November 2008, I sat in Sacrament Service between my two ambulatory children, daughter aged eleven years, son aged eighteen. As the program moved into the blessing and passing of the Sacrament, my mind began its shift from observation to meditation.
Movement atop the empty pew just ahead drew my eye. A beetle about a quarter of an [...]
The Salt Lake Tribune reports an annual event to document magnitudes of light pollution across the planet. This project invites public participation.
Every year, Globe at Night asks teachers and students, parents and their children, and stargazers located internationally to observe the constellation Orion, specifically his belt. The website linked above provides all the tools and information needed, although people [...]
Wyman Meinzer. Coyote. Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 1995. 128 pages. Cloth: $19.95; ISBN 0-89672-353-4.
Coyote is classified as a “pictorial work,” a coffee-table book. Of its 128 pages, only the first 44 contain text; captioned, gorgeous photos of coyotes that the author took himself during his many years of coyote research fill out the book’s bulk.
The textual material of [...]
One of the reasons I moved from Utah County to San Juan County was to provide my oldest son and youngest daughter greater exposure to nature. Household circumstances have resulted in their being confined to the house more than is natural for children in general but is even more unnatural for children of an outdoors-type [...]
First published at A Motley Vision, this essay explores the nature of stewardship by wondering if we understand what stewardship is or if we’ve merely assumed that we understand. Are we fully conscious of the needs of other creatures, as good stewards ought to be? Are we imaginative enough to visualize the possibilities of faithful stewardship, which may include providing other [...]
Posts in this series are semi-polished exerpts from the pocket-sized hiking journal I carry when I go out walking in local canyons, etc. If something interesting happens or a bolt from the blue strikes, I pull out the old journal and get down the basics. I’ve left Field Notes elsewhere around the bloggernacle, such as here and here, but I thought that for Wilderness Interface Zone and [...]
This brief, light treatment of possibilities for the LDS nature writer is excerpted from my unpublished paper “Why Joseph Went to the Woods: Rootstock for LDS Literary Nature Writers,” presented at the 2008 Association for Mormon Letters Annual Conference. This paper arose out of blog posts at A Motley Vision and Times and Seasons.
Perhaps one [...]