When I first moved to Oregon I didn't make the trip down to the Wild & Scenic Rogue for quite a few years.  I was busy with school, and then trying to start a practice.  I was also quite pleased with how close Idaho is--for the whitewater paddler, there are few summer destinations more pleasing than Idaho. One time I applied for a Rogue permit in ( Read more... )

Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wilderness is a necessity.
- John Muir

To be wild is not to be crazy or psychotic.
True wildness is a love of nature,
a delight in silence,
a voice free to say spontaneous things,
and an exuberant curiosity
in the face of the unknown.

~ Robert Bly

We just received a couple of Christmas gifts from our friends in Lake Oswego.  One of them was a hand made ornament, a chicken sewn out of a red and white floral patterned cloth.  On Hawaii, chickens are everywhere, especially on Kawaii where there are no natural predators for the wild chickens.  The Hawaiians do not think of them as food ( Read more... )

HRS 707-734 Indecent exposure. (1) A person commits the offense of indecent exposure if, the person intentionally exposes the person's genitals to a person to whom the person is not married under circumstances in which the actor's conduct is likely to cause affront.I needed to check because I keep wanting to take of my clothes.  It's so warm and ( Read more... )

Above There Is The Mountain

And at its foot, the summer refuge---

sanctuary in town and yards under spreading

boughs of evergreens

Beneath the mountain’s wild, they find

their forage: shrubs, wild plants and the feast

of dropped fruit spread about the ground

Those with antlers come alone

Those without bring offspring---fawns

following last year’s babes ( Read more... )

A new species of snake has been discovered: Siphlophis ayaums. Lots of other recent reptilians to join the taxonomy are featured in this post ( Read more... )

I never even knew that these creatures exist! Cool photos of endangered and at risk shark species in this article: http://www.onearth.org/earthwire/there-are-other-sharks-sea.

We have the wolf by the ears,
and we can neither hold him,
nor safely let him go.
Justice is in one scale,
and self preservation is in the other.
---Thomas Jefferson -Apr. 22, 1820

The environment we're used to is designed to sustain us. We live like fish in an aquarium. Food comes mysteriously down, oxygen bubbles up. We are the domestic pets of a human zoo we call civilization. Then we go into nature, where we are least among equals with all other creatures. There we are put to the test. Most of us sleep through the ( Read more... )