Field Notes

Walking through the woods recently, I saw a red squirrel digging in the litter of the forest floor. I assumed it was burying a pine cone, but on closer inspection I found a piece of mushroom. Little did I know I was witnessing a process critical to the survival of a forest.

One of my favorite places to look in the forest is up. I love the way trees frame patches of sky, and how rays of sun slide over the branches and slant into pockets of darkness. On a recent stroll through the woods near Echo lake, I found myself, as usual, looking up. I saw mostly fir and birch trees, and I took their narrow trunks and modest heights as signs of a young forest. But it was a much older tree that caught my eye.

Soaking up some September sun, I was perched on a rocky outcrop of Wild Horse Island in Flathead Lake. The sweet vanilla scent of Ponderosa pine permeated the air as I watched gulls flying overhead. I sat quietly on a large boulder and waited for the residents of this island ecosystem to resume activity as if I were not there. Across the small gully on the next rocky hilltop, a single female deer grazed in the shade of a pine. By the black tip on the end of her tail, I was able to identify her

One evening while walking along the river just outside of town, winding my way through a meadow fringed with ponderosa pine, I met a great gray owl hunting down amongst the bunchgrass and wheatgrass. Startled, the bird rose on 5-foot wings and flew straight towards me, veering at the last moment to skim past my shoulder.

I’ve always been impressed by survivors, especially here in the arid, unforgiving West. No species better demonstrates this survival instinct for me than does the lowly Artemisia tridentata , better known as big sagebrush. And few other species come as close to communicating such a significant part of the nature of the landscape.

Fellow Montanans, it’s time for your second wake-up call concerning the upcoming solar eclipse — the celestial event of the summer, if not a lifetime. Pencil “eclipse day” into your day planners for August 21, and set aside the time window of roughly 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. to experience the whole event. It will feature, on average, an astonishing 90 percent totality for many of us in the Treasure State. There are lots of community resources out there to help you enjoy the eclipse, so let’s run

At the end of last summer, as I sat in an eddy on the Clark Fork River, something furry and black caught my eye, moving as smoothly as the water itself. I was looking at a North American river otter. Remembering studying sea otters in elementary school, I wondered if I had just seen something rare for this region, and decided to do a little research.

Last summer I was helping teach a geology field camp near Dillon. On our way back to the Birch Creek Outdoor Education Center each day, after long hours in the August sun spent identifying and mapping incredible exposures of rock, we would drive past a few crumbling cabins beneath an unweathered cliff face footed by large piles of scree. This was once the town of Farlin – a long-abandoned copper mining camp at the base of the Pioneer Mountains. Shortly after the dawn of the 20th century, it was

While watching an evening newscast about Montana wildfires , I saw some TV footage of deer and elk fleeing burning areas and listened to speculation by the newscasters of how many animals might be killed during the fires. I was reminded of watching the movie Bambi as a child, and fearing for Bambi’s life as he fled that fictional wildfire many decades ago. So how devastating are wildfires to deer and elk? Can most of them outrun or outflank a rapidly spreading fire? And what about the survivors

There’s an event coming your way that’s so significant, the Post Office has issued a commemorative stamp for it: On Monday, August 21, 2017, a historic solar eclipse will occur. The path of 100 percent totality, spanning parts of 14 states, will extend in an arc across the United States from south of Portland, Oregon, in the west to mid-South Carolina in the east.