Conservation
The Prairie Strips of Howard County
Across a single Iowa farm, twelve narrow strips of native prairie are filtering runoff, holding soil, and slowly persuading the neighbours.
Wildlife editor
Wendell Foss
Wendell Foss spent twenty-two years as a Forest Service backcountry ranger before he started writing about the species he had spent his career not disturbing.
Beats
Published in Field Lantern
Skills
Weather Reading From a Ridgeline
From a small summit in the Bridger Range one afternoon in late May, Wendell Foss watched a thunderstorm form, mature, and dissipate over the course of seventy minutes. He made the decision to descend at minute twelve.
Trails
Three Days Alone on a 28-Mile Wind Rivers Loop
A solo walker covers a small loop in Wyoming's Wind River Range over three days in early June, while the high lakes are still half ice.
Gear Tested
Backpacking stoves tested through a shoulder-season Cascades trip
Wendell Foss spent twelve days in the North Cascades in late May with four stove systems and a kitchen scale. The canister system won fewer rounds than expected.
Weather
Lapse Rates Explained for Trail Walkers
Why the summit is colder than the trailhead, and exactly how much colder, on a typical day.
Conservation
What the Ladder Does: The Penobscot Salmon Retrofit
A 14-month retrofit of the fish ladder at the Milford Dam was finished in October 2025. The salmon counters are still waiting to see what difference it makes.
Wildlife
Wolverine Tracks at the Base of Rainier
Three weeks with a small camera-trap crew confirming what biologists had begun to suspect: wolverines have returned to Mount Rainier National Park after a century's absence.
Skills
Reading a Topo for Water Sources
Before a four-day route through the Glass Mountains of west Texas, Wendell Foss spent an evening at his kitchen table identifying every dependable spring on a 1973 USGS quadrangle. Six of seven were still flowing in May.
Trails
The Lost Path to an Abandoned Sierra Ranger Station
A long-disused trail leads through second-growth pine to a 1937 USFS cabin nobody officially maintains anymore. A retired ranger walks it once a year.
Field Notes
Spring on the Long Trail, Day by Day
Eleven days northbound on Vermont's spine in the second week of May, with mud to the knee and the first wood thrush of the season.
Maps & Routes
Planning a Four-Day Route Through the Bob
The Bob Marshall Wilderness has no roads, no marked trails on its inner ridges, and few reliable water sources after July. A four-day route through the western end requires real planning, in pencil, before anyone laces a boot.
Weather
Reading Mountain Clouds From a Ridgeline
A guide to the half-dozen cloud forms that matter most when you are above treeline and three hours from shelter.
Wildlife
What the Bears Left in the Pine Barrens
A May morning with the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife's black bear team, working a culvert trap on a sand road near Chatsworth.