by Natalie Ogbourne | Sep 1, 2020 | Pondering Life Outside
I was finishing up the dinner dishes when my daughter, sixteen, slipped into the house and said, “You might want to stop and come outside. The sky is beautiful. I don’t think you want to miss it.” I’ve learned to listen to that girl. She pays attention. She’s attuned...
by Natalie Ogbourne | Jun 18, 2020 | Navigating Tough Terrain
My great-grandma was a woman of summer. She kept a garden. She grew the flowers and vegetables that graced her table. She picked the berries that topped our ice cream. Every once in a while, I helped her in the garden or the berry patch and it always shocked me when...
by Natalie Ogbourne | Apr 13, 2020 | Navigating Tough Terrain
From the trailhead, the narrow, uneven path took us up a short, steep incline between towering pines. The road below and the river beyond were visible between their trunks. Lodgepoles, their growing habits produced tall, straight poles topped by comparatively tiny...
by Natalie Ogbourne | Apr 3, 2020 | Lessons from Yellowstone, Pause, Ponder the Path, Press On
One strange thing about the internet world is that I don’t actually know where many of you live. Oddly, though, because of this unfamiliar terrain we’re collectively navigating, I can probably pretty accurately guess that most of us are at home much more than usual....
by Natalie Ogbourne | Feb 26, 2020 | Pause, Ponder the Path, Press On
My son is studying abroad this semester. In northern Italy. Until this week, I hadn’t heard much talk about northern Italy outside the context of his travel plans. Now it’s all over the news. He was supposed to start classes next Monday. On Monday of...
by Natalie Ogbourne | Feb 21, 2020 | Pondering Life Outside
In his book, For Everything There is a Season: A Sequence of Natural Events in the Grand Teton-Yellowstone Area, naturalist Frank C. Craighead compiles decades of observations of outdoor happenings into week-by-week entries. At least, they’re weekly entries between...