Roads End Naturalist

Exploring the natural world as we wander at the end of the road


Author: Mike Dunn

  • Opossum Afterlife

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    Life and death are one thread, the same line viewed from different sides. ~Lao Tzu One day earlier this month I discovered a recently deceased Virginia Opossum out by one of the wood piles. No idea what might have happened to it though it was not long after some severely cold weather. I decided to… Read more…

  • Mustelid Moments

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    We need the tonic of wildness, — to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground. ~Henry David… Read more…

  • Sharing with Friends

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    To appreciate the beauty of a snowflake it is necessary to stand in the cold. ~Aristotle This is the second post from our January trip to Yellowstone. After spending a few days scouting the northern range of the park and hanging out with some Montana friends, a group of eight NC friends flew out to… Read more…

  • A Winter’s Journey

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    Winter is not a season, it’s a celebration. ~Anamika Mishra Melissa had another wonderful educator workshop to Yellowstone last month with plenty of extraordinary sightings including a Pygmy Owl, Ermine, and a Bobcat feeding on a Mule Deer carcass (jealous, me??). We planned for her to take some time off afterward and have some friends… Read more…

  • The Forest Unseen

    Forests will always hold your secrets, for that’s what forests are for. ~Victoria Erickson We’ve been gone for a couple of weeks (more on that adventure in the next post) and the trail cameras were busy keeping up with the goings-on back home while we were away. Lots of the same sort of behaviors we… Read more…

  • Critter Condo

    Be as useful as a tree! Give life to others; be shelter to everyone; grant fruits to all! Be good like a tree! ~Mehmet Murat Ildan Just beyond our deer fence is a huge old Tulip Poplar with a split at the base forming a hollow that stretches up 20 feet or so. This is… Read more…

  • A New Year, and New Happenings in the Woods

    Always walk through life as if you have something new to learn and you will. ~Vernon Howard The first days of the new year have brought a few more surprises and lessons from the trail cameras scattered in our woods. Several cameras have remained in one spot for many months because they tend to record… Read more…

  • Wrapping It Up In Our Woods

    Departure of a year welcomes so many new memories. ~Munia Khan Our woods offer a lot of things to us – a quiet soundscape, a canopy of huge trees that help cool our landscape in summer, majestic gray forms that stretch to the winter sky, and a source of nourishment and shelter for the countless… Read more…

  • What’s in a Name?

    It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things. ~Oscar Wilde I enjoy cold winter days as I tend to pay more attention to the little things in our woods like patterns, surprise colors, and living things that I sometimes pay less attention to in warmer months… Read more…

  • Ice Art

    Ice has a social life. Its changeability shapes the culture, language and stories of those who live near it! ~Robert Macfarlane I went for a walk in our cold woods on Monday and came across some remnant ice patterns left from a combination of heavy rain followed by frigid temperatures while we were away for… Read more…