David Seton Greer is a writer and editor on the Pacific coast of British Columbia. His writings are frequently inspired by observations of the natural world. His books include White Horses and Shooting Stars: A Book of Wishes (Conari, San Francisco); Simple Pleasures (Conari); and Blue Genes: Sharing and Conserving the World’s Aquatic Biodiversity (Earthscan, London). Email: davidgreer500 [at] gmail.com
by David Greer It’s a magical scene not easily forgotten—snow-covered peaks reflected in calm turquoise lakes ringed by stately pines. It’s a view that likely inspired the romantic ballad “The Blue Canadian Rockies”, about a lonesome guy pining for a faraway sweetheart who unaccountably refuses to abandon the mountains she loves to join him somewhere…
by David Greer The smallest spider I’ve ever seen is slowly descending from the little metal lampshade above my computer. She’s so tiny, a millimeter wide at most, I have to look twice to make sure she isn’t just a speck of dust. The only reason I can be certain that she’s not is that…
by David Greer Standing face to face with an Anna’s hummingbird hovering a foot or two from my nose, I felt a little mesmerized. Anna’s hummingbirds tend to have that effect on me. They’re otherworldly creatures, with a world of mystery packed into a body that weighs not much more than a paperclip. Hummingbirds are…
by David Greer Countries love their symbols. But what do those symbols tell us? One of President Biden’s final actions before handing over the keys to the White House was to sign into law a unanimous bipartisan bill, perhaps one of the last of those for a good long time, declaring the bald eagle (Haliaeetus…
by David Greer My friend R is a man who takes his simple pleasures seriously, so I asked him to name one for me. Boathouses, he said, without hesitation. To the best of my knowledge, R has never owned a boat. No canoe or coracle, not a dinghy or dory, nor even a yacht. His…
by David Greer A group of island neighbours were enjoying a glass of wine in the old wooden boathouse when our quiet conversation was interrupted by an explosive Whupf! from the direction of the sea. We turned to look just in time to see the black-and-white hulk of a six-ton orca, curving gracefully into the…
by David Greer I used to visit our airport on Vancouver Island not to catch a flight but to hear the skylarks. I stood in the parking lot and looked up. The stares from passengers arriving and departing seemed a small price to pay for the reward of listening to the endless birdsong spilling from…
by David Greer Two weeks after my wife died this past October, she briefly returned. Or so it seemed to me. Not in the flesh, of course. Instead, I received a visit from a creature whose behavior was so unexpected, so unnerving, so uplifting, that it seemed to defy rational explanation, and I felt the…
by David Greer The northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina) and the southern resident orca (Orcinus orca) are dramatically different animals that employ curiously similar predation techniques, and both face extinction thanks in large part to their choice of prey. The northern spotted owl, one of three subspecies of spotted owls, is slightly smaller than…
by David Greer In the mid 1990s, I asked an assortment of people to describe their favorite simple pleasures. As I expected, the responses were wide-ranging, everything from feelings of accomplishment (perfecting a Chopin étude on the piano) to intimate moments (nursing a baby) to bringing order to chaos (the zen of vacuuming). There were…
by David Greer During the past decade, an environmental calamity has been gradually unfolding along the shores of North America’s Pacific coast. In what has been described as one of the largest recorded die-offs in history of a marine animal, the giant sunflower sea star (Pycnopodia helianthoides) has almost entirely disappeared from its range extending…
by David Greer On the islands of the Salish Sea, spring is often interrupted by the final roars of winter’s lion. Firs and cedars that usually withstand storm winds from the west or south may break when a rare mass of Arctic air brings with it a mean gale from the north. In a rural…
by David Greer Camera in hand, nature photographer Myles Clarke walked along the pebble beach on South Pender Island watching for great blue herons, bald eagles, buffleheads, cormorants—any of the species likely to frequent waters close to the shore of a Salish Sea island on a summer’s day. He listened carefully for their familiar calls,…
by David Greer There’s a bird that weighs no more than an average paper clip and is one of the fiercest fliers on the planet. There once was a bird that weighed around half a ton, the same as an average cow, and laid an egg as large as 150 chicken eggs. The elephant bird…
by David Greer My property on Pender Island is just a postage stamp of a lot by rural standards, but the immensity of the surrounding stillness of the Pacific rainforest feels more precious to me than the numbers representing its square footage. With no other human dwellings within sight or hearing, the stillness is the…
by David S. Greer 1And the Lord spake unto Moses, Go unto Pharaoh, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord, Let my people go, that they may serve me. 2And if thou refuse to let them go, behold, I will smite all thy borders with frogs. 3 And the river shall bring forth frogs abundantly, which shall go…
by David S. Greer John Keats can be forgiven for overlooking the spiders in his ode “To Autumn”. Who can blame him for accentuating the positive, given the health issues that eventually overcame him, barely 25, in his rude room by the foot of the Spanish Steps? My sometime island abode in the Salish Sea,…
by David Greer The 1900 Paris Exposition was a grand event, a world’s fair intended to honor the great achievements of the century just completed while heralding those of the century about to begin. In this spirit, architect René Binet designed a daring, futuristic entrance gate unlike anything ever seen before. It was as if…
by David Greer “If mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed 10,000 years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.” —E. O. Wilson “[Rachel] Carson may have won a battle, but not the war.” —Dave Goulson, Silent Earth January 31,…
by David Greer And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet’s wings. —Excerpt from The Lake Isle of Innisfree, by William Butler Yeats…