Personal Field Guide

Notes from the field

Aug 17, 202215 min read

Walking, and Thoughts Along The Way

In the 2010 indie film The Way, the actor Emilio Estevez says to the actor Martin Sheen, who’s both Estevez’s on-screen and real-life...

May 20, 20229 min read

I'm Going This Way

With both hands, my nine-year-old grabs hold of an exposed hemlock root and then kicks his sports-sandaled left foot up to a round, wet...

Dec 19, 20213 min read

Mending the Terrible Mess We Make of Things

Oh, if we were all given $7.7 million and an army of engineers to mend the terrible mess we make of things. That’s what repaired Nine...

Jul 31, 20214 min read

Rain Falls

It’s never quieter in my Pittsburgh neighborhood than after a summer morning thunderstorm, when moments move in dribs and drabs ...

Sep 26, 202012 min read

The Girls

A family welcomes an urban chicken foursome to their new home, a pretty fly A-frame chicken tractor … (Originally appeared in Blue Earth...

Sep 3, 20192 min read

Serial Spaces

Last year, without much forethought, I began taking photographs from a particular spot in a plaza that I regularly visit, capturing...

Aug 17, 20183 min read

'Preciating the Pocket Park

Admittedly, I don’t usually care much for monocrops of flowers lining city sidewalks - all those begonias, marigolds, and African violets...

Jul 2, 20183 min read

Graveyard Perspectives: The second of three cemetery excursions

In two days, in two different Pittsburgh cemeteries, I saw two northern flickers. The only ground-feeding woodpecker, northern flickers...

Jun 18, 20184 min read

Finding Nature in Cities of the Dead: The first in a series of cemetery excursions

I’ve been walking cemeteries of late. Harried life has got me reflecting on the death of things, and, coincidentally or not, I’ve found...

May 27, 20181 min read

Creating to Cope

I made an elm leaf recently. In my study. Well, admittedly, I can't actually make elm leaves. But I did draw one, on my study wall. In...

Sep 15, 20174 min read

Birding Beginnings: Field notes on birds spotted around Eau Claire, Wisconsin

A list of birds I saw and was able to identify, mostly within a single acre of bird-watching terrain ...

Nov 15, 20161 min read

Adding to the Life List

I pedal through a billow of white feathers drifting like avian tumbleweeds, bobbing, one small bound at a time ...

Oct 15, 20164 min read

Urban Wild

I’d just finished telling my neighbor, Ben, about a doe that had bounded into our fenced front yard the other morning ...