What do you see on this alpine slope? What you don’t see may be as important as what you do. You might see a rocky substrate with a very sparse cover of plants, all apparently similar. A few grasses and sedges, several asters, and a few other stragglers from other families. They are all short…

My commute to work this summer takes three hours each day. Most people have shorter journeys, but I don’t spend mine driving a car, riding a bus, or sitting in traffic. I walk. A mile and a half of road, then two and a half miles of mountain, climbing from 9500′ to 11600′. This is…

Usually I like seeing marmots. They represent everything I like about the high country out here. But recently our relationship has gotten much worse. The problem happened at 8:28:57 AM on July 1st, when a marmot bit through the sensor cable of the solar radiation probe for my weather station. I had left the cables…

Living the middle of a national forest in the Rockies means that there is more wildlife in and around my house than you might expect. Here a few of the regular visitors. First, here is a deer mouse (Peromyscus maniculatus) that moved in when the snowpack was still melting. It found a supply of packing…