Publisher’s Ponderings

"Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom of the mountaineer. Camp out among the grasses and gentians of glacial meadows, in craggy garden nooks full of nature's darlings. Climb the mountains and get their good tidings, nature's peace will flow into...

Living with Holly through the passing of her mother has been quite an experience. I now realize how easy I had it when my mother passed away several years ago. When the time came, one of my sisters moved in with mom as a full-time caregiver. Another sister took over...

Keep close to Nature's heart... and break clear away, once in a while, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean. — John Muir

After reading about the multitude of fires in Canada and how dry their forests are, I was about to write a column on how fortunate we are to have received so much rain this year and how much I love the rain. When I mentioned it to Holly, her immediate response was,...

The tiger salamander was declared the Colorado State Amphibian in March 2012, after a sustained campaign initiated by the John Babiak family of Denver. It turns out that the tiger salamander is also the state amphibian of Kansas and Illinois.  The tiger salamander is...

As many of you might already know, longtime Evergreen resident, Glen Gerlach, passed away in his home in the Greenwood area on April 3rd. It’s possible that I have known Glen longer than any of his friends here in town because we worked together for a decade in...

My pondering this month has a lot to do with having a long attention span... or not. So, if you have a very short attention span and relish that behavior you can stop reading right now and move on to your next curiosity. I have always had a very long attention span to...

There are a lot of things about our mountain community to be upset about, especially if you are recently from California. However, the one characteristic of our community that we all might agree upon is that it really does feel like a small town. I have said, since I...

Last month, Holly and I took her mother’s Ford Fusion in to get the rear turn signal fixed. Seems pretty simple. Replace the burned-out bulb, right? Are you sitting down? Because of the fancy new LED design, the entire assembly had to be replaced at a cost of about...

From an old Sam Cooke song performed by the Kingston Trio… “Way out West they got a name for rain and wind and fire. The rain is Tess, the fire is Joe and they call the wind Mariah.” Hmmm… There’s no name for snow? On today’s morning walk, the mountains whispered to...

It seems like I frequently feel like giving thanks a month earlier than the traditional day of Thanksgiving. It must be the appearance of the golden aspen leaves of October, which by November are only a brown mess underfoot.  The Rocky Mountains in Colorado offer...

Well, Holly and I are finally married. I actually proposed and gave her a ring in December of 2019. But then Covid forced us to reschedule our originally planned 2020 honeymoon for this next month. We are so looking forward to a long­awaited and well deserved nine...

Peggy Noonan recently wrote an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal titled “The Lonely Office Is Bad for America.” Based on the title alone, I was pretty sure that I would be in agreement. On the surface that might seem odd since I walked away from the corporate...

As a person with a lifelong passion for scientific pursuit, I found it quite perplexing that I became so annoyed with the pandemic rally cry of “Follow the Science.” In times past, I would have considered it a dream come true to have so many unscientific people...