On a gusty day in Half Moon Basin, a meadow surrounded by towering mountains where we were camping, I participated in my favorite school assignment of all time. Every student had the opportunity to pick a plant to observe, sketch, read about in a nature guide, and make a creative piece about it. I had

My name is Jackson, I’m a current student of the Conservation Across Boundaries course, and I’m here to share some of the things I’ve learned, along with a few observations I’ve made. The very first concept we studied on this course also happened to be one I was unfamiliar with. It’s the idea of Traditional

Mountains and meadows, rivers and flowers,  Thinking of landscapes I stare at for hours,  Great big white clouds and thunder that rings,  These are a few of my favorite things! Daily Journal Excerpt from 06-25-2021 Snowcrest Mountains, Mt.: “Today was a blur. I didn’t feel great for most of the day, but I have a

“Screedle on!” Someone shouts as we descend steep Navajo Sandstone slickrock. This is our third expedition as a group and we are each carrying twelve days worth of tightly packed gear on our backs. We appear to be defying gravity as we round a cliffside for our first glimpse of the Dirty Devil River far

It was full speed running. Sand flying, daypacks forgotten, every one of us dying of curiosity for what lay beyond the bend of the sandstone walls. We had reached a point in our hike where Katie and Dave, our WRFI instructors, let us find the last greatest surprise of the day. Out of uncontainable excitement

As my watch alarm wakes me from my intermittent slumber, I slowly lift my head from my sleeping bag to confront the cold morning air. It is now early November, almost two months into my semester with the Wild Rockies Field Institute, and the canyon country is being greeted with the first signs of winter.

I have seen where stars come from. They rise, tiny specks of light born from an equally illuminated world. Festering underneath furled logs, laying in wait until their home is disturbed, probed by the caress of a fellow branch, these specks burst outward in a fury of light and heat. I am one with the

The morning is cool but not cold. Spared from the wind, I easily boil a pot of water to wake my comrades with. Everyone is asleep under the vast desert sky, their snores echoing off the walls of the three shallow canyons just beyond camp. Though the urgent need for coffee usually rouses them in

Rocks are lively, dynamic, and bearers of history. This was certainly never a thought that crossed my mind until I abandoned old perspectives and simply sat among them. With my college education rooted deeply in Western science, and working toward a degree in Fisheries and Wildlife Management, unbeknownst to me, my mind became rooted in

  Every step that I take my foot gets engulfed into inches of quicksand. You’d think that river hiking would be a breeze, and that might be if you could see where the bottom was but that’s not the case with the Dirty Devil River with its water similar to chocolate milk out here in