WriterByNature.com

March 21, 2008 8:34 am

On tightly wound coils. The fierce, gale-force winds have been blowing for over 24 hours. Snow flurries swirled and collided just before dusk, then the sun appeared briefly before setting. The full moon makes it harder to see some of the other stars.

I’ve been reading and listening to news reports. I have to stop doing that. I need to get outdoors and hike, but monsoon rains and the dangers of high winds have been enough to keep me working on my homework for Mushroom U. Sorting out boletes is no small task. The good news is that there are no deadly boletes, although sorting out the bitter lookalikes from the choice edibles takes “dirt time,” and a workable key to sort out details.

The more I want to improve my nature skills, the more carefully and slowly I need to move in nature and in research. So, what do I do for exercise? These past few months, swimming and aquatic exercise. But the gym is far, which tugs at my carbon footprint issues and my budget.

I am blessed. My needs are met. My biggest concern is avoiding nature deficit disorder. It all seems so tangential, until you realize that trees are critical to our ability to breathe clean air. Trees also keep soil from eroding and prevent flooding.

Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods, writes that deprivation from nature causes “increased feelings of stress, trouble paying attention, feelings of not being rooted in the world.”

I am blessed, I know where I can get a good 5-mile hike protected from the prevailing winds. That’s exactly the right way to celebrate this first full day of spring.

March 19, 2008 6:43 am

As a writer, reading enlightens me in a way that watching images cannot. Words have power. Pete Seeger sings the Hudson River clean. I’m hopeful that Barack Obama’s words will get us closer to a UNITED States of America?

This is the best piece of writing I have read in a very long time. Take the time to read each of his words, even if you watched the delivery on screen. It’s worth reading more than once. (more…)

March 16, 2008 5:43 am

This is another indoor nature activity.

A good time to do this is late winter, before the trees wake up.

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February 24, 2008 7:04 am

Finding a blow-down, where a live tree has fallen down, can be a lucky opportunity in a survival situation. The pine tree that fell just before our survival class began, provided pine needles for tea, pine inner bark for food, boughs to cushion and warm the floor of our shelter and baskets for heating liquid during our trek.

This photo shows how the pine branch was peeled and the folded basket. (more…)

February 11, 2008 5:05 am

I haven’t experimented with hide tanning for years. Back then, I used a hide scraper to remove membranes, fat and meat from a wet hide.

I had no idea it was even possible to scrape a dry hide clean. The red squirrel that found my trap provided an unexpected opportunity. I started with basic instructions provided by Barry Keegan. I skinned the hide while at Hawk Circle, but with all we had to do, I didn’t get to the tanning until I got back home. (more…)

February 8, 2008 5:32 am

I dug out my old notes from Tom Brown’s Advanced Tracking class. Either I took really good notes, or I copied them over right after I got home. I took Advanced Tracking in 1991. How time flies.

Virtually everyone I respect in the world of wilderness survival has taken classes from Tom Brown. He’s a charismatic speaker and an enigmatic personality. I struggled through those classes, but despite my fears and my inadequacies, I learned something.

As I think about how creatures move and how the shift in weight is recorded in the movement of each foot, (that’s a very simplistic explanation of pressure releases), I rediscover Tom Brown’s coffee cup tracking technique. (more…)

February 7, 2008 6:10 am

The wild parsnip (Pastinaca sativa) is an escaped cultivated parsnip, according to every forager I consulted. The important thing to note is that the leaves can irritate your skin. The root is the desired edible part of the plant.

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February 6, 2008 4:58 am

This is the first time I cleaned a skull without an expert at my side. I have only two other fresh skulls in my collection; the rest I found while hiking.

I wasn’t willing to bury this red squirrel skull and wait for the dung beetles. I knew that by boiling the skull, I would risk losing the teeth, so I tried an experiment, after consulting my experts and reading as much as I could on the subjects of cleaning skulls and cooking meat. (more…)

January 22, 2008 5:56 am

In addition to waxing and waning in a pattern, the moon rises and sets in a pattern.  Here is how the moon moves in relation to the sun. (more…)

January 5, 2008 8:27 am

The Hawk Circle advertisement reads:

Two Feet of Fresh Snow
17 Degrees Below Zero
No Tent
No Electricity
No Problem.

The reason: a quinzee - an Inuit word for a snow shelter made from compressed snow, which is then hollowed out.

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