Author: Michael Stevens

Our human body, mind, and emotions crave intimacy. We want to have close loving relationships. But the relationships we attract are affected by karma. Unliberated past experiences seem to surface in the context of...

I have been standing in line for three hours at the Antiques Road Show, waiting to get an appraisal of an old painting. I gaze out at the thousands of people here and reflect...

Western coralroot (corallorhiza mertensiana) is an orchid species common to Pacific Northwest conifer forests. It is a myco-heterotroph, meaning it feeds upon (parasitic to) a kind of fungus for its nutrition. And that fungus...

I am perched on a basalt boulder as I peer through strands of lovely fireweed and columbine toward a small a waterfall on Paulina creek. The roiling white caps flow over strands of deep green...

While hiking on Browder Ridge I see a beargrass community in full bloom—rising like spears of white piercing in the forest understory. This year I also see the brilliant orange of tiger lilies intermingling...

I am surrounded by a towering stand of old growth conifers that seems to absorb every sound. Not a breath of wind stirs the air. Even the the birds and insects have disappeared. The...

The Merganzer mom led her clutch of fluffy ducklings through eddies and ripples created by a series of spring fed waterfalls flowing into the Metolius river. It seems strange she would choose this route....

The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the...

I am sitting on a stool next to a cafe-style table near the the front windows of a local tire store while I wait for an alignment service on my truck. My front end...

The popular media rarely reports the challenging side effects of meditation when one uncovers hidden afflictive emotions stuffed way down in the psyche. Zen Buddhism has a word for these sometimes disturbing experiences: makyo,...