The Emergency Response Station under construction in my rural community will be equipped with both ambulances and fire trucks. This is a huge benefit to our very rural community in the western mountains of Virginia. It will cut the time for help to reach someone sick or injured by hours, at a time when every minute can count. The Chimney Rock Chronicle is our local monthly newspaper, and I’m happy to be an occasional writer for it.
To […]
“60th Anniversary: Brocks Gap Dam Proposal Lambasted!” is the true story of how a small rural community stopped a huge government agency, the Army Corp of Engineers, from drowning hundreds of homes and farms under a massive lake meant to dilute urban pollution as far downstream as Washington, D.C. Published in the September, 2023 issue of The Chimney Rock Chronicle. I did much of the research for this story in 2008, when, as a member of the Fulks Run Ruritan […]
Published in the Chimney Rock Chronicle, Volume 5, Issue 6, July 2023.
Everybody knows that money doesn’t grow on trees, but did you know money can grow inside them? In a sign of the times, forest landowners have a new revenue source: trees left to grow ever bigger and older. Trees are the best technology yet discovered for pulling carbon dioxide (CO2), the major greenhouse gas, out of the air. Leaves break it down during photosynthesis […]
“Forest Forensics” was first published in October of 2019 in Blue Ridge Outdoors Online then republished in Rewilding Earth in February 2020.
“There are no bodies, no police tape, no cluster of curious onlookers. Yet there is plenty of evidence of a historic ecological crime: the deforestation of the eastern United States and consequent massive loss of topsoil. It began slowly at Jamestown and culminated quickly just a century ago in the Appalachian Mountains. Archives document the destruction of virtually […]
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“Seeing the Forest for the Carbon” was published in Virginia Wildlife Magazine, March/April 2018. It won a prize in the 2019 Virginia Outdoor Writers Assn. Excellence in Craft Contest.
“Old growth is critical for biodiversity from amphibians and aquatic organisms, to entire suites of terrestrial species.”
– J.D. Kleopfer
“Like most small woodland owners, according to the National Woodland Owners Survey, I love the scenic beauty and the wildlife of […]
An identity crisis at my age? “Becoming Appalachian” was first published in the Winter/Spring, 2011, issue of Appalachian Journal, then reprinted with photos in poet and naturalist Dave Bonta’s Blog, via negativa, July 2011.
“The Fall, 2010 issue of Appalachian Journal, which focused on regional identity, hit me where it hurts: in my self-proclaimed, hardly-won, and wholly un-censused identity as Appalachian. Because nowhere in seventy pages of scholarly […]
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“A Bend in the River” was published in Madison, The Magazine of James Madison University, summer 2007.
“In May 2003, several JMU professors and students formed the core of the first annual expedition known as The Shenandoah Sojourn. ‘It was an attempt to build a community around water,’ says Tom Benzing, professor of environmental toxicology in JMU’s integrated science and technology department, and the science leader of what was […]
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“Contemplating a Cougar Comeback: a Bioregional Venture into Carnivore Country” was published in Orion Afield, winter 2000-01.
“‘So THE MORAL OF THE STORY,’ said wildlife tracking instructor Susan Morse, ‘is always save some of your shit.’ We clustered around her to gaze at the item under discussion, which looked like a hairy Tootsie Roll. White petals of wild cherry blossoms flurried around us. Despite the mid-April date of this tracking […]
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“Daniel Boone Slept Here” was published in Sierra Magazine, January/February 2000.
“Legend has it that Daniel Boone was asked if he had ever been lost during his decades of exploring uncharted wilderness. ‘No,’ replied America’s quintessential pioneer, ‘but I was plumb bewildered for a few days once.’ It could easily have been in Kentucky’s Red River Gorge. A dendritic maze of red sandstone canyons, the gorge would look like […]
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“In Search of Your Own Private Idaho” was published in the New York Times, August 21, 1994.
DEFENDING our territory – a firneedle-strewn campsite near a lake – wasn’t what my husband and I had in mind for our trip last August to the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness in Idaho, at 2.4 million acres the largest chunk of protected wild land in the contiguous United States. […]
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“The Great Forest” was published in the Wilderness Magazine, spring 1994.
“Rage is not the politically correct emotion to feel in an old growth forest. Awe, veneration, respect, humility, these are expected. But I want to pummel the furrowed bark with my fists, stamp my feet on the moldy ground, scream into the dappling canopy. I want to weep. The thought of the forests lost, […]
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“A Yukon Fish Camp for Visitors” was published in the The New York Times, August 29, 1993.
“MY husband, Ralph, and I were on the banks of the Yukon River 1,500 miles from its source in Canada and 800 miles from its mouth at the Bering Sea. Surrounding us were hundreds of fish hanging on drying racks scattered through a thin grove of cottonwood trees. The filleted flesh lapped […]
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“Concepts of Cougar” was published in the Wilderness Magazine, summer 1991.
“In the beginning was the lion. Images of leonine power are as ancient as the first scratchings on cave walls and as ambiguous as the Sphinx. Lions roam through the Bible, emissaries sometimes of God, sometimes of the Devil. From Aristotle’s attempts at empirical description to the fanciful symbolism of medieval bestiarists, the lion […]