Colors of Clifton: Foraging and Dyeing with Native Plants

This fall, The Clifton Institute hosted a program called Colors of Clifton: Preserving the Palette of Autumn. We gathered native plants and learned about their special qualities with naturalist, Regina Yurkonis. “I don’t want my art to do damage. All things pass away, so using natural materials allows one’s art to dissolve back into the […]

Human-Beaver Coexistence Q&A with Skip Lisle and the Almost Anthropologist

This post is a summary of portions of a Q&A panel that occurred after a film screening of Beaver Believers in Washington, VA on January 10, 2020. Responses are paraphrased from memory unless in quotation marks. Q: How are beavers unique in the larger context of human-wildlife conflict across the world? Alison Zak: Beavers are […]

Beavers: Revisited

The last time I blogged about beavers, about a year ago, I wasn’t even sure I’d seen one. It’s been a crazy ride in the World of Beaver Belief! Over the course of the past year, I have observed beavers regularly and taken detailed notes of each encounter. I see anywhere between one and four […]

No Birthday Monkey: Macaque Encounters in India

I haven’t blogged about my trip to India yet! The most exciting wildlife sighting for me, other than langurs for the first time in Great Himalayan National Park (sorry, no good photos!), was rhesus macaques! Until September, I had only observed rhesus macaques along the Silver River in central Florida. Here is a quick overview […]

Trees are Our Teachers

A couple months ago, I had the song ‘I Love Nature’ by Joe Reilly stuck in my head. The line ‘trees are our teachers’ was on loop in my brain. I had also spent a day earlier that same week talking to high school students about monitoring tree phenology for a citizen science project. “You […]

Pronghorn Prayer Haiku

wooden prayer beads leap over the poet’s finger- pronghorns jump the fence

Hiking Meditation

“Go out in the woods, go out. If you don’t go out in the woods, nothing will ever happen and your life will never begin.” -Clarissa Pinkola Estes We should heed this advice more often. We can find plenty of reasons to avoid the woods: heat, cold, rain, ticks, the intimidating intensity of a raw […]

Christmas Coyote Haiku

Christmas morning At the edge of the marsh Coyote presence ~ Merry Christmas, fellow primates!

Florida Haiku

two squirrels scurry in spirals down the oak dressed in Spanish moss

The Almost Anthropologist’s Favorite Books of 2019

Picture Books A Stone Sat Still by Brendan Wenzel Carl and the Meaning of Life by Deborah Freedman Little Tigers by Jo Weaver Muskrat Will Be Swimming by Cheryl Savageau, illustrated by Robert Hynes Under My Hijab by Hena Khan Middle Grade/ Young Adult Forward Me Back To You by Mitali Perkins (YA) From Twinkle […]