[Except from The Edge of Extinction (2014, Cornell University Press)] At the top of the state of Ohio, it seems no one saw the economic tsunami coming. It rolled across the financial landscape, ripped the heart out of communities and … Continue reading
Category Archives: Nature Notes
[Except from The Edge of Extinction (Cornell University Press, 2014)] Mud brown water sluices at the eroding bank, eddying around drowned willows still thick with trailing leaves, and races up a swollen bayou of old growth cypress. Beneath a watchful … Continue reading
Ohio farmer and writer, Gene Logsdon, has written extensively about being a contrary farmer. Small, biodiverse, community-oriented, unstressed, and above all successful. “ We are pioneers,” he writes, “seeking a new kind of religious and economic freedom.” Such contrary farming … Continue reading
The whale rose into the glittering polar light, the brilliance tinkling with the sound of bells and the crystal water singing under a dome of cobalt sky. The creature was sandy brown, leathery, thrumming and exhaled great sighs above the … Continue reading
We had come south to meet the migrators. To limestone scarps and pavements rising sharply from groves of grey-green olives and almond trees with trunks of dark charcoal. In the blanco village clinging to the hillside, swifts and house martins … Continue reading
I walked down to the glittering blue sea, and then back up the mountain. Past a private sign and over the coastal railway, through the white development of flats on the cliff point., the pool empty and post boxes stuffed … Continue reading
21st June 2012 Dear Dad, I wished you hadn’t died. With an ache in bones and stomach, it hurts. But not as much as you had suffered from the infection of spine that spread. We had come daily to the big … Continue reading
The website instructions were to meet at Brighton Farmers’ Market, and the taxi driver slalomed over crumbling tarmac and parked on an open grassy slope in the mid-afternoon sun. One rule, said the hike leader, don’t lose sight of the … Continue reading
We had come to the oak and sweet chestnut forests of the Haut-Languedoc, steep hills of small farms and villages strung along the top roads. Most of the wheat was long in, but sunflowers still hung darkened heads in the … Continue reading
The 2012 Olympics have already created a legacy on the Essex coast. As a battering sou’easterly scudded clouds from the North Sea, I returned to one of the finest nature reserves in the region where in spring come many nightingales. … Continue reading