I haven’t blogged about my trip to India yet! The most exciting wildlife sighting for me, other than langurs for the first time in Great Himalayan National Park (sorry, no good photos!), was rhesus macaques! Until September, I had only observed rhesus macaques along the Silver River in central Florida. Here is a quick overviewContinue reading “No Birthday Monkey: Macaque Encounters in India”

A couple months ago, I had the song ‘I Love Nature’ by Joe Reilly stuck in my head. The line ‘trees are our teachers’ was on loop in my brain. I had also spent a day earlier that same week talking to high school students about monitoring tree phenology for a citizen science project. “YouContinue reading “Trees are Our Teachers”

“Go out in the woods, go out. If you don’t go out in the woods, nothing will ever happen and your life will never begin.” -Clarissa Pinkola Estes We should heed this advice more often. We can find plenty of reasons to avoid the woods: heat, cold, rain, ticks, the intimidating intensity of a rawContinue reading “Hiking Meditation”

Picture Books A Stone Sat Still by Brendan Wenzel Carl and the Meaning of Life by Deborah Freedman Little Tigers by Jo Weaver Muskrat Will Be Swimming by Cheryl Savageau, illustrated by Robert Hynes Under My Hijab by Hena Khan Middle Grade/ Young Adult Forward Me Back To You by Mitali Perkins (YA) From TwinkleContinue reading “The Almost Anthropologist’s Favorite Books of 2019”

Within the last year I have developed a deep interest in how my own and others’ yoga practices may benefit from moving out of our homes and yoga studios and into nature. I believe that practicing outside can help us to feel more connected. When we feel more connected with the world, we are moreContinue reading “Why Practice Yoga Outside?”

Lovingkindness meditation, or metta, is a Buddhist practice for developing compassion. Practicing it over time, I started to wonder why we are limited to primarily wishing lovingkindness to ourselves and other humans (until the very end when ‘all beings everywhere’ are included). So, I created my own version! I flipped the order of the traditionalContinue reading “Loving-Kindness Meditation Beyond the Human”

I just attended the North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE) annual meeting. It was my second environmental education (EE) conference, and during both I lamented the fact that they were not the anthropology or primatology conferences where I feel the most satisfying sense of belonging. (Note: Not everyone feels this way, and that’s aContinue reading “What is an Almost Anthropologist?”

Years ago, I posed for a picture on a day trip along the Wakulla River in northern Florida. A juvenile brown pelican bobbed behind me as I aimed my cheesy smile at the camera. I turned back around, greeted the bird with enthusiasm, and delighted as it swam closer to my rocky perch on theContinue reading “Usual Love for an Ordinary Pelican”

A farmer plucked a watermelon from the vine and cut it into chunks with a machete. We sat in the garden surrounded by forest, munching on the fruit as the juice trickled down and dripped off our elbows into the dirt. I chatted with farmers in between greedy bites of the snack that was grown inContinue reading “Watermelon and Dead Monkeys”

Single-use plastic straws carry a lot more than a sip of iced tea from the glass to your waiting lips these days. Are straws really harmful to marine life? Does refusing a straw really make a contribution toward reducing ocean pollution? You can Google these questions ’til the sea cows come home. For me, theContinue reading “Should You Skip the Straw?”

I heard the first distant rumblings of thunder and put down my glue stick. I looked around to gauge the reaction of the other students. Did they hear the thunder? Were they as nervous as I was? They kept cutting and gluing, either oblivious to or apathetic about the approaching storm. It was the middleContinue reading “Florida Storms”