Cache Valley Winds

...it's too many climate deniers controlling public policy and a lack of courage in everyone else.

There are a few human activities that are primal, and deep, and never boring; these include watching clouds move across the sky...

Among my influences I had some fabulous professors in the department of biology. A lot of them were WWII veterans.

When I was young America was great again. Nothing got out of hand because we controlled things.

I’ve been passionate about the night sky ever since I was a child. Back then, I could lie down in my yard in Cache Valley and see the whole Milky Way. My wonder rode on a river of starlight, to the far reaches of my imagination as my mind explored space. Photo: Milky Way by Aaron Watson Later in my college days I discovered the joy of backpacking into wilderness. I couldn't wait to gaze upward and receive the streams of inspiration and light that are st

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?

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

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.