Cache Valley Winds

"If attention is paid, the land begins to speak its own truths"

What is a naturalist?

What real people say, farmers edition.

Horse and rider break on together in the early morning frost.

An excerpt from Herding Sheep in Northern Utah (1998; pp. 80-82) By Laurie Rich

As hunting skills disappear, what skills will bring us intimately into the natural world and temper our vast ignorance of that world?

Education teaches us to research and check out the data we are given by referencing numerous

Typical farm equipment costs and profit projections for alfalfa growing in Cache Valley, Utah.

Why don't the farmers in Cache Valley grow something other than high-water-use alfalfa and cows?

Listen. Set aside your binoculars, life list, notepad, camera, and listen. Quiet and sitting among stately white stems, close your eyes and extend a finger to count each distinct sound.

Rivers are all about renewal. No matter how we dam them, divert them, shunt them through concrete or steel, they renew themselves eventually. Rivers replenish.

After destruction always comes renewal. The Phoenix doesn't rise from the verdant forest but from the ash.

In nature, renewal happens everywhere, on both vast and short timescales.

We have this remarkable quality in our cranium that is useful to try to understand as best we can how these things work. Our curiosity, our deep desire to learn about things around us.