The ornithologist and I picked our way across a knife-edge ridge high on a Kauai mountain. We were here looking for the nesting site of a rare and endangered bird—the Newell’s shearwater. Due to development and cats and rats and barn owls and a host of other threats, the total population of this particular species…
Author: Kim Steutermann Rogers
Kim Steutermann Rogers lives with her husband and dog on the island of Kauai. She's a longtime freelance science journalist and author covering Hawaii's natural history and, periodically, Mark Twain. In between assignments, she writes fiction and nonfiction. She maintains a website at http://www.kimsrogers.com. You can find her on social media @kimsrogers.
Happy Birthday, Joyce
Earlier, on the trail, they’d seen it. The massive dog. Tugging at its master’s leash, so that the young man’s calves bulged with muscle as he fought to hold the dog back. Grunting what sounded like “Damn, Rob-roy! Damn dog!” in a tone of exasperated affection. Signs along the trail forbade dogs without leashes. At…
A Hui Hou, Buzzy
While visiting Kalaupapa last week and attending mass at St. Francis, I learned Buzzy Sproat, the famous muleskinner of Molokai, was in ill health. Yesterday, I learned he passed on, no doubt with his boots on and sporting his Princeville Ranch rodeo belt buckle. Here, in his honor, is a piece I wrote over two…
The Extremes of Kalaupapa.
Tragedy and beauty go hand-in-hand at Kalaupapa. Along with metaphor and anthropomorphism. The wind is an ever-present friend at Kalaupapa, blowing bugs and the humid heat down a backdrop of cliffs lined up straight as soldiers in formation. If I were shooting slide film again, I would select a blue-and-green box of Fuji Velvia for…
Plastic for Dinner? Sound Good?
“Activism is the rent I pay for living on this planet.” Alice Walker This week on Kauai, a whiff of white ginger caught me unawares while I was walking my two dogs before bed. My head whipped around as if I’d seen an old friend in a crowded airport. “It is you,” I said when…
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