Aug 29, 20238 min read
How One Park’s Ecosystem — and Maybe its Legacy — Is Eroding Away
Once, while I was in college, I heard a talk on finding your purpose in life. This was during a Christian campus ministry meeting in an...
Aug 17, 202215 min read
Walking, and Thoughts Along The Way
In the 2010 indie film The Way, the actor Emilio Estevez says to the actor Martin Sheen, who’s both Estevez’s on-screen and real-life...
May 20, 20229 min read
I'm Going This Way
With both hands, my nine-year-old grabs hold of an exposed hemlock root and then kicks his sports-sandaled left foot up to a round, wet...
Dec 19, 20213 min read
Mending the Terrible Mess We Make of Things
Oh, if we were all given $7.7 million and an army of engineers to mend the terrible mess we make of things. That’s what repaired Nine...
Jul 31, 20214 min read
Rain Falls
It’s never quieter in my Pittsburgh neighborhood than after a summer morning thunderstorm, when moments move in dribs and drabs ...
Sep 26, 202012 min read
The Girls
A family welcomes an urban chicken foursome to their new home, a pretty fly A-frame chicken tractor … (Originally appeared in Blue Earth...
Sep 3, 20192 min read
Serial Spaces
Last year, without much forethought, I began taking photographs from a particular spot in a plaza that I regularly visit, capturing...
Jul 18, 20191 min read
Eat This One, Not That
"This is the chanterelle mushroom.” A wide-eyed, blond-haired man with dual black earplugs flashes two handfuls of orange fungi before...
Aug 17, 20183 min read
'Preciating the Pocket Park
Admittedly, I don’t usually care much for monocrops of flowers lining city sidewalks - all those begonias, marigolds, and African violets...
Jul 2, 20183 min read
Graveyard Perspectives: The second of three cemetery excursions
In two days, in two different Pittsburgh cemeteries, I saw two northern flickers. The only ground-feeding woodpecker, northern flickers...
Jun 18, 20184 min read
Finding Nature in Cities of the Dead: The first in a series of cemetery excursions
I’ve been walking cemeteries of late. Harried life has got me reflecting on the death of things, and, coincidentally or not, I’ve found...
Jun 1, 20182 min read
The Environmental Justice Ecosystem
Aaron Mair, president of the Sierra Club, stated the following in an interview with Sojourners magazine. He was discussing the broader...
May 27, 20181 min read
Creating to Cope
I made an elm leaf recently. In my study. Well, admittedly, I can't actually make elm leaves. But I did draw one, on my study wall. In...
May 15, 20182 min read
City Soundscapes
In the city, I hear idling engines and revving engines, yelling and laughter as people pass by on the sidewalk, construction crews and...
Mar 4, 20182 min read
Life Together
Apparently, geese can produce up to 1.5 pounds of dung every day, going an average of every seven minutes while feeding ...
Sep 15, 20174 min read
Birding Beginnings: Field notes on birds spotted around Eau Claire, Wisconsin
A list of birds I saw and was able to identify, mostly within a single acre of bird-watching terrain ...
Aug 15, 20171 min read
Biophilic Cities
Imagine a "natureful" city that, rather than repelling nature, actually attracts more abundant biodiversity ...
Nov 15, 20161 min read
Adding to the Life List
I pedal through a billow of white feathers drifting like avian tumbleweeds, bobbing, one small bound at a time ...
Oct 15, 20164 min read
Urban Wild
I’d just finished telling my neighbor, Ben, about a doe that had bounded into our fenced front yard the other morning ...
May 11, 20163 min read
When Neighborhoods Are Like Wonder Bread
On bread and gentrification: The more enriched social classes snatch up the “natural” loaves, leaving the spongy, sugary bread to others ...