Remember those long summers from childhood? My family spent lots of weekends camping each summer – going on hikes, reading paperbacks in the shade, wading in streams, taking afternoon naps, and telling stories around the campfire. Back at home, my sister and I rode our bikes all over town, walked to the swimming pool most…
“The first step in the acquisition of wisdom is silence, the second listening.” – Solomon Ibn Gabriol Recently I wrote a post about acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton’s search for natural silence, and something he said to a New York Times reporter caught my attention: “When you become a better listener to nature, you become a…
Happy First Day of Summer! In the Northern Hemisphere, it’s the longest day of the year. You can find out what time the sun will rise and set where you live here. Where I live sunrise is at 5:27 A.M. and sunset is at 9:02 P.M. for most of the week. That’s a lot of…
A few years ago, Kurt Hoelting, a wilderness guide and commercial fisherman living in the San Juan Islands in Washington, took an online quiz to calculate his carbon footprint. He was living fairly simply, so he was shocked to find that his carbon footprint was gigantic. The culprit? Air travel. So Hoelting made a resolution….
Summer solstice, or Midsummer’s Day, is June 21. It’s the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere when we enjoy the most sunlight and the shortest night. The sun rises to its maximum height, bathing the Arctic Circle – including parts of Sweden, Finland, Norway, and all of Iceland – in twenty-four hours…
There’s nothing like a sunny day at the farmer’s market to make you forget weeks of drenching rain.