a wilderness journal

Broken Top with the southern-most of the Green Lakes in the foreground. Last week we took the kids on their first backpacking trip to t...

This post is the final of 3 about my trip in early July to the Olympic Peninsula and Whidbey Island . Heading out of Bowman Bay in ...

This post continues the narrative of my trip in early July to the Olympic Peninsula and Whidbey Island. Our second night on the Olympic p...

The Hamma Hama River with the Mt. Skokomish wilderness in the distance. After a few years living in the Pacific Northwest, I finall...

There is a great hike in the vicinity of Iron Mountain in the Willamette National Forest. I first visited last year about this time with a g...

Diamond Peak, at 8744 ft, crowns the western half of the Diamond Peak Wilderness in the Willamette and Deschutes National Forests in centra...

Some flowers today from Finley National Wildlife Refuge in the Willamette Valley: Iris were common on an eastern-facing hillside at the...

My current research centers on climate change impacts to tidal wetlands such as salt marshes in the Pacific Northwest. I also worked in thes...

Calochortus luteus  from Santa Cruz Island, CA, 2012. One of my favorite groups of flowers is the genus Calochortus in the lily family (...

One of the educational highlights of my life occurred during my senior year (late 1998) as an undergraduate at UC Santa Cruz. I enrolled in ...

The sea palm, a rocky intertidal kelp found along western North American shores is one of the most distinctive seaweeds in the world. In sh...

I went to northern California this week for a retreat of sorts and didn’t plan to have a nature adventure. However, by northern California t...

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...