Seeing the Sourlands Essays by Jim Amon

Boulders are strewn throughout the forests of the Sourlands.Originally published in "Seeing the Sourlands" 2019. Rock Road, West Rock Road, Rock Brook, Rocktown, Stony Brook, and Stony Brook Road—looking at a map of the Sourlands region sends a message. This is a...

In one of the Bible’s least credulous stories a snake converses with Eve in the Garden of Eden and tricks her into eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge.  When God found out what the snake had done he was so angry that he condemned all snakes to crawl on their...

 I am not sure what constitutes a tradition, but for the last several years I have published some photographs in December. These are photographs taken in the Sourlands but not used for any of the other essays. This year I have 8; in past years there were a couple more...

Tulip trees are known for their straight, tall trunks, but this young tulip tree has been encased in vines its entire life and they have pruned it, bent it, and shaded it. It looks like it doesn’t have long to live. When I was a boy watching Tarzan movies I loved how...

Black birch trees can live for over 350 years, but few of them do. If taller trees overtop them they die from insufficient light. About a hundred years ago many farm fields were abandoned in the Sourlands and black birch trees were among the first trees to take...

I had to resist swatting this mosquito until I had photographed it.My family and I were having a pleasant evening in our rented Maine vacation house when mosquitoes suddenly inundated us. It didn’t matter how many we swatted, there were always more. After a while, we...

By Jim Amon Fireflies have good eyesight, which as nocturnal insects, suits them. The two orange blobs on their head, shown in the above photo, are coloring on the cover of their thorax; they are not eyes.  Their eyes can only be seen from the side or bottom.  I...

Several years ago I published a Seeing the Sourlands essay on dragonflies and damselflies. I am doing another one now because in the intervening years I have become an avid watcher of dragonflies and damselflies. After years of bird watching, I started paying...

This ebony jewelwing damselfly was looking right at me while I took this picture, but since—like all insects—damselflies have compound eyes, it was also looking at its shadow, at a limb above it, and checking to make sure nothing was threatening it from either side,...

Common blue violets are found in sunny spots throughout the Sourlands forest. When I walk in the Sourlands I am usually drawn to the spectacular over the modest. I am transfixed by an ancient white oak, majestic in it girth and sheer presence, and scarcely see the...

By Jim AmonIn autumn the leaves on flowering dogwood trees turn bright colors early and stay on the tree for a long time.Flowering dogwood tree in springThere is a myth that dogwood trees were once tall and straight like oaks, and that the wood from a dogwood tree was...

This cumulonimbus cloud is raining on the portion of the landscape on the left half of this photograph.A family with three daughters lives next door to me. The girls are now in their late teens, but when they were young I could count on seeing them running up and down...