I can’t get out of my mind the image of two men in wool sweaters, each with a giant cod slung over their shoulder, walking across a snowy Norwegian mountainside in a late winter storm. The image was placed there by my friend Erik’s kindly mother. She had just served lunch to us in her …
The Nurse Log
Mason Voehl is a climber, a writer, a philosopher, and an outdoor educator. He recently completed a graduate degree in environmental philosophy at the University of Montana and lives now in the Black hills of South Dakota. Here he writes about an experience as an instructor on a Wild Rockies Field Institute course when the forest floor suddenly …
History, Wonder, and Care in the Canadian Rockies, by Charles B. Hayes
Charles B. Hayes is a philosopher, naturalist, poet, and outdoorsman. He spent the summer of 2019 with the Mountain Legacy Project helping to reproduce photos taken in the Canadian Rockies a century ago. This comparative record provides an invaluable data set for tracking climate change and human use of the landscape. Charles' reflections on map-making …
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An Owl with a Parachute
I never knew a northern spotted owl could parachute vertically through the forest. This delightful image came from a researcher who spent eight years studying the owls in the Oregon Cascades. He had personally witnessed a descent and could hardly contain his excitement when he told us about it. To find the reticent Strix for …
Why Montana’s Not That Different
Jetlag gets you up early. On the first day back from a trip to Europe, I found myself alert in bed at 5.30 a.m. wondering how exactly I was going to fill the time till breakfast. A casual jog around the neighborhood would not normally be my first choice but it felt like a good …
When People, Dogs, and Fungi Form an Inseparable Whole
This was the third time I had witnessed Andrea, the gruff Italian woodsman and truffle hunter, working closely with his dog Zara. Zara is a short-haired pointer, an awkward-looking blend of floppy ears, long legs, and bountiful canine energy who just happens to be excellent at sniffing out the black truffles that lie beneath the …
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Christopher J. Preston 