Category: Trip report
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They’re Baaaaack
The homing instinct in birds and animals is one of their most remarkable traits: their strong local attachments and their skill in finding their way back…It seems at times as if they possessed some extra sense—the home sense—which operates unerringly. ~John Burroughs, 1905 Last weekend we managed to escape for a couple of days and Read more…
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Hiking the High Country
Live your life each day as you would climb a mountain. An occasional glance toward the summit keeps the goal in mind, but many beautiful scenes are to be observed from each new vantage point. ~Harold B Melchart Seems like just a little over a week ago that I was struggling to climb a mountain Read more…
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Shining Rock
Backpacking: An extended form of hiking in which people carry double the amount of gear they need for half the distance they planned to go in twice the time it should take. ~Author unknown Melissa loves to backpack. That is an understatement. And I love to be in the places that backpacking takes us. It Read more…
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Hot Holiday
It’s summer and time for wandering… ~Kellie Elmore After I retired (you remember back when I was retired) I loved the fact that I could go to some of my favorite places on a week day when fewer people would be out and about in the wild places I love. I certainly didn’t want to Read more…
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Pungo Summer
Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it. ~Russell Baker It’s been too long since I have visited my other favorite place, the Pungo Unit of Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge. So, with Melissa in Yellowstone leading a museum youth group, I decided to make a day-trip this past weekend Read more…
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Our Yellowstone
In such surroundings – occasional as our visits may be – we can achieve that kind of physical and spiritual renewal that comes alone from the wonder of the natural world. ~Laurence Rockefeller To celebrate our wedding, Melissa and I did something we have never done – went to our favorite place, without a group. Read more…
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Plants That Bite Back – Part 2
It commonly chances that I make my most interesting botanical discoveries when I am in a thrilled and expectant mood…some rare plant which for some reason has occupied a strangely prominent place in my thoughts for some time will present itself. My expectation ripens to discovery. I am prepared for strange things. ~Henry David Thoreau, Read more…
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Plants That Bite Back
The great wonder of the vegetable kingdom is a very curious unknown species of Sensitive. It is a dwarf plant. The leaves are like a narrow segment of a sphere, consisting of two parts, like the cap of a spring purse, the concave part outwards, each of which falls back with indented edges (like an Read more…
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Bears and Butterflies
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do… Explore. Dream. Discover. ~Mark Twain I think that sentiment is one of Melissa’s primary views of how to live a life. But, even she was a bit reluctant to head out early Read more…
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Green Shelters
The distinctive roar of the longleaf was the sound the evening breeze made, and the odor of pine resin was the smell of the countryside…It was so much a part of their lives, so wound up with everything it meant to be southern, that it was as impossible to discern its influence as it was Read more…
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Roads End Naturalist 