2020 Nature Calls
Making calendars is not a business for me. I started a few years ago because some friends asked me to. I make them the way I like them β with nice paper so the images pop and I can actually write on them. This year,…
Birding While Black with Drew Lanham
Drew Lanham is a different bird. And heβs known that to be the case since, back in the day in Edgefield, South Carolina, he leapt off buildings and trees with cardboard wings, umbrellas and parachutes made of garbage bags. One time he broke his collarbone…
‘Nature Keeps Me Grounded’
Itβs hard to say how or why Chevon Powell was granted a rebirth so close to the beginning of her life. She was only 5 months old when her familyβs Houston apartment burned down. She was rescued after suffering first- and second-degree burns on about…
Your Guide for #DogOnAHike
Hiking offers a variety of benefits for the heart, mind, and body. Aside from the many known health impacts, time spent outdoors also can serve as a restorative and stress-relieving activity for the whole family (Spoiler Alert: even the dog!). It may seem as simple…
Connected by Nature
OVER THE COURSE of 3Β½ months, I made more than 30 visits to a nest site thatβs surprisingly urban, in the middle of Seattle, in the shadow of the University of Washington campus, where aspirations sometimes rise and fall as suddenly and unexpectedly as the…
Birding Is Booming. So Where Are the Black Birders?
Tiffany Adams grew up in the Chelsea-Elliott Houses, a sprawling, low-income housing project on the west side of Manhattan. There, cookie-cutter brick buildings are separated by modest courtyards with benches and tables. Trees and grassy yards enclosed by black, wrought-iron fences dot the fringes of…
Birds of Incarceration
On an air-conditioned bus to Tule Lake, we fold shimmering sheets of colored paper into delicate, mystical birds. The weight of the shared ritual makes my fingers fumble. Itβs been decades since I made origami with my immigrant mother, and I feel pressure to reprise…
2019 Nature Calls
I finally captured an image of a pronghorn with a healthy, pronged horn and without details blown out. So I’m doing wildlife again–half mammals, half birds. And I’ve been saving these for this calendar. Nine of these pictures were never shared on social media. Making…
No Right Way to Be Outside
The first time I tried my hand at astrophotography (shooting the stars, as opposed to shooting stars) was on a clear night just outside Mount Rainier National Park. I was renting a cabin with my wife and her family, a trio of sisters from Colombia…
WE ARE OUTSIDE!
One of my favorite places in the outdoors has multiple trails, several different habitats, and offers spectacular views of a major snow-capped peak. There is an old-growth forest where, among the mossy trees, you are serenaded by the rat-ta-tat-tat of pileated woodpeckers, hoots from barred…
Urban Osprey Nest
This is a sampling of images taken while monitoring an osprey nest in the Union Bay Natural Area in the middle of Seattle, Washington, behind Husky Stadium. Included are some of the neighbors and onlookers. The monitoring is in its fourth month, beginning in early…
Japanese American Activation
After a sometimes rousing, mostly solemn, and often tear-filled memorial ceremony brimming with Japanese and Japanese American influences, a scene unfurled that, to common understanding, may have seemed very un-Japanese. It happened beside an old jail nested in a much larger prison, the Tule Lake…
