Author: Michael Stevens

The throng of visitors at Artist’s Point overlooking Yellowstone Falls is overwhelming. We choose to visit this park after school starts so as to as avoid such crowds. But, apparently, social media has popularized...

Waterfalls are glorious displays of nothingness. Water pours over rock precipices and crashes into the earth below, scattering shards of moisture and emitting a fine ethereal mist into the air. The space becomes vibrant...

Myopia. Nearsightedness. I notice with the advent of the smart phone that people have become very nearsighted. For instance, it appears they cannot see nor read the signs that say, “Give plants a chance,”...

I am looking through the window toward our back porch and see a floating apparition. It is some sort of flower seed composed of gossamer filaments radiating from a central spire—similar to spokes on...

The practice of Tonglen, giving and receiving, can be a profound and liberating experience. We breathe in, gracefully acknowledging the suffering of all beings. Then we breathe out, offering light and love, visualizing that...

There are so many ways to become intimate with nature: walking barefoot, bending to smell a flower, dropping sweat on a steep trail, becoming absorbed in the view from atop a mountain, tasting a...

As of this writing there have been 250 mass shootings this year in the U.S. What in the world goes on in the mind of a mass shooter? If we think we would never...

Purple sage (Salvia dorrii ) is a plant native to much of the western United States. It is not really a sage but a member of the mint family. I have come across this...

I received a call to conduct a ceremony for someone unknown to me who was in the end stage of dying. The caller said the dying man had a connection to Tibetan Buddhism and...

We have a number of blue scrub jays that visit our back yard. We offer them shelled peanuts from our feeding area and they happily feed on the legumes, stuffing up to five in...