I think about these highest areas of the Olympics largely returning to the animals this time of year, to those who sleep and those who don’t. The scamperers, the flyers, the ones stepping gingerly through the snow drifts.

This is a time that I love. It is mercifully quieter, a little bit slower, often filled with days of writing and reading. In a world that can feel to me too busy and too loud, I revel in the opportunity to step back and reflect.

“Goldfinches Galore” might be a bit of an overstatement. Even so, there are a number of these fine little birds still at our feeder this autumn.

The forest, the green leaves and needles, the lichen and moss, and the hues of lime and jade and deep olive, welcome me, but this other world doesn’t require my company.

In 1893, Sister Protasia Schindler, a young woman in her early twenties, found two conifer seedlings growing nearby adjacent the railroad tracks…

An answer to the question about whether we have hope that humanity can wake up from the environmental crisis we’re in and turn things around…

This wetland near our home reverberates with frog chorus every spring for several months.

Community. Interdependence. Connection. I think about these words every time I’m out in the forest.