I've always been kind of a nature geek. It's hard not to be when you grow up in a rural place with more open space and freedom than neighbors. Of a summer day or winter weekend I could often be found at the creek following raccoon tracks or seeing how fast a weedy flower head would take to freeze solid when dipped in the icy water. This was fun and fascinating for me, and helped form a life-long love and curiosity of pretty much everything in the natural world - from the smallest bug to the tallest tree.

Working at Oregon Wild has been a great way to continue my education in the field and has allowed me to subject my wonder and curiosity on others as I lead hikes in all seasons. (Sorry folks!)

I recently decided my knowledge was getting stale, so I invested in a stack of books to help me out of this situation.  I've been having a great time reading up on Oregon's geology (so I can answer the question, "what kind of rock is this?"), Oregon's insects (because I at least like to know what kind of beetles and centipedes we find on hikes, even if my hikers don't care), and what kind of wildlife use different habitat structures in the forest (so I'm not just making up answers to what might live "up there").

My hope is that my new and improved knowledge of the natural world, as well as my curiosity and continual wonder over what I DON'T know, will rub off on the folks I have the privilege of taking into the forests and meadows of our beautiful home. To me, there is no better way to learn to care for a landscape than to learn to appreciate the mosses and beetles and dead trees that play such an important role in making that landscape what it is. If I can help make that connection for more people, my investment will be paying off.

Back to work. Today I'm reading about how wildlife use mistletoe brooms in trees in eastern Oregon. You'd be amazed...