Mike in the Wild

I couldn't fly into Fresno without seeing one of my best friends from college and his wife.  They had just flown back from Spain five days before, having spent a month and a half walking the Camino de Santiago where they trekked five hundred miles in total.  While I am in awe of both their spiritual and physical stamina, I was actually visiting Fresno to make a pilgrimage of my own.  I'd soon cover almost the same distance, albeit in a rental car, on a journey to bear witness to living entities often just as old as Christianity itself.  The giant sequoias were awaiting me.  It's been close to forty years since I've moved to Arizona, and I've visited California dozens of times.  But surprisingly I've never visited three of the state's national parks: Giant Sequoia, Yosemite, and Kings Canyon.  Except for skiing near Lake Tahoe, the wonders of the Sierra Nevada mountain range had  eluded me.  However I have been to Northern California and witne...

It's been a long time since I've seen a western screech owl: six years, by my rough record-keeping.  So I was delighted to recently witness one in my Phoenix backyard after only a few days back in town following my long summer stay in Prescott.   The last time I wrote about this small owl species, I had just seen one roosting during the day at the Desert Botanical Garden.  It was the second time I had seen one there, and the third time ever.  The first was actually in an adjacent community to mine in Phoenix, when I watched an owl over the course of several days as it basked in a winter's early morning light from a perch in the hollow of a saguaro cactus.   Over the next six years, I occasionally heard the western screech owl's bouncing-ball hoots during winter nights in the desert.  However I was much more apt to hear the deep calls of a great horned owl, which I was also more likely to see on my sunrise runs.  Last week for the first time s...