Perception of Nature

I'm curious about the different ways people perceive nature. My friend Rich Silver talks about utilizing “sensing, feeling, imagining, and knowing” as ways to enter the natural world and I think there is something instructive in this. I know that, as a naturalist, I reside mainly in the world of "sensing," in particular in the realm of visual perception and I wonder what else I might be missing. I have read that in some Eastern traditions perception of reality no longer resides in the brain but is an activity of the totality of the body. I'm curious if anyone has practiced this level of awareness vis a vis nature? We have countless field guides with an exquisite terminology of visual description, but why haven't we developed an equally exquisite terminology for other realms of perception in the natural world?

Read More......

What's Striking You About Springtime?

Here in the Central Highlands of Arizona, springtime is magnificent--and daunting.


Migrants and breeding birds appear in droves, crescendoing around the last week of April and early May. Two bird species and one botanical phemonenon have been what's especially grabbed my attention this year. Painted Redstarts flick their showy white-edged tails back and forth, while crimson bellies and large white wing patches flash bright. When they're around--just up from Meso-America, in this case--they're hard to miss. We tend to see them forested canyons, near water. The other bird that has been seeping deep into my consciousness this spring is the Black-headed Grosbeak, the most determined and spectacular singer in my neighborhood. Suddenly, the final week of April their long, Robin-like song reasserts itself. Every day--at times it seems like every moment--since that first song, their singing is heard everywhere around my home (which sits amidst Ponderosa Pines and evergreen oaks). Their singing is an incessant, persistent beauty that infuses spring and summer here. The other thing I've been extra aware of this spring is the incredible dumps of pollen into the clear, dry air by, first, Alligator Junipers, then--now!--by Emory Oaks. So many people around me are crippled for a week or two by the load of irritating pollen hanging in the air. It's thick enough that hardy souls can draw pictures in the pollen resting on porch railings with their fingertips. Because it has been an extra dry spring, even by Arizona standards, the pollen lingers in the air, and people who haven't previously been bothered by allergies are coughing, sneezing, and rubbing their eyes. It's all a remarkable testament to the efficacy of wind pollination as a reproductive strategy.

These are a few of the things that have drawn my attention this spring, here at the northern limit of Madrean pine-oak forests. What two or three things have you found yourself paying attention to? Read More......

Dawn Chorus

This is the season for getting up early (before sunrise that is) to hear the dawn chorus of singing birds. And for the especially hardy, there are few treats as thrilling as getting up in the pitch black, sitting outside all huddled up in a sleeping bag or warm blanket, and waiting in the silence to hear the very first bird song. From that first tentative chirp, cheep, or chirrup, the chorus begins like a ball bouncing back and forth in the forest, picking up speed and momentum until there is a veritable crescendo of songs from all sides. Then, as the eastern sky begins to glow with light, the chorus gradually tapers off to the background murmur that normal people hear upon awakening, leaving you with the sweet memory that you've experienced something unique and special. I bring this up because I recently learned what's going on with the dawn chorus and it makes the event even more intriguing. Apparently this is the magic hour when neighboring males can safely hurl insults and threats at each other, because in the pitch black no one can do anything about it. Then when the sun starts coming up you'd better watch what you say because you might get beaten up for your cheekiness. In other words, this is the time when males sort out their hierarchies by vocally one-upping each other. If your neighbor sounds a lot tougher than you are, then he probably is and there's no point in wandering over to his territory to find out! This is probably also a great opportunity for females to listen in and discover who is the buffest stud in the forest, and if she wants to, she can decide which male to sneak over and get a notorious "extra-pair copulation" from. No wonder it's such a busy hour in the forest!

Read More......

Children's Dictionary Discards Nature Words

Saul Weisberg brought a news item to my attention earlier this week that's been eating away at me because it is an important statement about our children's lives and our culture at large. You can read it yourself here, http://www.nextnature.net/?p=3110, but the jist of the piece is that the editors of the new edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary have dropped a list of what they consider outdated nature words that presumably have no more use for children. Granted, there might be some archaic or overly technical nature words out there that no child needs to learn, but consider what items actually made the list. No longer useful are words like buttercup, acorn, fern and wren. No longer useful are the dandelions that children love to blow seeds from. Gone are childhood pets like goldfish and guinea pigs. Forget about totem animals like the meditative heron or the industrious beaver, the mythic raven or the singing thrush. Even our vocabulary of wholesome plant-based foods is becoming a thing of the past thanks to the Oxford team, goodbye cauliflower, radish, spinach, apricot and almond. Of course, all this newly available real estate in the dictionary has some new tenants, such lively and vital alternatives as Blackberry, which now replaces the sumptious blackberries that you might pick along a dusty country road. And let us all rejoice that our children now have up-to-date definitions of broadband, MP3 player, voicemail, attachment, database, export, chatroom and cut and paste, in place of those nasty old nature words.

This should of course be read as a sad commentary on the state of our culture, but it also reminds me that language evolves in a much larger context that we are all responsible for creating. If dictionaries no longer function in this role, then let it be our job to help keep this language alive for our children!

Read More......

A Great Book for Naturalists

In my ceaseless search for high-quality natural history books I just ran across a real gem that would be of great interest to naturalists and science teachers. The book is called "Animal Skulls: A Guide to North American Species" by Mark Elbroch (published by Stackpole Books). I own quite a few books on animal bones and skulls but this new title stands out because of how clearly it illustrates the features that distinguish each species' skull, and how clearly it explains the ways that an animal's ecological niche is reflected in the shape of its skull.

One thing you'll love about this book is the stunning quality of its illustrations, the skulls are drawn with such clarity and detail that they look like photographs. The features being discussed are cleanly color-coded and highlighted with precise arrows so that the complex ideas and terminology are easily understood.

I am particularly excited about the countless insights into how the shape of different animal skulls and tooth patterns facilitate their unique lifestyles. For example how bobcats have huge eye sockets but tiny nasal passages because they are visual hunters, while coyotes have small eye sockets and long elaborate nasal passages because scent is an important part of their life.

I also enjoy the way Mark's book lays out the identification of each species' skull, with every distinctive field mark clearly highlighted and explained. Within a day of buying his book I collected a handful of owl pellets at an owl roost and had an extremely satisfying experience teasing out a collection of skulls and jaws and identifying Botta's pocket gophers, California voles, and a ringtail cat. And when I got home I pulled down skulls I have scattered around the house and learned more about skulls in a few hours then I've learned in an entire life of reading about animal bones and skulls. I can't recommend Mark's book highly enough!

Read More......

To Capitalize or Not

I have long wondered who establishes the editorial conventions that shape our writing about the natural world? In particular, I find myself taking issue with the modern convention of lower-casing the proper names of plants and animals. In the popular ornithological literature, which is apparently self-determining, they have no problem upper-casing bird names (but not other plants or animals). However, in every other situation when I've written for publishers, newspaper, and magazine editors they force me to lower-case names, and in my state of fuming about this I figure that they are merely big city editors sitting all day at their desks who have little or no personal connection with the natural world, which means, in my mind, that they have lost a sense of respect for the lives of plants and animals.

My argument has been two-fold: On one hand I feel that it is a great failing to not honor the lives of plants and animals in the same way we implicitly honor anything we give capitalized proper nouns to. Would we upper-case the name of our next-door neighbor but not the name of our neighborhood Western Gray Squirrel for any other reason but simple lack of respect? My other argument is that for purely practical reasons it is ridiculously confusing, as a nature writer, to describe basic plant and animal observations when the elegant modifiers we struggle to come up with and the names of the species run together like mixed-up paint. In other words, where does the "cute but smelly little spotted skunk" end and the "Spotted Skunk" begin? Why don't we simply insist on capitalizing all proper species names, pay the plants and animals a degree of respect, and make our language of the natural world that much clearer?

Read More......

First Migrants: Sierra Nevada foothills

I agree with Tom that it almost felt like spring started today. Here at 3000' on the west slope of the Sierra Nevada, within sight of Yosemite National Park, amid grasslands that are rapidly greening up, the air is buzzing with bits of excitement. Lots of California Tortoiseshell butterflies for the first time this year, a Western Meadowlark giving rusty renditions of its song in a distant grassland, Red-tailed Hawks circling exuberantly to the tops of clouds, and at dusk a chorus of Great Horned Owls. In the evening the Pacific treefrogs at the pond are chorusing so loudly that it's hard to think straight. Within 3 weeks we'll get our first warblers (Orange-crowned Warblers) and from that point on, spring will be in full bloom in the Sierra Nevada!

Read More......

First Migrants

Here in the Central Highlands of Arizona--Ponderosa Pine forest mixed with several species of evergreen oaks, at 5600 feet--the weather just turned spring-warm, inducing rapid melting of the foot+ of snow still lingering from a major winter storm a couple weeks back. Like opening a valve in a pressurized line, suddenly migrants are here. This morning saw the first hummingbirds of the year--amazing ecological gamble for them to be here, when it could just as well have been a snowstorm today--as well as the first butterfly, a Mourning Cloak (predictably our first species, since they overwinter as adults and emerge quickly when it warms up).

So, having just been in New England earlier this week, I find myself thinking of North America as a vast canvas transforming in front of us--at different times, at different rates, of course.

What are your first migrants? When do they appear? Perhaps together we can pay attention to the magic of seasonality here in the north temperate latitudes. Send us your news of springtime.

Read More......

Carolina parakeet, RIP

On this day in 1918, the last Carolina parakeet died in the Cincinatti Zoo. Gone. Extinct. Not just extirpated, but obliterated. Once numerous throughout the eastern half of the U.S., they steadily declined throughout the 19th century due to overhunting and land clearing. Essentially, the narrative of the last days of the Carolina parakeet is the same as that for the more widely known passenger pigeon. And our collective shame at causing it should be just as great.



Image from Wikipedia

How many more species will go extinct, recorded or not, before we make a better peace with the rest of life on Earth?

Read More......

Happy Birthday, Wallace Stegner

Today is the birthday of one of my favorite authors, Wallace Stegner. Born in 1909, Stegner helped create a genre of literary fiction that, while not strictly grounded in natural history, placed its characters in real landscapes that became important parts of the story. From the West (The Big Rock Candy Mountain) to the East (Crossing to Safety), Stegner used landscapes from his own life's experience almost as additional characters in his stories. In a very real sense, he was a true practitioner of natural history through is detailed practice of observation.

Wallace Stegner passed away in 1993. His absence is still felt today.

Read More......

Engaging fully with where you live

As usual, I am behind on my reading, so it was just this past week that I cracked open the Autumn (2008) issue of Living Bird, the truly excellent magazine produced by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Two articles leaped out at me from the issue, in part because they both relate to topics I care deeply about, and in part because I think they intersect with each other in a way that perhaps neither author fully appreciated.



First, in "Straight--No Chaser," Mel White brilliantly advanced the argument that if birders still feel that it is affordable to travel to distant locations simply in search of a rare sighting, then gasoline doesn't cost nearly enough. As he says in the tagline to the article's title, "It's time to reconsider traveling just to add a checkmark to a list."

"I remember one January when a Fork-tailed Flycatcher appeared in central Arkansas, attracting a mini-convention of birders the next morning (I was in attendance) hoping to see this stray from the tropics. Lots of $1.19 gasoline got burned that day, nearly everybody saw the bird--and it meant nothing, except that everyone's state and United States lists (and many world lists) advanced a notch. It wasn't a precursor to range expansion, it wasn't an endangered species, it wasn't part of a significant migration trend. It was just a mentally or physiologically defective individual that flew a long way in the wrong direction. When a severe cold front passed through a couple of days later, it no doubt met its Darwinian fate and became, as somebody said, 'possum food.'"

Amen to that. When the world is confronted with the kind of climate crisis we now face, and when the vast majority of the people in the world are confronting daily challenges in meeting their most basic needs, chasing birds simply for the purpose of expanding one's list at the expense of environmental protection is the height of self-centered arrogance.

I wrote about this briefly in a post last November, when I acknowledged that I no longer maintain lists for birds outside of my county. Think globally, but bird locally. It's the grown-up thing to do, people.

Of course, I leave myself open to the criticism that by even listing in my county I am pumping CO2 needlessly into the atmosphere, to which I can only say mea culpa. But nothing is simply "good" or "bad." I'm willing to compare my county-only carbon footprint to anyone else's state- or nation-wide footprint any day. A time may come when none of us will go anywhere for any reason unless it's under our own power, at which point I will change my goal to a list of birds seen anywhere I can ride my bike to. But we all have to start somewhere, or at least we all SHOULD start somewhere. Leaving behind the selfishness of natural history jet-setting for no good reason is a good place to start.

White's piece was followed by Jack Conner's In the Field column, called "The Accidental Phenologists," in which he counselled natural historians to pay attention to the actual timing of events, and hence seasons, where we live. We might come to notice that we don't experience the four traditional seasons but rather something more like two ... or twelve ... or fifty-two. For years now I have berated my students for not paying closer attention to the actual rhythms of the natural world, rhythms that change tempo and melody through the year and can only be discerned through careful, purposeful attention to what is real (a close approximation of how Tom Fleischner encourages us to view the practice of natural history).

Several years ago, I began experimenting with different ways of subdividing the year based on my field observations. To be honest, I've yet to come up with a single scheme that I think is clearly superior to all the others. Some of my schemes focus on what the birds are doing (e.g., The Week the Phoebe's start singing), some on the trees (e.g., Leaf Out), some on the weather (e.g., When the Ice Breaks), and some on ad hoc combinations of all three. But for me, finding the superior scheme has not been the point. My goal has been to focus on nature's patterns; paying attention to what is going on where I live ... even down to the most minute details that wouldn't merit notice in a field journal under most circumstances ... is its own reward.

And here's where the two articles intersect. Think globally, but bird (or whatever) locally. It is only by foregoing the chase for the rarities and oddities that you can truly get to know a place. Intimacy can only come from familiarity, which can only come from attention to detail and full engagement with where you live. If you can't even describe the TRUE nature of the seasons where you live, then it's time to scale back your territory and open your eyes.

Read More......

Teaching Natural History and the Spirit of Place

Fred Taylor and John Tallmadge have a new article in the Journal of Natural History Education on Teaching Natural History and the Spirit of Place. Using the field-based graduate seminar they teach as a case study, they explore the opportunities and rewards of teaching course to non-specialists that combines a literary and scientific perspective on what it means to understand and inhabit a place.

From their abstract ...

This paper describes the design and conduct of an interdisciplinary doctoral seminar on the spirit of place offered in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area of Minnesota to adult learners of the Union Institute Graduate School. Natural and human history were addressed through readings and class discussions combined with observations and excursions by canoe, simulating the experiences of early explorer-naturalists. Exercises in narrative and descriptive writing as well as reading the landscape and splitting the spruce roots used for bark canoe repair provided visceral appreciation of the unseen dimensions of the ecosystem and the literary achievements of the poets and writers discussed. This type of course can be easily tailored to fit different venues or clientele. Such approaches are timely as we intensify the search for a sustainable world.

Check it out.

Read More......

Wildlife of the World

I just finished writing a book on the top 200 places to see wildlife in the world and the experience of researching the world's wildlife was eye-opening and sobering. It goes without saying that were many horror stories, but there were also many surprises that I didn't expect. There are literally hundreds of national parks and nature reserves in the world that have never been written about, receive no publicity, have no presence on the web, and are virtually unvisited by travellers. Some of these places are vast, unspoiled, unmapped, unsurveyed landscapes that boggle the imagination. Many have only been recently set aside and their fate hangs on a thread to the extent that their national governments are willing to set them aside for now, but if tourists don't start showing up the parks will be converted into logging or mining operations to generate profits.

It was also quite a surprise to learn that the entire concept of a "national park" is so culturally dependent. "Parks" in different parts of the world can be entirely off-limits to visitors, they can be crowded with villages and roads, and they frequently lack infrastructure and budgets of any kind. It was also surprising to realize how desperately different parks need a basic web presence to help generate publicity. Some parks have web sites but the English and information presented was so garbled as to be indecipherable. Many web sites and park descriptions have no concept of what a visitor would want to know when planning a visit, and I would love to see folks help some of these vitally important parks present themselves to the world.

My book was about the best places to see amazing wildlife and I was heartened to discover that there are still some astounding pockets of intact wildlife around the world, sometimes in places that are generally overlooked. However, in nearly every case wildlife populations around the world are more hemmed in and threatened that anyone realizes because we don't often look at the "big picture." We frequently read about individual crises and threats, but we rarely sum up all the pieces and look at how the "whole" is incredibly threatened. This is a story that needs to get out!!!

Read More......

You are here

The Global Environmental Monitoring unit of the European Commission has hust published a nifty, if somewhat despressing, map of the travel time to major cities, which they use as a surrogate measure of "accessibility." Even without seeing the map you can probably guess what the U.S. looks like: mostly bright yellow, which symbolizes travel times of one hour or less.

While accessibility itself is not necessarily a problem, the ways in which we achieve accessibility in this current era are. Road networks, in particular, are a disaster for the natural world, causing problems for wild nature in ways ranging from chemical contamination, spread of exotic species, habitat fragmentation, habitat loss, and outright mortality from contruction and roadkill.

Hopefully, the future will bring modes of transportation that don't jeopardize the natural world or destroy the presence of wild nature. Hey, it's a new political era in the U.S.; I can dream, can't I?

Read More......

Myth 4: My story is only worth telling if I describe everything I do in my entire class.

[This post is the continuation of a thread begun on 12/15]

Wrong. The more you try to describe with your story, the more complex it becomes and the harder it is for someone to learn from it. I realize that effective teachers usually plan classes as complete and distinct constructions, where exercises and field trips connect logically one to the other to support overarching themes and standards. Yet this does not mean that the component parts of the class are not useful or important on their own. Other teachers could easily incorporate a single new exercise into their own class construction to support their own educational goals.

I experience this regularly in my own school. I am blessed with colleagues who teach classes on other taxa and with other conceptual emphases than I do, yet who share my interest in natural history. We commonly talk with each other about what we do with the students in lecture, field, and lab, and more often than not, we each find aspects of what the others do that we want to incorporate into our own class. This does not change the taxa we focus on or the concepts we emphasize, but it provides for steady improvement in the quality and effectiveness of our instruction, whether it is something as simple as how to keep a field notebook or as complex as how to introduce students to a statistical technique for interpreting behavioral observations in the field.

The truth is that you make more of a contribution, not less, if you focus your story on one simple thing: an exercise, an activity, a discussion, a technique, a field trip. Here the dictum “Minor est magis” (Less is more) is relevant: tell a detailed story about one thing. The fact that you have many such stories to tell simply means that you can write several different articles; it does not mean that you need to find a way to compress all your stories into one.

Read More......

Myth 3: I should only write my story if I am sure that what I do is unique and significant

[This post is the continuation of a thread begun on 12/15]

Myth 3: I should only write my story if I am sure that what I do is unique and significant.

Wrong. I suspect this myth is ingrained in us from the body of publications that we are used to reading in the course of our research on new findings in education and natural history. Although we may accept that a core principle of the scientific method is that results must be repeatable – and hence saying something that has already been said is a key part of science – we typically do not see publication of such results. This has unfortunately led us to believe the same is true of for all publications, or even that it is desirable for all publications.

But this is not the case. For a renaissance in natural history to occur, we need to foster an explosion in the prevalence of natural history education in classrooms and community nature centers everywhere. Publications in this journal are not simply about novel ideas. They are about your practices: what did you try, what worked, what failed, what would you do differently? And there is value to reporting on activities that others have reported on … or even reporting on activities about which you have no idea whether or not they are novel. If someone reads about your practices and says, “Well, will you look at that. That’s the same exercise I heard about elsewhere,” then they are more likely to remember it and be empowered to try it. The truth is that your story is worth telling simply because it is your story, regardless of how unique it is.

Read More......

Unlikely birding: I-5 in California's Central Valley

If you happen to find yourself in California’s central valley around Lodi, say traveling the state on I-5 anytime between November and February, don’t despair! Grab those binoculars off the front seat and pull over near the Isenberg Sandhill Crane Reserve around dusk, and wait for a spectacular show.

After a couple of articles in the San Francisco Chronicle caught my Dad’s eye my folks and I went on a special trek just to see the birds’ nightly return to roost. It’s absolutely worth the trip, especially if there is good weather (no fog). There are guided tours, with special access to a blind, but once you’ve had a chance to hear about the cranes from the friendly naturalists, you can certainly find some great spots to view them on your own.

It’s a beautiful and heartening show, right there in the middle of a landscape that is, at least for me, sometimes hard to reconcile. Strand after strand, these huge birds come in from every direction as the dusty brown air turns pink, and until all you hear is their honky calls in the wet fields.

The California Department of Fish & Game's site is really helpful if you're thinking of visiting.

Read More......

Bush's nod to the Micronesian megapode

I'm not actually sure what to think of all of this, but here are a few good sources of info on the three new marine monuments.
The NPR story, which I think has the most interest for natural historians.

The NY Times article.

A NY Times Opinion piece.

An LA Times article, with nice accompanying extras.

And, the Huffington Post's article.

Read More......

Earthrise, forty years later

If you've got a moment for this quick little BBC Radio snippet, it's a nice little perspective piece on this historic photograph. Forty years ago humans got to see the first view of earth "rising" as taken from Apollo 8. It is said that this photograph has changed people's perspective on earth more than any other.

It's a great reminder of how powerful images can be, and another great reason why getting outside to see, and learn about, our planet is so important.

Read More......

Natural History in unexpected places

I love finding bits of natural history in unexpected places. Today’s was in the book I’m currently reading, Cold Mountain, by Charles Frazier. It’s an American Civil War book set in the Southern Blue Ridge Mountains.

There is a great character, Ruby, who is in-tune with the natural history of the area, and she is teaching Ada, once a city girl, what she knows. Just a few pages earlier I was skimming through violent wartime details, and then to my surprise I was glued to the description in the passage that follows, which takes place on the west fork of the Pigeon River.

..........................................................................................................

They had not walked far above the fork when Ruby stopped and squared her body to the water, sighting on something in it as if to take range. She sank down in her knees just a notch, like a fighter lowering his center of gravity to compose himself for attack. She said, Well look there. That’s not a common sight.

Off in the river stood a great blue heron. It was a tall bird to begin with, but something about the angle from which they viewed it and the cast of low sun made it seem even taller. It looked high as a man in the slant light with its long shadow blown out across the water. Its legs and the tips of its wings were black as the river. The beak of it was black on top and yellow underneath, and the light shone off it with muted sheen as from satin or chipped flint. The heron stared down into the water with fierce concentration. At wide intervals it took delicate slow steps, lifting a foot from out the water and pausing, as if waiting for it to quit dripping, and then placing it back on the river bottom in a new spot apparently chosen only after deep reflection.

Ruby said, He’s looking for a frog or a fish.

But his staring so heedfully into the water reminded Ada of Narcissus, and to further their continuing studies of the Greeks, she told Ruby a brief version of the tale.

­—That bird’s not thinking about himself at all, Ruby said, when Ada had finished the story. Look at the beak on him. Stab wounds; that’s his main nature. He’s thinking about what other thing he can stab and eat.

The stepped slowly toward the river edge and the heron turned to look at them with some interest. He made tiny precise adjustments of his narrow head as if having trouble sighting around his blade of beak. His eyes seemed to Ada to be searching for her merits and coming up short.

—What are you doing up here? She said aloud to the heron. But she knew by the look of him that his nature was anchorite and mystic. Like all of his kinds, he was a solitary pilgrim, strange in his ways and governed by no policy or creed common to flocking birds. Ada wondered that herons could tolerate each other close enough to breed. She had seen a scant number in her life, and those so lonesome as to make the heart sting on their behalf. Exile birds. Everywhere they were seemed far from home.

The heron walked toward them to the river edge and stood on a welt of mud. He was not ten feet away. He tipped his head a notch off level, raised a back leg, scales as big as fingernails, the foot held just off the ground. Ada stared down at the strange footprint in the mud. When she looked up, the bird was staring at her as at someone met long ago, dimly registered in memory.

Then the heron slowly opened its wings. The process was carried out as if it were a matter of hinges and levers, cranks and pulleys. All the long bones under feather and skin were much in evidence. When it was done the wings were so broad that Ada could not imagine how it would get out among the trees. The bird took a step toward Ada, lifted itself from the ground, and with only a slow beat or two of the immense wings soared just above her head and up and away through the forest canopy.

..........................................................................................................

Not only is this such a great description of a great blue, but it weaves many pieces of the story together, and gives perspective on life in wartime all at once. There are countless examples of times and places where natural history weaves itself into the arts … where are you seeing it today?

Read More......

Goals for the year

One of the things I've learned about myself over the long years is that I have to have goals. The vague notion, which I develop around this time every year, that I need to do "more" of something or get "better" at something never quite seems to transform into real action. To get from notion to reality I need to set real targets for myself.

I was finally able to articulate this after talking with my partner the other day during our numerous trips up a mountain in a ski lift. "We should ski more this winter," she says. "I agree," I reply. "Let's ski more."

Yeah, ok. Let's ski more, bird more, climb more mountains, finally learn those wetland trees, and look for beetles in some different places. (Not to mention lose a few pounds and knock some time off my 5K.)

But, as I said, I need goals if it's really going to happen. Maybe that's a manifestation of my obsessive-compulsive tendencies. But whatever it is, I realize now that I need to set specific targets if I'm really going to take it seriously. So I spent the rest of yesterday thinking about my goals for the year.

See 160 species of birds in my county. Check.
Climb 10 summits in the Green Mountains that I haven't climbed before. Check.
Read 5 natural history accounts that I haven't read before. Check.

And finally, complete my book on ecoregional-scale conservation planning. Double check.

I'll let you know how it goes.

So ... what about you? Got goals?

Read More......