“Throughout my life, it has been here, near Estes Park, Colorado. On a sunny slope or even the local golf course, eyes closed, sun on my skin, the cool air of a fall afternoon, and the copper-throated call of elk. It is primal and it is poetry and hearing this sound in this beautiful location lets me know I am home, lets me know I belong.”

“There are places that are my compass points on the map. Places that I have to return to in order to find myself and to find hope. The Payette National Forest and, more specifically, the steep and beautiful drainages along the South Fork of the Salmon River not only offer rugged wild beauty but, through the commitment of others who love this place, show that we are capable of a great many things, most of which are fed by hope and community.”

“This is my homeplace. This is the backyard that unknowingly taught me to be a naturalist, to love all wild things and sounds, even as they occurred in my backyard. This place on the map is that place that grew me, and though it changes, it still holds the music that all of our ancestors knew, music that connects us still, birdsong, and most specifically the song of robins.”

“Every year as the season begins to move from summer to fall, I, along with the kokanee, migrate from the deep waters of Payette Lake to the thin water of the river that feeds it to watch sunset-red kokanee spawn. They show up like ideas, like flashes of inspiration, and with this spawning, they bring bear, eagle, osprey, and hope. To watch the kokanee spawn here is to remind me that what we cannot see is as vital as all we do see.”

“The prairie’s vastness makes me feel large, and possible. The sound of the wind both elevates my senses and when the day’s golden light combs the top of the prairie and the breeze starts to move the landscape like water, it feels, looks, and sounds like a vast ocean, an inland sea. The landscape uninterrupted is renewing. To be in the wilderness is to allow us to know our own wildness.”

“Though winter can seem less inviting than other seasons, when you first walk out in the fresh snow in the shadows of the collegiate peaks, you know that you have stepped into a deeper knowing. The tracks of animals emerge, the moonlight is reflected back at you, the sounds of winter are sharper, and have finer edges. An evening snowscape in the Colorado Rockies is a chance to enter the quiet season and to know a place through its nighttime passings.”

“There are certain places where the feeling of the past is not steeped in buildings or monuments, but in the landscape itself. For over 16,000 years this part of Idaho has known human presence. Walking the steep canyons and drainages, you can feel the eyes of the ancestors watching you. You see them return in salmon and lamprey and in the scars of the oldest trees. To be alone with this presence is a gift of remembrance and honoring.”

“We need vistas. We need them literally and metaphorically, and for centuries, Comb Ridge has provided them. Each year I return to this place inhabited by wind and art on the rocks and trails to views unparalelled. From the top of Comb Ridge, I not only see the vastness of the Southwest, but find my own way forward, just as the thousands of others before me have.”