A few summers ago, a colleague and I were searching for golden eagles in a remote area of Yellowstone National Park. Hiking the rim of a large cliff wall, dwarfed by the massive scree slope below, we watched an adult eagle sweep up and perch on a snag with one powerful stroke of its’ massive …
Author: Lisa
If You Know Wilderness
"Without enough wilderness America will change. Democracy, with its myriad personalities and increasing sophistication, must be fibred and vitalized by regular contact with outdoor growths — animals, trees, sun warmth and free skies — or it will dwindle and pale." — Walt Whitman When I first read about the Public Lands Initiative Act I thought …
The Great Forgetting
I arrived in Bozeman, Montana the third week in May more than ten years ago. The lawns of the university campus were mowed into a tidy green cross-hatch and I remember flicking off my sandals and having lunch under a blossoming crabapple tree. The sun-warmed grass was soft under my feet. It was my first …
The Memory of Sound
In every issue of Orion Magazine, a literary journal that explores the connection between nature, culture and place, a writer pens a declaration in list form. It could be about anything. One was entitled 7 Survival Tips for the Hardy Extraterrestrial and another, 10 Words Technology Borrowed from Nature. It’s called an enumeration. Here is my …
Is it an Ice Mountain?
One morning last June I was in the middle of a bird survey near the terraces at Mammoth Hot Springs just inside Yellowstone Park when I heard a voice behind me say, “Excuse me.” I hoped she was talking to someone else, but she persisted. “Excuse me,” she said again more loudly. As I turned …
Writing the Wild 