“The whole thing felt surreal, almost dreamlike—only the fatigue in my arms and shoulders reminded me that it wasn’t a dream. Once we reached the point at the end of the island, we aimed back into the waves and made for the opposite shore, upwind of where the boat launch should be. Once we could see the shore, we spun the canoe so the wind was behind us, and blew down the lake until we spotted the stone wall near the launch. My friend pulled the canoe ashore while I ran to the parking area to get my car. I felt relieved, thinking that the hard part was over—we just had to make a call.”
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Night Fishing on the Coast
“It feels out of scale–standing on (or on a rock maybe 100 feet from) the shore of the Atlantic Ocean and casting out a matter of yards. Sometimes it seems ridiculous to think that I can catch anything from a water body so vast. Is there even one fish in the area to see the lure I’m casting out? At least in a small lake you know that the fish are there, it’s just a matter of whether they are biting or not. Out here, there may not be a fish within a mile of my lure, and I would be none the wiser.”
Taking the people out of the National Park
“I walked by a sign saying “no pets allowed” and noticed a set of coyote tracks less than a few feet below the sign. The tracks led well into the closed area. Apparently, coyotes don’t pay much attention to signs and string. As I worked my way toward the sandy point at the end of Cape Cod, the closed area extended to the waterline, blocking my path.”
What really makes a good school “good”?
“Most people want their kid to attend a good school. A lot of parents are willing to pay a premium for this. People who care about education tend to be well-educated themselves, or grew up with parents who cared about education. This education leads to a higher average income, which gives parents a choice to live in more expensive, more desirable towns…”
Are fisheries management programs too passive?
“It’s important to know what population densities are, but ocean and inshore systems are so dynamic that small changes like a decrease in freshwater river input to a bay, a new, warmer water species adapting to a more northerly habitat, or a prime predator moving into a new area, can have huge impacts to a large ecosystem. When you consider all these unpredictable factors influencing a large system, modeling for the future is almost impossible…”