Pensacola Flooding

The storm system that brought deadly tornadoes to Arkansas and Mississippi swept torrential rains across the Florida Panhandle over the past...

The Impersonal Age

Now that cell phones allow humans to speak with one another from almost anywhere on the planet, actual talking has become passe.  Much to my...

Faith in New Jersey

Yesterday, CNN reported that a woman in New Jersey was denied the right to use 8THEIST for her license plate; the State motor vehicle agency...

Consumption & Earth Day

Yesterday, on the annual celebration of Earth Day, I was helping to organize an estate sale in Ohio.  Such events can be emotional for famil...

Thoughts on Genetic Engineering

Throughout the history of life on Earth, which spans 3.6 billion years, natural selection has acted on genetic variance to select traits tha...

Spring Fires & Global Warming

Driving back to Missouri yesterday, I crossed the Flint Hills of eastern Kansas.  Most of those grass-covered ridges were charred from recen...

The Futility of Leash Laws

I am very fond of dogs and have owned five of them in the course of my life.  Fortunately, I or my family always owned property large enough...

Communing with Wildlife

Last evening, the PBS series  Nature aired the personal story of a Wyoming rancher who became closely involved with a herd of mule deer, na...

Reynard Returns

Since buying our Littleton, Colorado, farm in 1990, red fox had been regular visitors (if not residents); indeed, for much of that time, an ...

Carbon & Life

While carbon is the fourth most common element in our solar system, exceeded only by hydrogen, helium and oxygen, it is but a tiny fraction ...

From Summer to Winter

Following a week of summer-like weather, with afternoon highs at or near 70 degrees F, winter conditions have returned to the Colorado Front...

The Birds of Summer

All across the Northern Hemisphere, birders will be checking their backyards and local nature preserves over the next few weeks, watching fo...

The Escalante River

The upper tributaries of the Escalante River rise on the Aquarius Plateau of southern Utah, a mesa capped by Tertiary volcanic rock and flan...

Up to the Pines

Along the Colorado Front Range, ponderosa pine woodlands cloak sunny slopes of the foothills and lower mountains, generally from elevations ...

The Problem with Obamacare

As Conservative Republicans continue to attack the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, distracting the electorate from their o...

Western Grebes in Colorado

Having just returned to Colorado, I saw the first western grebes of the season this morning; a pair of those slender divers was feeding on a...

April on the Great Plains

Driving west on I-70, I entered the Great Plains of North America several miles west of Topeka, Kansas; there, the rolling, wooded terrain o...

Birds on a Wire

Many bird species perch on wires from time to time but some are more likely to engage in that practice.  Among raptors, American kestrels ar...

Snake Watching

Today's warm, sunny weather lured garter snakes from our rock wall for the first time this season.  Over the course of an hour or so, I ...

A Flooded Floodplain

A day after the latest storm system passed through Missouri, a strong northwest wind is raking the State and the temperature has dropped alm...

Deluge in the Heartland

For the past 36 hours, the cold front of the latest Pacific storm system has stretched across or just south of Columbia, Missouri.  Ahead of...

Building a Compost Bin

While we have a large, free-standing compost pile on our Littleton, Colorado, farm, our Missouri property is only half an acre (at most) and...

The Month of Transition

While April weather can be fickle, there is generally a significant transition toward warmer days, punctuated by regular periods of rain.  O...