| Explores the ecology, wildlife and quirky weirdness of nature—and the challenge of trying to live a life of substance in this materialistic world. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
<< Start < Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Next > End >> |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Page 1 of 8 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Stay in touch with EcoHearth
EcoHearth Spotlights
Rich Bard
Rich Bard is a wildlife biologist who began his career as a zookeeper. Having spent most of his adult life moving around the country working with various wild animals, he settled near the coast of Maine in 2004. Amid the striking beauty of this remote region, he passes the time with his family, hiking, snowshoeing, gardening and watching the tide ebb and flow.
Eco Action Tools
Knowledge is power only if you use it. Below are tools to help you get your eco activism on.
Eco Product Pick
The Kill A Watt EZ helps you cut energy costs by monitoring the electricity consumption of your appliances. See more items in our Eco Shop. |
Leave The Trail Behind
It's almost the end of February. Still the dead of winter in Maine. Night time temps regularly dip below 0º. Nothing but snow and ice as far as the eye can see. Skin gets all pasty white from lack of sun. (Not being the most racially diverse state in the US, most Mainers start the winter fairly white anyway.) People resort to desperate measures to help them through the rest of the winter: TV, alcohol, garden catalogs, full-spectrum lighting, ice hockey, you name it. 
Donning my snowshoes, I leave the plowed, shoveled and accessible world that we humans carve out of the winter snows. Each snowfall is cleared from what is “in bounds” for human use during the winter—and the plow banks and piles of snow grow taller each time. Anything outside of that maintained boundary is by necessity off limits—unless, of course, like me you put on your snowshoes. 
“Look at that,” I say to seven-year-old Max as we linger in the back yard on an autumn afternoon. “Those two are both maple trees. That one’s already lost almost all of its leaves, but this one has barely started to change colors. Why do you suppose that is?”
There is a certain stretch of beach that I walk regularly. Being part of a naval base, it is closed to the public, but I have permission to do shorebird surveys there. Only once in three years have I seen another person’s footprint in the sand, most likely from a boat that landed there.
Steve rowed the boat slowly, speaking in measured phrases between his strokes. Occasionally he looked over his shoulder to see if we were still on course for Burying Island. He was in no particular hurry. As long as the headwinds weren't too strong, we'd get there in due time. It’s a trip he's made countless times since his family acquired the island, back in 1938, when he was just four years old. Since then, Steve has seen the once nearly clear-cut island return to a forest and watched the wildlife return along with it. Supporting Sponsors
