[Featured image: Camp at Harris Beach State Park, Oregon in May 2018. This was one of several basecamps during my recent work on a wildlife assessment for the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department.] I have always had an affinity for travel and exploration of the outdoors. It began when I was young with family camping … Continue reading The Joys and Sorrows of Working Away From Home
Category: Biology
The degree to which I am enamored with the freedom of backpacking is not reflected by the frequency with which I go. For awhile now, I've taken an interest in expanding my knowledge-base of the fauna of the San Gabriel Mountains by backpacking into remote campgrounds, preferably on a weekday when no or few people … Continue reading A Night at West Fork
[Featured image: A Black-tailed Jackrabbit (Lepus californicus) attempts to hide on a cold day during the Owyhee Roads Fuelbreak Project in northern Nevada, October 2017.] We are walking our fifteenth mile of the day. The accumulated sun and wind exposure while walking around sagebrush and over unstable volcanic rock has taken its toll. Attentiveness is … Continue reading The Under-Appreciated Black-tailed Jackrabbit
[Featured image: looking toward Lake Elsinore from within the Cleveland National Forest, Riverside County, California during the 2017 Twin Peaks 50k] This Autumn is, for me, an interesting confluence of long-distance trail running and biological consulting. On November 18, 2017, I will toe the starting line of the Chimera 100, a 100 mile trail race … Continue reading On the Potential Interface of Ultrarunning and Pygmy Rabbits
In response to a question about hawk identification on nextdoor.com (a neighborhood-based social media site), I posted a long discussion about the status of various raptors in our neighborhood. Someone posted a follow-up question about how to tell hawks from falcons in flight. I thought the easiest way to do that would be to post … Continue reading Raptors in Flight
Two days short of one year ago, I wrote a post about my goals for 2016. As often happens, life takes unexpected twists and turns, sometimes rendering goals difficult if not impossible to reach within the time period you planned for. For example, there was no way I could know that I would be out … Continue reading The Year That Was, The Year That Will Be
Around 10:30 am yesterday I was driving northeast on Highway 14. The San Gabriel Mountains were on my right. For the better part of a half hour I saw little other than charred hillsides and moon-scaped mountains. My view was a product of the recent Sand Fire, the largest in the San Gabriel Mountains since … Continue reading Map: What We’ve Lost
