Soil agroecologist Nicole Masters, daughter Melanie and I were standing on the windswept shoulder of a peak high up on our Hat Creek grazing ranges that a precipitous and narrow jeep trail meandered over. Before and just below us was the sweep of Bear Basin, an unbroken 15 square mile bowl of …
In Beetle Business
The repulsive seething mass of beetles shimmered in the high-altitude sunlight. I found myself transfixed by the frenetic movement of their red-backed bodies. I had spotted a few of the shiny-winged standouts on top of the dried and crusty stud pile while hiking up to check on the flow of a spring …
Ancients on the Range
Mammoth tusks. Images of ancient ivory filled my mind as I followed the mud and ice track in my pickup, meandering off the high ridgeline of the Continental Divide yesterday. It was a lovely day for the drive into our county from the Montana outback. I'd only passed one other pickup over the last …
Pregging Cows with Dr. Jeff
There’s bears in the bottoms. It’s been established by eyewitnesses that there’s definitely two individuals that are hungrily wandering around in the willows below our house; one looks like a large boar (male) and the other like a 2-year old or yearling cub. There’s several winter-kill elk and deer …
Grass to Grain and Back Again
Thousands of cattle on a braided network of well-worn trails were weaving their way out of the high mountains of the Hat Creek country. Around 30 to 40 leather and flannel-clad dirt cowboys on horseback rode with them, and when their wide brimmed hats failed to block the setting sun, a pillar-cloud …
Below the Feet of a Giant
At the foot of a giant, I dug a little soil test hole a few days ago. I was in a remote stand of massive coast redwoods—one of the most northern great groves of the magnificent trees in the southern reaches of coastal Oregon. Clouds drifted through the treetops, and whitewater cascades poured over …