On October 27, 1826 the Scottish botanist and explorer, David Douglas, responded to an attack on one of his guides and pursued and killed a grizzly bear (Ursus arctos) near the Umpqua River.  His journals did not mention many more encounters in western Oregon with these large brown bears. Lewis and Clark described many fearful accounts of encounters with “white bears” (one their names for grizzly bears) along their expedition route.  Sadly if you travel their route today, you may see a  few grizzlies only at one site, Lewis and Clark Pass in Montana.  Grizzly bears occupied most of the western North America before being Read More

Tonight we’re here looking out over this beautiful valley, listening to brilliant music, enjoying good food in the company of friends. The scene breathes harmony. But we can’t take that for granted. An ecosystem is like an orchestra—providing the music to our lives. This particular orchestra is extraordinarily complex and has many many members—the coast range as the big bowed double basses with their nearly tectonic energy, the firs are stately violas. . . . the creeks and the rivers variously flutes or bassoons. Somewhere in there are the frogs, Cooper’s hawks, the fungi, and the friendly worms whose roofs we’re perching on even now—Every Read More

“Yes, these are the dog days, Fortunatus: The heather lies limp and dead On the mountain, the baltering torrent Shrunk to a soodling thread;. . . .” Auden’s  famous ‘Under Sirius’ says it all—the streams are sunk to a “soodling thread”, we wither under the Dog Star. The temperature hits triple digits, the grass hardens, the sheep nose about in the shade for something tender and must settle for blackberry leaves. Barley in the neighbor’s field grows heavy-headed, waiting for harvest. Portents gather—soon we’ll see the Perseid meteorite shower. . . .  This is the season of the porch, the day trip to somewhere high Read More

A few years ago, I was invited on a walk along the Willamette River to look at a parcel of land that contained some remnant backchannels and a riparian gallery forest near Salem. The riparian forest was remarkable because it contained a number of enormous black cottonwood trees that towered over the ashes, alders, maples and conifers.  Cottonwoods are one of my most favored trees.  They thrive on floodplains.  Arno and Hammerly in their wonderful book, Northwest Trees, mentioned that cottonwoods in floodplains “grow tall and develop great, arching branch-trunks that form a light-filtering canopy high overhead.”  Some of the largest cottonwood trees soar over Read More

This country has always been defined by its grasslands as much as it has been by its forests, mountain ranges, and rivers. Grass informs our landscapes, shapes our history, and probably has more to do with our future than we realize. Our western grasslands are iconic. In 1541, on his quest for yet another fabled city of gold long before the pioneers headed west from St. Joseph, Coronado marched northeast from Mexico City to Kansas. In the middle of what would become Texas he noted, tersely, “I reached some plains.” Indeed.  He was the first European to encounter a sea of grass more vast than Read More