I've been venturing out here and there throughout the past couple weeks to find something to write about. So far, it's been rather pleasant for late winter walks--temperatures in the 60's and even 70's along with mostly rain and sunshine. The crocus bloomed, followed by the daffodils. In the woods there are a fair share... Continue Reading →
Spring Forward!
Welcome! ... Again! Hello, I'm Aaron and this is my blog about nature. I started this little blog project a while back and I have admittedly been neglecting the site. But I plan on maintaining a more committed relationship. A few new things will be coming to the site and I think I'm going to... Continue Reading →
Spring Wildflowers at Irwin Run
In nature nothing exists alone. --Rachel Carson, Silent Spring I park my car near a small lake in the local park and decide that I will follow a stream--Irwin Run. I enjoy streams and am fascinated with the movement of water and how the density of life seems to increase when water... Continue Reading →
Spring Greening
Humanity is exalted not because we are so far above other living creatures, but because knowing them well elevates the very concept of life. -- Edward O. Wilson, Biophilia It's May already. I feel like the last few months of winter and the first of Spring blend and meld and then suddenly it's ninety degrees Fahrenheit... Continue Reading →
Pollution: Invisible and Obvious
Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans. --Jacques-Yves Cousteau On a walk through a local park, a young woman passes beneath a dense green canopy of trees. Birds sing around her, wildflowers bloom along the trail, and a doe and fawn whitetail deer pass nearby with little... Continue Reading →
Becoming a Naturalist
I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in. --John Muir As a youth I had a dream of becoming an astronaut. I even made a T-shirt with the space shuttle on it using acrylic paint--I wanted to be the... Continue Reading →
Climate and Weather
Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get. - Mark Twain The sky darkens as a mass of thick, low clouds sweep across the sky. Winds blast frigid air through the city and flurries fly violently with every gust. The snowstorm unloads more than a foot of snow in only a few hours.... Continue Reading →
Enjoying Nature in All Seasons
You can't get too much winter in the winter. -- Robert Frost I usually wait for a day when temperatures are bearable but not too warm--25 degrees Fahrenheit isn't bad--and when there is a fresh coating of snow. The fresh coat of snow helps identify trails, tracks, and scats which otherwise may have been... Continue Reading →
Summer Home
At age fourteen I packed up some belongings and went to work at a Boy Scout summer camp in the Laurel Highlands--two thousand acres of Northeastern forest with a three hundred acre man-made lake. That summer while teaching youth about nature, I hiked the trail around the lake many times with friends. I caught frogs... Continue Reading →