In my companion article to this piece, I wrote that one of the top reasons that stargazing is the ultimate outdoor pursuit is because of the real world drama played out in the nightly motions of the stars and other celestial objects. A recent night of stargazing which I...

When we hear the phrase “outdoor activity,” images of someone lugging a backpack deep into a remote forest or furiously paddling through a series of churning rapids likely fill our minds.  Activities like these appeal to us for being exhilarating and challenging...

While I spent many years as a seasonal wildlife biology technician, my more recent experience has been as an academic. While I feel that the life of a field tech better represents who I am, it’s hard to totally take the academic out of me. The following reads as...

The following is an excerpt from my reflections on a conversation I recorded while traveling through the US documenting the work and personal stories of wildlife biology technicians. It centers on the dramatic events which convinced Mark Steele, a former field tech, to...

It was my first week as a field tech, and I’d just been caught trespassing by a landowner in Wyoming. My supervisor offered me the opportunity to put in some extra work by matching up printouts of aerial photos with what was actually on the ground, a process called...