Essays

Above is a close-up of Douglas-fir needles (Pseudotsuga menziesii) arranged by nature in a puddle of water, which then drained away.

EIGHT (!) OF MY ESSAY COLLECTIONS HAVE NOW BEEN PUBLISHED:

(THE EIGHTH JUST CAME OUT IN APRIL 2024)

STAYING PUT IN LANE COUNTY

WORDS FROM THE WOODS: 2004-2008

WORDS FROM THE WOODS: 2009-2011

SIXTY-FOUR TRIPS AROUND THE SUN

THE TREES OF EUGENE

LASTING LESSONS

IN PRAISE OF NATURAL SILENCE

FURTHER ADVENTURES OF A TALL BLOND GUY (NEW!)

AND I'VE ATTACHED BELOW FIVE OF MY

ESSAYS FROM 2022

I write constantly—letters and thank-you notes, journal entries, informative pamphlets, educational articles—and have done so my entire adult life.  But it wasn't until 1992 that I actually sat down and wrote an essay about something that had happened to me:  The Incident at Madrone Bluff.  Another essay appeared in 1993 and was called A Fairy in the Bay of the Angels.

Then there was a long hiatus until around 2004 when, for some reason, I began essay-writing with gusto.  That year, five appeared.  Since then, I've produced a dozen or more every year.  Many of them describe experiences I've had outdoors—usually when alone in the woods.  Some of them are more philosophical in nature.  I write others to help resolve some question that has arisen in my life:  why people do this, or why I do that.

I've also done more than forty "audio snapshots" where I sit quietly in a secluded place (again, usually in the forests of Oregon's West Cascades) and for an entire hour keep track of every sound I hear.  Then I list all the sounds, and discuss my findings.  It's simply fascinating to me what one can hear when one focuses on just that one sense.

Almost all of my essays are written during the days that I spend in the woods each week—or during solitary camping trips, when I also have plenty of what I call "reflection time."  The first drafts are written long-hand and, until about 2008, the final draft was always written on my beloved Smith-Corona CLASSIC 12 typewriter—with interchangeable foreign accent keys, so I could type in French, Spanish, German, and Swedish as well as English.  But these days, I go directly from the handwritten draft to a Microsoft Word document on a laptop.

AND NOW FOR DETAILS ABOUT THE ESSAY COLLECTIONS NOTED ABOVE:

My first collection of essays—those written in 2014 when I did not leave Lane County, Oregon for the entire calendar year—was published in mid-December 2015.  Like all the books I've written, Staying Put in Lane County is available on Amazon.  Some of the books are also available in Eugene, Oregon at Tsunami Books and Black Sun Books.  Plus, all of the books are in the Eugene Public Library downtown, as well as in the University of Oregon Libraries on campus.

My second book, Words from the Woods, is a collection of essays written between 2004 and 2008.  The third book, by the same title, is a compilation of the essays written from 2009-2011.  And the fourth—called Sixty-Four Trips Around the Sun—contains essays written since 2010, but of course excluding those written in 2014 for Staying Put in Lane County.

Each book contains forty to fifty essays on a broad variety of topics.  See below for a sampling.

In December 2019, my fifth book was published, entitled The Trees of Eugene.  It's a compilation of my tree-related columns written for The Springfield News (1993-2003) and articles I wrote for the quarterly newsletter of the Eugene Tree Foundation (now Friends of Trees Eugene) between 1999 and 2013.

My sixth collection of essays, called Lasting Lessons, was published in January 2021.

The full title of my seventh collection is In Praise of Natural Silence: What Oregon's West Cascades Sounded Like in the Early 2000s.  It contains all 50 of the "audio snapshots" I did between 2004 and 2022, where I sat for an hour in the forest--at different seasons, different times of day, and in different weather--and noted, for each minute, each and every sound I heard during that minute (e.g., a twig dropping, a bird calling, a distant chainsaw, aircraft...) and then discussed the snapshot in a short essay.

And now comes my most recent collection: Further Adventures of a Tall Blond Guy. As usual, there are a number of nature-related essays--but there's much more.  This new book is divided into five parts.  The essays comprise Part One.  Part Two is a sampling of my signature "annual reports" that I send out to friends once a year.  Part Three includes documents that were part of my field classes in natural history that I taught throughout The West for nearly three decades.  Part Four consists of several professional-level papers I've written, that have not appeared elsewhere.  And Part Five showcases some of my efforts for "community improvement." 

(This page updated 07 April 2024.)