a wilderness journal

The giant redwood of the western US is among the largest organisms on Earth. It is one of fascinating group of conifers and is the tallest t...

Letharia columbiana from California. Winter in the Pacific Northwest is the season for lichens. Deciduous trees have lost their foliage...

I visited two new Oregon wilderness areas this month, both situated on the western slopes of the Cascades. The sites were similar in terrain...

The three snow-capped peaks of Sisters, each rising to over 10,000 ft, sit right in the middle of the Oregon Cascades. To the north are ...

Over the last month, I made two trips to Finley National Wildlife Monument in the southern Willamette Valley and two to the Cascades in cent...

The Cascades and Sierras are like a string of pearls lying from north to south along the western edge of the United States : Mt. St. Helen...

Salmon River Estuary near Lincoln City Netarts Bay near Tillamook

There is a small freshwater wetland adjacent to our new apartment in Corvallis. A very shallow creek and pool is vegetated with large hummoc...

We’ll soon be leaving the coast for the Willamette Valley, so I took a short trip this morning to Ona Beach, where Beaver Creek meets the Pa...

Crater Lake is the only national park in Oregon, but it is a gem, and it is surrounded by a number of other beautiful places in the southe...

I’ve been in coastal Oregon long enough to get very accustomed to mild temperatures, lots of rain and green everywhere.  But during the late...

The O’Shaughnessy Dam, designed to provide water for the city of San Francisco, was in place by 1923 to drown the Hetch Hetchy Valley.  Befo...

It has been a La Niña year, so winters in the northwest can be accompanied by higher than average precipitation . ENSO-linked precipitation ...