Marcia Bonta

  • The Value of Aging Trees

    On a hot July day, I sit beneath a large red oak, nestled into a deep buttress, one of several that flare out from this 200-year-old tree. The ground beneath the tree is littered with old acorn remnants as are the bases of the other elders in this stand of deciduous trees. Protected as a…

  • Christmas books for nature-lovers

    Christmas is coming and even in this super-technological world, some of us still like to curl up with a good book. If you are such a person or if someone like that is on your Christmas list, you might be interested in one of the following books. Cerulean Blues: A Personal Search for a Vanishing…

  • A Walk in the Park

    “Is there anything that can sting me?” our granddaughter Eva asked as she peered down at the lake bottom. She and I were swimming in Lake Jean at Ricketts Glen State Park. It was a hot day in early June, and this was ten-year-old Eva’s first experience of lake-swimming. Like her mother Luz she enjoys…

  • In Search of Old-Growth

    Every time our son Dave suggests a field trip in search of old-growth forests, I get nervous. I also grab my walking stick. That’s because these rumored old-growth remnants are always on steep rocky slopes that discouraged loggers back in the late 1800s. They also discourage me. Navigating up boulder-strewn mountainsides is not my strong…

  • Theodora Cope Gray – Nature’s Own Child

    She died as she had wished, propped up in her bed so she could watch the birds at her feeder. At 94 years of age, Teddy Gray had lived a long and interesting life. She would say that her happiest days were those spent when she was married to Philip Gray whom she wed when…

  • Visiting Old Growth

    Sometimes you have to work to see an old growth forest. That’s what my husband Bruce, our son Dave, and I decided as we labored up the steep, rocky, north side of Paddy Mountain one summer day. We were following the unmarked Joyce Kilmer Trail through the Joyce Kilmer Natural Area in Bald Eagle State…