Mike in the Wild

It was the bubbles that initially disturbed me; there were so many of them and they seemed to overwhelm the training pool and cloud my visibility.  But they didn't stop me from venturing with Cabo Adventures on a boat to my first diving site on what was my first ever scuba dive.   On the vessel, I discovered I was about to enter the Sea of Cortez with fifty pounds of equipment strapped around me.  I also unnervingly found out I'd be sitting on the edge of the boat and falling blindly backwards into the warm water behind and below me.  I was incredulous that holding my mask with one hand and placing my other hand behind my head would prevent the mask from tearing away on impact with the sea.  (The mask stayed securely on.)  Yet I was still bravely undeterred from making the dive. Floating with a buoyancy vest was effortless, as was rolling over uncontrollably, belly up and floundering.  But following my Mexican guides' instructions to pull myself a...

I marked the end of my fourteenth summer in Prescott in typical fashion, weedwacking desiccated wildflowers and covering deck furniture.  I also refilled bird feeders for the last time this year, leaving sugar water for Anna's hummingbirds and suet and seeds for the menagerie of titmice, nuthatches, jays, and woodpeckers that call the trees in my neighborhood their year-round home.  It wasn't the birds' last supper as they seem to manage well enough on the bounty of other humans along with that of the surrounding woods.  Enjoying my last glimpses of these forest friends until the spring, I was struck by two surprises in my yard: a pair of red-naped sapsuckers and a first-time sighting of a red-breasted nuthatch. Red-naped sapsuckers have appeared on my Prescott property at least twice before.  Like this past weekend, the visits were in autumn and the birds were foraging high in the ponderosa pines.  Sapsuckers appear to be seasonal visitors, never joining their ...