This week at the airport, a woman in front of me got pulled out of the TSA line and her black ukulele case unzipped on a stainless steel table. She wasn’t asked to play music, but to explain the crystalized contents of a plastic bag. I recognized the Ziploc bag of pink, chunky salt as…
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Honey: The Simple Solution to Mango Rash
Occam’s Razor: At its simplest, William Ockham posited—more than 500 years ago—that when faced with multiple solutions to a problem, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected. The dogs had been walked and my husband kissed good night. When my eyes started drooping and my iPad slipped from my grasp, I gave up…
Fishwatching: The One that Got Away
There is really only one piece of equipment essential for snorkeling. Technically, you don’t even need a snorkel. Or a swimsuit, for that matter. But you do need a mask. My friend Heather and I had long talked about conducting a REEF survey at Makua on Kauai’s North Shore. So, a couple weeks ago, Heather…
Independence Day for Kaloakulua
A month ago, when I was in Kalaupapa on Molokai, I spotted some dolphins swimming in the bay outside our kitchen window and called out, “Spinners.” Spinner dolphins are not listed as threatened or endangered by the Endangered Species Act. Because they forage far offshore at night and rest in sandy-bottom, near-shore bays during the…
Do These Pants Make Me Fit In?
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…
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