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Salmon Are My Heroes

December 16, 2013 by Margaret Hammitt-McDonald 2 Comments

With battered grace they thrashed upstream, bashing themselves against the current, rocks, other obstacles, and their own mortality to reach their natal waters. Their ordeal had flayed away their steely overcoats to reveal the muscle that powered their thrust toward the new life for which they would sacrifice their own. [Read More]

Filed Under: Culture, Nature, Spirit, ULE Tagged With: Salmon

It’s a lot of work

November 25, 2013 by T H Savaht 2 Comments

It’s a lot of work
coming Home
retreading
previous paths
turning
at some fateful moment
back
to the by ways of our
Birth [Read More]

Filed Under: Nature, Poetry, Spirit, ULE Tagged With: Cannon Beach, Ecola Creek, Salmon

A Guardian Spirit (Short Fiction)

November 24, 2013 by A.M. Laissig 1 Comment

“Daisy, come quick. He’s back.” The small, shaggy-bearded man danced a few steps in excitement.

A woman moved her girth sideways, through the screen door, letting it slap shut. Frizzy dark-rooted blond hair framed her splotchy sagging face. She snatched the binoculars and trained them on a distant stand of trees growing across Cape Falcon. [Read More]

Filed Under: Fiction, Nature, Spirit, ULE Tagged With: Bald Eagle

Why I Moved to Astoria

October 26, 2013 by Rabbi Bob 5 Comments

forest

About eight years ago, the same day that Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, my family and I moved from the Wallingford neighborhood of Seattle to Astoria — specifically to the Emerald Heights Apartments, past the Alderbrook neighborhood at the very eastern edge of the city. So many times was I asked why I moved to Astoria that I actually started a website with that domain (I’ve since taken the site down). [Read more]

Filed Under: Featured Writing, Nature, Politics, ULE Tagged With: Astoria

How the World Can Be the Way It Is

August 13, 2013 by Rabbi Bob 1 Comment

hagen

I’m reading a book by this title, by Steve Hagen, published in 1995. The book has recently been revised and retitled Why the World Doesn’t Seem to Make Sense, published by Sentient Publications. Hagen is a Buddhist teacher with lots of credentials. Anyway, the book so far has been pretty repetitive, basically saying that Reality (with a capital R, the real thing) is different from what we think it is.
[Read more]

Filed Under: Books, Culture, Entertainment, Nature, Spirit, ULE

What If We Mined It All?

May 22, 2013 by Rabbi Bob 1 Comment

Today I encountered three stories of the displacement of indigenous peoples and environmental destruction in the name of progress. The first was from a talk by Arundhati Roy given at Northwestern University on March 18 called Reimagining the World.

[Read More]

Filed Under: Culture, Nature, ULE

The Burial Ground, After the Battle

April 21, 2013 by Margaret Hammitt-McDonald 2 Comments

The dead are lined up according to size and type,
as neatly arranged as clothing in a drawer,
records on a shelf,
bullets in a chamber.
A quiescent machine waits to lift them,
its steel mouth clamping one, nipping at mossy skin
and flaccid lichens.

[Read More]

Filed Under: Nature, Poetry, Spirit, ULE

Unclear Cuts 2: The Metaphysics of a Designer Forest

March 7, 2013 by Margaret Hammitt-McDonald 6 Comments

How can human beings, with our arrogance so many orders of magnitude greater than our understanding or our reverence, hope to recreate the intricacies of these familial relations between different types of trees, plants, fungi, and fauna?

[Read More]

Filed Under: Culture, Featured Writing, Nature, ULE Tagged With: plantation forest

Unclear Cuts: My Quixotic Quest to Chronicle the Labors of a “Working” Forest

February 18, 2013 by Margaret Hammitt-McDonald 6 Comments

I wonder how often the “generals” of forest-product corporations visit the clearcuts and view the devastation for themselves. And if they do, do they perceive their surroundings as the wreckage of an ecosystem or as a lawn that has been mowed, as easily regrown as grass?

[Read More]

Filed Under: Culture, Featured Images, Nature, ULE Tagged With: clear cut, working forest

Valentine for Flipper

February 14, 2013 by Watt Childress 16 Comments

One of the most important cultural centers in the ancient world was founded by a dolphin. According to a Homeric Hymn, the creature jumped aboard a ship sailing from Crete and commanded the mariners to build a sanctuary at Delphi. The animal was said to be a manifestation of the Greek god Apollo. Apollo Delphinios.

[Read More]

Filed Under: Culture, Nature, Spirit, Television, ULE Tagged With: Delphyne, Dephi, dolphin, Flipper, omphalos, sea serpent

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Readers’ Comments

  • R²
    January 7, 2026 at 7:19 am
    on Smart travel money helps care for places we love
    Couldn't agree with you more. We're dealing with that all right now trying to get the air museum in tillamook
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    December 6, 2025 at 8:29 am
    on Adventures with author Charles de Lint
    The first work I read by Charles de Lint was Greenmantle followed by Moonheart. Since then there has not been
  • Trudy
    October 8, 2025 at 2:42 pm
    on Hankering for Paradise: My Discovery of The Wave Crest Inn
    I stayed at the Wave Crest for a night in the late 70s. If I remember right, the cost was
  • K H
    September 24, 2025 at 8:09 am
    on The Genocide of the American Indian, and Their Refusal to Die
    This response is far from timely, I know. But in honor of the ancestors I thank you for helping us
  • Ronald Logan Buchansn
    September 22, 2025 at 12:35 am
    on Three Poems and a Mountain
    Logan, on my annual summer browsing at Jupitor's I read "Freewriting In A Parked Car" and instantly purchased your book.
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