Roads End Naturalist

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

Author: Mike Dunn

  • Settling In

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    Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined. ~Henry David Thoreau We’ve been in our new home a little over three weeks now and we are starting to feel settled. It is a different world to be sure. As I started writing this yesterday, it was 4:30 a.m, Mountain Read more…

    Written by

    Mike Dunn

  • Welcome Home

    The best journey takes you home. ~Unknown It has been a little over a week in this journey from our beloved woods in North Carolina to a small town at the edge of a place we love – Yellowstone. It has been a very busy several days with us driving two vehicles across country in Read more…

    Written by

    Mike Dunn

  • Walking the Woods

    Parting is such sweet sorrow. ~William Shakespeare Yesterday morning we took what may be our final stroll through our property. Our home is on a little over 14 acres of rolling landscape with big hardwoods, mostly white oak and tulip poplar with some northern red oak and various hickories making up the largest trees. As Read more…

    Written by

    Mike Dunn

  • My Temple is the Swamp

    …I seek the darkest wood, the thickest and most impenetrable and to the citizen, most dismal, swamp. I enter a swamp as a sacred place…I seemed to have reached a new world, so wild a place…far away from human society. ~Henry David Thoreau My last trips to the magical swamps of the Roanoke River happened Read more…

    Written by

    Mike Dunn

  • Chip Away

    The temple of truth has never suffered so much from woodpeckers on the outside as from termites within. ~Vance Havner Melissa spotted a pair of pileated woodpeckers out front the other day and we grabbed the scope to take a closer look. They were both pounding on a couple of hickory stumps that we had Read more…

    Written by

    Mike Dunn

  • Swampin’ Again

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    Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day. ~Winnie the Pooh Well, if you didn’t know it before, you will know it now…swamps are Melissa’s (and my) favorite places to camp in North Carolina. And one swamp in particular, the “Amazon of North Carolina”, the massive swamps along the Roanoke Read more…

    Written by

    Mike Dunn

  • Song of the Swamp

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    If prisons, freight trains, swamps, and gators don’t get ya to write songs, y’ain’t got no business writin’ songs. ~Ronnie Van Zant As part of our “farewell tour”, we drove up to Merchants Millpond State Park last weekend. When I was working with state parks, I fell in love with that place and its amazing Read more…

    Written by

    Mike Dunn

  • Snow Birds

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    Winter perches like a bird. Wings tucked in so the soul is heard. ~Angie Weiland-Crosby Another nice snowfall (it has been many years since I could utter that phrase around these parts). We probably got about 3 inches here and it was a nice fluffy snow (prepping us for our upcoming move to Montana no Read more…

    Written by

    Mike Dunn

  • Grand Finale

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    The song is ended, but the melody lingers on. ~Irving Berlin After leading my last group over a week ago, we decided to make one more trip to Pungo last Friday (it appears letting go truly is hard to do!). Our friend, Meghan, was with us and we decided to do a day trip for Read more…

    Written by

    Mike Dunn

  • My Last Group

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    Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened. ~Dr. Seuss Last weekend, I had the privilege of co-leading a group of folks to two of my favorite NC places, the Pungo Unit of Pocosin Lakes NWR and Mattamuskeet NWR. It was for a program sponsored by the NC Botanical Garden and New Hope Bird Read more…

    Written by

    Mike Dunn