Category Archives: Appalachia

New River Birding & Nature Festival

Posted by Apr 17, 2015 Appalachia, Birds, Travel Leave a Comment
New River Birding & Nature Festival

Friends, you have only two days left to register for the New River Birding & Nature Festival! I’ve given presentations and helped guide birding trips at the festival for the last three years, and I will be there again this year (although only for a day or two — someday, when I’m not pregnant or nursing, I hope to spend the entire week!) The festival is held in the beautiful New River Gorge area of southern West Virginia, in the heart of the cerulean warbler’s breeding range…

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2014: A Year

Posted by Jan 1, 2015 Appalachia, Birds, Children, Family Leave a Comment
2014: A Year

Reflection is an important part of preserving memory—of learning and evolving, of taking inventory. Counting blessings, so to speak, making a list and checking it twice. I’ve been inspired by the season to reflect on 2014—its joys and disappointments, regrets and surprises, of new lives coming in and old ones transitioning to whatever’s next, divinity or dust, or an unimaginable somewhere else.

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A New West Virginia

Posted by Aug 15, 2014 Appalachia, Environment, Family Leave a Comment
A New West Virginia

In Desert Solitaire Edward Abbey wrote, “When a man must be afraid to drink freely from his country’s rivers and streams, that country is no longer fit to live in. Time to move on, to find another country or—in the name of Jefferson—to make another country.”

I’ve been thinking about this quote a lot lately, ever since Freedom Industries’ storage tanks leaked a toxic chemical(s) into the Elk River in Charleston, WV…

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