Goat meat from a vendor at the Gateway Market and veggies from our CSA. Pickle I made from my garden last year
Wolf and I celebrate our anniversary and get away to the ocean each year in York, Maine. Since we’ve been vacationing there as a couple for 8 years (I’ve been vacationing there with my family for 38 years) we are well acquainted with many of the local wares available to the the traveler. Local food availability is one of the things we’re taking the time to learn about.
The CSA we purchase from allows shareholders to double up on their order if the shareholder is unavailable for whatever reason. This is what we chose to do. It required a small amount of pre-planning by calling the organizer of the CSA and letting her know we’d be away and wanted to double up. This allowed us to create a meal plan based on what we already had on hand. The cottage we rent has a kitchen which allows us to save on food costs because we didn’t have to eat out every meal like we would if we stayed in motels or hotels. Read more…
Courtney and I are on the road this week, checking out what’s old in New England and leaving an acute shortage of lobster and local beer in our wake. We had the extreme pleasure of getting dragged all over the greater Boston area for the past four days by fellow Greenist NPW (who also let us crash on her floor for the duration.) Bonus points were scored on Monday when we met up with Howling Hill for lunch and some sightseeing, making it an even four Greenists tromping around the north end of Beantown. For an afternoon at least, Boston was green-blogger central.
During our journey over the past week, we’ve had plenty of opportunities to contemplate some of the impacts of traveling and the stark differences between the city we came from, Atlanta, and the places we’ve been traveling through: Read more…
There are a lot of different angles to this whole “environmentalist” thing, probably because the “environment” is basically made up of “everything.” That makes for a lot of angles. So we have the energy angle and the transportation angle and the food angle and the multi-purpose undergarments angle and on and on and all the rest, most of them overlapping and cross-pollinating ad infinitum. But just as with biological vs. adopted children or guys surnamed Jonas, we inevitably choose favorites: I like the wilderness angle (also, Nick; he’s the real talent.) Or maybe we should call it the land conservation angle. Whatever. It was my first love (for the record, we’re no longer talking about Nick Jonas.) Through all the recycling and hypermiling and organic strawberries and “if it’s yellow, let it mellow,” I have one image in my head- a place worth saving, and to me it’s the kind of place where none of those other angles even apply because they haven’t made it there yet. They aren’t willing to walk that far.
I’m currently in Seattle, taking a little vacation after a reading/signing for STAY, and I am loving what a green city Seattle is. Citywide composting means that every home and every store has a separate bin for food scraps. Menus commonly state that the food being served is free-range/antibiotic free/organic. And there are vegan donuts!
The seasons turn quickly in Wyoming, and I don’t mean one day you’re kicking around in sandals and the next day you’ve decided to compliment them with socks. No, here in Grand Teton National Park, where I’m a seasonal ranger, I was standing atop an 11,000-foot peak in short sleeves one day last week and the next day it snowed in the valley, with temps barely scraping forty. In the mountains it was the new snow that won’t melt until next July or possibly August. The date was September 30, and it has snowed several times in the week since. It will snow some more tonight. It’s like somebody flipped a switch: summer one day, winter the next. No fall to speak of.
I have often boiled down my love of the American west to one sentence: I need a big backyard. Of course, in my case this has nothing to do with any sort of desire for a lavish hot tub-waterfall-swimming pool combo or my own personal putting green. The backyard I refer to are the millions of acres of public lands that make up the western US. Nothing less will do. Read more…
Photo credit: www.npr.org
Big cities have the advantage of not only having a lot of attractions in a relatively small space, but also having mass transit systems. One of the best I’ve experienced is the Metro system in Washington, D.C., which goes pretty much anywhere a tourist could want to go in our nation’s capital. I don’t need to explain the environmental benefits of mass transportation to you — one vehicle moving lots of people at once is obviously greener than each of those people driving individual cars. But in D.C., you can take it one step further and bike your way to wherever you want to go.
Please welcome back today’s poster, Mickey.
Two days ago, rambling with a friend along a rocky ridge way off trail in Grand Teton National Park, I had the opportunity, for the second time, to peer down into the upper reaches of Leigh Canyon, a wild place if ever there was one. Though the mouth of the canyon, which pours out into the air-clear waters of Leigh Lake on the floor of Jackson Hole, is only a few miles from the tourist beehive of Jenny Lake, the upper canyon is a place only glimpsed by marmots, adventurous ravens and, rarely, misguided off-duty park rangers.
Please welcome today’s guest poster, Mickey. Mickey is a park ranger at Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, and as an avid mountaineer, he is well acquainted with wild places.
We focus a lot around here on the things that each of us can do to be better citizens of the planet, to live in a way that doesn’t exhaust the earth, air and water on which we depend, and maybe to reverse some of the damage that we’ve already caused. I guess we do this because it’s what we can do and it’s our responsibility.
But what is it we’re trying to save? Our own welfare, for sure, but believe it or not that isn’t reason enough for some of us; after all, our planet will likely limp along just fine at least until after I expire. So what, through our explicit actions, can we save right now that isn’t expressed in pollutant parts-per-million, tenths-of-a-degree temperature increases, or rates of glacial melt?
Wilderness. The earth as we once knew it. The earth as we still know it, if only in our imaginations.
Thinking of getting a gift card to a coffee shop for your caffeine addicted friend or family member? Take it a step further and get them a reusable coffee mug.
I promise to do a real garden update next week. Well, I don’t promise, but I’ll try to. In the meantime, I will give you a quick idea of what’s going on. Bunnies. Eating. Everything.
“But, Allie,” you say, “don’t you have a big, hulking, wolf-like dog? Doesn’t he scare off the bunnies?”
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