to Fly - Elbow [download]

Avoiding the spring at Bennett Spring State Park

This is a blufftop view in Bennett Spring State Park, sans trail (but closest to Natural Tunnel Trail). It may not be technically in the park; it may not have been legal to be up there. But there were no signs and in that moment a day or two after Thanksgiving I felt like the world was mine, and no documents could say otherwise. Who can own a landscape?

Holidays mean Bennett Spring as much as they do Grandma's cookies and old familiar quilts. As I get older, I explore new places and notice new patterns. I love the spring, but there's more out there.

I love how far you can see in the woods in the winter, all the dips and densities and exact location of sycamore trees.

The stream bed and trailside are flanked by dry seed pods that stand about calf-height. When you brush past or stand and shiver in a stand of them, a tinny sound rises from the earth, like walking on wet gravel. The plants and rocks are a constant companion, and I'm fascinated by how they make such a fanfare.

Peace on the Buffalo

In the Ken Burns National Parks series I was struck by the stories of Stephen Mather, the first director of the National Park Service. The documentary focused on what the parks meant to Mather and how he saw them as a place of solace. I have always felt at peace on the many backpacking trips throughout the western parks. Some of my fondest memories come from shared experiences in these places. However, all the majesty of western parks always felt a world away to my mid-western background. I explored the mountains, valleys and deserts not as a native mountaineer, sheepherder or desert rat but rather as a flat-lander in a spacesuit.

This brought me to hike thirty-six miles along side the Buffalo National River in northern Arkansas. The Buffalo River is one of the over two hundred rivers managed by the National Park Service. National Geographic did a good summary of national rivers in their November issue. Hiking near the river allowed me more than just another opportunity to see a beautiful part of the world. It felt like a homecoming.

The Buffalo River Trail offered me an opportunity to experience a stretch of backpacking right in the Ozarks, an area that extends into my home state of Missouri. It is hard for me to think of an area that is quite as overlooked as the Ozarks. The Ozarks is more likely to be known as the setting of Winter’s Bone than as an outdoor destination. However, the magnificent limestone bluffs and creek beds that were part of my childhood are some features that I always find myself missing when I am away from the Ozarks for long.

I have always been drawn to backpacking for its ability to whittle away all of my concerns. A day on the trail is one spent focused on a goal. One mile after another I see my progress develop. Miles must be earned and in this time of year protection from cold nights creates a clear set of priorities. The achievements are earned with each beautiful vista, sound of running water and tree turned friend. The Buffalo National River’s many waterfalls, springs and caves provided more than the peace that comes from being outside. They provided a meaning for existence.

A year past college graduation I face sources of stress familiar to most everyone in my age group. Complete with concerns about jobs, family, and the future. This hike through the hills and hollows northern Arkansas for the first time in my life allowed me a place of refuge from my day-to-day mental geography. The concerns over rough terrain, constant rain and the cold were the most pleasant of concerns imaginable. The complete control over each step I took felt like an experience I had not had in over a year. The experience transcended the awestruck beauty of so many hikes I have taken and became simply therapeutic. In finding the same use Stephen Mather so dreamt the parks could provide to the nation, I felt one step closer to understanding my heroes of conservation all these years and many iterations later.

Invasive or new native?

When I was reporting in California over the summer, a conservation official mentioned the possibility of "new natives:" invasive plants that humans introduced centuries ago and are now part of the landscape.  Like most immigrants, they "take over" areas and bear the brunt of the blame for all kinds of ecological problems — but they're here, and it

This Yale E360 video "In Drought-Stricken Southwest,A War Against an Invasive Tree" captures the nuance between resistance and acceptance. Is it right that politicians aggressively fight the the tamarisk tree, or salt cedar, when scientific evidence shows that it's not responsible for water loss? What about the flycatchers who build homes in the trees' branches?

This is a good time for Nick to chime in.

What is a murmuration?

Just watch. It's the best way to learn.

Murmuration from Sophie Windsor Clive on Vimeo.

Reading the Midwest

A few weeks ago, NPR ran "Hello From Flyover Territory" in their Three Books series. I'm ordering them now.

The Midwest doesn't seem as rich in literary culture as the South or the coasts, but the best way to help break that is by reading what is there. Here we go.

With nature as your home, it's hard to get sick.

I've seen a lot of the environment this week. My fave journalism professor, Bill Allen (of Costa Rica and California fame), let me hop in on a Field Reporting Institute trip to the Pioneer Forest, a cotton field and gin, and various facets and points of the Birds Point Levee issue. My temporary classmates created a lovely mosaic of impressions at their online blog, MUddy Boots News. It was really refreshing to be outside in new places, learning learning learning. My own recorded impressions will come later, someday, perhaps.

And then there's the passing of the environmentalist Wangari Maathai. Jared Cole composed a beautiful reflection on her. If you read nothing else today, read that. I was surprised to learn that Maathai influenced the operation of Sustain Mizzou, the nonprofit I led last year. I'd been living off of our mission statement addressing "the interconnection of human welfare and the environment," without ever having known the inspiration behind it. Anyway, what Jared wrote was really touching. Hard to shake off.

Nick sent me this New York Times article titled "A Well-Regulated Wilderness," about how government mediates even the gnarliest, most hands-off areas. Interesting to think about.

Today I watched this microdocumentary about my friend Julie's slacklining hobby. I've only done slacklining once, but it was a blast.

Slacklining from Ellen Thommesen on Vimeo.

Finally, in case you're interested, I went for a bike ride this afternoon in the Grindstone Nature Area in Columbia, Mo. This is my favorite place around town to see indigo buntings. They must have migrated away this time of year, but in the spring, they're all over. We saw several other birds, but it's hard to identify them when you're biking.

photo by Gary Irwin

The Beauty of Urban Forests

Over the past few days I have been conducting an urban forest inventory of a small town in Utah. I spent time in parks, cemeteries and in that awkward space between the road and the sidewalk. I took down information on big trees, small trees, healthy looking trees and trees that were not much more than bare sticks poking out of the ground. At last count, the inventory contained over one thousand trees. I promise you I have done more thinking about trees in the last eight days than most people do in a year.


The inventory provided a peek into not only the lives of the trees but also the people who live there. I have seen a family get a new puppy, watched as kids climbed the trees I was counting and held passionate
conversations with the citizens in the town about the past, present and future of their trees. “That tree was planted when I was just a boy,” a man said staring at a tree over thirty foot high. Another talked about the trees that used to be here. The memory of the trees remained alive in the man even as new trees had been planted to provide shade for some future generation. A crutch, and in another a paint roller, rested ten feet up a tree. The story of how they got there is one I will never know.

The trees I inventoried told stories simply by where they were located and the condition they were in when I added them to the list. A row of Norway Spruce with branches hanging like a well worn suit added to the somber nature of conducting a tree inventory in a cemetery. They spoke to the seriousness of the place. Planted not long after the settlement of the town, they showed the commitment of the town’s people to see the cemetery last well into the future.

Honeylocusts line the streets and make common appearances in the parks. I have always considered them to be a fun if somewhat bland tree. Their leaves are not quite serious about shade yet not as wispy as a willow. Cottonwoods, forever young, grow up fast, loud and full of life. The many fruit trees in the town teach to all who pay attention just which side gets the most sun. The town is also full of new trees still needing a stake to help them stand in the wind. Their future is unwritten and full of hope with just a handful of leaves.

I planned on writing this article about all the practical things that trees bring, how they can up property values, lower energy costs and improve water quality. But, I have to think that we get more than that out of urban trees. As I entered tree after tree day after day a certain beauty becomes clear in the data. Each dot on my map represented dozens of years of time, care and maintenance. The species chosen, the care given or withheld and the age distribution created a record of choices.

People plant trees in places they value. The elms and cottonwoods that are the shade trees of today were the seedlings of years past. That investment in the future continues with every tree planted and maintained. A city that manages their tree population is one that plans on sticking around awhile and maybe enjoying what experiences may come from having a tree or two.

"Encounters with the Archdruid"

I'm reading Encounters with the Archdruid: narratives about a conservationist and three of his natural enemies. Author John McPhee takes David Brower, former president of the Sierra Club, to meet a geologist, a developer and a commissioner of reclamation at sites threatened by the latter's idea of progress.

The third chapter is titled "A River," and Brower rafts down the Grand Canyon with Floyd Dominy, the man responsible for building dozens of dams. They hit Havasu Canyon.

"A bend to the right, a bend to the left, right, left — this stone labyrinth with a crystal stream in it was moment enough, no matter where it ended, but there lay beyond it a world that humbled the mind's eye."

"The walls widened first into a cascaded gorge and then flared out to become the ovate sides of a deep valley, into which the stream rose in tiers of pools and waterfalls.  Some of the falls were only two feet high, others four feet, six feet."

"There were hundreds of them."

 "The pools were as much as fifteen feet deep, and the water in them was white where it plunged and foamed, then blue in a wide circle around the plunge point, and pale green in the outer peripheries. Mile after mile, the pools and waterfalls continued. The high walls of the valley were bright red."

"This was Havasu Canyon, the immemorial home of the Havasupai, whose tribal name means 'the people of the blue-green waters.'"

"Dominy was waiting below. 'It's fabulous,' he said. 'I know every river canyon in the country, and this is the prettiest in the West.'"

This is what Encounters does: paint stunning scenes and juxtapose them with men supposedly who rather profit from a place than admire it. McPhee, however, gives these characters humanity and nuance. They know these lands better than Brower; they just don't think we can afford to preserve every inch of it.

At first, I disliked this book and then realized I actually disliked Brower, or at least the way he was characterized in the first part. He's consistently shown up on nature, knowledge and hiking by a geologist who wants to put a copper mine in the Cascade Mountains. In dialogue, the mining expert says something reasonable and Bower pipes up with something cliche like "population is pollution spelled inside out."

Later Brower mellowed out, and I found peace. It's a good story. There's definitely some stilted dialogue and an anemic amount of scenes and plots, but that's an issue with the concept. In just three parts, McPhee effectively shined light on the preservation -> conservation -> development gradient and challenged conceptions about each one.

So if that sounds like your kind of paperback, check out Encounters of the Archdruid by John McPhee, lent out at fine libraries nationwide. Maybe even bookstores! Definitely Amazon.

The Wild Bluffs

I pulled a twig from my hair, clinging with the other hand to a small branch. A blue jay’s jeer pierced through my heavy breathing, but I saw no sign of the bird or my friend below. If a rock tumbled, I could go with it — 60 feet down to a scoured-out creek bed.

The scoured-out creek bed. Photo by Miranda Metheny.

It was August 27, 2001, and in the first weekend of our senior year in college, I traveled to Three Creeks Conservation Area with my friend Miranda. She hadn’t been in Missouri for twelve months, and I hadn’t been in woods since the start of the summer heat wave; after reading The Wild Trees about the redwood canopies, I was craving a climb.

We skipped Rock Bridge State Park; it’s too mediated, too mapped. In the Columbia, Mo., microcosm, if Rock Bridge is Muir Woods, then Three Creeks is at least like Humboldt Redwoods State Park. There’s a little more left to discover. Some know this area for its “swimming hole” in Bonne Femme Creek that’s easy to find from a parking lot. Fewer know about Turkey Creek’s holes, cliff swallows and dripping moss. Even fewer have seen the dove habitat’s purple-blue shade on a full moon or smelled the musky green-gold grass as they broke a path through it. Like the canopy explorers, though, I don’t share these places with just anyone.

The land is by no means untouched. “Through the years, the timber was grazed and logged and occasional fires swept through the area,” the Missouri Department of Conservation website reads. “Because of these practices, the land has suffered...“ The geology, however, endures.

I have never done any truly dangerous climbs, and these rises are often biologically bland. But I think I understand in some small way what Steve Sillett felt when he looks up at a redwood. I feel the bluff tops beckon. Carved by many millennia of water and wind, bluffs hold geologic history I barely understand. They’re nearly vertical, and yet saplings and animals brave enough to defy gravity keep living on them.

When a human defies gravity, “brave” morphs to “reckless.” I was free climbing. My flat-soled Converse shoes began slipping in the soil and I stretched to the nearest root. It slipped too. Nothing felt stable. Loose rocks all around, and nothing else in reach. I was relying on one foothold at the base of a bush with my body pressed against the steep ground. Scrambling ensued, and a minute later I made it.

“Miranda,” I shouted. “I found another trail.”

“Are you staying up there?” she answered. Her voice could barely climb the bluff.

“I can come down, but it won’t be graceful.”

“I’ll come up. Give me a minute.”

As I waited for her ascent, I thought about how Steve Sillett didn’t curse in the canopy. After scrambling around the Ozarks for years, the reservation seems clear. A certain respect is reserved for nature when it forces us into tough places.

- I wrote this as an assignment for Bill Allen's "Readings in Science Journalism: Four Great Books on the Environment" class. The prompt was to "write a personal narrative about your own encounters with the natural world, reflecting on all the encounters described in The Wild Trees by Richard Preston." It was a good exercise, restricted to 500 words. I'm happy to share it with you now.

Sunday Service

I have music here in my body

I have choice, I have freedom to choose

Bow my head in thanks and humility

And in all of the things that He does

...and I know that I don't know a thing

(Sorry for the littering in this video. Since it's Bonnie 'Prince' Billy and it's Sunday, we'll forgive the kid of his sins.)

Climbing and Camera Envy

Renan Ozturk's video of climbing at Yosemite is one of those clips that young people might watch and treasure forever as a life model (climbing, photography, videography, whatever, just get to the mountains and make art once you're there). Gorgeous.

On Assignment from renan ozturk on Vimeo.

Every shot is high quality — creative angles and time progression, intimate scenes and really really really great camera and equipment. Excellent color. And fog breathing in and out of mountains and constellations traveling overhead never gets old.

The images are supported by a narrative by photographer Jimmy Chin as he reflects on climbing and doing the sport justice through photography.

I'm glad I'm a writer. Otherwise, I'd probably spend the rest of my life trying to get this good at videography.

Turning the Pages of a Mountain

There is no understanding of place without context. Earth is simply dirt beneath one’s feet until the history of a place is understood. Whatever it is that draws someone to visit Muir’s Yosemite or Abbey’s Arches tempted me to explore the Wah Wah Mountains of Southwest Utah. The investment of learning about the natural and historical underpinnings of these places through pages turned creates such a connection to them that they feel like old friends even, as in the case of the Wah Wahs, if that history is fiction.

A few years ago I started listening to the self proclaimed first podcast only novel. It is a science-fiction book called Earthcore by Scott Sigler. It tells a story of aliens, prospectors and corporations all fighting over a platinum find in the Wah Wah Mountains, a place described in the book as requiring six hours of hiking and three miles of driving to find anything resembling a road. It sounded like my kind of place. It was also a world away from the days of my youth in the middle of Missouri.

I went on to subsequently take jobs in Georgia and then Utah. It struck me only recently, as I searched for an audiobook to help fill a drive, that I was in the same state as the Wah Wah Mountains. A quick search reveled I was living a mere hour from the mountains that had intrigued me when I first heard of them. I started researching the range. It became clear pretty quickly that the mountains that had appeared in the book were quite different from those that were on my computer screen.

None of these differences bothered me much. Truth, as it turned out, was more interesting. The Wah Wahs are as remote as they had sounded in the book. A highway does separate the northern from the southern range but the range is large enough for six hours of hiking to be reasonable. Even the highway that runs through the range is considered one of the more lonely highways in the nation. The mountains that exist in the book are home to aliens and platinum. The mountains in reality are home to abandoned mines, underground springs and desert creatures. While the Wah Wah range doesn’t contain platinum, it is known for its gems. It is one of only a handful of places in the world where red beryl can be found. Apparently the author had done his research.
Picture via Rob Lavinsky, iRocks.com – CC-BY-SA-3.0
Also true to the book, finding information on the history of the range is difficult. The web presence of the range consists of a few academic papers on the geology, mentions of red beryl and a scattering of trip reports to the high point of the Northern and Southern ranges. At a little over 9,000 feet it is a nondescript mountain range in an area filled with National Parks and geologic wonders. Yet, the Wah Wahs offer something else entirely.


My visit to the range was an opportunity for solitude and connection to a place I knew only from spoken words. The book being fiction only stroked my curiosity. Only a visit would separate the truth from the prose. The author had made the Wah Wahs feel alive. That is something I had to experience.

The area is largely owned by the Bureau of Land Management. Because the highway splits the range, the Wah Wahs demand attention as they extend toward the horizon on both sides of the road. I turned off the highway and onto the gravel road. The road through Pine Valley looked to go on forever in a sea of browns and greens. More than once I had the feeling of being lost that can only really be understood by someone who has been on poorly improved Forest Service or BLM roads that get crossed every couple of minutes by some other road, all seemingly going to different nowheres. I found my turn, took it and parked the car when the going got rough.


I walked past entrance after entrance to abandoned mines. All of the mines caught me with their names. There was the Revenue Mine, Tasso Mine, Lou Mine and others. One after another. I alternated between envisioning the real men who entered these mines and the characters from the book, both descending deep into the earth. I wondered about the motives of each.

I hiked my way up the mountain and rested in the hard to come by shade of the Pinyon Pine, Mountain Mahogany and Juniper scrubland. My mind went to the many times the book talked of the stillness of the place. The view extended several miles and two states. The range was not overflowing with life. Water is hard to find in the dry part of the year. Yet, there were several signs of life. The bulk of the wildlife on the mountain were bird species and an occasional lizard or two. Funeral mountain, as the book had dubbed a specific peak, had a feeling of dread over it. I wanted to know if I would feel something eerie as I summited the high point of the range. The feeling never came. Only the view occupied my thoughts.

I am indebted to the author, to all authors, that have given me a reason to travel to the many temples of nature. Their passion is infectious. Their words are the key to exploration and understanding. Each great place needs its staunch supporters and every wilderness its defenders.

The Civil Wars(s)

This week, Daytrotter released a studio set by The Civil Wars. My friend Kelly (she runs a music blog called Disregarding Silence; you'll like her) turned me onto the band this summer, and I'm grateful for the sweet shakeup. Joy Williams and John Paul White make swallow-swoop harmonies up and down the vocal scale and all around each other — appropriate, then, that they lead "Birds of a Feather." They also cover the Smashing Pumpkin's "Disarm" quite beautifully. Gorgeous set. Download it here.

So, appropriately, I also need to share this video I made previewing The Battle of Wilson's Creek reenactment, which takes place this weekend: 3,400 reenactors, 32 cannons, authentic sutlers and other vendors converging on beautiful farmland near Wilson's Creek.  Come out if you can!

Managing for endangered species: it's a dance, not a war

This week I'm in California writing about its rare and endangered plants for the Center for Plant Conservation.  We're only two days in, and the fire hose of information has really bruised my brain. Botany can really throw some punches. I do have one quote victoriously held above all the water.

My professor asked someone from the Sacramento Splash center why he doesn't rise up and more assertively oppose the groups such as solar industries threatening endangered species. "It's a dance," the man answered, "not a war."

Gorgeous. In that case:

Here's M. Ward's very smoldering, slow cover of "Let's Dance" by David Bowie. I hear he played this at the Newport Folk Festival, although it's unfortunately not archived at NPR like all kinds of other wonderful artists (Carolina Chocolate Drops, Justin Townes Earle, Delta Spirit, of course Mavis Staples and ohmygodthislineupisbeautifulmustgonextyear). [download] [buy]

Summer Songs About The Outdoors

As summer runs its dry course what better to pour some water on the soul than songs about nature and summertime?

I deeply recommend That Summer by Bishop Allen. It is rare that you get a song about beetles even though their impact in Western forests over the last few years cannot be understated.

Next up is another nod to insect infestations, a cicada compilation! Listen to songs about the critters that caused quite a buzz and a few tasty treats this summer.



There is only one artist I trust to write good songs about trees and that is Lizzie Wright Super Spaceship. This artist and forestry graduate student from Mississippi rocks a mean ukelele in the song titled Us. The track compares and contrasts people to trees in a way that is not nearly as cheesy as it sounds.

Any other summer track recommendations out there?

Land Management Tips for Wildlife

A few weeks ago I had a friend ask me, "I want to own land and manage it to save the world. How can I do that?" As I thought of all the possible ways land could be managed to mitigate habitat destruction, increase local food supply or assure flora that will strive in a changing climate, one thread came to me as the most important element in land management. I replied, "Manage with thought." I deeply believe that it is a lack of planning and forethought that helped degrade the productivity of a great many acres coast to coast and it will be planning for the future that will help solve the challenges facing land management today. I will keep this post on what I know best, managing land for the benefit of wildlife.

My first suggestion to is to make land ownership work for your needs. Management should be lasting in terms of economic, environmental and social commitment. If a landowner cannot maintain the land on these three fronts then any changes made to the property are unlikely to have any lasting benefit.

Next up, understanding the property as it fits into the landscape. Almost any wildlife species will need more space than the average landowner can provide. Therefore, it is important to find a role each property can play in providing food, water and habitat to the local fauna. If the surrounding properties are fulfilling one or two of these requirements, it could be of greater benefit to have the property fill the third. Food plots, ponds or modifying vegetation cover are all possible ways to do that.

The structure and layout of these resources should also be a consideration. Feathered edges which are soft borders transitioning from forest to shrubs to pastures or farmland allow many animals to have cover from predation. Consider vegetation at different heights as well. Grass, shrubs, understory trees and canopy trees all provide different niches and resources to wildlife species. The ability of the wildlife to get to the food, cover and water provided is also important. Placing these resources within a reasonable distance, 200 yards for a rough average, makes sure all the pieces fit together to create usable habitat.

Finally, work on some small projects that help increase the utility of the land to wildlife. I cannot emphasize this enough: stick with native vegetation. Exotic plants might have one advantage or another but they are rarely worth the potential harm they can cause or as well adapted to the climate and soil as native plants. Piles are another good thing for wildlife. Rock piles or brush piles can provide habitat for a wide host of wildlife. Also, leave standing dead trees. The life of the tree is not over when it dies. A dead tree can provide a home to woodpeckers and flying squirrels. There are many cost share programs to help landowners increase the usefulness of their land to wildlife. Contact your state’s conservation department for help accessing these funds.

(modified from Working Trees for Wildlife by USDA in partnership with the Forest Service and Natural Resources Conservation Service.)

Hedwig, we salute you

Illustration by Brittney Lee for a 2011 HP tribute show.

This week, amidst the jubilation over Harry Potter's heroics (not to mention Neville Longbottom, Severus Snape, the Weasleys, et cetera et cetera), let us not forget the story's great communicator, Hedwig. As cousins to the snowy owl, we Bard Owls may be a bit biased, but really, what is the wizarding world (or the Muggle world, even) without timely correspondence?

Hedwig, you delivered stuff, you nipped Harry on the ear when he deserved it, you suffered at the hands of Delores Umbridge and lived locked in a stupid closet every summer. You've endured much, my friend, including life in a non-native climate zone. And for this, we salute you.

We're certainly not the first to pay tribute to this great raptor.  First, there was the "Hedwig's Theme" remix by Virtual Boy.



There's also a pretty bad YouTube video tribute with an absurd song choice. And then, of course, the crop circle in Wiltshire.

And most recently, this precious illustration of the owlry by artist Brittney Lee (see more of the piece on her website).

Finally, on the latest score for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Alexandre Desplat brilliantly combines "Hedwig's Theme" and "Lilly's Theme" for an original track titled "Snape's Demise." It's a touching mix that expresses one of the story's more complex relationships. [listen] [buy]

Paint the field red

Looking for a fight? How about some flowers and grasses? Visit a battlefield. This one is in Centralia, Mo.

Here, on Sept. 27, 1864, Bloody Bill Anderson wiped out over 120 Union soldiers. Earlier that day, his men wiped out 23 others in a massacre by the train depot. It was a bloodbath. Now the place is mostly quiet, save for occasional reenactments. A small acreage worth visiting if you want solitude and some sense of the sacred.

 

If the birds and bugs don't make enough noise, try meditating to the 1861 Project, a collaboration of Nashville songwriters and other musicians to commemorate the Civil War. The website also encourages discussion of the war's meaning for contemporary citizens. It's a cool interactive project and if you like sentimental, mellow songs that tell stories then, well, here you go.

National Parks and Bears

“A venturesome minority will always be eager to set off on their own, and no obstacles should be placed in their path; let them take risks, for godsake, let them get lost, sunburnt, stranded, drowned, eaten by bears, buried alive under avalanches - that is the right and privilege of any free American."

- Edward Abbey

The news last week seemed to be full of discussion about a mother grizzly bear who mauled a hiker in Yellowstone National Park and the park’s decision to not euthanize the bear. I first wish to express my sympathy for the family and friends of the lost hiker. I also wish to express that I feel the park service made the right decision given the circumstances. I too have stumbled upon a mother grizzly bear with cubs.

When the encounter occurred, I wondered about how it would end. Would it be a wonderful story for years to come about disaster avoided or were the clicks of my camera a final record of what went wrong on a hike in the woods. I thought of the three other people who had trusted me to guide them into the wilderness area. I thought about my family’s concern about the threat posed by bears and my dismissal of how big of risk it really was. I always believed it was more realistic to be worried about a broken ankle miles from the trailhead as compared to any threat from wildlife.

Our first spotting of the mother grizzly bear was on the outbound stretch of a out-and-back day hike. We saw the bear with cubs from some distance and watched as they spotted us. Slowly and without panic they went out of sight in the direction that we had come from. It was an almost ideal bear interaction as it was far away and ended quickly. However, even with this perfect sighting I began to have concerns. The bears had left in the same direction we had to hike to return to the trailhead. Another sighting was not only possible but likely.

My concerns turned out to be correct. As we finished the outbound section and began to return the way we had come my thoughts turned to the bear and her cubs. When we hit the meadow where we had last seen the bear my eyes began to scan the terrain. I unclasped my bear spray can and placed it into my right hand with my fingers on the safety release.

I knew other friends who were outdoor inclined that talked about never going into the wilderness without a firearm. I had always felt that was ridiculous and possible mechanical bravery that could result in either bears or humans being killed or mauled unnecessarily. I would be dishonest to say that at the moment we stumbled upon the bear for a second time, at this point a mere 25 feet from the mother, that I would not have been reassured to have a loaded firearm. I had test fired a inert can of bear spray before the trip and knew that, at most, I had five seconds of very cloudy spray to prevent a bear attack. If I were to use it effectively, I would have to have the nerve for a “whites of the eyes” moment. I slid the safety cap off and it hit the ground.

We had been following every rule of travel in grizzly country. Undoubtably at 25 feet the bear had heard us. However, as we froze where we were and prepared for an attack the bear never once looked at us. It passed without pause from our right, across the trail and downhill toward the left. In fact, we ended up having numerous times of being close to the bear after that simply because the bear was in no hurry and traveling the same direction we were. Our attempts forward were slow and loud followed by backing up once we could see either the bear or cubs in front of us. Once we were sure that the bear and cubs were on the same side of the trail and a comfortable distance away, we made a controlled sprint past the area. The danger had passed.

I have no doubts that chance played the difference between how my story and the unfortunate story in Yellowstone ended. I feel in retrospect it is clear to me that the bear I interacted with had certainly seen people before and was not afraid of them. The bear in Yellowstone, surprisingly, had not had these constant human interactions. Even if it had the same experience it still might have reacted the way it did. If bear research proves anything, it is that all bears are different.
It is with a very real understanding of the risks that I support the park service’s decision to not euthanize the bear. I too, as Edward Abbey so succinctly summarized above, believe we need places to take risks, live free of society and be humbled if even for a little while. It is a credit to the park and the practice of killing problem bears that the park managed to go 25 years without a death caused by bears.

It took me several trips to the West for me to truly wrap my mind around the idea that national parks are not outdoor theme parks. The cultural impact of Yogi Bear and developed campgrounds runs deep. That said, the emergency services at National Parks are second to none. Your chances of surviving an accident or wildlife encounter in a national park are without a doubt better than with any other land management agency due in no small part to the park service’s mission and budget.

There is risk in every step taken in wild places. It is out of a respect for existence that bears continue to roam the national parks. It is in some way unspoken that the reason people year after year put on a backpack and sojourn in the wilderness is to prove their ability to sustain themselves for a number of days based only on what they carried in on their back. What is maintained with the presence of wild animals is the opportunity to face an honest landscape and reep the risks as well as the rewards. A hike in the wilderness should never be allowed to become a bumper car experience.

I will end the post with Danielle Ate the Sandwich's song Public Property.

The Problems of Taking a Species to Market

Yesterday, the advocacy group Food & Water Watch released its 2011 Smart Seafood Guide. And high on the list of seafood that's OK to eat are such invasive species as lionfish, Asian carp, blue tilapia, and a few kinds of crab.

Some of these may not be well-known to gourmands, but all of them are pushing out the locals in various rivers, lakes and coastal areas around the country.

The environmental group wants to show they can be as tasty as they are pesky. So it enlisted hotshot chef Kerry Heffernan of South Gate Restaurant to cook up some.

In A Fish-Eat-Fish World, Order Asian Carp And Lionfish To Save The Rest

This article started me thinking about the ups and downs of creating a market for a species. Marketing a species has been proposed as the solution for invasives and endangered animals alike. The thinking with endangered animals is that once livelihoods depend on the resource it would be wise of those dependent on the species to make sure it continues. This has worked wonders in terms of money put into habitat by hunters for all the major game species such as deer, turkey and ducks. Have no doubt, several livelihoods depend on the influx of hunters to an area. The thought with invasives is to remove the harvest limits that keep populations from crashing and incentivize the capture of the species of interest. Both of these ideas have been used with mixed results.

One example that pops into my head is wild boars in much of the Eastern United States. Many eastern states have a year round hunting season on boars. They are not native to the area and can cause extensive problems when rooting around for grubs. Some places actively try to get rid of the species by paying someone to trap and kill the animals. The problem is that trapping to kill doesn’t always happen. Sometimes the people getting paid to kill the boars transport the live animals to other property where the owner wants to be able to hunt something, in this case boar, all year round despite the problems the species causes. Boars, being wild species, do not follow property lines and spread into the surrounding area.

Opening up fishing of lionfish and carp alone might not do the trick. In this example, the expected collapse of boar populations never occurs despite or maybe because of the hunting season put into place. All of this despite places like Smoky Mountain National Park killing a rumored three million of the animals in a single year.

The current problem with these species is there is no market but in trying to create a market the question turns to what do we do once there is one? I see a couple possible outcomes if a market for lionfish or Asian carp ever becomes established. The first is that demand spikes and the numbers of these species plummet. However, demand will not cease when the numbers fall. I imagine that people profiting from these species will either reintroduce the invasive to places it was over-fished from, recreating the problem, or start fishing the species in their native ranges to meet the demand. The problem of the market is that it never quite allows us to get rid of the invasive species as long as we succeed in perpetuating the demand and creating unintended consequences.

Camping in New York City: a tent revival, of sorts

The Outdoor Nation National Congress met this weekend in New York City — ironic placement?  I've always scoffed at urban camping, but in such a nature-starved city, maybe it's better than nothing.  Photos are by Rachel Elkhind.

46 delegates from across the country met to discuss our vision for connecting youth to the outdoors. Outdoor Nation is growing in its second year.

 How camping at the Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn is like real camping:

• Mosquitoes whined through the night and ticks lurked in all the grass, which is part of a grassland restoration project.
• Fireflies came on at dusk.
• It's colder camping near water (in this case, Jamaica Bay).
• Campers have the option for some seclusion (at least a few campsites have about 180° worth panning before you're looking at the side of someone else's tent) and they have fire pits!

 How camping at the Floyd Bennett Field National Park in Brooklyn was NOT like real camping:

• It's on an old airfield, with a bar half a mile down from the campsite (albeit with slow service and limited stock of everything).
• You can see a city skyline but no stars.
• My group got a Cribs-worthy eight-person Coleman tent complete with a light switch.  Crazy.

You know, backpacking . . . and luggaging.

How camping in Central Park in Manhattan is like real camping:

• We pounded our tent stakes into real dirt.
• We had rangers on hand to show us cool birds, reveal park secrets and hidden treasures and point out certain tree smells (like lindenwood!).  They also kept us safe from late-night visitors in the Ramble.
• The birds start chirping at 4 in the morning just like anywhere else.
• Umm . . .

How camping in Central Park is NOT like real camping:

• Everything else.

But! All is not lost. Wilderness deprivation came at the cost of culture, and that's a reasonable price.  On Friday night I saw new bands at the Rockwood Music Hall in SoHo. The most energetic was Holy Ghost Tent Revival. Their instrumentation verged on being almost too eclectic, including a banjo, tambourine and baby grand piano that edged the brass players off the stage.

They're talented performers and I'd see them again if they ever venture west.  Or if, you know, I ever want to revive tent camping in the center of a metropolis again.

Dickcissles: panorama of SOUND!

The tall grasses are chirping!  It's a dickcissle flock!

My annotation from this weekend in Bates County, Mo., noted a "choot choot chweet chweet!" from this bird that took longer than it should have to identify. WhatBird contends they make a "dick-dick-dick-cissel"* and The Cornell Lab of Ornithology says their song is a "simple, dry, 'dick, dick, ciss, ciss, ciss.' Call a dry 'chek.' Flight call a short, buzzy "fpppt," like a Bronx cheer."** Okay, so dickcissles sound more like campers plucking string instruments rather than a stadium rock show, but if you stand in a middle of a field, the call and response encroaches from every direction and fan sout in a fading aural perspective. Very beautiful.

Here's my video.  This one is better.

Reminds me of Iron Horse's bluegrass cover of "World at Large." [listen] [buy]

* cliche'
** What's a Bronx cheer?

Canyoneering: An Ethical Debate About Anchors

I often find myself incapable of turning down any opportunity to explore the land around me. At age fourteen I found myself with a plane ticket to New Zealand and Australia. This began what might have been my first meaningful introduction to the environmental ethos of outdoor recreationists that is so often wrapped up in the phrase “take only photographs, leave only footprint.” I refused to go to the Great Barrier Reef and not scuba dive. I wanted to experience such a marvelous place as closely and intimately as I could. This meant training, equipment and an understanding of how to not harm the delicate reef or myself in the process. So began my connection to the idea of how fleeting a resource and life can be without proper considerations.

Nine years later and I find myself in another locale and partaking in yet another form of outdoor recreation that is just as fleeting and demanding of consideration as scuba diving, canyoneering in Utah. My thoughts wondered to the environmental ethics of the sport. First, let me draw some borders around what is meant by the word “canyoneering” and where in the world it occurs. Canyoneering in a general sense is any exploration of a canyon anywhere in the world. The traditional understanding of leave no trace that existed long before the organization of the same name came into existence stands there as much as it does in any other area receiving outdoor recreation. For the purposes of the more interesting ethical discussion I will use the narrower definition of canyoneering, which takes place in slot canyons requiring some combination of scrambling, downclimbing and repelling.

The technical aspects of canyoneering make canyons with large vertical drops possible to explore. An anchor is an essential element of any descent. The anchor provides the attachment point for the repel rope. It is either pre-existing or made on the spot. Canyoneers make anchors by attaching webbing and a ring to almost anything. Anchors have been made using live vegetation, rocks buried in sand or a pile of rocks with an appropriate amount of friction. Following standard canyoneering practice the repel rope is pulled when the canyon floor is reached and continues with the canyoneer for the next repel. The anchor does not continue on. This becomes the source of the ethical debate.

If you think of slot canyons as staircases, really large staircases, then it becomes easy to see how canyoneers cannot, under normal circumstances, get back up the canyon once the rope has been removed from the higher step in the staircase. Until the slot canyon opens up the canyoneer can only move one direction, down. It is because the anchors are not removed from the canyon that much has been done to minimize the visual impact. Anchors are often made using webbing that blends with the color of the rock. This helps minimize the visual impact the anchors have on other visitors to the canyon. Removing the webbing from the top of the canyon often is possible once the canyoneer makes it out of the slot. Most canyon explorers do remove this first anchor.

There is a rising contingent of canyoneers that have started doing what is called ghosting canyons. The idea behind ghosting a canyon is to transverse the canyon and leave no evidence of human touch. This is possible by using different approaches than traditional anchors. One device that works for this is called a sand trap. Sand traps have two attachment points. The first is located in the front where the most friction and weight from the sand is exerted on the rope. Another is in the back. Pulling this rope allows the sand to escape out the sides and the tarp to continue on each repel. Another method is to carry sandbags into the canyon. The sandbags are separated by set distances of rope. The repel is done with the weight of all the sandbags. Then the pull rope is used to get the bags to come down separately.

The question then becomes why is every canyon not done using these methods? The answer is that these methods provide marginal anchors. There is a higher degree of safety in more traditional anchors done properly. Another reason is that some canyons such as a few in Zion National Park are already bolted. This provides a permanent, if unsightly, anchor. Only the future will tell if the ethic of canyoneering will stay the same or move to a lower impact and less safe alternative.