An Imagination (short story)

Here's something a little different: a fiction story! I wrote this during our Semester in the West writing workshop with author Ann Walka. She instructed us to write a story based on the place we were in, Comb Ridge, a magnificent geological formation near Bluff, Utah.Sadly,...

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Reptiles and Amphibians of the Intermountain West

Hello from Comb Ridge, Utah. I'm travelling through the Intermountain West -- the arid lands of America between the Cascades and the Rockies -- on a Whitman College program called Semester in the West. There are oodles of things to write about, but let's begin with the...

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A Wild Volvox

Seldom does a day pass when I fail to learn something new from the guests on my tour. Today, a pair of freshwater ecologists from Chicago taught me about the life of Lost and Found Lake.A dragonfly's-eye view of Lost and Found Lake.Our dragonflies live four to five years as...

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The Dismemberment of an Eight-Legged Giant

Our Alaskan ocean, with its cold year-round temperatures and high oxygen content, is home to some of the largest creatures in the world. One enormous mollusk happens to be as intelligent as she is large, and she's all the more intriguing for her eight arms, hundreds of suction...

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Something's Not Right With This Ptarmigan!

Laura and I bounded through ferns and devil's club. We were running our daily loop of the Lost and Found Lake Trail, bear spray in hand, singing bear songs, trying to break our record of 19 minutes.Laura rounded the bend near the spruce-bark-beetle clearing and stopped dead...

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