Pepper Trail
Jefferson Journal ContributorPepper Trail is a naturalist, photographer, writer, and world traveler who has lived in Ashland since 1994. He works as a biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and in his spare time leads natural history trips to every corner of the world, including Jackson County. Pepper is a regular essayist for the Jefferson Journal and for High Country News, and his writing has been included in several anthologies, including Intricate Homeland and What the River Brings: Oregon River Poems. In 2009, he published Shifting Patterns: Meditations on Climate Change in Oregon’s Rogue Valley, a collection of essays and poems, with photographs by Jim Chamberlain and himself. Pepper’s poetry has appeared in the Jefferson Monthly, Windfall, Kyoto Journal, Borderlands, Comstock Review and many other publications. His writing combines a scientist’s insights with deeply personal meditations on memory, mortality, and the human place in the natural world.
-
No one in the Rogue Valley will forget September 8, 2020, when the Almeda Fire roared north from the edge of Ashland through Talent and Phoenix to the edge of Medford. Thousands of homes were destroyed in a matter of hours, and only the courageous efforts of our firefighters stopped the march of the wind-driven flames and prevented catastrophic loss of life. -
The Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuges are echoing with sound now: the honks of geese, the quacks of mallards, the whistling of wigeon, the bugling of cranes. March is peak migration time, and the abundance of waterfowl is a heart-lifting spectacle.
-
It is my deep hope that before too long it will once again be possible to travel the world. Paradoxically, travel off the beaten track may lead us back to an unremembered home. What is most strange often strikes a resonant chord deep within ourselves. Nowhere on earth have I experienced this shock of recognition more strongly than New Guinea—the wildest of islands.
-
I began thinking about this essay in a very different time. In February, to be exact—just a few months ago, but belonging to another existence entirely.
-
For a traveler, simply to say the word “Cuba” sets off a little shiver of excitement. Few other place names unleash such a jumble of associations,…
-
I’m big into names. As a professional ornithologist and a lifelong naturalist, I’ve spent years learning the names of things. That drab little…
-
Tahiti. Hiva Oa. Mangareva. Pitcairn. Rapa Nui. These are names that conjure up all the adventure and romance of the South Seas. Scattered across 3000…
-
Today I hiked along a forest trail near my home. Squirrels scolded, a raven croaked. I moved steadily on. Startled at my approach, a deer bounded away,…
-
It is winter, the fog along the river heavy as sodden wool, the ramparts of Table Rock looming high above. I have to place my feet carefully on the…
-
For climate activists, this feels like the last moment. This summer, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its latest report, covering…
-
I’d like you to summon into your mind’s eye the greatest animal spectacle you’ve ever seen. Was it a cloud of Snow Geese filling the sky over the Klamath…
-
Every fall, the maples and dogwoods color the foothills of southern Oregon with yellow and orange highlights, flaring vibrant among the dark green pines.…
