Articles
The Hawaiians have a term that describes the art of conversation, the act of telling a tale. They call it “talking story.” Information, anecdotes, amazing accounts of the world that is and the world as it was: all these and many more are parts of an easy-going conversation among friends. Some of the articles I’ve written below have been published elsewhere and some have not, but all of them are part of that continuing idea of talking story, and are presented here as simple contributions to the larger conversation.
For a complete listing of articles and interviews, click here.
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Copper Creek
From where I’m sitting, I can see the light slowly bleeding out of the day. It’s about 5:00pm, the end of the evening at this time of year, the beginning of what will be a cold winter’s night. The remains of the sunset are a wash of dark orange and red, gradually fading to indigo.
All …Read More -
The Roadless Coast
“The edges of any landscape,” writes Barry Lopez in his landmark book, Arctic Dreams, “quicken an observer’s expectations. That attraction to borders, to the earth’s twilit places, is part of the shape of human curiosity.”
When the border in question is the nebulous zone between land and ocean, the resulting curiosity is even more intense. A …Read More -
Secrets of Augustine
Last year’s Roadless Coast expedition took the Ikkatsu Project team along Washington’s Olympic coastline where we surveyed remote beaches for marine debris. We had barely finished that trip when we decided to do another, this time to south-central Alaska, to see what might have washed up on some of the least-visited and wildest shorelines in …Read More -
Roll On, Columbia
It is doubtful that when Woody Guthrie wrote his quintessential salute to moving water, he had any idea of the effect that the years would have on his beloved Columbia river. Rapids have been submerged, huge hydroelectric dams have formed lakes in the desert, and the legendary salmon runs of yesteryear seem more myth than …Read More -
A Winter Tale
“It is easy to make plans in this world; even a cat can do it; and when one is out in those remote oceans it is noticeable that a cat’s plans and a man’s are worth about the same.”
Mark Twain
As I lay in my sleeping bag somewhere on the shores of Johnstone Strait, I knew …Read More