Daily Update Newsletter
PAT NEAL: Birdwatching with a chainsaw
BIRDWATCHING IS my life. Most of my best birdwatching has been done with a chainsaw. Birdwatching with a…
Pat Neal
Opinion
PAT NEAL: A wilderness crime spree
ADMITTING YOU HAVE a fishing problem is the first step in dealing with it. Sometimes, it’s only when…
Opinion
PAT NEAL: I’m not complaining about the weather
IT WAS DAYLIGHT in the swamp. The drumming of rain on the roof announced another damp and dreary…
Opinion
PAT NEAL: How not to prepare for the subduction event
Columnist note: This week marks the 326-year anniversary of the Jan., 26, 1700, magnitude-9 megathrust earthquake and associated…
Opinion
PAT NEAL: Cabin fever cures
IT’S OFFICIAL. THE cabin fever season started early and hit hard this year.
Opinion
PAT NEAL: Life on the stump ranch
THOUGH IT MAY seem like our dark and dreary winter will never end, there are rumors of spring…
Opinion
PAT NEAL: The 40-pound steelhead
THE HOLIDAYS ARE over. Only the mess remains. That, and the grim realization that after only a week…
Opinion
PAT NEAL: Making and breaking New Year’s resolutions
BY NOW, I’M pretty sure we’ve all had it up to here with know-it-all newspaper columnists wasting valuable…
Opinion
PAT NEAL: The Christmas colonoscopy
IT WAS DAYLIGHT on the river, but I was not on a river. This was strange since I…
Opinion
PAT NEAL: Interpreting the weather report
ONCE UPON A time, anthropologists somehow determined that the Eskimos have 50 different words for snow.
Opinion
PAT NEAL: A rainforest expedition
IT WAS A dark and stormy night. Inside the cabin, the wood stove glowed red with venison stew…
Opinion
PAT NEAL: What Thanksgiving means to me
THANK YOU FOR reading this. Writing our nation’s only wilderness gossip column is not easy.
Opinion
PAT NEAL: You could be spawned out
MAYBE YOU’VE HAD one of those days. You wake up in the morning and everything hurts. None of…
Opinion
PAT NEAL: This otter work
WHO SAYS THERE’S no good news? Lately, the co-managers of our natural resources have stumbled upon a unique…
Opinion
PAT NEAL: A bad day on the river
THIS TIME OF year brings back a lot of memories. These can be triggered by the smell of…
Opinion
PAT NEAL: The Halloween hunt for Bigfoot
I WON’T BORE you, dear reader(s), with the petty details of my ill-fated, underfunded hunt for Bigfoot that’s…
Opinion
PAT NEAL: Singing the birdfeeder blues
THIS IS THE season of one of the greatest migrations on Earth happening right now.
Opinion
PAT NEAL: The great deer hunt of 2025
OPENING DAY. IT’S a day when anything can happen. I was hoping, if for only a brief moment…
Opinion
PAT NEAL: The great clam hunt of 2025
THIS MUST BE the best autumn weather in years. And just when you thought it couldn’t get any…