How nature supports, informs, and inspires our lives
I climbed the switchback trail up to the ridge at Southwest Nature Preserve yesterday, and it felt a little different. The high temperature was still in the 90s and there were no clouds to deflect a little of the sun’s radiant warmth, but there… Continue Reading “Is It Autumn Yet?”
At the end of 2019, I wanted to write a book about practicing mindfulness in nature. I wanted to describe what it was like to let go of the background noise and pay attention fully to the present moment, while exploring the woods, the… Continue Reading “A Few More Destinations”
June 16, 2021 The day-long drive set the stage for our arrival in the Big Bend country. The land became flatter and more arid, and the stretches between towns lengthened. We began to see dust devils spinning across short distances among the mesquite and… Continue Reading “The Road to the Big Bend”
Avoiding Encounters and Enjoying Them When They Do Occur (I wrote this for The Post Oak, newsletter of the Arlington Conservation Council. It appeared in the June, 2021 issue.) It is spring, and now we’ve had rain, and so the abundance of life is… Continue Reading “Our Venomous Snakes”
We were driving west, toward a respite from the city, a quiet refuge out in the Rolling Plains. That part of Texas shows us how much beauty there is in openness and how much richness and life can be contained in a sparse landscape.… Continue Reading “Grief and Hope on the Rolling Plains”
(A writing experiment, with country cemeteries, beautiful prairie, a copperhead, and distant storms. On this visit to the grasslands, I did not take a camera. I intended to experience it without trying to “capture” it in images, although I did have my phone so… Continue Reading “At LBJ Grasslands, the evening of May 27”
May 23rd is World Turtle Day, an opportunity to celebrate those animals that found a good plan and stuck with it for over 200 million years. The earliest turtles developed a protective shell and then rearranged their bodies to be able to swim, walk, and… Continue Reading “World Turtle Day at LLELA”
For some time I have been focused on travel and writing for the planned book on mindfulness in Texas nature. Part of those plans involved visiting the Big Thicket, and that was a highlight on my calendar. Meghan and I spent a weekend in… Continue Reading “Back to the Thicket”
Meghan Cassidy and I traveled to the upper Texas coast the weekend of March 6, working on the book project about mindfulness in nature in Texas. I am posting a few preview photos and a little description of what Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge and… Continue Reading “End of Winter, at the Coast”
It was Monday afternoon, February 8th. The hours of broken clouds and sunshine were ticking away, and I made it to Fort Worth Nature Center & Refuge around 3:00pm. Faced with an array of good spots to choose from, I decided to walk the… Continue Reading “The Undertaker’s Community Picnic”
