Plastic fantastic lover (1/18/2026)

I am traveling this week and was struck by what is on my pill box.  We live in a "What the Fuck" time. (I know it is a plastic box)

A few years ago, I first learned from the book “Finding the Mother Tree” by Suzanne Simard that trees in the Northwest had accumulated fish DNA. This occurred in trees with a lot of fish carcasses around the base. All these fish bones were likely left there by bears (grizzlies) after they ate the salmon they caught. Can you imagine bears leaning against a big tree and munching on dead fish. It sounds like a Gary Larson Far Side comic. Some of these trees were a considerably distance removed from the stream from which the fish were harvested by these animals. It seems the mycorrhizal fungi were decomposing the carcasses and sharing the nutrients including the DNA with the tree.

Thinking about it, it begs the question will human DNA also be incorporated into nature? Could it be that the trees in the woods behind our home have some DNA from George Washington? He spent time in these woods, and I am sure that he left some DNA behind. I am not sure how long DNA remains unaltered when single cells are deposited in the natural environment.

Next question: is my DNA being incorporated into nature since I love to pee outside in the yard and in the woods? I learned that we are able to detect if people have corn products in their diet. Corn has a certain isotope composition that can be incorporated into our bones. An isotope analysis of these bones will show archaeologists what a person’s diet was like. Now this is not DNA, but I can now imagine that if I consistently use a single tree out there for my urination practice, it may actually incorporate something of me into its structure. This sounds like an idea that is fascinating and cool, but also scarry. Fascinating and cool because something of me may continue its presence after I am gone. I don’t know how long or even if it is more than a few molecules. Nobody has come back from being incorporated into a tree to tell me.

The scary part of this equation is that if this is true, anything we do has a long-term impact on nature. This seems to be undeniably the case anyway. It might explain why the eggs of chickens that are fed fish by products have a fishy taste, or the milk from cows solely grazing in organic pastures has a higher nutritive value than those fed with corn. The milk from these pasture and grass-fed cows has a higher Omega fat content. I have also heard somewhere that the meat from these cows rivals the Omega fat content of salmon.

While that may be not the scariest, even scarier is that we are so busy screwing up nature. We appear to be cavalier about what we are doing; it is insane. We know now that plant cells have PFAS and microplastics in them, and those chemicals are also being incorporated in us. We now find these chemicals in our brains and in men their testicles (this reminds me of Jefferson Airplane’s Plastic Fantastic Lover). Plastic babies anyone? (Is that a Frank Zappa song?)

It is unbelievable what we are doing to the environment! And then to think that the current administration is dialing back the clock and weakening the environmental regulations in favor of industry. It also seems that the large Wall street firms are distancing themselves from environmental causes. Many of the most polluting industries are in or near minority areas. It seems to be another form of genocide that they are attempting. Affluent folks can afford more expensive organic food, the costlier glass food storage containers, and so on, but let’s feed the poor and racial minority the unhealthy processed food. This seems to be the plan of the ultra-rich and the Stephen Millers of the bunch. If they cannot kill them with the Trumpstapo, by rounding them up and shooting them using the military or ICE like what happened to Heather Good, then we can at least try to poison them slowly. It is obscene! 

We need to set aside our politics. We need to protest what is going on in our environment, and fight for civil rights, environmental and social justice . Alternatively, we need to prepare ourselves to apologize to our children, grandchildren, and future generations for fucking up their world.

No snow in Montana in January.  Must be global warming.  

Does the natural world communicate with us? (1/10/2026)

I have started to read a book by Robert Macfarlane entitled “Is a River Alive.” In the introduction he writes that his 9-year-old son asked him the title and premis of the book, and when he told him, his son said: “well, that is going to be a short book, of course it is.” Reading this I wondered whether nature or the natural environment is talking to us. I am a pantheist and would like to argue that even rocks, stones, and clouds are alive and communicate with us, even though they do not have DNA.

This idea reminds me of a post I wrote some time ago entitled: “Does the world love us.” These are interesting questions. I know that I love the world. I take a walk with my dogs in the woods behind our home almost every morning. I wrote about this in 2018 (The Old Man and the Woods), where I describe taking a walk with our previous dog Jake. To think I called myself old more than 7 years ago. I had just re-read Hemingway’s book “The Old Man and the Sea,” and felt inspired by it. I just used the title to spin off the title of my post.

I try to live in the moment whenever I am out in nature. I always look around, take it all in and try to learn. For example, I love large beech trees; I like their elephant skin like bark, and I love their root spread. During the past years I have tried to make an inventory of the large beech trees in the woods behind our home. I do this by getting off the trails and bushwacking. To date I have found 17 bigger trees. I have no idea how old they are, but I always wonder if they were planted by folks that lived back there before it was converted to park land, and unlike the pines, oaks and maples these beeches were never harvested.

One of the beeches I found the other day

I am in LOVE, whenever I am in nature. Even in times like the other morning when we ran into Blondie, the blond coyote and our two dogs go absolutely insane. But as the song goes “Love hurts,” and I often find it more entertaining that aggravating, even if their howls and barks are deafening and they are trying to pull your arm off (yes, we always walk them on the leash). Those coyotes are getting bolder. Early in the morning, around 2 am on January 1 and 3 they were in our neighborhood, just a few houses over. Their howling and japing woke our dogs, and our dogs woke us. It was crazy.

But back to our woods. Before the invasion of the English settlers, the woods behind our home were the home of the Kiskiack tribe, a group that was part of the Powhatan Confederacy. Kiskiack means wide land or broad place in their native language, and it also seems to be the name of the town they lived in, near the current Yorktown. From what I can determine, the woods must have been cleared in spots for agriculture using slash and burn. Corn was their main crop. The area was also used as hunting grounds.

The Brits eventually cleared large tracks for the cultivation of tobacco. Our woods were part of something that was called the Edgehill Plantation, although there was no actual plantation house. The area was straddled by two roads: Warwick to York and Hampton to York (later on Warwick was incorporated into the town of Newport News). During those times, our region was a very active participant in the Revolution and later the Civil War. I wrote a tongue in cheek post about it once <here>.

I do not exactly know what happened after the civil war. It was around the 1930s when our immediate area was taken over by the National Park Service and most likely the Newport News water works. Recently, we examined the tree rings of a large pine that had fallen across our trail, and someone cut the trunk to allow passage. Dating it by counting the tree rings showed us that it was approximately 80 years old. It appears that the tree probably germinated around the 1940s and was allowed to grow without much interference. This again dates to a time just after the annexation of the area by the Park Service. The tree was one of the bigger ones and is located in an area with some of the largest trees in the woods behind our home.

There is so much to explore and think about when I walk through nature, listening to nature talking to me and to each other.

The beeches so far

A good haul today, we found 3

Before I die and before I’m gone (1/4/2026)

How would I look back at my life, my accomplishments, regrets, failures, things or places I never did? I already have written about an eulogy as I described in part over in this blog post. But is that all? I have written about other things that are going on or have occurred in my life; however, I somehow feel more contemplative during the days with the least daylight in the year. Christmas and the new year are ideal times to reflect. Most of my regular readers know that I am not a guy for New Years resolutions. I discussed that in my recent blog post for my church and in this regular post here.

Do I feel my mortality? Maybe a little, I am getting older and I feel like I am getting slower. My joints hurt, I get mysterious muscle pains, I am looking forward to my mid-day naps, and I have become more cerebral and reflective. I am no longer that interested in the advances in biology but I have changed interests to history. I am still interested in science and I consider myself a naturalist who enjoys being out in nature and I hope to continue chronicling my forays into and opinions of the natural environment.

The truly most enjoyable things I have done in my life involved nature; those events stayed with me over the years. I have been above 14,000 feet three times in my life and those are among my favorites. The top of Mount Elgon (14,177 feet or 4321 meters), Grays Peak (14,276 feet or 4351 meters), and the north slopes of the Annapurna (we estimated to approximately 16,000 feet or 4800 meters). Our visit to Gros Morne National Park was another highlight. Finally, our hike on the Isle of Sky ranks up there as well.

My failures and most troublesome experiences include my job and stay in Uganda. I have had a difficult time holding on to jobs over the years. I am sure it was caused by my sometimes-abrasive behavior and my cynicism and sarcasm. Early on I had a difficult time compromising; but then I hate hypocrisy and that is how I perceived the world (and sometimes I still do). During my job in Nepal, I walked into my supervisor’s office and saw him bent over a chair with his pants down getting screwed in the rear by the assistant supervisor. That surely did not help, both were male and married to women. I lost my job fairly soon after that.

Anything I still want to do, experience or place I still would like to visit? I am 72 years old. How many more years do I have in me; how much longer will I live? Five, ten, fifteen, twenty years? I better hurry up. They call the 80s the slow go years (obviously even slower than right now), and the 90s the no go years. My wife thinks we will be strong and independent for a long time; seventies is the new sixties she keeps reminding me. There are places I would like to return to: Curacao, Newfoundland, Scottland, Uganda, Nepal, Japan, just to name a few. I would love to visit New Zeeland, the Easter Island, Chili, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Finland, the Faro Islands, Iceland, Alaska. Things to do? Take a Rhine cruise, eat in some high-end luxury restaurants, visit the Albuquerque balloon festival, go to the Munich October fest, take a stroll on the beach of Ipanema (I guess that I am still a dirty old man), visit Rome and Florence. I am sure there are a lot more things, but I better keep it realistic.

These are some of my thoughts about going into the new year. Politically, socially, and environmentally, 2026 is going to be an interesting, albeit very stressful year. Put on your seatbelts.

A picture from our hike on the Isle of Sky in 2011

Coyotes and skinny dipping (12/22/2025)

Walking in the woods behind our home is one of the most pleasurable things I (we) do.  As you know, I am a huge fan of what is called “forest bathing.” No, this has nothing to do with getting naked in the woods during a rainstorm or in a river, pond or lake.  Although that does sounds like fun (at least when the weather is warm).  We have done some skinny dipping in the past, but I am not sure I want to embarrass myself anymore with this old body. 

My favorite skinny-dipping memory was the time we did it in the mountains above Logan, Utah.  We had been hiking with our friends; we were hot and happened upon a pool in a creek.  It was so inviting.  The four of us stripped and jumped in.  After sitting in the refreshingly cool water for approximately ten minutes some hikers approached and when they walked by, we recognized the male in the group as the dean of our college at Utah State University.  Both Jeff and I knew him well and the only thing we were able to do was wave and say “hi.”  The next day we were both somewhat on pins and needles, wondering if the dean would say something.  But we never heard from him about the incident.

Enough about that and back to my more recent experience.

We have coyotes in the woods behind our home.  While we already knew that, and saw one a few years ago, our sighting of them has become increasingly frequent.  Wildlife watching has become our sport, ranging from fornicating deer to coyotes.  We have been told there are at least bobcats back there and now we have been told that there was a bear sighting nearby.

Well, don’t go wildlife watching with two dogs on the leash.  The dogs go absolutely ballistic the minute they even sense a wild animal.  While the hound howled and the other barked incessantly at the screwing deer or any other deer they see, but coyotes eat the cake.  They go nuts.  On top of that, the coyotes don’t give a damn.  They just stay where they are and look at you with this attitude of “bring it on.”  I had to walk by them one day while they were approximately 60 feet (20 meters) away from me, with two insane dogs that I hardly was able to control.  The coyotes just stood there and watched me struggling (walk) by with two absolutely bonkers dogs.

By rough estimate we have approximately 17 square miles (11,000 acres) of forest behind our home.  For our metric folks that is around 44 square kilometers (4.400 hectares).  That is large enough for coyotes, bears, and bobcats to hide.

I am still working on an inventory of all the beech trees directly behind our home.  Yesterday, I set out into the woods on my own, at the advice from my wife.  She knows my love for nature and for forest bathing.  My goal was to go to one of my favorite beeches and just sit at its roots, meditate and inhale nature.

It was somewhat quiet out there; however, it was frequently interrupted by the sounds of civilization.  An airplane was landing at the airport nearby and you could hear the incessant noise of traffic on the highway.  Finally, I heard the call of the pileated woodpecker.

It felt good to be out in the woods, although it was difficult to relax and meditate with all the crap going on in the world around us.  Despite all that, I definitely need to do it again.

 

We call the Blondy and Yote

Crazy, just relaxing in clear sight 

At my favorite beech

Reading, politics and Rome (8/12/2025)

I am currently reading three books at the same time:

• Thomas Jefferson: Writings (just 1599 pages including index or 1517 pages of actual writing).
• Anthony J.C. Wallace: Jefferson and the Indians. The tragic faith of the first Americans.
• Edward J. Watts: Mortal Republic. How Rome fell into Tyranny.

These books are connected by a common thread. First of all, it is Clay Jenkinson (from Listening to America). I am reading the first two books in preparation for a workshop that I will be going to in January, which is somewhat similar as last January’s trip that I took, but then on a different subject. The third is currently being discussed in a book club hosted by Clay. Although I do not attend the club, a friend who is, told me that this is the book that the members are reading and discussing. It sounded interesting and I decided to read it independently. As some of you know, of late, I have been reading on Roman stoicism and this felt like a logical follow up book, or so I thought.

Is there another common thread between these books? Jefferson was a student of the Roman civilization and was most likely familiar with Rome’s democratic system before the rise of the emperors. Rome was, in many ways, very democratic and treated its citizens fairly equally (except for slaves). This idea is echoed in the U.S. Constitution, where everyone is considered equal (now stop snickering). The Romans considered themselves civilized and all others were seen as savages. In Jefferson’s time, the white settlers considered themselves civilized, and my understanding is the Indian population was considered savages, while the black slaves were seen as barbarians. The prevailing belief was that savages could be educated, assimilated and civilized, but barbarians were considered a lesser class. There even was a push to relocate freed slaves to Liberia in West Africa. This worldview is troubling, especially considering how we continue to judge people by skin color or gender today. The latest examples of that are the outrage from our president (with a very small p) about folks from Afghanistan and Somalia, and by his derogatory treatment of women, calling them stupid and piggy. This clearly shows that we have not evolved much. In some way, we may be regressing into a stage similar as the one that ended in the turmoil which resulted in Rome’s decline into dictatorship.

The Romans normalized violence with their gladiator fights, desensitizing the public to brutality. Similarly, today’s regime is doing the same thing with boat strikes; the ICE-stapo that is going rampant in some town; and visits to Salvadoran concentration camps. Are these actions meant to immunize us to violence, especially with upcoming elections? It definitively feels like that. It may well be an effort to maintain power by rallying the base and encouraging others to look away. This “immunization campaign” is happening while public health efforts are being undermined and the CDC and JFK jr. are trying to curb access to vaccines. A strange and disturbing world, indeed.

I realize that I am oversimplifying these complex issues. As I am sure you know, I expect to write more about these topics in future posts, especially after my workshop in January.

A photograph from the site of last January's workshop.  I wonder how much snow there will be this time.