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Unless you were born in the North Country, you probably believe the summer solstice is the greatest time of year. Day has eroded both ends of night to the fullest, giving us more vitamin D and less darkness than during any other 24-hour period. If, like me, however, you grew up at or above the 45th Parallel, you know this is no cause for celebration. In fact, quite the opposite, for after June 21 the days begin shrinking. The nights ooze longer. And that part of our brain that never forgets the blasting chill of a winter wind says, "Chink...

And then one day the world is reborn. On the cusp of summer, when time has passed through the equinox season into long days here in Montana, with a sun rising far north of where it did even a month ago, I spent a morning walking along the Yellowstone River, celebrating the new life that was all around and had seemingly appeared overnight from thin air. It's fitting that it happens this way - how a new generation magically materializes. While the world has gone on about its business, Nature has done something quite remarkable and I've paid no attention...

When I was a boy, growing up in Northern Vermont, arguably in either the end of the Appalachian Chain or beginning of the Laurentian Range, winter was as much hell for me as it ever was for Persephone. In fact, there were times when I would gladly have traded my cloudy, north-wind-blown, packed-snow landscape for whatever she viewed in Hades because it undoubtedly would have been warmer. To a boy whom my father frequently referred to as “all boy and a yard wide,” meaning I suppose that if it was breakable I’d smash it, if I could throw it I’d...

I walked through a cemetery on a day which was neither spring nor winter, when I was neither young nor old. It was a time of in betweens all around, with bright sun and a biting, north breeze and me falling smack in the middle of the born-on died-on dates carved into the granite and marble. Geese passed fast overhead with no regard to direction, carried on the wind as though they, too, were undecided about where they should be going this time of year. There were narrow roads through the stones, covered in places with clean, crushed rock, holding...

It's unseasonably warm for February in Wyoming, but the wind cuts out of the west at more than 50 miles an hour as though Nature is attempting to balance herself. The mud flats at the mouth of Buffalo Bill Reservoir on the North Fork of the Shoshone River are ripped skyward, a virtual haboob sailing east over the half-open lake. High above, on the peaks of the Absaroka Beartooth Mountains, similar trails of snow twist from cornices, streaming in the gale like clouds. Tall grasses along the river, which for ten thousand years have drawn elk, deer, and bighorn sheep...