My books begin with curiosity—a bird, a wild landscape, an unexpected encounter, or a question about how the natural world works. Following those threads through science, memory, and experience, I explore what nature can reveal about wonder, loss, resilience, time, and the complicated business of being human.
Published Books
A journey into wild Alaska in search of bears and beauty becomes an unexpected exploration of loss, resilience, and the question of who we become when life takes us somewhere we never expected to go.
Through encounters with birds and wild places, an ecologist explores the science, memories, losses, and joys that shape a life—and discovers how paying attention to nature can deepen our sense of wonder at being alive.
Work In Progress
Reflections Down Under
The Unsung Pacific Northwest
Two Antilipine Wallaroo eye us near Georgetown, Australia. The mother carries another joey in her pouch. 
A billabong on the Cape York Peninsula provides wetland habitat during the dry season. 
Jonathan, my guide, checks out a Cathedral Termite mound on the Cape York Peninsula. 
A Double-eyed Fig-Parrot feeds on fig fruits. Mutualism is promenent in this relationship. The parrot gets food and in the process disperses the seeds of the tree. 
The freshwater crocodile had its mouth wide open. These are fish eaters, but still I would not want to be too close to those teeth. 
Magpie Geese are the most primitive member of the waterfowl order. My major professor did research on the taxonomic relationships of this species. 
A Rose-crowned Fruit-Dove leans over, puffing its throat, and lets out its beautiful song. This bird is much like an oboe and an joy to listen to. 
Two sooty terns fly toward their nesiting colony on Michaelmas Cay in the Great Barrier Reef.
Successive lava flows came from Eastern Washington to cover the Columbia Plateau. 
These are lava dikes from the Grand Ronde Lava irruption that happened in the middle of the Miocene. Lava from these fissures flowed all the way to the Pacific Ocean. 
A Lazuli Bunting sings to defend its territory and attrack a mate. 
Lichens grow slowly, adding to their area on these basalt rocks. 
When the Missoula Floods came across this landscape, tjhey swpt over the hills and crashed down over the falls. The torrent tore out basalt columns sweeping them down to the Snake River. Over the many floods, the canyong was cut back 5 miles from the Snake to its present location. 
The Snake River carved down through layers and layers of Miocene Lava flows. 
My friends work on identifying a plant in the Columbia National Wildlife Refuge 
Cliff Swallows built their nests under a basalt overhang.
Australia has drawn me back again and again, each journey revealing something unexpected about its birds, landscapes, people—and about myself. Reflections Down Under weaves natural history and science with stories of family, loss, aging, and becoming a grandfather as I consider how a lifetime of experiences shapes who we become. At its heart is a question I am still exploring: how do we remain curious, open to wonder, and uncertain about what comes next as we grow older?
Some of the Pacific Northwest’s most remarkable stories lie beyond its famous mountains and celebrated parks, in landscapes we often drive past without a second thought. In The Unsung Pacific Northwest, I follow birds, grasslands, rivers, fossils, basalt, and the traces of vanished animals through deep time, asking how geology and life have continually remade one another. These essays are an invitation to stop, look closely, and discover the extraordinary stories hidden in seemingly ordinary places.