Photo from the Grower’s Guide to Canada

Lammas, also known as Lughnasadh, is the first of the three harvest festivals on the Celtic Wheel of the Year. Celebrated around August 1st, it marks the beginning of the grain harvest and the subtle shift from the exuberance of midsummer toward the slower, more reflective days of autumn. The fields are heavy with wheat, blackberries ripen along the trails, tomatoes spill from the garden, and the earth begins offering the first fruits of a season’s worth of care.

Where Litha celebrates abundance at its peak, Lammas invites us to pause and gather what has grown. It is a season of gratitude; for the literal harvest from the land and for the less tangible harvests in our own lives. The relationships we’ve nurtured, the skills we’ve developed, the projects we’ve brought to life, and the resilience we’ve cultivated all deserve to be noticed and celebrated.

Traditionally known as Lughnasadh (pronounced LOO-nuh-sah), the festival honors the Celtic god Lugh, a master craftsman celebrated for his many talents and dedication to learning. In his honor, communities gathered to share food, music, games, storytelling, and friendly competitions that celebrated creativity and human ingenuity alongside the gifts of the earth.

The name Lammas comes from the Old English hlāfmæsse, meaning “loaf mass,” referring to the custom of baking the first loaf of bread from the newly harvested grain. Bread became both a practical staple and a powerful symbol of transformation. Tiny seeds planted months before becoming nourishment shared around the table. Like the grain, we, too, are continually transformed by time, patience, and care.

Lammas reminds us that every harvest begins with a seed. Before rushing ahead to the next goal or season, we are invited to slow down, acknowledge how far we’ve come, and share the abundance we have with those around us.

To celebrate Lammas with your friends and family, you can…

The Lammas Vibe

Decorate your table with baskets of fresh produce, wildflowers, dried grasses, wheat stalks, sunflowers, and late-summer herbs. Fill bowls with peaches, apples, blackberries, tomatoes, or whatever is in season where you live. Warm earth tones like gold, amber, rust, and deep green capture the feeling of the first harvest.

Light a beeswax candle during dinner as a reminder of the sun’s energy that made the harvest possible.

Bake Bread Together

Few traditions capture the spirit of Lammas better than baking bread. Whether you make a simple loaf from scratch or bake muffins with your children, take time to appreciate the journey from seed to table.

As you knead or mix the dough, invite each family member to share something they’re grateful for or something they’ve worked hard to grow this year.

One of my favorite muffin recipes that I’ve turned to again and again over the past 20 years was found on this blog way back in 2007. This time of year, go find a blackberry bush to mix in some fresh, tart berries alongside some extra molasses. Yum! (I love them for breakfast, warmed up, with a swipe of crunchy peanut butter.)

Share the Harvest

Lammas has always been a community celebration. Share extra vegetables from your garden with a neighbor, make blackberry jam together, bring a homemade loaf to a friend, or prepare a meal using ingredients from a local farmers market.

The first harvest reminds us that abundance grows richer when it is shared.

Take a Gratitude Walk

Head outdoors with a basket or nature journal. Notice the signs that summer is beginning to soften; the golden grasses, ripe berries, buzzing insects, drying seed heads, changing light, and cooler evenings.

Collect a few fallen treasures like feathers, acorns, interesting leaves, or dried flowers to create a small nature altar celebrating the season.

Enjoy a Harvest Feast

Gather friends or family for a meal featuring seasonal foods: fresh bread, corn, tomatoes, peaches, berries, basil, roasted vegetables, local honey, cheeses, and berry cobblers or fruit crisps.

Invite everyone to contribute one homemade dish and share the story behind it.

Journal Prompts

What seeds did you plant earlier this year that are beginning to bear fruit?

What accomplishments, relationships, or personal growth deserve to be celebrated?

How have your challenges helped shape who you are becoming?

What gifts or abundance do you have that you are ready to share with your community?

Lammas Craft: Nature Weaving

Photo from The Chaos and the Clutter

Celebrate the season’s abundance by creating a simple weaving from natural materials.

Materials:

• Four sticks

• Yarn or twine

• Long grasses, dried flowers, wheat stalks, feathers, leaves, ribbons, and other natural treasures

Instructions:

• Using the yarn or twine, make a frame by attaching the sticks together at each corner. You can do this by winding the twine around and knotting once it is securely fastened.

• Wrap yarn vertically around your frame to make a simple loom.

• Weave natural materials over and under the strands.

• Add ribbons, seed heads, or dried flowers as you go.

• Tie off the ends and hang your weaving indoors as a reminder of the season’s abundance.

Each weaving becomes a snapshot of the landscape at this moment in the year. A beautiful reminder that every season leaves its own unique gifts.

More Wheel of the Year Celebrations

Litha: Celebrating Light, Vitality, and Full Bloom

Beltane: Celebrating Fire and Fertility

Ostara: Celebrating Emergence and Balancing Light

Imbolc: Celebrating the Stirring Seeds

Yule: Celebrating the Return of Light

Gray whale mother and her calf on their northbound migration. Photo from NOAA

Last month, I read a press release from NOAA of an endangered Fin whale that was carried along the bow of a cruise ship to Alaska. It was brought to shore for a necropsy (an animal autopsy) and it was discovered that this whale was a pregnant female. Her cause of death was confirmed to be blunt force trauma consistent with a ship strike. I added this story to the growing stack of alarming news in my mind for West Coast whales this season. As of this week, there have been 151 stranded or beached whales reported along the North American West coast and the Center for Biological Diversity reports that we are on track for the deadliest year for Pacific gray whales, Humpback whales, and endangered Fin whales in recent history. A history that has included the decline of the eastern north Pacific gray whale population, the population found on the west coast of North America, by 50% in the past decade. (For a timeline of Pacific gray whale strandings in the Pacific Northwest this season check out this website from the Cascadia Research Collective.)

This news prompted me to want to take a deeper dive into what is contributing to these losses. But first, I needed to understand what is known of the lives of our West Coast whales to shed light on where in their life cycle these injuries, illnesses, or deaths are occurring. I’ll focus on the Pacific gray whale and their Arctic feeding grounds this time, and come back to our Humpback and Fin whale friends in future posts.

Photo of gray whale, Earhart (CRC-22) with suction-cup attached tag on 17 April 2015 off Hat Island in Possession Sound. Photo: John Calambokidis, Cascadia Research. Encyclopedia of Puget Sound

The Pacific Gray Whale

The Pacific gray whale completes the longest annual migration of any mammal, traveling an astonishing 10,000 to 14,000 miles round-trip. Their life cycle revolves around this journey: feeding in the icy Arctic during the summer and traveling south to give birth or mate in the warm, shallow lagoons of Baja California, Mexico.

We can think of theirs as a life lived in four acts:

Act I Winter; Birth and Nursing. The gestation period is 12 to 13 months and females give birth to a single calf in the protected bays of Baja California between January and February. Newborns measure about 14 to 16 feet in length and weigh roughly 2,000 pounds, which is a number hard to wrap my head around. They nurse for 7 to 8 months on a diet that is 40% fat, allowing the calf to double its weight by the time it is weaned.

Act II Spring; The First Migration. In the spring, mothers and calves begin their northern migration back to the Arctic, traveling close to the coastlines. This is an incredibly dangerous time, as calves are highly vulnerable to predation by transient orcas in open waters, particularly across California’s Monterey Bay and in Washington’s Puget Sound and the Salish Sea.

Act III Summer; Feeding and Maturation. During the summer, the whales spend up to 20 hours a day feeding in the nutrient-rich, icy waters of the Bering, Chukchi, and Beaufort Seas. They scoop up sediment from the ocean floor and filter out small marine invertebrates, rapidly building up thick layers of blubber.

Act IV Autumn; Mating Season. Pacific gray whales reach sexual maturity around 8 to 9 years of age and adult gray whales typically mate during the southward migration or directly in the calving lagoons in Baja California. They are thought to live for 50 to 70 years, growing to lengths of 45 to 50 feet and reaching weights of 30 to 40 tons. Females typically give birth every two or more years, repeating the cycle.

Pacific gray whales do not actively feed while in their Baja California birthing and breeding lagoons. They primarily fast during this winter period, relying entirely on their thick blubber reserves for energy until they return to the nutrient-rich waters of the Arctic in the spring. I’ve bolded this line so you can hold onto it as you read on.

So, the question is why? Why undertake that 14,000 mile round trip in the first place when you are exposed to your baby’s predation, exhaustion, and the risk of vessel strikes along the way?

Gray whale use of the eastern North Pacific corridor showing feeding grounds, migration route, and lagoons where calves are born. Eastern North Pacific gray whale abundance and the number of calves born annually are shown in the lower left hand corner. Credit: NOAA Fisheries

The (usually) All-You-Can-Eat Buffet of Arctic Waters

Something happens in the far northern and southern reaches of the planet that can’t occur anywhere else on Earth. And, it’s a process that depends on sea ice to power it. Each spring, when sea ice melts in the Arctic or Antarctic, the ice leaves behind a layer of freshwater on the ocean surface that is full of nutrients. Though sea ice forms out of salty, ocean water, when it freezes, the process of freezing pushes out its salt. So, when sea ice melts, layers of freshwater float above the heavier, briny waters. Microorganisms use the nutrients in the freshwater to develop. And these microorganisms are greatly important because they form the basis of the oceanic food web.

Phytoplankton form the base of the aquatic food web as this illustration from NASA’s super informative page details their role in Antarctic ecosystems. Illustration ©2010 Gulf of Maine Research Institute. The arrows point to who gets the energy from the food.

As these cold surface waters become dense, they sink, displacing the nutrient-rich deep water that sank over the winter months back up to the surface in a circular cycle. Scientists call this up and down current the vertical water column. There are two types of nutrient-rich plankton who benefit from this cycle and are worth talking about as we explore the food chain that feeds Gray whales. Phytoplankton are powered by the sun, and we can think of them as tiny plants, incorporating energy from the sun into their bodies and drawing from minerals like nitrogen, iron, and silica that are dropped off by glaciers as they retreat in the summer time or are left behind as the sea ice melts in spring. This abundance of phytoplankton means that the zooplankton (animal-like plankton) and krill have a continual food source. Gray whales don’t usually feed directly on plankton, but benefit from abundant plankton because their food eats plankton.

Pacific gray whales feed by sucking sediment up from the sea floor as they roll on their sides and move slowly along the ocean floor. They filter through the mud and collect small animals called amphipods using about 150 coarse baleen plates on each side of their upper jaw. Baleen is made of keratin, the same fibrous protein that makes up human hair, fingernails, and animal claws. It forms strong, flexible, bristly plates that hang from the upper jaw of Gray whales, acting as a giant sieve or colander to capture their food.

Baleen can be seen here along the upper jaw of this Pacific gray whale. Baleen is stiff, whiskery like material made from keratin that acts like a giant colander when Gray whales push mud out through their lips, trapping delicious amphipods within. Photo from Shutterstock.

Why Are Whales Dying?

The migration between Mexico’s Baja California and the Arctic is a delicate balancing act of energy expenditure and replenishment. As we lose sea ice and glacial silt, we lose the foundation of the aquatic food web. Whales are unable to bulk up and build up the fat reserves they require for their winter-long fast during the breeding season. They often begin their southern journey in the autumn already thin. Scientists are noting concave depressions behind their skulls (often called “peanut heads”) from severe blubber loss even as they are leaving the summer feeding grounds. Malnourished mothers lack the energy to sustain pregnancy and nursing, leading to plummeting birth rates and increasing infant mortality. And by the time they are heading northward in the spring, they are running on empty.

The loss of body condition removes the whales’ natural buoyancy and energy reserves, rendering them highly susceptible to fatal collisions with maritime vessels or starvation during the 10,000-to-14,000-mile round trip. Whales desperate for calories frequently divert from traditional coastal migration routes into heavily trafficked estuaries (such as San Francisco Bay) in search of substitute prey, drastically increasing the risk of ship strikes and stranding in shallow waters.

In the past 40 years, we’ve seen some whales that have chosen to forgo the trip to the arctic and break off from the group headed north. Some even stay to feed in northern Puget Sound. Called the Sounders Group, six whales were first documented diverting to the waters around Whidbey and Camano Islands starting in 1990 and they continue to return there each year. These intrepid animals have learned to use the incoming high tides to forage for highly nutritious ghost shrimp in the intertidal zone. The risk of stranding is high, feeding so close to the shoreline, but the whales have calculated that the risk is worth the reward.

There’s another group of about 250 whales that appear to be distinct from the others called the Pacific Coast Feeding Group (PCFG). They largely do not appear to migrate to the far north and they remain to feed near shore from Northern California to the Salish Sea from spring to fall. This group has a number of distinct differences from the rest of the Pacific coast population. Because they don’t travel to the highly productive waters of the Arctic, these whales are smaller in stature than their cousins. They also employ a number of feeding tactics that are not seen in the Arctic-migrating population by specializing in shallow, rocky, and kelp-heavy habitats. Feeding behaviors include tight turning, flipping, blasting bubbles, and doing vertical headstands while sifting through sediment or foraging for zooplankton. The PCFG’s unique feeding behaviors and feeding grounds are passed down from mothers to offspring through what animal behaviorists refer to as “vertical cultural knowledge”; in other words, these resident whales have cultural differences from other Pacific gray whales.

On Thin Ice

Perhaps the most surprising thing I learned while researching Pacific gray whales is that their story begins not with whales at all, but with ice.

Sea ice. Freshwater. Microscopic phytoplankton. Tiny amphipods no larger than your fingernail. An ocean floor rich with life. One giant whale. Remove any one of these pieces, and the entire story begins to unravel.

It is tempting to think of conservation as saving a single charismatic species. But nature rarely works that way. The Pacific gray whale reminds us that every living thing is held within a web of relationships, many of them invisible to us. The loss of Arctic sea ice is not simply the loss of frozen water. It is the loss of an annual pulse that nourishes an entire food web stretching from organisms too small to see to some of the largest animals ever to live on Earth.

Yet there is also reason for hope. Gray whales have always been adaptable. Some have learned entirely new migration strategies, discovering productive feeding grounds in Puget Sound or along the Pacific Coast and teaching these behaviors to their calves. They remind us that resilience is woven into the fabric of life. But resilience has its limits. Adaptation can buy time. It can’t replace an ecosystem.

The next time you catch sight of a whale’s spout offshore, remember that you are witnessing the final chapter of a story that began months earlier with winter sea ice thousands of miles away. Every breath that whale takes, every calf that is born, every migration completed is connected to a chain of events that stretches from the Arctic to Baja California and back again.

To understand the Pacific gray whale is to understand one of nature’s greatest lessons: nothing lives alone.

Sources and More Information:

https://www.nps.gov/cabr/blogs/gentle-and-strong-the-pacific-gray-whale.htm

https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/species/gray-whale

https://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=graywhale.printerfriendly

https://www.oceanicsociety.org/resources/the-gray-whale-migration-in-california-and-beyond/

https://www.eopugetsound.org/article/gray-whales-salish-sea

https://wdfw.wa.gov/species-habitats/species/eschrichtius-robustus

https://www.montereybayaquarium.org/animals-the-ocean/animals-a-to-z/gray-whale

https://nsidc.org/learn/parts-cryosphere/sea-ice/why-sea-ice-matters

https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/the-biological-productivity-of-the-ocean-section-70631438/

https://science.nasa.gov/earth/earth-observatory/what-are-phytoplankton/

The height of summer here in the Sierra Nevadas

There is something deeply grounding about pausing to acknowledge the Summer Solstice. Modern life often encourages us to push through seasons without noticing them, but Litha invites us to step outside, feel the warmth on our skin, and remember that we, too, are part of nature’s rhythms. The fullness of summer reminds us that growth is not only about striving—it is also about savoring.

I think of Litha as a time of gratitude and embodiment. A moment to notice what has blossomed in our lives since the quiet intentions planted in winter or spring. What relationships have deepened? What projects have taken root? What parts of ourselves feel more alive in the warmth and openness of the season?

And yet, woven into the joy of midsummer is the humble understanding that nothing stays at its peak forever. The wheel continues to turn. The days will slowly darken again. Litha teaches us to celebrate abundance while it is here and to trust the cyclical nature of change. There is wisdom in both expansion and release.

The word “solstice” comes from the Latin solstitium, meaning “sun standing still,” referring to the brief pause before the sun begins its gradual journey back toward winter. In the Celtic Wheel of the Year, Litha represents fullness, vitality, creativity, passion, and the life-giving energy of the sun. Bonfires, flower crowns, and gatherings outdoors have long been associated with midsummer celebrations, honoring the earth in its season of greatest abundance.

To celebrate Litha with your friends and family, you can….

The Litha Vibe:

Bring the outdoors in by decorating your space with wildflowers, sunflowers, herbs, and fresh greenery. Use bright colors like gold, yellow, orange, and white to reflect the energy of the sun. Fill jars with seasonal fruit, light candles at sunset, and open the windows to let in the warm evening air.

You can also create a midsummer simmer pot with sliced lemons, oranges, fresh lavender, rosemary, mint, and vanilla to make your home smell like sunshine and summer gardens.

Host a Bonfire or Sunset Gathering:

Fire has long been associated with Litha celebrations. Gather friends or family around a backyard fire pit, beach bonfire, or candlelit patio to honor the sun at its peak. Traditionally, bonfires were believed to offer protection, luck, and purification.

You might invite everyone to write down something they wish to cultivate during the second half of the year—joy, courage, creativity, connection—and toss it into the flames as an offering or intention.

Spend Time Outside:

Litha is best celebrated outdoors if possible. Watch the sunrise or sunset, have a picnic in the park, swim in a lake or ocean, go for a barefoot walk in the grass, or simply spend time noticing the fullness of the natural world around you.

Make flower crowns, gather herbs, or forage responsibly for plants like chamomile, lavender, rosemary, or mugwort if they grow in your area.

Mylitta crescent butterfly (I think!) on rudbeckia in my garden.

Enjoy a Midsummer Feast:

Celebrate the abundance of the season with fresh summer foods: berries, cherries, peaches, tomatoes, garden herbs, honey, fresh bread, grilled vegetables, salads, and floral drinks like lavender lemonade or hibiscus tea.

A potluck picnic outdoors can feel especially magical this time of year.

Journal Prompts:

As Litha marks the height of growth and vitality, what in your life is currently flourishing? What dreams, relationships, or parts of yourself are asking to be celebrated?

What would it look like to fully enjoy the abundance already present in your life instead of immediately reaching for the next thing?

As the wheel begins its gradual turn back toward darkness after the solstice, what practices might help you stay connected to joy, warmth, and community throughout the rest of the year?

Litha Craft: Pressed Flower Sun Catchers

A step-by-step tutorial can be found here.

Bring the beauty of midsummer indoors by making simple pressed flower sun catchers to hang in your windows.

Materials:

Pressed flowers or leaves, clear contact paper, scissors, embroidery hoop or cardstock frame (optional), ribbon or string.

Instructions:

• Gather flowers, herbs, or leaves from your garden or neighborhood walks. Press them between heavy books for several days beforehand or you can order pressed flowers online.

• Cut two equal pieces of clear contact paper.

• Arrange your flowers and greenery on one sheet.

• Carefully place the second sheet on top, sealing the flowers inside.

• Trim into circles, suns, or other shapes.

• Add a ribbon or string for hanging.

• Place in a sunny window and enjoy the way the light shines through the colors of summer.

You could also make flower crowns together, braid dried herbs into bundles, or create natural dyes using berries and flowers from the season.

If you’d like to know, astronomically, what is happening in the sky (in space?) at a Solstice, I wrote an explainer! In which I offer some STEAM activities for you and your young naturalist as well!

The Journey of the Earth: Explaining the Solstice

Previous Wheel of the Year Posts:

Beltane: Celebrating Fire, Fertility, and Full Bloom

Ostara: Celebrating Emergence and Balanced Light

Imbolc: Celebrating the Stirring Seeds

Yule: Celebrating the Return of Light

Make your own Wheel of the Year as an exercise of noticing and marking the turn of the seasons.

Make a Wheel of the Year

The sky changes personalities after sunset. The chatter of chickadees falls silent. The squirrels retire. The swallows that spent the day stitching the sky together disappear into their roosts. Gradually, the world seems to exhale.

A fringed bat (Myotis thysanodes) flying above a pond in the high-desert of Central Oregon. Photo from Bats Northwest

As darkness deepens and the stars emerge overhead, I especially love an evening walk in summer. Particularly around a lake or pond. As the last light lingers in the tops of the trees, insects begin to emerge from the shadows. Midges dance above water. Moths materialize from nowhere. The air that seemed empty moments ago becomes crowded with tiny lives.

And then come the bats.

At first, you catch only a glimpse: a dark shape zigzagging against the fading sky. Then another. Soon the air above you is alive with impossible flight.

Unlike birds, bats don’t soar or glide for long stretches. They dart. Veer. Stall. Pivot. Their movements can seem chaotic until you realize they’re pursuing insects with extraordinary precision. Each twist and sudden turn represents a split-second adjustment in pursuit of prey.

The bats are hunting.

A summer lake is one of the best places to witness this hidden world because water attracts insects, and insects attract bats. As darkness settles, I often imagine the lake from their perspective. To us, the shoreline is fading into shadow. To a bat using echolocation, the world is becoming brighter. Each high-frequency call bounces off trees, insects, water, and rocks, returning as a detailed map of the night. While we strain to see shapes in the gloom, bats are navigating a three-dimensional landscape built from sound.

Little brown myotis bats range throughout most of North America, from northern Canada and Alaska to California and the southeastern U.S. They are habitat generalists and occur throughout a broad range of habitats, including forests, urban buildings and bridges. Photo Bats Northwest

In the Pacific Northwest, one of the most common species you might encounter is the Little Brown Myotis Bat. Despite their ordinary name, Little Brown Bats are extraordinary travelers of the twilight. They are habitat generalists, comfortable in forests, wetlands, towns, and mountain valleys alike. They are especially fond of hunting over lakes and rivers, where aquatic insects emerge in abundance.

Watch carefully over still water and you may see one skimming low across the surface. Their flight is quick and agile, allowing them to snatch mosquitoes, midges, and other insects from the air with remarkable efficiency. A single Little Brown Bat can consume hundreds of insects in a night.

The edge of your backyard can be another place to spot bats. Outdoor lights act like giant insect magnets, drawing moths, beetles, and flies into concentrated swarms. Enter the Big Brown Bat. Big Brown Bats are among the most adaptable bats in North America. Larger and more robust than their little brown cousins, they thrive in landscapes that humans have altered. Barns, attics, bridges, and buildings often serve as roost sites, and they readily take advantage of the insect buffets we unintentionally create around lights.

Big brown bats range from southern and central Canada to northern South America and the Caribbean. Big brown bats are habitat generalists and live in a variety of forests, shrub-steppes, alpine and urban areas. Photo from Bats Northwest

While some wildlife retreats as development spreads, Big Brown Bats have learned to live alongside us. Their success offers a reminder that conservation isn’t always about preserving pristine wilderness. Sometimes it means creating landscapes where wildlife can coexist with human communities.

Not all bats stay year-round.

On warm summer evenings in the Pacific Northwest, you might be fortunate enough to encounter a Hoary Bat. With a wingspan reaching sixteen to seventeen inches, the Hoary Bat is the largest bat in our region. Frosted silver tips on its fur give it a striking appearance and its name: “hoary” meaning gray or frosted.

Unlike many bats that roost in caves, Hoary Bats often spend their days tucked among tree foliage, remarkably well camouflaged. They are also migrants, traveling long distances between summer breeding grounds and warmer winter habitats. Due to their habit of tucking into the foliage, rather than living in giant colonies, we still lack basic information about their migration patterns and wintering locations or strategies.

Hoary bats are the most widespread bat in North America, and are the only bat occurring in Hawaii. They have been found in most Washington counties. Hoary bats prefer a variety of forest types with a strong preference for late successional forests. Photo Bats Northwest

To me, Hoary Bats embody one of nature’s recurring lessons: the boundaries we imagine between places are often illusions. Forests, mountains, deserts, and coastlines are connected by the movements of living creatures. The same night sky that carries swallows southward in autumn also guides these bats across vast landscapes. Sadly, that autumn migration also leads them straight into the path of wind turbines, and Hoary Bats are seeing fatality numbers greater than any other species of bat.

Some bats, however, are tied intimately to specific places.Townsend’s Big-Eared Bat is impossible to mistake once you’ve seen one. With enormous ears that are nearly half the length of their body give them a perpetually astonished expression.They depend upon particular caves, abandoned mines, and roosting sites that provide the stable conditions they need. Disturbance can cause entire colonies to abandon a roost. Unlike adaptable Big Brown Bats, Townsend’s Big-Eared Bats cannot simply relocate to the nearest attic or bridge.

Townsend’s big-eared bats range from southern B.C. throughout the western U.S. to central Mexico. Photo Bats Northwest

Their story reminds us that conservation often depends on protecting not only species, but places. Some creatures can flourish almost anywhere. Others require very specific homes, and when those homes disappear, so do they.

As autumn cools and insects become scarce, bats face a challenge familiar to many wildlife species: finding enough food to survive the winter. Different species solve this problem in different ways. Some, like the Hoary Bat, migrate to warmer regions where insects remain active throughout the year. Others enter hibernation, retreating to protected winter shelters and dramatically slowing their metabolism. During hibernation, a bat’s heart rate, breathing, immune activity, and energy use all decrease, allowing it to survive for months on stored fat reserves. Many bats also use shorter periods of torpor throughout the year, temporarily lowering their metabolic rate to conserve energy during cold weather or food shortages. Winter roosts, known by the beautiful word hibernacula, may be found in caves, abandoned mines, rock crevices, beneath loose bark, inside quiet corners of buildings, or even tucked among leaves. These cool, humid refuges provide the stable conditions bats need to make it through the lean months until spring insects return.

During a summer’s day, though, we admire wildflowers and warbling songbirds. We celebrate butterflies and swimming holes. But as soon as the sun slips behind the horizon, we often retreat indoors and leave half the story untold. Bats invite us back outside. They ask us to trust our ears more than our eyes. To become comfortable in twilight. To appreciate a world that doesn’t announce itself with bright colors or birdsong. The next time a warm summer evening settles over your neighborhood, lake, or forest trail, linger a little longer.

Look up.

You may discover that the sky is still busy long after the swallows have gone to bed.

If you like what you’ve read, please like or leave a comment. This helps The Algorithm put my work in front of new readers. Or you can show your appreciation with a flower!

Buy Me a Flower

Other Night Walks from The Mindful Naturalist:

Take a Night-Time Low Tide Walk

Take a Night Walk with the Owls

Take a Night Walk with the Cold Moon

Notes and resources:

Bats Northwest has upcoming Bat Talks and Community Science opportunities for you to take part in and have excellent resources so you can Meet Washington’s Bats

More information about the 15 species of bats found in Oregon at Oregon State University’s Northwest Bat Hub

Results from the Woodland Park Zoo bat monitoring program find there are seven species with medium to high levels of activity in Seattle.

• California myotis

• Big brown bat

• Yuma myotis

• Long-legged myotis

• Silver-haired bat

• Hoary bat

• Little brown myotis

This is based on a bat detector that records calls during the night, located in the Family Farm on the south end of the zoo.

To learn more about the issue of bats and wind energy: http://batsandwind.org/

Black Bear crossing the remote Cassiar Highway in northwestern British Columbia, Canada Photo by Dalton Johnson

This is a piece that I wrote in 2007 or so, when the movie adaptation of Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild was first released. It was a book that woke something up in me and led me to where I am now and after seeing the film, I was inspired to write my reflection of that time.

I found this essay recently as I was looking through my old journals and writing. It was burned on a CD! Remember when computers didn’t have enough memory to save your work? I also found my old Flickr account when looking for any photos that I may have uploaded from this time of my life. I didn’t have any there, but I did find a bunch from my time living in central Europe. I digress. I’m a little nervous about sharing it here, but I also feel like I’ve lived a thousand lives and perhaps it’s time to explore how I got this way. This one explores themes of shedding expectations and of finding your people by becoming your more authentic self.

I’ve always been a weirdo. I wore my entire soccer uniform to school everyday for a whole school year in 3rd grade when I moved to a new school. I thought I’d attract other people who liked soccer. And besides, the boy scouts got to wear their uniforms. I was really into spelling and loved to read the dictionary. My hobby was spelling. In 4th grade we moved to the big city (Anchorage, Alaska) for the year and I went to Boys and Girls Club after school where I learned to double-dutch jump rope with the girls from the military base. Then, bringing a jump rope with me everywhere was my thing. By high school, I rode the social capital of my much cooler sisters into the realm of social acceptance. I was captain of the debate team.

In college, I came across the book, Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. Alexander Supertramp was my new obsession and, in so many ways, someone I never met who changed the course of my life.

I think I averaged about 3 hours of sleep a day during those years. I was 22 and finishing up a Zoology degree at the University of Washington, working on an ambitious undergraduate research project in the Neurobiology department, all while working full-time graveyard shifts as a vet nurse in the animal emergency clinic and, somehow, managing to maintain a semblance of a social life as well.

I met a girl named Mizz on the number 34 bus that took us to campus every morning. It turned out we were both in the same Biochemistry class and she lived around the corner from me in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle. We soon became friends and she was one of those people who at 23 had already been to places I’d never even heard of. She wanted to be an oenologist, which was also something I’d never even heard of. She knew somebody who had a cabin overlooking the Nenana river near the entrance to Denali National Park. She asked if I was interested in renting it for the summer with her. She also knew somebody who knew somebody and the next thing we knew we had jobs doing Living History performances in the park–you know the people who dress up as characters from the past and harass the visitors?

The pieces all fell together. I found someone to sublet my apartment for the summer. We packed up my old Saab and put up one of those cheesy signs in the window that said ALASKA OR BUST and headed north on I-5. We listened to a lot of Modest Mouse and Built to Spill and Cake and Sleater-Kinney and then some books-on-tape from Tom Robbins and Edward Abbey and Dorothy Parker thus christening my Saab “Blanche” after a ‘high-breasted blonde’ in one of Parker’s stories. We adopted fake accents and alter egos; she became an Australian and me a hapless Canadian (since I don’t do accents well, eh?). We met some boys playing in a punk band in a bar in Whitehorse and they took us fishing in the midnight sun with whiskey-soaked marshmallows for bait. We had a run-in with a Black Bear on a toilet break somewhere on the Cassiar Highway and it was with tears that we unwittingly drove through an “outbreak” of hundreds of Canadian Tiger swallowtail butterflies and had to pick their delicate wings out of Blanche’s menacing grill. It was Alexander Supertramp who I thought of through all these experiences. Did he soak in this pool in the Liard Hotsprings? Did he stop for gas at this station in the Yukon? Did he see the same herd of caribou cross the highway near Tok?

Caribou photo credit The Seattle Times

We arrived in Denali seven years after Alexander Supertramp had died lonely and misguided in the back of an abandoned bus. It was with wide eyes and jaw dropped open that I listened to the ‘old timers’ who had been working there in 1992 who suggested that Alex had found his way into the staff cafeteria at the Denali Village hotel on a regular basis. There were others I spoke to who told me they’d had their Stampede Trail cabin broken into that summer with the glint of a big city prosecutor in their eye and their hand on their hearts claiming that it was certainly Supertramp to blame. I’m not sure if I bought what they were selling, and Krakauer reckons that that kind of conjecture was simply that, conjecture.

That summer something within me broke down a little bit. Focus shifted. Life re-framed. For the first time in my life I felt like I belonged. There were city kids and country kids, Southern Belles and boho Phishheads and jennies from the block and kids all the way from Afghanistan and Estonia and Poland, too. Because there was no one else around, traditional social boundaries were obsolete. Every sorority girl from Connecticut and forty year old farm mechanic from Iowa and recovering addict from Hollywood just got along. That summer I danced on tables, kissed a lot of girls (and boys, too), backpacked solo through polychrome pass and was bluff charged by a grizzly bear, fell in love at least ten times, gorged on blueberries right off the bush, threw rocks at rocks, sang silly songs when hiking to warn the bears I was coming down the trail, drank beers around a campfire nearly every night. There was a ptarmigan I called Bobby McGee and a fox called Sly who visited me every shift I worked out at Savage Cabin. There were the orphaned teenage bears who terrorized me at the same cabin. I chopped wood. I learned that I was afraid of heights after one too many close calls walking on railroad bridges over bottomless gorges, ooohed and aahhhhed while the Northern Lights danced overhead like neon wind.

This incredible photo of two bull moose sparring in front of Denali herself is from Tom Walker Photography

Every paycheck was immediately spent at the Spike, a bar in an old railroad car that was mostly frequented by employees at the park. There was an old poet there who bought you shots of Goldschläger and stared at your boobs. Sometimes he wore feathered masks or took his clothes off at random intervals and always in public, but always imparted some scrap of wisdom that slowly changed my outlook on the world. He was the first man I’d encountered, and actually developed a friendship with, who was truly and fearlessly free. He worked summers as a tour guide in Denali and had been for some 20 odd years. And every winter, he and his girlfriend made it a point to live in a different place each year, aiming to live in each of all 50 states, working when they needed to and living out of their old airstream caravan. It had never occurred to me that it was possible to spend a lifetime exploring, my wheels began slowly spinning.

Near the end of that magical summer, when the Teklanika was finally running lower, the thing to do was to hike out to the bus on the Stampede Trail. It was all the rage that year and random groups of people (often your hiking partner was dictated by whoever had the same day off as you) started making the pilgrimage to the bus and returning with bragging rights and photos like these.

(I don’t know who these guys are, but I found this photo here, it says on his website that this photo was taken the year before I was there.)

My feelings are still mixed about the en vogue onslaught to what was probably a sacred and magical place for Alexander Supertramp. Presumably, the pilgrimage is still carried out every summer by the college kids that go to work at the park, and probably became all the more popular after the Sean Penn film came out.

It’s not a particularly pretty hike, nor is it necessarily an easy one. The first 10 miles is a relatively flat, but boot-suckingly muddy track that is zig-zagged perpetually by an annoying rivulet of what we called Notagain Creek, but I’m not sure of its actual name. You have to cross that jerkface at least 15 times before you even reach the first big river crossing. Your boots have overfilled and your feet are wet before you finish the first mile. And the day we attempted this journey we got caught out in a squall that seemingly came out of nowhere and didn’t give us enough time to get the rain gear out before our packs were soaked through. We camped on the bank of the Teklanika River that first rainy night, with an aim to cross the river in the morning, and spent a considerable amount of it shivering in our damp sleeping bags by the campfire under the tarp and reading Krakauer’s book out loud to each other by the light of our headlamps. The rhythmic drumming of the rain on the tent fly soothing our blistered and exhausted bodies.

The next morning, I discovered that I’d managed to melt one of my hiking boots to a rock while drying it out by the campfire. Unfortunately, it was a portent of things to come that day. First things first, we had to cross the Teklanika River, Alex Supertramp’s Rubicon, weary and cold from a frosty Denali night in wet gear. Despite giving it a good couple of hours, walking up and down the bank a half mile in either direction, we couldn’t find a good place to cross, the water chest high and neither girl particularly buff, we couldn’t support each other with enough strength to make it across. When Megan slipped and went under, our confidence was shaken enough to chalk this one up to experience. And though I was disappointed at the time, in retrospect I think it was all for the best. In the end, I don’t think I really wanted to intrude on the cherished place a hapless kid died in just to get a notch on the belt of Denali cool. It was more than simple curiosity that brought me out this far. I had been driven by a reverence for someone who had such a mysteriously profound effect on me, even in death and through somebody else’s words. But I didn’t need to see the bus to pay my respects.

We spent the day, instead, lazily recovering by the river bank, throwing rocks at rocks, swapping your mama jokes and stories from home. It was a relatively uneventful day save for the bull moose that went running through our campsite, getting tangled in our makeshift clothes-line, strewing our damp clothes through the dense willows and for the lightness that was slowly unraveling in my heart. A new understanding was emerging of the destination not being nearly so important as the progress made on the journey.

Photo: Vashishtha Jogi on Unsplash

That night the storm had finally given up the last dregs of its fury and when the clouds parted, the Northern lights were revealed against the infinite backdrop of the Milky Way. We lay on our backs on a mattress of softest tundra and warmed to the soul by the campfire, we marveled at the night sky as the Aurora danced and twirled overhead. At one point in the show, they formed a sort of wagon wheel directly overhead, a perfect circle of the greenest light with glowing shafts directed inward like so many spokes. I considered this a different kind of portent, a sign from the heavens that my wheels were spinning in a new direction.

I didn’t return to university that autumn, even though it would have been my last quarter before graduation. My wheels carried me next to the national parks of the redwoods, then to the red rock desert of southern Utah and then on to coastal Maine and from there I just went on and on. I spent the next few years perpetually on the road, and there was a kind of freedom there that I hadn’t known before or since. Janis said that freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose, and things these days are sure piling up in the tattered cardboard box that holds the Things-I’ve-Got-To-Lose. In fact it’s practically overflowing. Though life’s a lot more complicated now than it ever has been, there’s a contentment and comfort here in this stability I never could have imagined all those transient years and wouldn’t trade now for all the blueberries in Denali National Park.

Sweat bee on Yellow salsify near my sit spot at White Pines Lake this morning.

One of the greatest gifts of a sit spot is that it teaches us something increasingly rare: how to stay.

Not forever. Just long enough to notice.

The first time you visit a sit spot, you tend to see the obvious things. A large pine tree. A creek. A patch of flowers. A squirrel. But return to the same place again and again, and something remarkable begins to happen. The landscape becomes less like a backdrop and more like a community. You start recognizing individual trees. You notice where the birds prefer to perch. You realize the afternoon sun reaches one corner before another. You begin to see relationships instead of scenery.

This week’s invitation is to create a Sensory Sketch Map of your sit spot.

My Sensory Map of my sit spot on White Pines Lake this morning. (The lake is next to my daughter’s school and I often walk here after drop off.) Notice how my sketch is not a finished or polished drawing.

Don’t worry about artistic skill. This isn’t cartography, and it certainly isn’t about creating a beautiful drawing. Think of your map as a collection of observations gathered in one place.

Start by marking where you are sitting. Then begin recording what you notice around you.

What can you see?

Perhaps there’s a fallen log twenty feet away, a patch of yarrow blooming beside the trail, or a cedar whose bark twists into deep furrows.

What can you hear?

A raven calling from uphill. The distant hum of traffic. Wind moving through pine needles. The chatter of a squirrel who disapproves of your presence.

What can you feel?

Warm sunlight on one shoulder. A cool breeze coming down the canyon. Rough bark beneath your fingertips. Dry grass brushing your ankles.

Add arrows showing movement. Sketch the path of a butterfly. Mark where a bee disappeared into the flowers. Draw the direction the wind is traveling. Include tiny doodles, labels, questions, and notes. Let your page become messy.

The goal is not accuracy.

The goal is attention.

Comparison is one of the most powerful tools in both science and nature journaling. When you return to your sit spot and create another sensory map a week later, you’ll have something to compare against. Has the shade shifted? Are different flowers blooming? Have the birds changed? Is the creek louder or quieter? Has the air become drier?

A single observation captures a moment.

Repeated observations reveal patterns.

And patterns are where understanding begins.

As you map your sit spot this week, consider these questions:

• What did you notice only because you slowed down?

• Which sense provided the most information?

• What was moving through your landscape besides you?

• What changes if you visit the same spot at a different time of day?

• If this place could speak, what story would it tell about the season?

You don’t need a wilderness preserve or a spectacular view for this activity. A backyard, city park, creek bank, schoolyard, porch, or balcony can all become places of discovery.

Return. Sit. Listen.

Then draw a map not of where things are, but of how a place feels to be alive within.

Find more of my sit spot and nature journaling prompts here:

Sit Spot Prompt: Tune Into Birdsong

Nature Journaling Prompt: The Power of Comparison

Nature Journaling Prompt: Create a Calendar of Firsts

Nature Journaling Prompt: Make a Wheel of the Year

Getting Started with Nature Journaling

Butterfly Crossing. Photo from the Pollinator Pathway Project.

If you were a bumblebee trying to cross a modern neighborhood, the journey might look surprisingly perilous.

A few flowering shrubs here. A lawn there. Long stretches of pavement. Sterile gravel landscaping. Parking lots radiating heat. A burst of lavender in someone’s yard, then another long ecological desert before the next source of nectar appears.

To us, these spaces may seem green enough. To a pollinator, they can function like fragmented islands.

Pollinator pathways attempt to change that.

The idea is beautifully simple: instead of isolated pollinator gardens scattered randomly across a city or neighborhood, what if people intentionally planted connected corridors of habitat? Tiny stepping stones of nectar, pollen, shelter, and host plants linking together into something larger than any single garden could provide.

Sarah Bergmann dreamt up the first Pollinator Pathway that stretched for a mile across Seattle in 2007. Photo from KUOW Seattle news article about her written in 2015.

The concept took root in Seattle in 2007 when artist Sarah Bergmann proposed the original Pollinator Pathway as a mile-long corridor connecting two green spaces in Seattle’s Madrona neighborhood through pollinator-friendly plantings woven into the parking strip (the space between the sidewalk and the street; you may have a different regional name for this where you live!) on residential streets and public spaces. What began as a university student’s art and ecological project quickly took on a life of its own. Communities embraced the idea because it transformed conservation from something distant and abstract into something participatory and local. A parking strip could matter. A curbside planting could matter. Even a few square feet of flowers could become part of a living network.

Today, pollinator pathway projects exist around the world, where neighborhoods, schools, local councils, and gardeners are helping reconnect fragmented habitat one planting at a time.

Why does this matter so much?

Because pollinators are struggling.

Habitat loss, pesticides, monoculture agriculture, climate change, invasive species, and urban fragmentation have dramatically reduced the resources available to native bees, butterflies, moths, hoverflies, hummingbirds, and other pollinators. Many species cannot survive if food sources are too isolated from one another. A bee may only be able to forage a certain distance before exhausting itself. Caterpillars may require specific host plants that have vanished entirely from a neighborhood.

Connectivity matters.

Ecologists sometimes describe habitat corridors as wildlife highways, but for pollinators the scale is often much smaller and more intimate. A single strip of native flowers along a sidewalk can become a refueling station. A patch of yarrow at the edge of a driveway can help bridge the gap between larger habitats. What appears tiny to us may be life-sustaining to an insect.

And perhaps just as importantly, pollinator pathways reconnect people to place.

There is something hopeful about transforming overlooked spaces into habitat. Parking strips become meadows. Lawns become living systems. Children begin noticing bees. Neighbors stop to ask about flowers. Small acts of stewardship ripple outward into community.

In 2024, I helped students create a pollinator garden on Catlin Gabel School’s campus in Portland, Oregon. We added artistic touches like mosaic stepping stones, signage describing each plant, and little garden gnomes. The hope was that it would be a place for both people and pollinators to hang out and connect. You can follow along on the insta!

The beautiful thing about pollinator pathways is that you do not need acreage to participate.

You can begin with a parking strip, a balcony planter, a neglected lawn edge, a schoolyard corner, or a patch beside the mailbox. Start by observing which pollinators already visit your space. Then choose plants that bloom across multiple seasons so nectar is available from spring through fall. Native plants are especially important because many native pollinators evolved alongside them and rely on them not just for nectar, but for reproduction and shelter.

A few easy principles can make a tremendous difference:

• Plant in clusters rather than isolated single plants so pollinators can forage efficiently.

• Include a variety of flower shapes to support different species.

• Avoid pesticides whenever possible, especially systemic insecticides.

• Leave some areas a little messy — hollow stems, leaf litter, and bare ground provide nesting habitat for native bees.

• Add shallow water sources with stones for safe landing spots.

• Let part of your yard become a little more alive and a little less controlled.

If you want to expand beyond your own garden, start small and local. Talk to neighbors. Share extra seedlings. Offer native plant starts from your own garden. Organize a “pollinator block” challenge. Create a little free seed library. Give out wildflower seeds for trick or treat at Halloween. Invite children to make pollinator signs or bee watering stations. Sometimes all it takes is one visible garden to inspire another.

A pathway, after all, does not appear all at once.

It forms flower by flower. Yard by yard. Neighbor by neighbor.

And perhaps that is part of what makes pollinator pathways so meaningful in this moment. They remind us that ecological restoration is not always dramatic. Sometimes it looks like milkweed planted beside a sidewalk. Sometimes it looks like clover allowed to bloom in the lawn. Sometimes it looks like a neighborhood slowly deciding to notice the small winged lives moving through it.

The landscape changes because people do.

And somewhere overhead, a bee finds its way across town because enough flowers bloomed along the journey.

Resources:

• This is a list of resources I created when I taught a course called Create a Buzz where we built a pollinator garden on our school’s campus in Portland, Oregon in 2024. It includes our final plant list which is perfect for just about anywhere in the Pacific Northwest for year-round pollinator habitat and food sources.

• Pacific Northwest specific Pollinator Pathway organization and the more general US

https://www.pollinator-pathway.org/

• Xerces guide to Pollinator Conservation in the Pacific Northwest and the more broadly US Pollinator Friendly Parks

• The official toolkit from Pollinator Pathways US (it’s a little more philosophical than practical, tbh)

• Many of my readers are in the UK; here is a toolkit to download from Bristol’s Pollinator Pathways Project

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Two pinecones. Two oak leaves. Two feathers. Two wildflowers growing only a few feet apart.

At first glance they may seem nearly identical, but the moment you begin drawing and comparing them, their differences begin to emerge. One leaf curls slightly at the edges while the other lies flat. One feather carries a faint stripe invisible from a distance. One pinecone opens wider toward the sun. Suddenly you are not just looking. You are investigating.

From the author’s nature journal. Notice how it isn’t a finished or polished drawing.

Comparison is one of the oldest and most important tools in science. Scientists compare specimens, habitats, weather patterns, behaviors, colors, sizes, and structures in order to reveal patterns and gather information. Nature journaling works much the same way. The simple act of sketching two similar subjects side by side naturally generates observations and questions.

Why is one darker?
Does this snail’s shell have more twists in its spiral than the other?
Why do these petals curve differently?
Did these organisms grow in different conditions?

And importantly: you do not need to create a polished piece of art for this process to work.

My own journal pages are often messy, incomplete, crossed out, or hastily sketched. The goal is not perfection. The sketch is simply a tool for slowing down long enough to notice what your brain would otherwise glide past. Drawing forces attention. Attention deepens observation. Observation leads to curiosity.

Another unpolished, unfinished example from my nature journal.

This week, try a simple comparison study in your journal. Choose two similar natural objects and sketch them side by side. Label differences. Write questions in the margins. Notice textures, asymmetry, color shifts, patterns of wear, insect damage, or growth.

You may discover that the real beauty of nature journaling is not in making beautiful pages, but in becoming someone who notices more than they did before.

*This activity is adapted from John Muir Laws’ e-book How To Teach Nature Journaling

Juicy Journal Prompts and Reflection

As you compare two leaves, feathers, or flowers, notice how quickly the mind wants to rank them: prettier, healthier, more symmetrical, more interesting. In human life, comparison often becomes competition or self-judgment. In nature journaling, comparison can become something gentler: a practice of noticing without assigning worth. What changes when comparison leads to curiosity instead of criticism?

Nature comparison teaches us that similarity and uniqueness coexist. Two pinecones may share the same structure while still carrying distinct shapes, scars, and asymmetries. How do you balance belonging with individuality in your own life? Where do you feel pressure to become identical rather than fully yourself?

Spend time comparing two natural objects that appear nearly identical at first glance. After sketching them, ask yourself: how often do I assume I already understand something before truly observing it? Where in my life might deeper attention reveal hidden complexity?

Buy Me a Coffee

Cut an apple in half across its middle and you’ll find a small star hidden inside.

Each point of that five-pointed star contains a chamber for seeds. A perfectly pollinated apple may hold ten seeds altogether, two tucked neatly into each chamber. If fewer seeds develop, the apple often grows misshapen or lopsided. If no pollination happens at all, the flower simply falls away and no apple forms.

Inside every orchard, meadow, hedgerow, and mountain wildflower patch, an ancient negotiation is taking place.

From the plant’s point of view, pollination is a matter of survival. Pollen, the fine golden dust that carries a plant’s genetic material, must somehow travel from one flower to another of the same species. But plants are rooted in place. They cannot move through the landscape searching for mates. Instead, they must persuade animals to do the traveling for them.

So flowers evolved incentives.

Pollen: The fine, grainy powder inside a flowering plant that makes it possible for the plant to reproduce. Insects, birds, other animals, and the wind help to spread pollen between plants. When pollen spreads to the female part of a plant, it germinates, or begins the process of growing a new plant. When pollen spreads like this, it’s called pollination, and it’s how plants reproduce.

Nectar: A sugar-rich liquid produced by plants which provides a nutrient source to attract animals, which may incidentally pick up pollen while feeding. This can aid in delivering pollen to other plants as they move between flowers. Common nectar-consuming pollinators include mosquitoes, hoverflies, wasps, bees, butterflies and moths, hummingbirds, and bats.

Fragrance. Color. Nectar. Ultraviolet landing strips invisible to human eyes but glowing brightly to bees. Some flowers offer abundant nectar like an all-you-can-eat buffet. Others hide their rewards deep inside narrow floral tubes that only certain visitors can reach. Columbine flowers form elongated, backward-pointing tubes full of rich nectar for a hummingbird with a long bill. An evening primrose flower may reserve its nectar for a hovering sphinx moth flying at dusk.

They provide this nutrient rich nectar to attract animals. Nectar itself doesn’t play a role in germination, it is simply there to entice. Plants, in other words, are attempting to create loyalty.

From the flower’s perspective, the ideal pollinator is faithful. A bumblebee that visits only lupine, or a hummingbird that flies from penstemon to penstemon carrying pollen exactly where the plant wants it delivered. Ecologists call this floral specificity, but it helps to think of it as the plant trying to establish an exclusive contract.

Pollinators, however, have entirely different priorities.

A bee is not trying to help a flower reproduce. A hummingbird does not care whether a blossom successfully sets seed. Pollinators are trying to survive. They move through the landscape seeking the richest rewards while spending the least amount of energy and avoiding predators along the way. If another flower nearby offers easier nectar, they will happily abandon the first plant’s carefully orchestrated plans.

And sometimes they cheat outright.

Certain bees bypass a flower’s elaborate reproductive structures by chewing tiny holes near the base of deep blossoms and stealing nectar directly without touching the pollen at all. To the plant, this is robbery. To the bee, it is efficiency.

The meadow is full of these quiet evolutionary negotiations.

Hoverflies drift between blossoms disguised as bees. Beetles blunder across flowers chewing pollen as they go (or laying eggs there so that their larvae can do so). Butterflies sip delicately in sunlight while moths work the evening shift beneath the moon. High in the mountains, hawkmoths shiver their flight muscles warm before dawn so they can fly in temperatures cold enough to still most other insects.

Bumblebee Butt in Lilac by Angie Klein

Bees remain the great champions of pollination not because they are altruistic, but because their lives are deeply entangled with flowers. They rely on nectar for carbohydrates and pollen for protein. Their fuzzy branched hairs are electrically charged to trap pollen grains easily, and many species carry specialized pollen baskets on their hind legs or abdomens. Flowers have shaped the evolution of bees, and bees have shaped the evolution of flowers in return.

Even the flower’s color and shape can seduce its main visitor: white, blue, or purple flowers are typically cup-shaped and attract bees, wasps, and butterflies. While red or pink flowers are long, tubular, and adapted for hummingbirds. Pale, night-blooming plants that produce a strong, musky fragrance and large amounts of nectar like agave or saguaro cactus flowers are particularly attractive to bats and moths.

Close to 75% of flowering plants on Earth rely on pollinators to produce seeds or fruit. Much of the food we eat depends upon these relationships. Here in the Pacific Northwest, pollinator-dependent crops shape entire regional economies. The apples of Washington, the berries of Oregon, the seed crops of California all begin with this exchange between flower and animal.

But we both know that pollination is more than an agricultural service. It is one of the great ongoing conversations of life on Earth.

The next time you kneel beside a patch of wildflowers, try watching from both points of view at once.

What is the flower asking the pollinator to do?

And what shortcuts is the pollinator attempting to take?

Look for blossoms shaped like gates, funnels, landing pads, or hidden vaults. Watch which insects move methodically from flower to flower and which wander opportunistically between species. Notice tiny holes chewed into petals by nectar thieves. Pay attention to which flowers seem to call to bees, which glow white for moths at dusk, and which lean toward hummingbirds passing overhead.

A meadow is not merely beautiful.

It is alive with bargains, seductions, opportunists, specialists, and evolutionary workarounds unfolding in real time.

Invitations and Activities:

Support Native Bees by Making a Bee Nursery

Check out this earlier post from me for an overview on the native bees of the Pacific Northwest and instructions for building a nursery to support them.

Nature Journaling: Watch a Flower

Choose a plant or flower species to watch and find a comfortable sit spot or vantage point. Here’s a list from an Oregon State University’s Ecology Lab of plants that particularly attract bees! Take a walk around your neighborhood or find a patch of flowers in your backyard that seem to be particularly buzzing. Once you’ve found your sit spot, note the time and start a 15 minute observation period. Each time a pollinator visits the plant or plants that you can see, make a notation and to the best of your ability, identify the type of pollinator. Record your observations in your nature journal.

Engineering: Design a Pollinator-Friendly Flower

Imagine you are a plant trying to attract the perfect pollinator. Would you want to attract hummingbirds, moths, bees, or butterflies? Draw or build your own flower using paper, recycled materials, or natural objects. Think about color, scent, shape, and where the nectar would be hidden. Would your flower reward many visitors or only specialists?

Journal Prompts Inspired by Pollination

Where in your life are you acting as a pollinator - carrying ideas, encouragement, creativity, or connection from one place to another without always realizing your impact?

Flowers invest enormous energy into attracting what they need. What do you cultivate in order to invite nourishment, community, or reciprocity into your own life?

Pollination is an act of carrying possibility into the future. What seeds, literal or metaphorical, are you helping to set in motion right now?

Create a Bee Watering Station

A bee watering station provides a safe, chemical-free hydration source for local pollinators. To build one, simply fill a shallow dish or plate with pebbles, marbles, or sticks and add fresh water. The rocks break the water’s surface, giving bees a dry, stable place to land and drink without drowning. Keep the station in a clean, shaded area sheltered from winds and top it off with fresh water daily.

Make your own or you could check out my website for purchasing options for the ones I make at sell at local markets!

Believe it or not, the Sit Spot was my most requested activity from my high school students. A Sit Spot is your secret doorway into the wild world right outside your door. It’s easy. Find a cozy spot that is close to home and easy to get to that you can return to again and again. This could be a sturdy rock, a soft patch of moss, or under the arms of a friendly tree, and settle in. You want this to be a place that you can regularly go to and spend time in solitude with nature.

Here, you’ll sit quietly, like a spy on a nature mission, and let your senses wake up. Listen closely, a bird trills a hidden song, leaves whisper in the wind, and maybe a squirrel scurries through the brush. Feel the cool earth beneath your hands or the sun warming your cheeks. Watch the tiny adventures of ants, the shimmer of a beetle’s shell, or the way sunlight dances on the water.

The magic of a Sit Spot is in the waiting. The longer you sit, the more secrets nature reveals. Patterns emerge, visitors appear, and you become part of the rhythm of the world around you. The more often you visit your sit spot the more connected you’ll feel to the natural world.

Sit Spot Prompt: Tune in to Bird Songs

An American robin singing cheerily, cheer up, cheer up, cheerily. iStock photos.

The best time to listen to the birds sing is during the dawn chorus. Now that the days are getting longer, I’m way too lazy to wake up that early. I’m really enjoying doing this activity in the evenings. I’ve been setting up on my back deck for a screen free 20-30 minutes each evening. Here’s about a minute of birdsong from the other night - you’ll hear California quail, Evening grosbeaks, Anna’s hummingbirds, American robins, Mountain chickadees, Red breasted nuthatches, and Steller’s jays! Pro-tip: Use the Merlin app to identify the birds in your area by sound.

Begin by taking a few deep breaths and become aware of your thoughts and notice any feelings you are experiencing. Just let them be as they are. Then close your eyes or soften your gaze and begin to tune in to any bird song around you. See if you can pick out individual songs. Can you tell which direction the song is coming from? Is there a call and response between many individuals or are you just hearing one bird?

I tend to think that 20 minutes is the perfect amount of time to spend in a Sit Spot for teens and adults, but it may take some practice to work up to such a long period of time. For younger naturalists, start with 5 minutes or even fewer if that seems too big a bridge to cross.

Some additional games you can play with your young naturalists:

Bird Song Mnemonics: Bird-song “translations” are fun and helpful ways to build your memory for identifying birds by the songs they sing. A familiar example is “chick-a-dee-dee-dee,” for our friend the familiar chickadee. “Who cooks for you?” for the distinctive call made by a barred owl. Or the American robin can be remembered with, “Cheerily, cheer up, cheer up, cheerily, cheer up.”

Invent your own silly or memorable phrases for the birds they hear. This builds memory skills and invites play. Pro-tip: Use the Merlin App to help identify birds by sound! You can listen to your recordings later to practice them.

The other day, I heard a fun variation of this game, where you use the bird’s names as curse words or insults! Give it a go, you Western wood-peewee!

Rhythm & Pattern Challenge: Have your kids tap the rhythm of a call on their knees or with sticks on the ground. Older naturalists can try to notate the rhythm in their nature journal using simple marks (dots for short notes, dashes for long ones). This activity helps deepen attention to call structure and builds skills for pattern recognition.

Nature Journaling Activity - Emotional Weather: Journal about or have a discussion with your group or partners about how each bird song feels to you. Does the song sound cheerful? Alarmed? Sleepy? Curious? How does the song make YOU feel when you hear it?

This activity connects bird behavior with vocal cues in a tangible way to help you remember them the next time. It’s also simply fun to come up with personalities for each bird.

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House sparrow in a forsythia bush. Photo from The Farmers Almanac

The collection of invitations, activities, and insights I write about here are an extension from a course called The Mindful Naturalist that I taught for a decade for high school students in Seattle and, ultimately, with kids from preschool onward at my Heartwood Mindful Nature School in the central Sierra Nevadas of California. But it all started with meditation.

About a decade ago, I found myself going through a difficult season of life. A dear friend with a robust mindfulness practice suggested meditation to me as a means of grounding myself and trying to be more present during this time when my future was a question mark. I started experimenting with formal meditation during the following months, but the full significance of mindfulness only struck me about a year after I began my practice.

I was feeling particularly low after a surgery, languishing and feeling a little hopeless. Still in my pajamas, I lay in bed while my toddler afternoon-napped next to me. A little brown bird caught my attention out the window, happily hopping about in the forsythia. I was straining to figure out what I was looking at. Female birds are notoriously difficult to identify, so you need to concentrate on all the features of the bird: the beak size and shape, the markings on the head, breast, and wing, the shape and color of legs and feet, the food it may be foraging for, and the sounds it might be making. It struck me that I was fully present and immersed in that singular moment; the experience felt akin to what I was learning in my more formal mindfulness and meditation classes. In that moment, I returned to myself. I could remember the young woman who was once a seabird biologist. The woman who could spend months on a deserted island in the Gulf of Alaska or the Columbia Bar, watching for banded birds to resight from the blind. Embodied is the only term that comes to mind to describe that moment arriving for me.

Having kept a journal for most of my life, I also turned to sketching and nature journaling to fill the long days of recovery. In drawing exercises as simple as comparing two types of grass seed heads or trying to capture the features of a particular leaf, I noticed I was fully engaged with what was present, not cycling through the neverending to-do list or analyzing that last awkward social situation. In other words, I discovered the ways that nature sketching is also a mindful practice.

As mindfulness became more integrated into my own life, I began looking for ways to incorporate it into my classroom. As a high school teacher, I knew that a sitting meditation is often a bridge too far for the average American teen. I learned more about Forest Bathing, the taking in of the natural world through our senses. This narrowing of our perception universalizes it. When we enter a green space, students bring with them their backgrounds, expectations, and experiences, but by focusing on the senses we can reduce our worlds to only the here and now. I felt like this more embodied and informal mindfulness was an offering I could bring to them. Thus, The Mindful Naturalist was born. And as we grew more practiced, students kept asking me “WHY? Why does this work? What is happening inside my brain that helps me get out of my own head?”

Heartwood Nature School Summer Camp crew, living the life aquatic.

Slaying the DMN in your mind

The brain moves through the day in two broad rhythms. One is the Default Mode Network, a hum of inward activity that turns on when we are not focused on a specific task. It is the place of memory, imagination, self-reflection, and, at times, worry. Left unattended, it can spiral into rumination, looping the same thoughts until they feel heavier than they are. The other rhythm is the Task Positive Network, a system that engages when we direct our attention outward into solving a problem, observing closely, making something with our hands.Where the first drifts, the second anchors. Where one wanders, the other attends. And only one mode can be turned on in your brain at a time.

Nature journaling and forest bathing offer a bridge between these two states. Neither demand perfection or expertise; they simply ask you to notice. The curve of a leaf, the flick of a bird’s tail, the way light fractures through a stand of trees. As pencil meets paper, attention gathers. The mind that was busy narrating the past or rehearsing the future begins to settle into the present moment. You are no longer inside your thoughts. You are in relationship with something real and immediate. This is the turning of the switch from the Default Mode Network (DMN) to the Task Positive Network (TPN).

The acronym, DMN, when spoken aloud, can feel like a kind of “demon,” not because it is bad (it is essential, after all), but because of how easily it can take the reins without invitation. Spending time noticing nature does not banish it; rather, it offers a counterbalance. By giving your attention a place to land, it interrupts the endless loop and replaces it with curiosity. What color is that shadow, really? How many sounds, close and far away, can you hear? How many life forms can you find in a single lichen- and fungus-covered fallen branch? Questions like these are small, but they are powerful. They root you.

Mindful Naturalists doing a spot of birding.

Over time, this practice becomes more than a momentary shift. It trains the mind to move more fluidly between reflection and attention, between inner landscape and outer world. You begin to recognize when you are caught in a loop and remember, almost instinctively, to step outside, to look closer, to draw, to write, to breathe. Outside becomes both mirror and window: a place to see yourself more clearly and to see beyond yourself at the same time.

In this way, noticing nature, whether through your senses or on the page, is not just an artistic or scientific practice. It is a neurological one. A quiet recalibration. A return to presence.

This is, at its heart, the work of The Mindful Naturalist. It is not simply about identifying species or keeping records, though those are worthy pursuits. It is about cultivating attention as a practice of care toward both the natural world and toward our own inner landscapes. Through simple, repeatable acts of noticing, Being a Mindful Naturalist invites you out of abstraction and into relationship, where learning is grounded in presence and curiosity becomes a steady guide. In this way, the practice becomes both a refuge and a tool. A way to quiet the noise within and re-enter the world with clarity, wonder, and a renewed sense of belonging.

Painting with nature-made paintbrushes at Heartwood Mindful Nature School.

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California superbloom photo from Homestead and Chill

Beltane is a Cross Quarter Day, the midpoint between the Spring Equinox and the Summer Solstice. Celebrated around May 1st, it arrives when spring is no longer tentative but fully alive. Beltane is green, blooming, and abundant. Where Ostara honors balance and emergence, Beltane celebrates vitality, connection, and the flourishing of life in all its forms.

By now, the subtle beginnings of early spring have given way to something unmistakable. The landscape hums with energy. Flowers are opening wide, pollinators are at work, trees are nearly leafed out in full. The days stretch long here in the Pacific Northwest, the air softens, and there is a sense of momentum that feels both joyful and alive. Beltane invites us not just to notice this energy, but to join it.

If Imbolc is about tending the spark, and Ostara about the first green shoots breaking through, Beltane is the season of full expression.

This is a time of outward movement. Of creativity, passion, and connection. The seeds we planted, both literal and metaphorical, are no longer hidden or just emerging; they are growing, reaching, becoming. Beltane asks us to step fully into our lives, to participate in the act of living with presence and intention.

There is a warmth to this season that goes beyond the weather. It lives in the way we gather, the way we celebrate, the way we open ourselves to joy. Traditionally, Beltane is associated with fire festivals, fertility rites, and the weaving together of community. Fires were lit as symbols of protection, purification, and life force, and people would move between them or leap over embers as a blessing for the season ahead. There is something both ancient and deeply human in this instinct, to mark the turning of the year not quietly, but with movement, laughter, and light.

The name Beltane is often linked to the Celtic god Belenus, associated with the sun and healing, and to the Gaelic word teine, meaning fire. Together, they evoke the image of “bright fire,” a fitting symbol for a season defined by energy, growth, and illumination. Beltane reminds us that we are part of this living world, not separate from it, and that joy, too, is a sacred act.

To celebrate Beltane with your friends and family, you can…

The Beltane Vibe:
Bring the outdoors in. Decorate your space with fresh flowers, greenery, and anything that feels vibrant and alive. Think color, texture, and movement: Garlands, wildflower bouquets, ribbons. If you can, celebrate outside. This is a season that wants to be felt in the open air.

Light a Beltane Fire:
If you have access to a fire pit or safe outdoor space, light a fire to honor the traditional Beltane flames. This can be as simple or ceremonial as you’d like. You might write intentions, wishes, or blessings for the coming months and offer them to the fire. Fire here represents transformation, energy, and life force. What do you want to ignite in your life?

Move Your Body:
Beltane is a celebration of aliveness. Move in whatever way feels joyful and free. Traditionally, Maypole dances wove ribbons together as a symbol of connection and the interweaving of life. You can recreate this in simple ways with ribbons, string, or even just turning up the Beyonce and dancing together.

Celebrate Connection:
Gather with others if you can. Share stories, laughter, food, and time outdoors. Beltane is about relationship. To the earth, to each other, and to ourselves. Even a small gathering can carry this spirit.

Beltane is a Celebration of Fertility and Creation:
This can be interpreted as broadly or narrowly as you’d like. Consider your creative projects, relationships, ideas, or literal growth in gardens and fields. Wear colors that feel bold and alive. Let yourself take up space. This is not a quiet season.

Share a Seasonal Feast:
Enjoy fresh, vibrant foods. Salads, herbs, fruits, bread, honey, cheeses. Think light but abundant. Eating together becomes part of the celebration of life’s richness.

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Journal Prompts:

What in my life feels most alive right now?

Where am I being invited to step more fully into expression or visibility?

What does “fertility” or creativity look like in my life at this moment?

How can I nurture joy, connection, and play in my daily rhythm?

What does it feel like to be fully present in this season of growth?

Image from VistaPrint stock photos

Beltane Craft: Create a Flower Crown or Nature Garland

Flower crowns are a simple, joyful way to connect with the beauty and abundance of the season.

Materials:
Fresh or faux flowers, greenery, floral wire or a flexible branch (like willow), twine or ribbon, and scissors.

Form a base using wire or a gently bent branch sized to your head. Wrap stems of flowers and greenery around the base, securing them as you go with twine or additional wire. Let it be imperfect and organic.

As you create, consider what you are celebrating or calling into your life. Wear your crown during your Beltane gathering, or make crowns as your party activity! You can hang a garland in your home as a reminder of the season’s vitality.

Rufous hummingbird photo from A-Z animals

Part of my seasonal field notes series, this introduction to the Hummingbirds of the Northwest offers a glimpse into what’s happening outside right now.

I saw an exhausted looking Rufous hummingbird on my feeder recently. I’m new to the Sierras and had assumed that… Yay! The Rufouses have arrived. When I looked into it further, I discovered that they don’t breed here, meaning that they don’t live here. They are just passing through. I’m along their migratory route from Mexico to Alaska. It turns out that Rufous hummingbirds have the longest migration of any hummingbird: around 4,000 miles!

This raised a lot of questions. How does this tiny bird, the length of a matchstick, make this journey happen? Why migrate at this elevation (I live at 4,000 ft) when more flowers are blooming lower in the foothills at this time of year? How did he find MY feeder, which serves the resident Anna’s hummingbirds all winter long? Why do the Annas stay and the Rufouses make this harrowing journey? Why migrate at all?

My initial googling revealed that Rufous hummingbirds have a fascinating migration strategy that differs depending how old the hummingbird is and whether the bird is male or female. What? I needed to know more, so I took a deep dive into the hummingbirds of the Pacific Northwest, so you don’t have to. I’ll overview each bird, but I’m going to spend the most time detailing the Rufous’ fascinating migration story. Scroll to the end if you’re looking for nature journaling prompts or other activities that you can do with your family to celebrate hummingbirds!

The Hummingbirds of the Pacific Northwest

Hummingbirds are only found in the New World, where they arrive as living light. There are more than 350 species stitched into the landscapes of North and South America from alpine meadows to tropical understories, from desert canyons to backyard feeders. They span a spectrum of scale that feels almost improbable: some no larger than a bumblebee, others approaching the size and presence of an American robin. They have legs that can support them to perch, but they can’t walk or even turn around when standing. And so, they have mastered the air. With wingbeats that blur into invisibility, bodies that seem less like flesh and bone and more like motion itself, and that startling, nearly mechanical buzz you feel as much as hear as they pass by, hummingbirds are sparks moving through the day, quickening whatever they touch. And if you are lucky enough to notice them, really notice them, they leave behind a sense that the world is far more vivid, far more alive, than it first appears.

In the Pacific Northwest, only four species of hummingbirds are regularly found. Of these, just one—the Anna’s hummingbird—stays here through the winters. They have adapted so well to our mild winters, abundant suburban gardens, and reliable feeders that many no longer migrate at all, remaining through seasons that were once inhospitable. The other three species arrive as summer visitors, drawn north by the bloom and warmth of the season.

Anna’s Hummingbird male. Photo by Vijayalakshmi Nidugondi for Unsplash

Anna’s Hummingbird

The Anna’s hummingbird feels like a jewel that learned how to fly. In certain light, the male’s throat ignites. It’s not just pink, but an electric rose that flashes and disappears depending on the angle, as though the color itself were a secret. There is a steadiness to Anna’s that sets it apart. They linger. They perch. They sing! An unexpected, scratchy burst of sound that feels almost oversized for such a small body. Where others pass through, Anna’s remains, a year-round presence, carrying a quiet confidence in its small, radiant form.

Rufous hummingbird male. Photo by Diana Roberts for Unsplash

Rufous Hummingbird

The Rufous hummingbird arrives like a spark struck from flint. They are small, fierce, and impossible to ignore. Their feathers burn with the color of rust and late-summer sun, a flicker of ember against the green. There is nothing hesitant about them. They move with urgency. With claim. Zipping, scolding, defending their patch of air as if it were a kingdom. Even their pauses feel temporary, a held breath before the next burst of motion. The Rufous carries fire in their body, and behaves as though the world must make space for them.

Calliope hummingbird male. Photo from Perpetua Resources

Calliope Hummingbird

The Calliope hummingbird is a whisper made visible. The smallest of the Pac NW hummingbirds, they move like a thought you almost miss. There, then gone. The male’s throat is streaked with fine magenta lines that flare outward like brushstrokes, delicate and precise, as if painted by hand. There is something understated about the Calliope, a kind of elegance that doesn’t demand attention but rewards those who notice. Their flight feels buoyant, almost playful, as though they belong more to air than to earth.

Black-chinned hummingbird male. Photo from Birds and Blooms

Black-chinned Hummingbird

The Black-chinned hummingbird carries their brilliance quietly. At first glance, they can seem subdued. They are dark, unassuming. Then the light shifts, and a narrow band of violet ignites beneath their chin, a hidden flash of color like a secret revealed only at the right moment. There is a calmness to their presence, a measured way of moving through space. They do not rush to be seen. Instead, they offer their beauty sparingly, asking you to slow down, to look again, to notice what might otherwise be overlooked.

Rufous Hummingbird Migration

This interactive migration map from Hummingbirds Central gives you up to the minute updates as to where hummingbirds are being spotted on their journey north. You can report your own sightings, too!

There is something almost improbable about a Rufous hummingbird. A bird the same weight as a stick of gum carries within them a map that stretches from the pine–oak forests of southern and central Mexico to the wild edges of Alaska. Each year, they trace one of the longest migrations in the world relative to their size, a journey of thousands of miles powered by wings that blur faster than the eye can follow.

They do this alone.

Unlike geese or cranes that move in loud, shifting formations across the sky, Rufous hummingbirds travel as solitary migrants. Each bird departs, navigates, feeds, and rests independently, as if the entire continent were a series of quiet, personal decisions. In fact, they let the flowers be their guide. They visit up to 5,000 flowers each day along the route! They convert the sugars they gain from flower nectars with their speedy metabolism in order to put on about one gram of fat in a day. This alchemy is how they fuel the vast distances they cover.

Remarkably, their migration is not a single wave but a staggered unfolding, stratified by age and sex. Adult males are often the first to leave wintering grounds, with some departing as early as January, racing north along the Pacific flyway through California and along the coasts of Oregon, Washington, Canada and Alaska to arrive at the breeding grounds first and establish territories. Females and younger birds follow later, spacing themselves across time and landscape, reducing competition for the nectar and insects they depend on to survive.

By May, everyone has arrived at the furthest edge of their range along the coast from southeast Alaska to the Kenai Peninsula. Resources are scarce there at this time of year. There are only a couple of flowering species available that time of year along the Alaskan and northern Canadian coastline. But they need to arrive this early in order to time nesting with the start of Alaska’s peak flower season. Many of the females waste no time with dilly dallying once they get there, many will start building their nests within three days of their arrivals! They need to lay their eggs in time to feed their young on the bounty of nectar from native flowers like salmonberries, fireweed, western columbines, or yellow paintbrush.

By the end of July, the cycle turns. Their southbound journey shifts inland, generally east of the Cascades and the Sierra Nevada into the Rockies, where late-season wildflowers fuel their return. It is a loop written in elevation, temperature, and bloom time. A moving relationship between bird and plant.

Graphic by Alexander Vidal for Birds and Blooms

And they are tougher than they appear. Rufous hummingbirds are the only hummingbirds known to tolerate temperatures below 0°F, entering a state of torpor to conserve energy through cold nights. This physiological resilience allows them to push farther north than any of their relatives, nesting in places where frost can linger even into early summer.

In recent decades, some have begun rewriting parts of their journey. A small but growing number now overwinter along the Gulf Coast and in the southeastern United States, adapting to changing climates and human-altered landscapes. Even within a species known for precision, there is flexibility.

How can you help?

• Go Native! Plant native flowers in your yard. Local plant nurseries are a great place to get native plant recommendations.

• Avoid using pesticides. Look for natural alternatives. Hummingbirds will catch insects to feed their babies.

• Keep and maintain a hummingbird feeder (but only if you can commit to washing it at least once per week, to remove mold and bacteria). Fill it with 4-parts water and 1-part white sugar, nothing else. For instance, make a mixture that is 1 cup sugar and 4 cups water.

• Provide nesting materials. Hummingbirds will often use objects such as feathers, lichens, mosses, pet fur, and spider silk to create nests for raising their young. If you keep your yard too tidy, they won’t be able to find these things.

Activities:

1. Create a Hummingbird Café (Feeder + Observation Station)

Hang a simple feeder and let kids help mix nectar (1 part sugar to 4 parts water, no dye). Turn it into a science station: keep a notebook nearby and track who visits, when, and how often. In your notebook you can record behavior notes about the activities you see. Are there any fights over who can access the feeder? Is there more activity at any particular time of the day? (We call the hour around sunset showtime at our house).

2. “Sit Spot” Hummingbird Watch

Choose a place outside near flowering plants or a hummingbird feeder and sit quietly for 10–15 minutes. The goal isn’t to find hummingbirds. It is simply to notice. The whir of wings, flashes of color, favorite perches. I once chose a sit spot in a clump of hardy fuchsias in the Washington Park Arboretum. What a show!

3. Migration Mapping Project

Follow the journey of the Rufous Hummingbird on a map. You can create your own with string or markers to trace their clockwise migration using information from trackers at Hummingbird Central or iNaturalist. This activity will help kids visualize just how far such a tiny bird travels.

4. Build a “Pollinator Garden in a Pot”

Plant hummingbird-friendly flowers (like salvia, fuchsia, or native honeysuckle, bee balms, or penstemons) in a container or a dedicated garden space. Let your kids help pick the flowers out and to plant them. Notice how flower shape and color attract different pollinators. Here’s a list of Pacific Northwest natives that hummingbirds love from Portland Nursery.

5. Lessons from a Hummingbird Journal Prompts

The Rufous hummingbird migrates thousands of miles alone.

Where in your life are you being asked to trust your own path, even without companionship or validation?

Their migration happens in waves where age and experience shape timing.

How has your “timing” in life differed from others, and what have you learned from that?

They are fiercely territorial despite their size.

What is worth protecting in your life right now? What boundaries need to be more clearly held?

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Sources and Further Reading:

https://www.hummingbirdcentral.com/index.htm

https://www.whitehawkbirding.com/hummingbird-migration/

https://www.audubon.org/magazine/rufous-hummingbirds-turning-unusual-places

https://perpetuaresources.com/the-calliope-hummingbird/

https://www.fws.gov/story/fast-and-furious

https://a-z-animals.com/animals/rufous-hummingbird/

https://www.birdsandblooms.com/birding/attracting-hummingbirds/five-fascinating-facts-about-fall-hummingbird-migration/

This essay was first written for my dear friend Aja’s Substack Fish Forward that she writes with her friend Jamie. As part of their Alaska-month, they had asked me to write about how my upbringing there continues to show up in my adult professional life. It was my first introduction to Substack as a medium and gave me the idea to get my own writing off the ground. As The Mindful Naturalist has gained subscribers (I still can’t believe it!) I thought I’d share it here to provide you with a little bit of context for who and how I am in the world. Welcome to our new subscribers! I’m so glad you’re here! PS Many of the original photos were lost in a house fire and many of them are slightly out of focus, 80s style. It’s not just your eyes!

Fishing as Ritual

When my dad’s friend, Bill, started pouring his ashes into the Kenai, we all cast our lines in the water. I watched my dad floating there, drifting lazily downstream, swirling on the surface then mixing in with the churning glacial silt that gives the river its vibrant turquoise color. He was home. Just then, my sister shouted out in joyous delight, “Fish on!” further downstream from me. Then my cousin crowed the same. The refrain went down the line to the 25 or 30 folks that were gathered there to celebrate my father’s life by doing what he loved best in the world: Fishing the upper Kenai River in Alaska at the height of the sockeye run on a sunny July afternoon.

Brooke (yellow shirt) and her family along the Kenai c.1982

I was next. I could feel my line bouncing along the riverbed, my line weighed down with a sinker for these swift waters in order to slow my fly’s tumble over the rocky bottom where the salmon often rested. While salmon don’t eat again after leaving the ocean to spawn in the river, they will snap at anything that gets too close to their mouths as it drifts by. When my line paused just long enough to tell me that I, too, had a bite, I set my hook and shouted out my own “Fish on!” battle cry.

The fly we all used was a ‘Ricko Special’. My sister and I spent that long Alaskan winter tying a type of fishing fly called a ‘coho fly’ with remnants of my dad’s beard instead of the animal fur (goat’s tails?) we normally used for each of the guests at the wake. My dad was one of those guys with a ZZ Top beard that often reached his belly button. His own personal protest to his time in the Vietnam War. It was the type of beard that was commented on nearly everywhere he went. For a laugh years ago, he tied his flies with his own beard clippings and thought it was hilarious how effective they were. The shock on the funeral director’s face when we asked if he could collect some of that glorious beard for us before he went to the crematorium was worth it for this moment. Of the two and half dozen of us fishing through my father’s ashes that day, nearly half of us landed a fish on that first cast.

Fishing was that embedded and that central to my early life that even our rituals for death were shaped by it. By extension, all that time I spent in nature, (yes with extraction/subsistence hunting and fishing, but also with a deep admiration, respect and awe for the wild wonder of my childhood landscape) formed the scaffolding of my worldview as I grew into an adult, a parent, a teacher, a naturalist, an artist, a citizen of the planet.

Brooke at fish camp, c. 1983

The Mindful Naturalist

I grew up to become a high school Biology teacher. For about a decade, I ran a course called The Mindful Naturalist for teens in urban Seattle. At its heart, the course is about framing the world around us in a way that centers our awareness. So much of our experience is what we pay attention to and by paying deep attention to the natural world, it opens a portal to pay closer attention to our inner worlds as well. In the field, we develop our skills as naturalists by learning to name the things around us, sketching and journaling, and reading and listening to the work of other naturalists, artists, and activists.

Brooke’s students Mindful Naturalisting in Discovery Park, Seattle 2023

Community connection is an integral part of the course and over the years I’ve connected teens with grassroots organizers who daylight creeks long buried by city planners or backyard moth enthusiasts who just want to share the love or native Duwamish storytellers who steward the ancestral knowledge of the region or pollinator pathway renegades who guerilla-scatter seeds of native wildflowers across the city to create wildlife corridors for migrating butterflies. We work with larger institutions like Birds Connect Seattle (formally Seattle Audubon) and the Burke Museum and scientists from the University of Washington, Oregon State University, and the conservationists at the Woodland Park Zoo and the Seattle Aquarium as well. We consider the social justice issue of urban greenspaces and examine who gets access to the natural world and why that matters. Along the way, we practice mindfulness, presence, patience, and seeing, and we explore what the latest discoveries about the science of well-being tells us about how time in nature improves our physical and emotional health.

The course is a mashup of the things I hold dearest to my heart and trace back to my wild childhood in Alaska: Nature journaling, field identification, forest bathing, and the psychology of flourishing. When I consider Ayana Elizabeth Johnson’s call to action through her Venn Diagram for climate advocacy, this course is at its center for me. The gift to see the world from this particular point of view was given to me by Alaska.

Brooke with her mom and sister, c. 1982

Born in the Far North

It was 20 below zero that day in Fairbanks, Alaska in the long shadows of the midwinter sun in January of 1976 when I came into the world. My parents had packed up their VW bus the year before, threw in a couple cats, and made their way north along the Alcan highway from McKinleyville on the Northern Californian redwood coast. I may have been made along the way. After finding their feet, my parents bought a homesteader’s A-frame in the Chugach Mountains of the Eagle River Valley about an hour outside of Anchorage when my dad got hired at the Alaska State Fish Hatchery at Elmendorf.

The house was more homebase than home, really. Most of my childhood memories are of fishing trips. Road trips to the Kenai nearly every weekend in summer. Depending on the run: the upper river for Reds, the lower river and at the mouth for Kings. Fly-in trips in Alaska’s interior, a float trip down the Gulkana here, another down the Little Susitna there. Ninilchik for razor clams. Or when we were small, always at least one lake trip to Tustumena or Skilak so we kids could catch Rainbow trout or my favorite fish (because it had such a cool name and pretty PINK spots) the sea going char called the Dolly Varden. And, always, a trip out into the stunning Kachemak Bay for halibut and lingcod.

Our house wasn’t exactly remote by Alaskan standards, but it certainly was from a modern American point of view. Still, subsistence fishing and hunting in summer was how we got through the long winters. If my mom and dad didn’t get a moose in the freezer by the end of September, we wouldn’t have meat through the winter. We bartered with the bounty of fish in the freezer though, trading with other subsistence families in the area for the things we didn’t do like growing and canning vegetables or raising chickens for meat or eggs. A lot of our neighbors raised rabbits. Yes, for eating. Friends from “Outside”, the term Alaskans use for everywhere that’s not Alaska, would bring abalone, lobsters, or venison to trade. Our winter pantry was a variety show of home canned vegetables, pickles, preserves, sausages or smoked fish from our friends and neighbors. The currency? Salmon.

Brooke, center, with her sister and cousin and their lake trip bounty, circa 1985

Around the time I started 1st grade, my mom started a tour guiding business aimed at teaching women the basics of how to be outdoors. In those days, it was common for outdoorsy men to bring their new wives up from the Lower 48 when they settled in the Wild West that was the early 80s in Alaska. My mom grew tired of hearing how these women stayed home because they didn’t know how. So, she stepped in with her tour company for women, by women. Often my sister and I would tag along on these trips, where we would help set up tents, gather firewood and kindling, or just take in the delight the women in mom’s tour groups were basking in as they gained confidence and skills. It’s only now with the advantage of time that I realize that our presence was probably out of the necessity of single parenting, not because she thought bringing kids along added to the experience. But holy hell. The moxie of my mother to make that work.

Eventually, that guiding business took her back to the Kenai where she became one of the only female King salmon guides on the river. She and my father had parted ways by then and the courage and tenacity it must have taken to buy that boat and launch into the fray of the swagger and machismo of the river guide scene in the 80s is astonishing to me. Again, my sister and I were thrown in the mix. We lived at Fish Camp in Soldotna in the summers. We were essentially feral while my mom was out for the early morning run by 4:30 and home after the evening run for a late dinner in the endless Alaskan summer light.

My mom with an enormous King salmon, circa 1990

I’ve always spent a lot of my life up in my own head, and having such an unstructured life with no adult supervision along that river suited me. While my sister would run around with the other river rat kids, I’d go on walkabout with my journal, lay on the forest floor watching the clouds go by, or fish for rainbows or dollys from the shore. I still remember the thrill of getting my first filet knife for Christmas when I was in 2nd grade and the pride of having it in a little holster at my hip. As a Biology teacher, I specialized in animal anatomy and physiology. I’m certain that all those fish that I gutted and fileted growing up and the processing of moose or caribou or ducks for meat led to my lifelong fascination with machinations of the body.

In fact, one of my first toys was a beating fish heart. Did you know that a fish’s heart conduction system continues to beat for an hour or two after it dies? Sometimes longer if there’s enough available oxygen. Before we were old enough to do it ourselves, my parents would carve out the fish hearts and pass them out like candy to all us kids that came with my parents’ friends. We’d run around with those tiny beating hearts, cradled in our little hands like we were holding a baby bird. Something precious and wondrous and wild and worth caring for.

Hope Is the Rhythm of our Broken Hearts

Today, when I work with teenagers, I don’t pass out beating fish hearts, though we spend a good deal of time considering the beating of our own broken hearts. Forest bathing is the taking in of the natural world through our senses. This narrowing of our perception universalizes it. When we enter a green space, students bring with them their backgrounds, expectations, and experiences, but by focusing on the senses we can reduce our worlds to only the here and now. The beating of our hearts becomes the rhythm of the present moment. It’s the drumline to the chorus of birdsong and tree frogs. Even in the city.

(Despite its name, forest bathing doesn’t have to happen in a forest. I’ve led groups on school campuses, beaches, and city parks. The important part is that you are noticing what is natural around you. Even the courtyard in the hospital or technology campus you work at holds wonders to discover.)

What if We Get This Right?

There was a Tuesday morning in a city park, not long ago, that changed everything for me.

“What do you think it is?” Claire asks me, squinting her eyes against the sun. Curiosity is plain on her face. Earlier, we talked of her upcoming driving lessons and plans for tennis camp over summer break, but now, on this Tuesday morning, we are focused on a single ant and its explorations around the picnic shelter we stand in at Seattle’s Seward Park.

Margo adds, “What is it doing?” with that same look of wonder. “It’s, like, following the cracks in the concrete like a trail - Woah! What just happened?”

Ella offers, “It found another ant! A smaller one!” She crouches to look closer, “Wait! There are so many little ones coming out of the cracks!”

“He’s running away!” Maddy interjects, delightedly. “He’s afraid of those tiny, little ants! He’s, like, 10 times bigger than them, and he’s running away!” She bounces on the balls of her feet, enchanted by this unexpected turn of events.

The Mindful Naturalist class doing a spot of birding

“More like 20 times bigger!” Claire chimes in, “Shouldn’t the little ones be afraid of him? He’s like Godzilla to them!” Her eyes bore into mine, looking for answers. I smile, say nothing, continuing our watch. We fall into easy, companionable silence and go back to watching the ant parade while we soak in the sunshine after a waterlogged spring in the Pacific Northwest.

That Tuesday was May, 24th 2022 and as these four teenagers were absorbed in the activities of a single ant, something so small and insignificant that on any other day it might have been overlooked entirely, another teenager walked into an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas with an assault rifle and took the lives of nineteen students and two teachers. He injured seventeen more young children and changed the lives of everyone in the community of Uvalde, and beyond, forever. I read the headline on my phone on the school bus as we were heading back to our own campus that afternoon. That was the day, like Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, I started asking “what if we get this right?”

What if we get education right so that kids are no longer left out of their own communities? What if Salvador Ramos (and the many, many others like him) had been with us that day, simply watching an ant or joyfully indulging in nature games in the old growth forest of Seattle’s Seward Park? What if he’d had access to the experience of finding enchantment and joy in wild spaces, even urban ones? What if connection with peers and his community were the focus of his days, rather than the lonely restlessness of a pandemic bedroom? What if everyone got to experience a sense of awe or wonder that centers humans as being a part of nature instead of adjacent, or worse, superior to it? How many lives could be saved? Human and wild?

I don’t need to tell you that we are losing our connection with the natural world. Robin Wall Kimmerer writes in Braiding Sweetgrass that “...philosophers call this state of isolation and disconnection “species loneliness”—a deep, unnamed sadness stemming from estrangement from the rest of Creation, from the loss of relationship. As our human dominance of the world has grown, we have become more isolated, more lonely when we can no longer call out to our neighbors. It’s no wonder that naming was the first job the Creator gave Nanabozho.” Why do I teach field identification in my courses? When I first started learning the names of the trees in my neighborhood, I immediately felt like I had a lot more friends. For the same reason it’s easier to ignore atrocities that happen to nameless, faraway people in faraway places, it’s important to connect young people to the beings all around them. And when we do…? Magic happens.

I was astonished when the 20-minute Sit Spot became the most requested activity I received when teaching. A Sit Spot is simply an invitation to sit in nature and just Be. Sometimes it can be structured with an invitation for them to focus on a particular idea like how many shades of green they can see or what sensations they can feel (such as the texture of the ground, the sun on their skin, the breeze in their hair, etc.). The fervor with which they request/demand this activity so often tells me that our kids are actually longing for more time outside to connect with the natural world around them.

I see The Mindful Naturalist as a path toward a future where we care not only for the earth, but for one another. Lyanda Lynn Haupt notes in her book Rooted that, “enchantment and wonder are typically portrayed as experiences that fall upon us, when in truth they most often require a cultivation of openness to their visitations.” What if the goal of education was to cultivate an openness to wonder? What if instead of shaming children for not knowing the name of that ant, we focus on nurturing their enthusiasm and curiosity? What if curiosity for community was centered? When we define the term ‘community’ by its broader, ecological definition - a group of species that interact with one another while sharing a common environment and resources - it is inherently inclusive. We are ALL part of this community. This definition intrinsically nurtures enthusiasm and curiosity and an openness to wonder.

Puff Puff Squeeze Cheese

Inside the Cheese, circa 1979

For as long as I can remember, my dad drove a 1968 VW bus otherwise known, to my sister and me, as Puff Puff Squeeze Cheese. It looked like an orange block of cheddar, (or maybe Swiss cheese near the end with all the rusted out holes where you could totally see the road beneath your feet in places, Flintstones style) and backfired every few miles, much to the hilarity of my sister and I when we were little. Though by the time we were 14 or 15, it wasn’t nearly as amusing.

The Cheese slowly disintegrated over the years, but Dad never seemed to notice or mind very much that there was no heat, despite this being Alaska, and I don’t remember it ever having a muffler. And he didn’t even blink an eye when the starter finally gave out. He just travelled with a couple of wooden wedges that he’d back up onto if he couldn’t find a hill to park on.

My sister and I learned at a young age how to pop the clutch to push start a car. In the beginning, we were still pretty little, so it was a team effort to get the van started; my sister worked the pedals while I steered and shifted into gear. Dad would push the Cheese down the slope and run alongside us and shout “Let ‘er rip, girls!” when we’d picked up enough speed. My sis would pop the clutch, while I struggled to push the gigantic gear stick into second. The Cheese would start with a pop (literally, she backfired on ignition), my sister would gently work the brake, I’d stick her in neutral and we’d slow down to a halting, rattling, muffler-less speed so that Dad could catch up to us. He’d hop in, light a Lucky Strike and say something like “How bout one for the road, girls?” And we’d find something suitably cold from the ice chest he carried behind the front seat. When I first saw the movie, Little Miss Sunshine, my initial thought was that the writer, Michael Arndt, must have seen us on a visit to the Last Frontier.

If my dad had one passion beyond fishing, it was lecturing to tourists. In the summer months, we’d head down to the Kenai peninsula every weekend to go fishing and along the way we’d no doubt cross the paths of the ‘Winnebago Brigade’, as he referred to them, blocking the road because there was a moose or Dall sheep alongside the road. He would take great pleasure in pulling up to the middle of the crowd, the Cheese chugging over so loudly he’d have to shout his well-rehearsed facts about moose biology out the window, all of which culminated in a crescendo of hunting calls for which he dramatically opened the door and stepped out.

He’d cup one hand over his mouth and huff in a deep baritone that echoed off the bluffs of Turnagain Arm, “Mmmwah. Mmmwaaaah. That’s the sound of a male moose in rut,” he’d explain to the gathering home movie cameras, with a curt nod of his head. He’d light another Lucky and hop back in the van and roll out of there leaving the tourists murmuring amongst themselves and with something of a story to take home about their run in with a ‘real Alaskan.’

My dad fileting a fish c. 1999

Through Red Salmon Colored Glasses

This essay began when I was asked to write a guest post about how my Alaskan childhood shaped who I am today both professionally and personally. It’s hard for me to separate the larger than life eccentricities of my parents from the wild rivers and mountains that were the backdrop of a feral childhood. Perhaps my desire to help children and teens (or anyone who will listen to me, really) gain an understanding of the natural world stems from those devastatingly embarrassing teenage moments ducking beneath the windows of The Cheese while memorizing and internalizing my father’s soliloquies. Or maybe it comes from my mother’s bold decision to enable and inspire women to learn to hunt, fish, and develop confidence with backcountry skills. Or maybe it was simply the majesty of Alaska, herself.

Brooke’s students dissecting a trout

There’s a Dena’ina origin story from a library book that my mom read to me when I was young which helped to answer the questions that I asked over and over again as 4-year-olds are wont to do: “Why was I born? What is the meaning of all this? Why am I here? Why? Why? Why?”

I’m going to paraphrase, but it goes something like this:

In the time of the Raven, before Naq’eltani (the Creator) created our people, the land did not look like it does today. The earth was covered mostly with water. Naq’eltani told Raven he was going to create new creatures, humans – the campfire people – so that Raven could have creatures smart enough to relate with. Raven was to make a place for these people, to pull a land up from under the water.

Naq’eltani had a condition for Raven, though. Raven must teach humans a set of principles that they were to live by; that they were to respect and to take good care of the earth. Naq’eltani predicted that some humans would try to destroy the earth and it was the duty of Raven’s clan to remind them that they were created because they would be intelligent and empathetic enough to steward and care for the land, waters, and many beings that were created. It was their purpose to live in harmony with them.

While I’m not a member of the Dena’ina or another Alaskan native tribe, this story deeply affected me as a child. It helped me to define my purpose during a time when my brain was forging my identity. It was simply the answer to the “who am I?” question I peppered my parents with. Like the core memories that the children’s film, Inside Out, does such a great job of illustrating the brain science of, this story of Raven is one of the pillars that stands at the center of my heart.

My view of the world was born in little hands covered in fish scales with a week’s worth of grime and fish slime under my fingernails. It was formed from the wind in my hair while racing atop the Kenai in my mom’s river sled and from the sea salt air in my lungs out on the Homer Spit in Kachemak Bay. My growing body was literally built from the salmon and halibut and clams and crabs of the fierce North Pacific. I carry these things with me everywhere my restless adult body has lived and loved. And in my allegiance to Raven’s origin story, I continue to share my commitment to stewardship of the natural world through classes, workshops, writings, art.

What gives me hope? Well, have you met a teenager recently? This generation’s bullshit detector is finely tuned. They are willing to call out societal standards and norms that my generation accepted as the status quo. They are attuned to the grief and anxiety of a planet in crisis and, at the same time, reject the narrative that has been spun for them. They instinctively hold Raven’s call to protect, honor, and steward this world we occupy with the passion that only an adolescent heart can bring. They offer innovations and solutions from a perspective that the generations before them have never considered. Our future is in good hands. The kinds of hands that can hold something precious and wondrous and wild and worth caring for.

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This essay is part of a new spotlight series called Rooted Lives. A series honoring the individuals whose lives and work have taken root in the Pacific Northwest, and beyond, shaping landscapes, communities, and the ways we learn to notice, care for, and belong to the natural world.

“What can I do to help?”

Helen Engle spent a lifetime answering that simple question. She worked tirelessly to create lasting protections for wetlands, shorelines, and wildlife habitat in the south Puget Sound region of Washington State. With a legacy that benefits both people and nature, Mrs. Engle (1926 – 2019) was a distinguished conservationist and activist. Born and raised in Grays Harbor county on a plot of land homesteaded by her great-grandfather in 1871, she trained as a nurse, and was mother to seven children, but found her true calling in environmental activism.

I didn’t know Mrs. Engle long, but I’ve been living with that central question - what can I do to help? - ever since I heard it used to describe her life.

In 2014, after returning to Seattle from a decade abroad, I happened to move in next door to her youngest daughter, Melanie. Our friendship began over a shared love of live music (Seattle made sharing that easy) but it deepened through shared time outdoors. Through Melanie, I came to know Mrs. Engle, if only briefly, before she passed.

Mrs. Engle believed that nature wasn’t something distant or reserved for wilderness areas, it lives in the places that we already call home. Her work helped establish urban and suburban green spaces, making nature accessible to families and neighborhoods while bringing together an unlikely coalition of birdwatchers, community groups, outdoor enthusiasts, and even loggers. Her impact was both practical and philosophical; she showed us that conservation begins not far away, but right where we stand.

She was the co-founder of the Tahoma Audubon Society in 1969, and one of the primary instigators of establishing the Billy Frank, Jr., Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge in South Puget Sound and the Grays Harbor Wildlife Refuge near her childhood home. Her appetite for learning and talent for uniting people led her to become a founding member of several leading Washington state conservation organizations including the Washington Environmental Council, Washington Wilderness Coalition, The Arboretum Foundation, Nisqually Land Trust, and Citizens for a Healthy Bay in Tacoma. If you’ve ever walked among the Old Growth giants at Point Defiance Park in Tacoma, you have Helen Engle to thank for personally and doggedly pursuing the Pierce County Metropolitan Parks Department until saving them from the literal chopping block. Her influence was further felt across the country as she served on the Board of the National Audubon Society for 20 years (1980–2000). Her activism included not just protecting land, but building communities, educating people about nature, and advocating across political lines.

At her memorial, what struck me most was not just the scale of her accomplishments, but the stories of her energy and determination. The many small, everyday ways she continued to show up for wildlife and community while raising seven children.

I couldn’t stop thinking about that. The raising seven children while changing the conservation landscape of Washington State’s south Puget Sound for the better part. I sat with it for weeks.

As a single parent of one, there are days when simply keeping us fed, bathed, and upright feels like all I can do. And yet, she did all of that, times seven. And then did some more. She cultivated a love of nature and a commitment to justice not in spite of her responsibilities, but alongside them.

That realization stayed with me. It marked a turning point. A moment when I began to think more intentionally about how I use my own sphere of influence as a parent and an educator. How I might invite the young people in my life to step into their own relationships with the natural world.

Her work also invites us to rethink where “nature” lives. It asks us to look closer. To the birds nesting in street trees, the moss softening a cracked sidewalk, the seasonal shifts in a neighborhood creek or schoolyard garden. By valuing these ordinary, nearby places, she showed us that meaningful relationships with the natural world don’t require special gear, long drives, or pristine landscapes. Nature is present wherever life persists, and when we learn to notice and care for it close to home, we build a deeper sense of belonging, stewardship, and shared responsibility for the places we already inhabit.

Helen Engle’s life is a reminder that meaningful change doesn’t require perfect conditions or unlimited time. It begins by starting where you are, with what you have, and choosing, again and again, to care for the places and people around you.

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A page from my nature journal.

Last weekend, in a flash of copper and urgency, I spotted my first Rufous hummingbird of the season. He startled me with his familiarity, like a friend arriving right on time, and just as quickly he stirred a humble realization: I haven’t been paying close attention to my “Firsts” this year. I recall noticing the swallows over the lake in early March, their swift arcs across the water, but it didn’t quite register that I was witnessing a First. The same with the fluttering blue wings flashing in the sunlight from the puddling azure butterflies at the lake last weekend. These moments passed without being marked, and something about that feels like a missed opportunity. I don’t mean as part of my bird list or as a data point. I’m not here just to record events. My purpose on Earth is to notice with a capital N.

Nature Journaling Activity: Keep a Calendar of Firsts

Keeping a calendar of firsts is a simple but powerful way to root yourself more deeply in the living world. It is an invitation into phenology, which I like to think of as the study of natural phenomena. Scientists might call it the study of recurring natural cycles and the relationships that happen between species within those cycles. It reminds us that nothing in nature happens in isolation. It’s the way nature’s appointment book works. Western tent caterpillars emerge from eggs laid last summer shortly after the alders and maples begin to leaf out in spring. Southern Resident Orcas follow the early-run Chinook salmon as instinct drives them to gather and run up the Columbia River to spawn. Chickadees time their nesting so that their chicks’ hatching coincides with the surge of insects in late spring needed to feed their young. Black bears rely on cues like increasing day length and warmer, rainy weather (which, in turn, signals the availability of food sources like Douglas fir cambium) for emerging from hibernation. Each unfolding event is both a response and a signal, part of a larger, interconnected rhythm that is always in motion around us.

Recording the first occurrence of these moments - your first frog call, the first alder catkin, the first crow carrying nesting material, the first salmonberry blossom - creates a thread you can follow from year to year. Over time, patterns begin to emerge. You start to anticipate, to connect, to recognize not just what is happening, but why and when. It becomes a practice of attention as much as a practice of record-keeping. And perhaps just as importantly, it draws you outside. I notice a subtle, yet eager motivation in wanting to catch sight of those first glimpses. To be present for the turning of the season. And once you are outside, paying attention, there is always more to discover.

A calendar of firsts gives shape and purpose to daily walks and small excursions. It builds anticipation and memory, turning ordinary moments into markers of time and meaning.

Your own calendar can be as simple or as detailed as you like. You might record the first bloom of a favorite wildflower (hello, trillium!), the return of migrating warblers and flycatchers, the first buzz of a queen bumble bee, the shedding of thick winter coats in elk or deer from heavy, dull protection to sleek, vibrant renewal, or the arrival times of the Gray whale migrations along your coastline as they head north for their summer feeding grounds. You might note when trees begin to leaf out, or when the first thimbleberry or salmonberry ripens. Over time, you’ll begin to see your yard, your neighborhood, your familiar paths, not as static, but as part of a living, changing system.

Starting it doesn’t need to be complicated. Honestly, the simpler it is, the more likely you are to keep up with it. Think of it less as a formal project and more as a habit of noticing that gently grows over time.

Here are some grounded, doable steps to begin:

1. Choose your format

Pick something you’ll actually use. This could be a small notebook, a wall calendar or pocket planner, a dedicated section in your nature journal, or even a notes app on your phone. Some people enjoy creating a year-at-a-glance grid, while others prefer dated journal entries with more detail. This past week, I just pledged to be present for one week and created a page in my journal to illustrate and highlight my Firsts in this one week of early spring.

2. Start with what you already notice

You don’t need to know everything. Begin with obvious, exciting moments: your first frog call, first pussy willow, first camas bloom, or simply the first warm day that feels like spring. Let your curiosity lead rather than trying to track everything all at once.

3. Record three simple details

Each time you notice a “First,” jot down:

What you observed

When (date)

Where (even just “backyard” or “neighborhood park”)

You can always add more details like weather, sketches, or reflections, but these three create a strong foundation.

4. Build it into your routine

Attach the practice to something you already do: a daily walk, morning coffee, or time outside with your kids. The more regularly you’re outside looking, the more Firsts you’ll catch.

5. Keep a short “watch list”

Write down a few things you’re hoping to notice: swallows returning, buds opening, bees emerging, berries ripening. This gives your attention somewhere to land and builds anticipation.

6. Revisit the same places

Go back to familiar trees, patches of flowering plants, or simply follow your regular walking route to the light rail station on your way to work. Patterns become visible when you observe the same place over time. It turns the world around you into a living calendar.

7. Don’t worry about missing things

You will miss Firsts. Everyone does. The goal isn’t perfection, its participation. Even noticing after the fact (“these must have bloomed a few days ago”) is part of learning the rhythm.

8. Add small reflections

Over time, include little notes to yourself:

“Earlier than last year”

“Came up right after that pineapple express”

“I think the mason bees showed up the same week as the cherry blossoms”

These are the beginnings of studying phenology. You’re seeing relationships, not just events.

9. Return next year

This is where the magic deepens. When the same season rolls around again, look back. You’ll begin to anticipate: It should be happening soon. That sense of expectation sharpens your awareness and connection.

10. Let it stay joyful

Resist turning it into a chore or checklist. A calendar of firsts is ultimately about wonder. It’s about catching those small, fleeting moments when the world quietly shifts.

While this primer has been focused primarily on events in the spring, that’s only because that’s the season I’m writing this in. You can clearly record Firsts throughout the year! The first snow, first V of geese flying south, the first blue-black Oregon grape berries or buttery, white snowberries of winter, the aspen’s first golden leaf quivering beneath an autumn blue sky, or the first fireweed or goldenrod of late summer. Start where you are.

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Great horned owl mosaic by the author.

There is a particular kind of darkness that invites you out instead of sending you in. Not the heavy, shuttered dark of late night, but the living dusk that gathers just after sunset, when the sky still holds a memory of light and the edges of things begin to soften. This is the hour to step outside, to leave behind the hum of the house, and walk slowly into the listening world.

If you are lucky, and if you are patient, you may hear the voice of an owl.

It does not begin all at once. First, there is the quiet rearranging of the evening. The last birds settling, the air cooling, the faint stirring of leaves. Then, from somewhere deep in the trees, a call rises: Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you-all? It is both question and proclamation, ancient and familiar. A Barred owl. The sound carries, round and resonant, as if the forest itself were speaking.

A night walk to listen for owls asks something different of you than a daytime walk. Your eyes, so used to leading, must soften their grip. Shapes dissolve into suggestion. Shadows become companions rather than obstacles. Your ears take the lead. Every sound grows distinct. The crackle of dry leaves underfoot, the far-off rush of water, the whisper of wind moving through branches. You begin to notice space differently, not by what you see, but by what you hear.

Owls move through this nightlit world with quiet precision, gliding between trunks, perching unseen. They are a creature of presence rather than display. You may never see her, even if she is close. And yet, when she calls again, closer now, you feel her nearness in your chest, in the way the sound seems to land inside you.

To walk at night is to practice a different kind of attention. You move more slowly. You become aware of your own breath, your own place in the landscape. There is a threshold you cross, somewhere between the first cautious steps and the moment when the dark begins to feel like something you belong to rather than something you move through.

And then, perhaps, there is an answer.

Another owl calls back from farther off, the two voices weaving across the trees. A conversation unfolds. Is it about territory? Partnership? Announcing presence? Admiring tonight’s full moon? Although you may not understand the language, you recognize the pattern. This is a place alive with relationship, with beings who know this hour intimately.

You stand and listen. You do not rush it. The moment stretches, then passes, as all moments do. The calls fade. The forest settles again.

On your way back, the darkness feels different. Not empty, but full. Not silent, but layered. You carry the echo of that call with you, a reminder that there are worlds moving alongside ours, just beyond the reach of our usual attention.

And tomorrow, in the brightness of day, you might pass those same trees without a second thought. But for now you know: at the edge of evening, if you step outside and listen, the forest will speak.

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Pacific chorus frog resting in the cool shade of a late summer dahlia. Photo courtesy of my dear friend, Tom Bergeron.

Part of my seasonal field notes series, this introduction to Pacific chorus frogs offers a glimpse into what’s happening outside right now.

Isn’t it remarkable that the soundtrack of spring in the Pacific Northwest doesn’t come from birds? A chorus of tiny frogs calling out from puddles, ditches, and temporary ponds takes up center stage. Pseudacris regilla (if I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times, Pseudacris should be your next band name) the Pacific chorus frog, formerly known as the Pacific treefrog, may be small enough to fit on your thumb, but when they gather together, their voices can fill an entire landscape. They are the most abundant amphibian on the West coast of America and they can be found from British Columbia down to Baja California. They are commonly found in diverse habitats ranging from sea level to 10,000 feet! Their call, often described as a cheerful “ribbit,” is so iconic that it’s been used as the sound of frogs in movies and cartoons, even in places where this species doesn’t live.

The hills are alive with the sound of Chorus frog music. Sound file, thanks to Tom Bergeron.

After spending the winter tucked away beneath leaf litter, logs, or loose soil, Pacific chorus frogs emerge with the return of longer days and warmer rains. During the colder months, they enter a state called brumation which is similar to hibernation, but for cold-blooded animals. Their bodies slow dramatically, their heart rates drop, and they rely on stored energy to survive until spring. In especially harsh conditions, these frogs have an almost magical ability: they can tolerate partial freezing, their bodies protected by natural antifreeze-like compounds. Specifically, for the nerdy among us, its high concentrations of glucose and glycerol that keep cells alive and prevents them from succumbing to the freeze. This cryoprotection allows them to freeze solid, stopping their heart and breathing, then thaw and fully recover when temperatures rise.

Many Frogs, Hand-pulled screen print, 2014 by Roy Henry Vickers from BC’s Tsimshian Nation along the Pacific Northwest Coast. From the artist’s statement, “The frog is a powerful symbol of transformation for the Gitxsan people of the Skeena valley and has been a clan crest for thousands of years. There are dances and songs that belong to those people of the frog clan. One day I was inspired by some people of the frog clan to create this design for a large drum.”

When spring arrives, everything changes quickly. Males gather in shallow water and begin calling to attract females, inflating their dark throat sacs like tiny balloons. What follows is a burst of activity; eggs are laid in clusters, tadpoles hatch, and a whole new generation begins in a matter of weeks. These frogs depend on seasonal, temporary water sources and vernal pools that often dry up by summer, making their timing essential. Importantly, it’s the seasonal nature of these water sources that keeps them free of fish, allowing amphibian eggs to grow and hatch without that voracious predator.

As the landscape shifts again toward heat and dryness, Pacific chorus frogs may enter another period of dormancy called aestivation. During aestivation, they seek out cool, moist refuges and become inactive to conserve water and energy through the dry season. It’s a different kind of stillness than winter’s brumation, but just as important for survival in a climate of extremes. Where I live in California’s Sierra Nevadas, I’m often startling the poor dears when I come by with the garden hose as they nestle into the cool shade of my plant pots to escape summer’s dry heat.

The lives of Pacific chorus frogs move in pulses. Quiet in winter, exuberant in spring, hidden again in summer. Their rhythm is tied closely to rain, temperature, and the fleeting presence of water. If you listen closely on a damp spring evening, you might hear their chorus rising all around you. A reminder that even the smallest creatures are responding, with perfect timing, to the turning of the seasons.

There’s something deeply grounding in the way the Pacific chorus frog moves through the year. They are not constantly active, not constantly striving, but responding with precision to the moment it’s in. A few quiet but powerful lessons emerge from that rhythm.

Lessons from a Pacific chorus frog

1. Life doesn’t have to be constant to be meaningful.

Chorus frogs remind us that growth and expression come in pulses. There are seasons for stillness, for hiding, for conserving energy. And seasons for showing up fully and making yourself heard. Our culture often pushes for nonstop productivity, but the frogs suggest that timing matters more than constant output.

2. Rest is not absence. It’s preparation.

Their quiet winter and hidden summer aren’t wasted time. Those periods of retreat make the explosive energy of spring possible. What looks like inactivity is actually essential. There’s a lesson here about trusting dormant phases in our own lives.

3. Respond, don’t force.

Chorus frogs don’t try to sing in the wrong season. They wait for the rain, the right temperature, the right conditions and then they respond completely. There’s wisdom in aligning with what’s actually happening, rather than pushing against it.

4. Small voices, together, create something powerful.

One frog is easy to miss. A chorus is impossible to ignore. Their collective sound reminds us that even small contributions matter, especially when joined with others.

5. Timing is its own kind of intelligence.

The frogs don’t overthink their moment, they feel it. When the conditions are right, they act. It’s a reminder that not all knowing is intellectual; some of it is instinctual, embodied, and deeply connected to the world around us.

6. The “window” won’t stay open forever and that’s okay.

Their breeding season is brief and tied to fleeting water sources. Instead of resisting that impermanence, they meet it fully. There’s a gentle nudge here: when your moment comes, step into it. You don’t need endless time. Just bring your willingness to begin.

Taken together, the chorus frogs offer a different model of living. One that honors cycles, trusts timing, and embraces both quiet and expression as equally necessary parts of a whole.

Singing Pacific chorus frog. Photo by Charlotte Gruneau. Find her remarkable work on instagram: cgwildlifephotography.

Life Cycle of the Pacific Chorus Frog

The life of the Pacific chorus frog unfolds like a fleeting song shaped by water, temperature, and time. With the first warm rains of late winter or early spring, males gather at the edges of temporary ponds and quiet ditches, their calls rising into the damp evening air. As the males make their advertisement calls, female frogs approach and select their mate. They lay clusters of eggs, each one a small, translucent bead, that are carefully attached to submerged sticks or stones, anchored just long enough to complete their transformation. A single female chorus frog can lay 500 to 1,250 eggs in a year! Chorus frogs have a prolonged breeding season that can stretch several months in order to take advantage of available seasonal water and pools. Within weeks, depending on the warmth of the water, their eggs quicken and hatch into tiny, gilled swimming tadpoles who spend two to five weeks feeding, growing, and drifting in the safety of the water’s edge. (I had trouble finding reliable sources on how long it takes Chorus frogs to metamorphose. I’m not sure if that’s because we don’t know for sure, or because it’s that variable.)

Explainer graphic from Symbio Op Garden Shop.

But these nurseries are temporary, and the clock is always ticking. As spring leans toward summer and the water begins to shrink, the tadpoles transform. Legs emerge, tails recede, lungs replace gills, and one by one they leave the water behind, no larger than a fingernail. The young frogs disperse into the surrounding grasses and leaf litter, beginning a mostly hidden life of foraging and growing. As the seasons turn, they slip into stillness when entering brumation during the cold months, and sometimes aestivation when the land grows hot and dry. Waiting, always, for the return of rain.

And then, almost as suddenly as they vanished, they return. The ponds refill, the air softens, and the chorus rises again. What was once a cluster of eggs becomes a voice in the night, part of a living cycle that pulses with the seasons. Brief, repeating, and perfectly timed to the rhythms of the earth.

Identifying Pacific Chorus Frogs

While their song is unmistakable, it may take some effort to spot one. When you do catch a glimpse, they are small and easy to overlook, usually no more than a couple of inches long, with a dark stripe running from the nose through the eye and along the side. They tend to stay close to water during breeding season, clinging to grasses or tucked among reeds, their presence revealed as much by movement as by form.

Explainer graphic from Symbio Op Garden Shop.

What makes them especially delightful to identify is their remarkable range of colors and textures. While many are shades of green or brown, some individuals carry a reddish hue, and patterns and skin textures can vary widely from frog to frog. This diversity is shaped in part by genetics. Studies have shown that multiple genes influence coloration, with brown tending to be dominant and red more recessive, but the story doesn’t end there. Pacific chorus frogs are also capable of shifting between green and brown depending on their surroundings, blending into leaves, mud, or bark with subtle ease. In this way, they are both constant and changing, a small, living reflection of the adaptable, ever-shifting landscapes they call home. If you’re not sure if you’re looking at a Chorus frog, look out for that eye stripe originating from just above the nostril and extending back toward the shoulder of their front legs. That’s a diagnostic feature!

Page from my nature journal.

How can you help?

• To support these remarkable amphibians, consider leaving patches of natural habitat in your yard like leaf litter, native plants, or even a small seasonal water feature. Our backyard “pond”, a small, salvaged plastic tub, is teaming with frogs not just in spring but all through summer and fall.

• Avoid using pesticides, which can harm frogs at every stage of life. Amphibians have highly permeable skin that can absorb toxic chemicals. They can be poisoned directly or indirectly through their food, such as slugs and snails. Choose wildlife-safe slug bait for your gardens. Moss and weed killers can also be toxic to amphibians and be aware that anything that you apply to your home or yard will be washed downstream into the watershed with the strong winter rains we see in the Pac NW.

• As long as we are talking about permeable skin, please wear gloves if you decide to handle a Chorus frog. If we are picking up multiple frogs, it’s so easy to spread parasites or other harmful material to our frog friends. I’ll talk about it in a future post, but a fungal parasite has spread around the globe that endangers amphibians everywhere.

Wear gloves when handling frogs! And change them out between animals if you are handling multiple frogs!

• Never release a bullfrog or other non-native wildlife into the wild. Bullfrogs, pet turtles, and goldfish that have been released into neighborhood ponds and ditches are eating and out-competing our tadpole and frog friends.

• If you have enough space, retain stumps, logs, root wads, rock piles and other debris that provide a cool, moist habitat for amphibians. Such habitat features provide much needed cover and also attract the food sources that amphibians need to survive. Notice how once you have Chorus frogs nearby, you have fewer pesky mosquitoes! Mosquito larvae is a froggy delicacy.

With just a little mindful care, you might find that

your own backyard becomes a springtime symphony.

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Sources and further information:

https://bcreptilesandamphibians.ca/pacific-treefrog/

https://www.mister-toad.com/PacificTreeFrog.html

https://backyardhabitats.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Creating-Frog-Habitat.pdf

https://www.dfw.state.or.us/wildlife/living_with/docs/LWW_Pacific_Treefrog_final.pdf

https://wdfw.wa.gov/sites/default/files/2020-05/amphibian__eggmass_lesson.pdf

Western skunk cabbage. Photo by Martin Bravenboer licensed under Creative Commons BY-ND 2.0

Part of my seasonal field notes series, this introduction to Western skunk cabbage offers a glimpse into what’s happening outside right now.

It probably doesn’t surprise you to learn that Skunk cabbage is my favorite spring flower. Of the portents of a changing season, spotting my first Western skunk cabbage of the year is when it hits me. This. Is. It. There’s no going back now, spring is on her way. Spring doesn’t slink in on silent feet like winter always does for me. Winter seems to creep up on me while I’m looking up at the falling leaves. I’m so often caught out unprepared for his arrival. On the other hand, spring hits me with the force of a steam train. Or maybe it’s that I’m desperately looking for signs of her after so long spent in the monochrome season.

In the damp, shadowed places where winter lingers longest - that is along the slow creeks, at the edges of swamps, in the quiet hush of wooded wetlands - something bright begins to stir. Before the trees have leafed out, before most plants have even considered waking, the Western skunk cabbage rises. Lysichiton americanus, known as skunk cabbage, swamp lantern, or ʹqilť in southern Lushootseed, pushes up through cold, saturated soil. Its vivid yellow spathe (the leaf-like bract that I’ve always just assumed was a petal) glowing like a small flame against the gray-green world of early March.

Skunk cabbage does not arrive timidly. The flower comes first: a bold, hooded bract, a yellow leaf, a burst of pure sunshine, wrapped around the central spear point of a spadix where the flowers are tightly packed together. Sometimes nearly five feet tall. As if the plant is announcing spring before spring has fully found its footing. Later, the leaves unfurl, enormous, lush, and improbable, spreading wide from the base in great green arcs, some of the largest of any native plant in the region. It is a plant that thrives where others hesitate, rooted in constant water, anchored by deep rhizomes (themselves over a foot long) that hold fast through the long wet season and return, year after year, with increasing presence.

The flowering spike of skunk cabbage, the spadix, is a crowded place, packed with hundreds of tiny blossoms pressed close together. At first glance, it seems like a recipe for self-pollination, each flower brushing against its neighbor. But skunk cabbage has evolved a clever, more patient strategy. When the spadix first opens, every flower is functionally female, ready to receive pollen but not yet producing any of its own. Only after a few days do the flowers shift, closing that receptive window and becoming functionally male, releasing pollen into the world. By separating these roles across time, the plant avoids fertilizing itself and instead relies on the rhythm of nearby blooms, earlier or later, to complete the exchange.

The spadix of Western skunk cabbage, complete with a tiny rove beetle pollinator. Photo by Walter Siegmund licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

And the messengers it calls upon are not the usual delicate visitors of spring. Skunk cabbage does not trade in sweetness or bright perfume. Its scent is earthier, stranger, a musky, skunky signal that drifts through the wetland air. This is an invitation to rove beetles, its primary pollinators, who arrive not for nectar but for pollen itself. They gather, feed, and even mate among the tightly clustered flowers, dusting themselves as they move. In their wandering, they carry pollen from one plant to another, linking individuals from all around the area. It is a system that feels less like a transaction and more like participation. It’s messy, communal, and perfectly suited to the damp, early-season world where skunk cabbage thrives.

Lysichiton americanus is closely related to the east Asian species, Lysichiton camtschatcensis, which has white flowers rather than yellow and is native to northern Japan to the Kamchatka peninsula in the Russian far east. I, for one, love this reminder that we were once joined together as part of the supercontinent Rodinia, which existed approximately 1.1 billion to 700 million years ago.

Elk and bear will browse its stems and roots, and for generations, Indigenous peoples have known its uses, its broad leaves for wrapping and storage, its leaves and roots prepared carefully for medicine or even as a source of food in times of scarcity. Like many wetland beings, it carries both nourishment and caution within it. It contains a lot of calcium oxalate, which can burn if eaten before boiling or cooking for a long time first.

But what the skunk cabbage offers most, perhaps, is light.

Photo by the author taken along the boardwalk to the Rockaway Big Tree (the largest Western redcedar in Oregon) on the Oregon Coast.

In landscapes still draped in the quiet of winter, its luminous yellow blooms seem to gather and reflect what little sunlight there is, earning it the name “swamp lantern.” There is no mistaking it. No other plant announces the turning of the season with such bold color, such presence, such certainty. It reminds us that spring does not always arrive gently. Sometimes, it rises from the mud, bright and unignorable, declaring that the long dark has held long enough.

And if you follow these lanterns, along creeks, into shaded ravines, through the soft and saturated edges of the land, you begin to understand: renewal does not wait for perfect conditions. It begins where the water lingers, where the ground is soft, where life has been quietly gathering strength all along.

Sources and Further Information:

https://mtsgreenway.org/blog/tis-the-season-for-skunk-cabbage-in-the-greenway/

https://botanicgardens.uw.edu/about/blog/2025/03/25/march-plant-profile-lysichiton-americanus/

https://nisquallylandtrust.org/species-spotlight-western-skunk-cabbage/

https://www.fs.usda.gov/wildflowers/plant-of-the-week/Lysichiton-americanus.shtml

Ostara is the Spring Equinox, the moment in the year when day and night stand in near perfect balance. Celebrated around March 21st, it marks the official arrival of spring. A turning point where the growing light begins to outpace the dark. Where Imbolc honors the quiet stirring beneath the surface, Ostara celebrates what is beginning to emerge, visible and alive.

The world feels different now. The subtle hints of Imbolc have given way to undeniable signs of change. Green shoots are pushing through soil, blossoms are opening, the birds are returning, (I heard my first Olive-sided flycatcher this week!) even the air itself is feeling lighter. The days stretch longer, and with them, our energy often follows. Ostara invites us to step forward, to meet this new season with openness and curiosity.

If Imbolc is about preparation, Ostara is about participation.

This is the season where intention begins to take form. The seeds we’ve been tending in the dark, those ideas, hopes, and inner shifts, are now gaining momentum and ready to break the surface. Not all at once, and not perfectly, but enough to be seen. Ostara asks us to trust this unfolding. To take small, meaningful steps toward what we’ve been nurturing.

There is something deeply grounding about the balance of the equinox. Equal light and equal dark. It reminds us that growth doesn’t mean leaving the darkness behind entirely, but learning to move in relationship with both. The darkness that held us, restored us, and helped us regenerate is still part of us, even as we step into the light.

This moment of equilibrium is brief, but powerful. It offers us a chance to check in: Where am I now? What feels ready to grow? What needs more time?

The name Ostara is often linked to Ēostre, an Anglo-Saxon/ Germanic goddess associated with the dawn, fertility, and new beginnings. And if you think her name sounds familiar and perhaps a lot like the name for the Christian holiday, Easter, your instincts are not wrong. Symbols of the season reflect themes of fertility, creativity, and life bursting forth. Eggs, which are one of the oldest symbols of possibility in cultural traditions the world over, or hares which in many folk traditions are considered creatures that could pass between worlds, and, of course, spring flowers, the classic symbols of rebirth and hope. Just as the earth expresses itself in color and movement, we too are invited to re-enter the world with a renewed sense of vitality and possibility.

To celebrate Ostara with your friends and family, you can…

The Ostara Vibe:
Decorate your space with fresh flowers, especially bright spring blooms like daffodils, tulips, or foraged blossoms and branches like quince or pussy willows. Incorporate pastel colors, soft greens, and vibrant yellows to reflect the energy of new life. Open windows, let in fresh air, and bring light into your space wherever you can. This is a time for brightness, color, and gentle joy.

Honor Balance:
Take a moment to reflect on the balance of light and dark in your life. You might light two candles, one for darkness, one for light, and spend time considering what each has offered you. This can be a quiet ritual or something shared, naming what you’re carrying forward from each.

Plant Seeds (Literally or Symbolically):
Plant seeds in your garden, in pots, or even in small containers indoors. Where I live in the Central Sierra Nevadas, today marks 6 weeks before our average last frost date, the literal time that my seed packets are telling me to start my seeds indoors. As you plant, connect each seed with an intention or hope. This is a beautiful, tangible way to honor the movement from idea into action.

Step Outside:
Spend time in nature noticing what has changed since winter. Look for signs of new growth, listen for birdsong, feel the warmth of the sun. Even a short walk can help you connect to the energy of emergence that defines this season.

Ostara is a Celebration of Life Returning:
Wear colors that feel alive to you. You could choose greens, florals, soft pinks, or bright yellows but you do you. This is a time to gently reawaken your senses. Let things feel fresh, light, and expansive.

Share a Spring Feast:
Enjoy fresh, seasonal foods like leafy greens, eggs, herbs, sprouts, and light breads. Incorporate bright flavors like lemon, honey, chives, leeks, or goat’s cheese, into your meal. A shared table can reflect the abundance that is beginning to return.

Smudge for Spring:

White Sage is widely regarded as the best smudge for transitions, new beginnings, and clearing stagnant energy. For specifically easing into new life chapters, Cedar is excellent for grounding, while Lavender introduces peace and harmony during stressful changes.

A Tarot Spread for Transitions:

My Ostara tarot spread and journal across my kitchen table this evening.

Before you start, take a moment to center yourself. I will call on my ancestors to guide me and ask the universe to help answer my questions. I keep a page in my journal for this spread and do it at the Fall and Spring Equinoxes. I like being able to see the reading from six months ago and today all on one page.

You’ll pull five cards from your deck as you ask for guidance in the following five areas:

What endings do I need to acknowledge and honor as I move through this threshold from winter’s end?

Are there any new rhythms I’m ready to embrace?

What am I holding onto that I no longer need?

What do I need to adapt in order to be successful in this time?

What guidance can you give me for the path ahead?

For me, today, two cards jumped out when I asked my last question. Know that it’s okay if that happens, the universe is trying to tell you something! My current favorite deck is White Sage Tarot by Theresa Hutch and you can see a tour of all the cards in this beautiful deck here.

Isn’t it interesting to be able to see what the universe has to say about my past six months?

Journal Prompts:

How can you honor both the parts of you that are ready to be seen and the parts still unfolding in the dark? As the light and dark come into balance, where do you find yourself right now? What is beginning to emerge in your life that once lived only beneath the surface? What small step can you take to support something you’ve been quietly growing?

Ostara Craft: Air Dry Clay Ornaments

I found these images on Pinterest, but there was not an author attributed. Do you know who made these?

Air dry clay seems intimidating, but it is honestly one of the easiest craft mediums. If you can roll out cookie dough, you can make these cute ornaments. I have to admit that I haven’t made these (YET) but I’ve made a number of similar ones as Christmas gifts. It’s a craft that

1. Collect some plant life from around your home. Try to find a variety of textures in small twigs, flowers, and leaves.

2. Roll out air dry clay (I like the brand DAS, but it can take some effort to warm it up and work it in your hands before it’s ready to be rolled out. The kids’ crayola brand is softer, but I have had it crack more often as it dries than the DAS).

3. Grab a bunny- or egg-shaped cookie cutter and stamp out several shapes.

4. Press tiny sprigs of dried wildflowers into the damp clay. It can help to run the rolling pin over the top, but be sure to place a piece of paper or parchment paper between your work and the rolling pin!

5. If you’d like to hang your ornaments, poke a small hole using a toothpick or straw. An alternative can be to adhere magnets to the backs for your refrigerator!

6. Swipe a bit of watercolor or acrylic paint over the plant imprints for a warm glow.

7. Let the clay harden completely 24-48 hours on a flat surface.

8. Loop thin jute twine or ribbon through the holes and tie a knot.

9. Hang your ornaments on a table centerpiece of small branches or across a mantel for instant Ostara charm.