Heading south on Kansas Route 177, Saturday February 10, 2018, we approached Council Grove (38 miles south of Manhattan). The cut-metal Conestoga wagon, oxen team, and rider on horseback greeted us atop a rise on the east side of the roadway. Late that afternoon, having looped south to Cassoday, another 40 miles or so, we […]
I’ve completed two Wednesdays of my six-week series at both LearningQUEST, an informal, membership-based continuing education program for “adults of all ages” here in Huntsville, Alabama. My topic is Nature’s Wisdom — Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading. Approximately 40 members signed up for the series. Attendance has average 25-30. Most, like me, are retired or semi-retired. […]
Tallgrass prairie once covered a third of the continental US — 170 million acres, reduced now by 96 percent. Most of the remaining large-tract acreage lies in Kansas’s Flint Hills. Konza Prairie Biological Station covers a little less than 14 square miles. We hiked there Sunday February 11, 2018. After Saturday’s below zero windchill at […]
We’ve heard many times the old adage that we must play the hand we’re dealt. Because we’ve made 13 interstate moves over our married years, we’re often asked, “Which place did you like best?” We have a stock answer, one we earnestly believe and have little trouble answering: “We have always preferred the place where […]
I write these words and reflections on a damp Saturday afternoon (February 17, 2018). Yesterday’s dawn temperature, a balmy 65 degrees, yielded to showery and drizzly upper-40s by noon, courtesy of a cold frontal passage. This morning the front backed our way with more light rain and drizzle, dragged northward by a strengthening low pressure […]
I wrote recently that Judy and I took grandsons Jack and Sam to the nearby Beaverdam Swamp trail at Joe Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge January 31. See my Dormant Season Beauty blog post. We four enjoyed ourselves walking, talking, and observing. Beyond what I previously reported, we all found fascination in the battle underway between […]
My keynote address to the annual meting (Conservation Delivery in Changing Times) of Kansas Natural Resource Professionals focused on Applying Nature’s Wisdom and Inspiration to Conservation Delivery. Three hundred seventy-five registrants set a new attendance record for the annual gathering, this the 11th. What a great concept in drawing together professionals dealing with forests, range-land, […]
One arm of the Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge extends north from the Tennessee River to I-565, just three miles from our daughter Katy’s home. January 31, Judy and I retrieved local grandsons Jack and Sam from their respective schools to hike the two-mile round trip at Beaverdam Swamp, returning them to Katy’s as dusk settled. […]
My six-month Fairmont State University adventure behind me, I am engaging Great Blue Heron here in the Huntsville area. In a public service spirit, I will deliver a six-week lecture series on Nature’s Wisdom through LearningQUEST (http://lquest.org/). My course offers participants a taste of Nature’s Wisdom through the eyes, heart, soul, and spirit of this […]
Just when I think I know a little something, I find evidence that I have discerned nothing new. A half-a-millennium ago, Leonardo da Vinci saw the invisible and brought it to life in art and writing. He saw magic, wonder, and truth in Nature: “Simplistically is the ultimate sophistication” “In her (nature’s) inventions nothing is […]