For a long time we each felt like two people in one body: the humans that travel and explore the natural world and the humans that live in a house and venture out into the natural world. At some point we realized the land we call home is part of nature and we are part of nature and that changed everything. This summer we felt the union of these two selves and what the world can be like when we live amongst nature, everywhere. Not just on the trail, not just on vacation, but every single day.
We roadtripped west to explore different ecosystems in the peak of their summer high.
We felt heat, sun baking, crisping heat.
And we swam. Everywhere we swam. With the fish. With the lack of humans. With macroinvertebrates and with turtles and with rocks.
We paid attention and found life everywhere.
Western box turtle crossing a road:
Dun skipper nectaring on knapweed along the Cimarron River:
Ponderosa pinecone reseeding in the Sangre de Cristos:
We drank coffee and we kept going. Who could miss a moment?
We dipped into the coldest streams you can imagine...
and we climbed mountains...
surrounded by singing white-crowned sparrows and by species that thrive above treeline. Like the nesting American pipit we didn't photograph and the Rocky Mountain parnassian butterflies nectaring on western roseroot.
We ooed and ahhed over lichens...
and Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep.
Then we headed home, but everywhere felt like home so I should say we headed to the land where our house sits. The cats of course welcomed our return...
but so did the wildlife. Life didn't feel like, oh we are in nature, oh, we are not. What are we dooooooooing? No, there wasn't that transition. We loved and exclaimed over the cats and then we did the same with the plants and critters. Old friends, reunited.
Leaf-cutter bees reminded us this is their home too.
Tupelo said, mine too.
As did the bunch gall makers,
the locust borer beetles,
the sweetheart underwing moths,
and the young wood frog who is a piece of Jennifer in same way shape or form. They have to be. How else can she feel the way she does about them?
The bent-line gray caterpillar said this land is mine, too.
As did the bumble bee and field thistle.
The summer resident birds were recently joined by the migratory birds, also sharing this land. The Swainson's thrushes, gray catbirds, flocks of blue jays, American robins, ruby-throated hummingbirds and house wrens didn't make the list, but they were here too.
What did we do while they were here, dripping from trees and dining on the caterpillars, poison ivy and Virginia creeper berries? Well, we sat in our chairs, laid on the ground and watched. We giggled a lot and we were silent. It felt like a church here. Reverence was in the air. Wonder and gratitude too.
It's a shared land. Everywhere.
We explore close to our house in Ohio too. We find wild American persimmon and pawpaws. We eat them when the coyotes, raccoons, opossums and eastern box turtles share them.
We visit American spikenard, whom we've loved for 5+ years now.
We swim more and we watch bald eagles, osprey, cormorants, great blue herons, great egrets, killdeer, greater yellowlegs, turkey vultures, black vultures and broad-winged hawks on human vacant beaches, with evaporating water. When will the rain fall again? When will the soil saturate?
We work out of our field station, live simply and restore and protect more land. How can we do anything else when the world is this magnificent? When the world asks us to participate and to remember where we came from and to live in accordance with the rules and respect of nature once again?
Do you understand what I am writing? Nature is here. It's there. It's everywhere. The following picture shows it all. Black vultures raised a baby in this abandoned house. It's a good home for them, made by humans and vacated by humans. We all live together on this one big, beautiful, nothing like it planet.
Share it.
Love it. Love it. Love it.
We appreciate you. Thank you for being who you are and for finding something in what we share.
Videos! Our YouTube channel is the best place to find us. We post every Wednesday about land restoration and sometimes exploration.
