It’s easy to get caught up with what’s right in front of us. In the human situation, while we might see and comprehend with perspective, we’re bound by gravity and typically orient ourselves with the ground. But high in the tree canopies above us, many different species of wildlife exist in a world with a…

50 years ago, “A River Runs Through It” by author Norman Maclean was published. A semi-auto biographical take on his life in Montana, it brought trout fishing as a near religious experience to new audiences. In 1992, Robert Redford put the book on the big screen. With Brad Pitt in focus and the Rocky Mountains…

 You couldn’t miss it. Either inside on the news or outside on the horizon, the haze created by northern wildfires hundreds of miles from Ohio was unavoidable. While often reports on events are over blown, that wasn’t the case this time. Fire has always been a shaping force on the environment, and that was definitely…

 I get it. Fishing might seem boring to some people. The historic image of a man in a straw hat napping on the shore with a bamboo pole seems about as close to doing nothing as one can get. I think there’s a time for that. At the polar opposite are modern big-money fishing tournaments…

When this country’s first 13 colonies declared independence from Britain 250 years ago in 1776, it probably didn’t make the local news here in the “Ohio Country” as the colonists would refer to it. Indigenous people, including Shawnee, Delaware, Mingo and Wyandot, were the only inhabitants and they likely had other things to do. But…

  The summer solstice had barely passed, and we were within the first week of July when I saw them. It was July 7th this year, to be exact. The first day I noticed what I take to be a sign of Autumn: multiple family groups of European Starlings, or a “murmur” as a flock…

“I know something you don’t know,” isn’t the gleeful greeting you expect from someone well past elementary school, never mind retirement. And in reality, there are a lot of things I don’t know and I expect that everyone knows things that I don’t. But it didn’t bother me because it was too big a secret…

 I love watching the sun rise and set. The color shifts and ombres are unique. I’m always glad that I can see them, and miss them when I can’t see them, to the point that at times my digital photo folders are too full of sunset pictures. I also feel a little sorry for those…

 KERSPLASH! We were quietly casting jitterbugs after sunset towards the shore of what was an Ohio Power (now American Electric Power (AEP)) pond when it sounded like someone had lobbed a bowling ball into the water towards our jon boat. We were fairly remote, and there weren’t any other campers around. Flashlights didn’t reveal Bigfoot…

Being outdoors in southwest Ohio has its blessings. While we don’t have snowcapped mountains or sweeping oceans, it’s also relatively safe. Walking outside doesn’t mean prepping against a host of lethal things trying to stick, sting, bite, or eat you immediately. There are no alligators in the pond. Poisonous snakes are rare. Maybe an occasional…