Seeing the Sourlands Essays by Jim Amon

Northern harriers fly low over meadows while hunting. The females are predominately brown and are larger than the grey and black males. Both sexes have a bright white patch at the base of their tails, which makes them easy to identify from a distance.There is a place...

For several years my sister-in-law, Penny, joined my wife, Kathleen, and me for our two-week vacation in Maine. All three of us were outside from dawn to dusk, hiking along the bold coast, through the spruce forest, or across meadows. Mostly, we followed Kathleen’s...

I started this essay in late April when dandelions were in bloom and I was struck by their beauty as though I had never seen them before.  I realized that there are a lot of plants and animals that are quite beautiful but I scarcely see them because they are common. ...

Blue flag irises growing on the edge of a pond where they protect the water’s edge from erosion.There are two hundred and eighty species of iris in the world, twenty-eight of which are native to North America, and one that is found in the Sourlands. Blue flag irises...

Dandelions got their name as a result of their French name dent de lion, which translates at “ tooth of a lion.” The term refers to the shape of their leaves.It started with a whim. I was walking along the edge of a meadow, enjoying the spring meadow flowers, when I...

By raising his tail, this striped skunk was warning me to back off. I did, and it did not spray.I haven’t been able to find out who has given names to groups of animals. Who decided that a group of crows is a murder? Who first called a group of giraffes “a tower?”...

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...