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Category: Nature & The Great Outdoors

Photo of the Day: Spinning the Fabric of Living Matter
Plants do toil—

they spin the fabric of living matter.

-E. J. H. Corner, botanist & mycologist

When I first started blogging on this site, I shared a photo every day with a quote. Sometimes the quote jived perfectly with the photographed subject matter; sometimes I had to explain the train of thought that linked them together in my mind. Sometimes I sort of meandered and made a new connection while I was writing— a weird little surprise from my subconscious.

Anyway. I did this for a couple of reasons:
- a main focus of my blog was opening my (and hopefully your) eyes to “wayside sacraments“— the little miracles that are scattered everywhere you go, but especially in your own backyard.
- I had just moved from the city to not-quite-but-close-enough-to-be-called-country and I wanted to document all the flora and fauna; we called this bit being “backyard naturalists.”
- I’m a lifelong hobbyist photographer and I wanted to make sure I took the time daily to practice and strengthen my photography and editing skills.
- I had this huge collection of quotes that I’d been accumulating since high school on index cards, notebooks and Word docs and I wanted to share them.
- My freshman year English teacher told me to “write every day” and it seemed like an easy enough way to ensure that I did.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped, and other sorts of posts took their place; the kinds that research informed me were the best to write to build an audience.

It happened slowly; first I dropped down to just Wordless Wednesdays, although I don’t think any of mine were ever truly wordless. Then it was Sundays, I think. Then just whenever I happened to have a shot I particularly liked.

It just seemed silly, I guess. Blogs had evolved until they were websites, not journals, and it felt childish to insist on continuing on as I had started as a newbie blogger, knowing nothing. The types of posts I was supposed to write were and continue to be fairly successful, but my desire to write them stalled.

It wasn’t fun anymore. I wouldn’t say I had writer’s block; I had a million things I wanted to write, yet no desire to write them. The honeymoon was over.

I just started blogging less and less. I was busy. I was working, and writing pretty much full time. More than full time. The last thing I wanted to do after finishing work was stay on the computer.

The thing is to become a master
and in your old age to acquire the courage to do
what children did when they knew nothing.

-Hemingway

I wouldn’t say I’m a master— not by a long shot— but I’m experienced. I’ve been at this since 2005, which in internet time is a danged long time. I’ve gone on to blog for other sites, wrangle online communities, develop content calendars, write copy for 17 newsletters (every week!), craft daily deals awash in poultry puns, become really good at SEO, edit guest posters, build social media channels, host Twitter chats, assist in social media marketing campaigns, wrestle analytics, and launch three more sites of my own beyond this one.

And now, for the life of me, I’ve been struggling to return and apply all that to this site.

I’ve decided the reason I’ve been struggling now is because “all that” doesn’t apply to this site.

I created this site out of my love of nature and my passions for photography and the written word.

I did it out of passion. I thought it would be fun.

Let’s try an experiment.

I’ll still write my informative posts, my reviews, my rants.

But first Imma gonna do what I wanna do: post my pictures, share my quotes, spin my stories into living fabric.

It’s what I did when I knew nothing about blogging.

OK?
August 4, 2015
Eastern Cougar: No Longer Endangered. That’s Not a Good Thing.

The one process now going on that will take millions of years to correct is the loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats.

This is the folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us.

E. O. Wilson

When I was a kid, there was a riddle that went along these lines:

A hunter is approached by a cougar, a mountain lion, and a puma. He has only one bullet left. What should he shoot first to ensure his safety?

The answer then was that it didn’t matter; a cougar, mountain lion and puma are all the same animal (technically the puma is a subspecies of the cougar/mountain lion), so he was only being approached by one beast.

The answer now is that it doesn’t really matter, because the US Fish and Wildlife service has called for removing federal protection for the Eastern cougar. It will no longer be on the endangered list.

It’s extinct.

There used to be tons, but overzealous hunters and habitat loss— which in turn affected numbers of white tailed deer, cougar prey— whittled away at cougar populations. The bulk of this happened in the 1800s when settlers were, well, settling in across the country and looking to protect their livestock. But since we haven’t done a whole lot to reinstate that habitat the cougar never really had a chance.

We are already feeling the effects of the loss of the cougar. Where I live the white tailed deer population has exploded due to having no natural predators around. I narrowly avoid hitting a deer with my car on a weekly basis. Hunting season keeps their numbers from being catastrophic, but it doesn’t work the same way natural selection does. Hunters want the strong, older, trophy deer; not the old, the sick, the genetically inferior. I don’t know if that’s somehow connected to the uptick in Lyme disease through deer ticks in this region, but it seems like a logical train of thought.

How will losing more animals listed as endangered or vulnerable— the loggerhead turtle, the blue whale, sea lions, the monarch butterfly, the jaguar, the great white shark— affect the ecosystems around them? We’re not just losing that magnificent animal, we’re taking a link out of the food chain. There is no real way for us to clearly see just how severe the ramifications may be.

The only way to truly protect these animals is to protect their habitats, which means a reversal of what was set in motion by the settlers in the 1800s. It seems like an impossible task; all we can do is try. (Here’s what you can do to help endangered species.)

Mother Nature is highly adaptable, but the pace we’ve asked of her is too fast. We need to actively support other species of big cats, in the hopes that they will fill the gap in the food chain left by the eastern cougar.

But mostly we need to recognize that we’re not the only ones on this earth, and it’s our responsibility to stop acting like we are.

Photo: DepositPhotos

July 23, 2015
Have You Seen This? Assassin Bug

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

OK, this isn’t a Jabberwocky. It’s an assassin bug, and when I took this picture back in 2008 I’d never seen one before.

Since then, I’ve seen them here and there, and this year I’ve seen several, even though I no longer spend my mornings wandering around the yard looking for interesting things to photograph (though now I think about it, I probably should).

I don’t know that necessarily means there are more assassin bugs around than there used to be, but keep your eyes peeled, friends! You can find some sort of assassin bug pretty much anywhere in the United States and that beak he keeps tucked under his head bites.

An assassin bug will violently stab prey to death— it’s pretty neat to watch actually— and juveniles and mature assassins alike will reward you with a nasty, painful bite if you manhandle him. So don’t.

July 6, 2015