The question of how to live with the wind is answered with bitter resignation and gritted teeth. How to talk about the wind—without cursing—has different answers. I’ve been a volunteer observer for the National Weather Service for more than fifteen years now. My duties involve recording temperature and precipitation data; wind isn’t part of the…
That annual autumnal vow to make good on the dark months by focusing on writing has worn itself out. Restlessness starts winning over office-bound convictions this time of year. The stuff that most needs doing is inside at my desk, but my attention refuses to stay in the room. Some part of me wants to…
As fall color, the caution-yellow flowers of rabbitbrush tend to flare early. They bloomed here, this year, weeks before the aspen or the scrub oak got around to changing. As a wildflower, though, rabbitbrush blooms late, which is why plantswoman Lauren Springer Ogden refers to it as the “last bar open”: a destination where insects gather for one final slug of nectar before the season shuts down.
They’re common as grass up here, and far more populous than trees. Lichens are everywhere, although I mostly notice them on rocks. Their ubiquity works against them, I suppose, makes it easy to skim past them with quick categorizing glances: the frilly pale green lichen, that orange one, the fluorescent lime variety. They’re also small…
In the background of all the unnerving events of 2020, a more private anguish has been unfolding for us. Back in early March, on one of the days I was rushing off to one appointment or another, I was driving past the feed boxes where the horses were eating their breakfast—except only one was munching.…
Well, vacations—both the planned of July and the unplanned of August—are over: time to get back to writing work. What better way to get back into the routine than to reflect on the break? About not writing in August, there’s nothing to say other than it happened. As for the July blog vacation, I recognize…
If you’re new to Between Urban and Wild or haven’t stopped by in a while, we’re having a terrific wildflower year in this part of central Colorado. I’m spending July blogging the bloom: posting a photo a day of a plant that’s flowering this month. My rules are: native plants, all photographed in July, and…
On the evening after the full moon, as dark settles fully in, I’m settled in, too: sunk deep in the cushions of the reading chair, reading, with feet under a throw and a glass of wine at my elbow. Doug, on the couch, stirs, gets up, announces he’s going into the hot tub. I nod…
I often say I write about my home place, but that’s not true all the time. The book project currently consuming my writing energy, for example, is about scientific literacy. (Though it might far afield from the natural history and personal observation focus of this blog, it turns out that scientific literacy is concerned with…
August: By now, usually, our high mountain landscape is burnished with a brassy gleam, as grasses send seedheads up to nod and wave in any breeze that bothers to turn up. In July, though, a monsoon weather pattern settled in, bringing daily thunderclouds and cool weather. The precipitation tally for the month overtopped six inches,…