Tamara Enz

Talking about ancient life and the Paleozoic Era (252 to 541 million years ago) in New Mexico elicits various unexpected responses. Oh, cool! The ancient Puebloans. Well, no. A little further back. Great! Dinosaurs. Charismatic megafauna get all the press, but no, earlier in geologic time. Occasionally, Oh. I tried that diet. No, again.

In the Arctic Ocean, two minutes means near-certain death. For a ship underway, in heavy seas or the Arctic dark, two minutes is an impossibility.

Most anyone who has met me knows I think for myself on, well, pretty much everything. For example, in my mind, breakfast can be anything from traditional eggs to leftovers to dessert. Despite what many people and cereal companies might think, my stomach doesn’t know or care what time it is; it just wants food. With that in mind, I set off for the next round of B&B breakfast adventures

My first book! Washington’s coast is teeming with scores of beautiful birds, and the Best Little Book of Birds: Coastal Washington will help you find them. This easy-to-use book will help you identify more than 100 commonly occurring birds that help make the Washington coast the natural wonder that it is. An emphasis on best practices and habitat sustainability help empower conservation and ensure that birding on the coast will be possible for years to come. Perfect for budding and experienced birders alike, this sleek and compact guide is the ideal travel companion for every trip to the coast. Tamara Enz has worked as a biologist for the past 25 years. Formally trained as a plant biologist, she spent more time studying birds than plants. From casual observation to serious research, central Maine to southern California and Arctic Alaska to central Missouri, Tamara’s work with birds has spanned the country. She has lived on the Oregon coast and conducted bird surveys throughout the West.

A few weeks ago in a random historic-site parking lot in far-flung western Colorado I met a 60-something woman from Atlanta. “You’re traveling alone?"

Endless miles of bluffs and beaches shelter sleepy towns along the wild Pacific Coast of North America. The ocean spreads away from sand and rock in an implacable expanse. Birds float lazily beyond the breakers. Gulls wheel and scream overhead. Sandpipers and peeps dash about madly at surf’s edge, spinning in unison in the air. And, under cover of early-morning semi-darkness, marbled murrelets leave the ocean and fly to the trees. The landscape is ruled by the stoic height and girth of trees. I

We believe in the intrinsic value of nature. Our goal is to conserve and enhance the estuaries and watersheds of Tillamook County by creating productive dialogues around the natural resources at the social, cultural, and economic core of our community while providing active and adaptable environmental leadership that honors the community’s principles and values and sustains our partners.

RxE2 is a digital health company delivering a new community-based clinical trials concept powered by cutting-edge technology that provides patient recruitment, dispensing, counseling, and operational services to the pharmaceutical and biotech industries. We are entirely revolutionizing how clinical trials are conducted.

Walla Walla has some world-class bed-and-breakfasts. My assignment is to explore the breakfast half of this duet. Before you think, “Oh, how you suffer,” consider this: In the interest of unbiased reporting, I ate nothing. Beautiful breakfasts were laid out in front of me, and I could only take photos. Alas! For I love breakfast.The first stop was the Wine Country Inn on Alvarado Terrace owned by Rick and Mary Moss. Mary’s family is from the South, her parents opened a deli in Walla Walla in the...

The future is not in plastics. These are Nurdles, the plastic pellets that are used to make all plastic products. They are small and light and often escape the captivity of shipping containers and factory waste streams. They turn up in the most remarkable places, like the Oregon beach in the photo above where I collected this vial. After Nurdles are extruded into their final form, they go off to live in the world. When their useful life as some product or another is over, they are discarded an

Distant. Persistent. Resistant. Recalcitrant. Immemorial time – Before there was Europe or Svalbard, the Arctic Ocean or coal, even before there was life, there was primordial soup – a steamy, overheated, water bath that covered the Earth.

Our lives are full of noise. Endless beeps, twitters, and rings. Traffic, jets, refrigerators, air conditioners. Ubiquitous cell phones, microwaves, TVs, and tablets.

In my most cynical moments, I see a brightly lit, well-appointed marketing office with sleek, well-dressed communications people sitting in comfortable chairs pitching a new ad campaign to a group of equally scruffy biologists in Carharrts and flannel. “We’ll call it, ‘Ecosystem Services, making nature more useful again.’ It’s a new way of thinking about the natural world.” A buzz phrase coined in the early Oughts, “Ecosystem Services,” identifies human benefits of the natural world and values

When I was a kid, breakfast was a meal we youngsters were expected to eat, but one that was only occasionally made for us. My first memory of cooking was making pancakes when I was about 4. I used salt instead of flour; even the dogs wouldn’t eat the results.

When Europeans invaded North America, it held an estimated 220 million acres of wetlands. In the intervening years, approximately half of that was lost to development, “reclamation,” dredging, poor land-use practices, and, more recently, drought and climate change. Wetlands are one of the most ecologically productive habitat types on Earth, providing a multitude of benefits to humans, including economic boons like billions of dollars in flood damage prevention and a place for the vast majority

My auntie once told me I’m the only person she knows who has managed to get divorced twice without ever actually getting married.

Cereal and Scotch whisky could seem like an odd choice for Thanksgiving dinner, but I had eaten the leftovers for breakfast; there was no other option.

As with many buzzwords and hyped dietary recommendations, “gluten-intolerant” and “gluten-free” seem to be circulating everywhere, polarizing populations into gluten-free and gluten-free-intolerant camps.

Three riders moved slowly across the landscape, deliberately but unhurriedly they paralleled my path in the opposite direction.

“In these difficult times” has become the new standard, but what was easy about the time before now? Remember, way back in February before the Coronavirus pandemic really hit the US? Remember how houselessness was a huge issue? Remember how affordable housing, even for people with fulltime jobs, was problematic? Healthcare was unaffordable to most and marginally provided by employers and the government. The education system was underfunded, failing, and exorbitant—and leaving young people fortu