In early September, President Trump signed an executive order that continued to rely on big-bad-wolf myths. He claimed that living in wolf country is “very dangerous.”He then directed Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to determine whether gray wolves and Mexican wolves should lose federal protection under the Endangered Species Act. Without waiting for an answer, he also directed Burgum to support Congressional removal of gray wolves from the endangered species list.

An interview with artist Kelly Moody at the 25th annual Mountain Harvest Festival in Paonia, Colorado.

“What is the most important thing about writing?” That’s the question botanist and writer Susan J. Tweit asked Barry Lopez. His answer helped inform her newest book, Earthbound: A Year of Mindful Connection in Nature. We talk with Susan about how she weaves photography, science, haiku and spiritual practice through each chapter, and how these different genres help us connect more wholly with the natural world. We also talk about making up language for our own passions to better understand them, the reciprocal relationship between reader and writer, the effects of negative self-talk, and how simple conversations with other creatives fuel and ignite our own creative endeavors.A plant ecologist by training, Susan J. Tweit traded fieldwork for writing when she realized she loved telling the stories in the data. Her fourteen books don’t pigeonhole well at all, ranging from memoirs (Bless the Birds: Living with Love in a Time of Dying and Walking Nature Home: A Life’s Journey) to nature (Seasons on the Pacific Coast and Seasons in the Desert, Chronicle Books) and travel (Colorado Scenic Byways). They are united by the idea of turophilia and “re-storying” the human-nature bond. Her writing has appeared in magazines and newspapers from Audubon and Popular Mechanics to the Los Angeles Times and High Country News, and in Best American Nature Writing along with two dozen other anthologies. She lives in an orchard-growing valley on Colorado’s rural West Slope, where big sagebrush perfumes the air and high mesas define the horizon. Her newest book is Earthbound: A Year of Mindful Connection in Nature.

One of the super-powers of mindfulness is that we get to observe our thoughts and let go of the ones that don't serve us. We learn that our thoughts are not who we are, we don't have to believe them and that we are the ones who create them, so we can just as easily choose to uncreate them.

KVNF's weekly call-in gardening show. As the Worm Turns is now on Wednesday's @ 5 PM.

Exoplanets are planets beyond our Solar System. Speculated to exist for centuries, the first exoplanets were only discovered in the 1990s. But since then, thousands of exoplanets have been discovered and confirmed, and that list grows longer every month. So, some of these exoplanets must be like Earth, right? Well, we still don’t know if that’s true! The easiest exoplanets to find are worlds that orbit very close to their parent stars, and are often fiercely hot, or massive gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn in our own Solar System. No exoplanet like Earth that orbits a Sun-like star has yet been found.

Artist Laura Zick discusses her bookbinding process.

In late August, national headlines exposed the National Park Service’s efforts to swap land from one of America’s natural crown jewels, Yosemite National Park, so that a developer could give his planned resort direct access to the park.Federal land trades are meant to advance land management objectives, such as enhancing recreation opportunities and access. Unfortunately, many swaps are not initiated to directly benefit the public. Rather than federal agencies spurring land deals, private parties, such as developers or landowners, often initiate the deals that benefit themselves, not the public. Public land trades are also meant to go through a public process.

In this culture we have a fear of boredom. We avoid it at all costs - with our phones, our televisions, our hobbies, and our interactions. The second we have a moment to just be, we grab at something that will entertain us. But Boredom can lead to much healing insight and creativity. The art of boredom is the ability to leave space in our lives without needing to immediately fill it.