Chasing Nature

Chasing Nature caters to birdwatchers, plant enthusiasts, and everyone who enjoys exploring the outdoors, whether from their backyards or from the comfort of their homes. It appeals to nature lovers, creative thinkers, outdoor photographers, and anyone looking to find solace in nature and reflect on human experiences.

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Articles

The Extinction of Virtue

1 week ago | chasingnature.substack.com | Bryan Pfeiffer

TWENTY-TWO years ago, when things were about to go really bad in the prairie, I had a brush with extinction. No, not my own demise, but rather the prospective oblivion of a little butterfly named Poweshiek Skipperling (Oarisma poweshiek). We met on a sunny day in a wet prairie fen in southern Michigan. Rather than float or flutter like most butterflies, skipperlings dart and scurry.
Warblers Redefined

3 weeks ago | chasingnature.substack.com | Bryan Pfeiffer

Color, music, flight, and grace mingle in the lives of birds. But few birds pull it off like warblers. What’s a warbler? The standard definition is: a small, vocal, colorful, migratory bird in the family Parulidae. But this is an injustice to warblers. So here’s my definition:war•bler | ˈwôrb(ə)lər |noun(1) A force of nature, like gravity or chocolate or lovemaking, like harmony or a sunset or a shooting star.
A Woodpecker’s Revenge

4 weeks ago | chasingnature.substack.com | Bryan Pfeiffer

IN THIS ERA of lies and hyperbole, here is a bird truly worthy of its superlatives: robust, dazzling, theatrical.
Trade Wars and Spring Wildflowers

1 month ago | chasingnature.substack.com | Bryan Pfeiffer

IN THE naked woods of April, you will find neither tariffs nor turmoil — only grace and renewal. Spring-beauties emerge to bloom hot pink from last autumn's fallen leaves. The flowers of Hepatica are soft pastels of blue, lilac, or cream. And the Bloodroot: well, the Bloodroot is immune to the blood sport of commerce and politics. The world economy, we are told, is in upheaval owing to men in power with ideas about money and free markets. Stock prices swing. People profit. People suffer.
The Vulture's Memoir

2 months ago | chasingnature.substack.com | Bryan Pfeiffer

Greetings, readers: Here’s my contribution to an evening of poetry, verse, and music celebrating National Poetry Month and Poem City here in Montpelier, Vermont, a few days ago. Also, please scroll onward to the spring beauties below and my note to Chasing Nature’s paying subscribers. Thanks!GRANTED, I’m not an early bird. I sleep through the confetti of warblers at dawn, and then doze with one eye open to the humans below me going about their rituals.
The Relegation of Nature Writing

2 months ago | chasingnature.substack.com | Bryan Pfeiffer |Bill Davison |Mk Creel |Bill McKibben

IT HAPPENED sometime after the Barred Owl called out to its mate, but before the Silver Maple erupted into crimson fireworks. On that day, one of you clicked a button on your glowing screen and became Chasing Nature’s 10,000th subscriber. Although I myself can herald this milestone with gratitude (and announcements for you below), the natural world, if it could, would probably shrug off 10,000 of anything.
The Problem with Butterflies

2 months ago | chasingnature.substack.com | Bryan Pfeiffer

THEIR BEAUTY AND GRACE alone would seem to warrant at least some measure of loyalty and reciprocity on our part. And that is to say nothing of how they’ve become iconic in our culture — from poetry to jewelry, spirituality to tattoos. So by now you’d think we would have found a way to get along with butterflies. Nope, sorry. Despite their glitter and charisma, we humans are destroying butterflies in far too many places — and therefore making the world less beautiful and less interesting.
First in Flower

Mar 6, 2025 | chasingnature.substack.com | Bryan Pfeiffer

A Note from Bryan: Because I’m out of action owing to successful knee surgery on Monday, here from the archives is a timely and updated dispatch that most of my readers have not seen, and which makes me happy because even while enduring severe post-operative pain I can nonetheless bring you vernal opportunity. FOR MANY OF US, the earliest hints of spring are not green — they are red. Maple trees are breaking out in explosions of crimson flowers. Flowers? Where are the petals in those images above?
"Running Talus" Revisited

Feb 25, 2025 | chasingnature.substack.com | Bryan Pfeiffer

Although this essay is more personal than usual here at Chasing Nature, I believe it has universal relevance (even for those of you who don’t run wild in mountains). HALF A CENTURY AGO, as a 17-year-old boy, which is to say a fairly naive lump of flesh, I lived to touch rock and defy gravity. Before I knew much of anything about the world or gained any genuine sense of myself, I was a mountaineer.
Lies and Light

Feb 11, 2025 | chasingnature.substack.com | Bryan Pfeiffer

DISHONESTY has been in the news of late. And yet long before humans arrived on the scene to tell them, lies have been a way of life on Earth. Opossums feign death to trick predators. Caterpillars can resemble anything from snakes to twigs to bird shit. And certain plants look like rotting flesh, attracting flies that become unwitting pollinators. Fraud in nature is evolution in action — wild things doing whatever to get by in the struggle for existence.