Nature
Nature
Nature
Invasion of the Bark Beetle
Trees along the West Coast and in the Rocky Mountains face a foe that is killing them by the millions and yet stands only millimeters tall. Bark beetles have affected tens of millions of acres of forest and show no sign of slowing down. Past outbreaks from these beetles have been brief and controlled by
Consider the Beetle
Ladies and gentlemen, may I present the unsung beetle. We share the planet with over 400,000 species of beetles. (For perspective, there are only 50,000 animals with backbones: fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals combined.) In fact, according to Berkeley entomologist Jerry Powell, beetles make up “almost 25% of all known life-forms.” How many kinds
Permaculture: A Necessary Environmental Design
Permaculture is a lifestyle that encompasses ethics and design in order to mimic the relationships seen in nature. The goal is to view every environment as one part of the whole world. Rather than being consumers, the focus is on becoming “responsible producers” of biodiversity and returning any unused goods to the ground. Permaculture aims
Legends of the Stars: Aborigine Astronomy
To see and understand the law. Aborigines abide by a cosmological understanding of the universe that is deeply tied to legends of ancestral beings of the Dreaming. Their lives center on understanding and respecting these forces, persisting through the tradition of passing down knowledge from generation to generation through various forms of art and storytelling
The Bat in Us
Only a handful of species address each other individually. For instance, there’s some evidence that bottlenose dolphins use learned vocal behavior to call each other by name. They become acquainted with signature whistle sounds from birth and associate these sounds with identity. Linking particular sounds to identity is an ability inherent to human language. Of
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Novels and Collected Works
Vacant Lots: A Butterfly Hunter Considers the Sacred
The simplest definition of “sacred” in the Oxford English Dictionary has always seemed to me to be “set apart,” and that’s probably why I’ve never felt very happy with the word. I’ve never much liked the idea of things being “set apart.” Somehow, in my staunchly Republican family, I acquired a stubborn egalitarianism. But I
Be Careful of Little Lives
Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider her ways and be wise: Which, having no chief, overseer, or ruler, Provideth her meat in the summer, [and] gathereth her food in the harvest. –Proverbs 6:6-6:8 Scripture praises ants, children are mesmerized by them, and yet ants in the garden are so commonplace as to be easily
Ode to the Great Black Swamp
The classroom rug was a little crusty, stamped with squared-off primary colors. At its far end, the beautiful Miss Chantry sat cross-legged in white stockings and a plaid wool miniskirt, while the rest of us sat “Indian style” upon the rug before her. From a stack of old favorites, she selected a crisp, clean book
Recycling a Well-Tended Garden
Recycling a Well-Tended Garden She side-bends and stoops after decades of puttering limber-up work-in-dirt yoga, knee bends to growing graces. Her garden sprawls on its back, open palms to June sun, humming a hover and rest like the blue darner. Her fingers spread compost, sifting the strumming of vegetable patches into mantras – mantras learned
Mongolian Shamanism: A Return to the Beyond
The revival of an ancient religion has taken Mongolia by storm. Decades of oppression and religious conversions could not stop Mongolia’s first religion, Shamanism, from surviving. The hundreds of years of Chinese influence over Mongolia before the turn of the 20th century brought in heavy pressure for the region to convert to Buddhism. A majority of