My Latest Sierra Report from Western Outdoor News

My Latest Sierra Report from Western Outdoor News

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Preserving nature’s beauty for own memories and for others In the darkness of a desert night, I stood with my feet in the sands of time while a sky filled with a boundless field of stars glittered overhead. The contrast was stunning. I was surrounded by time. Geological time that had created the sands at my feet, and astronomical time that is difficult for the mind to comprehend. In Kumeyaay culture this is Earth and Sky, a place between the land, which is the source of life, and the celestial realm of ancestral spirits. I had gone to the desert east of San Diego to seek something that urban dwellers can’t see. The bright lights of cities dim the view of the heavens, but in this place away from urban glow, I could see the incredible beauty of the universe. I was also surrounded by a completely natural world, and from this vantage point the hand of man was nowhere to be seen. How increasingly rare that opportunity is becoming. For the first few minutes, my focus was on the process of se...
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Soft whispering of quail a sign property has come a long way A male quail being a lookout. (ERNIE COWAN) ERNIE COWAN  Outdoors I could hear the whispers and it sounded juicy. If only I understood quail. It was an intimate moment with nature like I had never experienced before. Sitting motionless at the edge of the flowerbed I was listening in to the whispered conversations of feeding quail just a few feet away. The murmurings were hushed, almost inaudible. I’ve written before about the “muttering army” of quail that pass my bedroom window at dawn as they emerge from native cover and march to a nearby seed feeder. Their not-so-subtle cooing then is an almost daily alarm clock. This was the same sound, but I could almost not hear it. Had there been a wind or other noise the sounds would have vanished. The feeding quail were obviously close to each other with no need to be speaking loudly. This became an impromptu sit-and-see moment. I was out enjoying the morning sun and had pulled u...
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 Outdoors I often seek answers in the wonders of a starry summer sky. It’s easy to do when you open the mind to the vastness of the universe and all that it holds. But as I sat on a rural mountaintop last week and watched a stunning comet hanging overhead, I was left with more questions than answers. Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS became visible in our evening sky about two weeks ago and has dazzled sky watchers, amateur astronomers and dreamers who share the mystic wonders found in a clear heavenly view. I was awed when realizing I was watching a tiny celestial object drifting through the night sky 44 million miles away. Hanging above was a visitor from the Oort cloud, a cluster of icy space debris far beyond our solar system. Only about 2 miles in diameter, Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS became visible as it neared the sun and its 18 million-mile-long ice and dust tail began to glow in the sunlight. And I was stunned when I learned that this object would journey through the heavens at 150,000 ...
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