M-44s are spring-loaded devices that blast cyanide into the mouth of any creature that bites or pulls them, writes Ted Williams.Now, thanks to the Trump administration, M-44s will litter 245 million acres of Bureau of Land Management lands. The problem, writes Williams, is that M-44s don’t just kill coyotes, foxes or feral dogs, they kill indiscriminately — from pet dogs to over 100 species of wildlife.Worse, there was no public involvement in the decision to bring M-44s back, and it’s unclear if sheep producers even want or need the cyanide bombs.

Your local almanac for gardening, landscaping, and much more for your home and valley living.

How can we be at peace with our food and with eating food?

Remember nights when you tossed and turned, desperately trying to get some sleep? I think we can all relate. Circadian rhythm disorders, known as chronodisruption, arise when the body’s internal clock—governed by the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) in the hypothalamus—falls out of sync with environmental light-dark cycles.

“Whenever life becomes too turbulent,” writes Utah writer Dennis Hinkamp, he likes to visit Robert Smithson’s most famous work of art—Spiral Jetty.Perhaps the world’s most widely known earthwork, it cost the artist less than $10,000 and took only six weeks to construct, thanks to rented heavy equipment and a hired crew.Smithson meant Spiral Jetty to erode, to evolve with time, and Hinkamp has watched this happen from its very beginning in 1970.

Your local almanac for gardening, landscaping, and much more for your home and valley living.

We are all told to prioritize self care but sometimes the pressure to do so leaves us stressed.

Montana writer Todd Wilkinson spent seven years writing the definitive biography of Ted Turner, who died recently at age 87. Turner was a complicated and accomplished man, he says, not just for starting CNN and 24-hour news, building a major league baseball team, his hometown Atlanta Braves, and starting a foundation run by former Colorado Senator Tim Wirth to strengthen the United Nations.Above all else, Wilkinson says Turner loved the West’s open lands and wanted to protect them for bison and all wildlife. As his former wife Jane Fonda put it, he wanted to be known as “a good guy."

Your local almanac for gardening, landscaping, and much more for your home and valley living.

The final part of a three part series on using mindfulness to heal from our mistakes.