The Crooked Pine

The Eastern Hemlock is one of the quiet giants of eastern forests. Its dense canopy keeps streams cool for trout and salamanders, shelters wildlife year-round, and helps protect fragile stream banks.

Sadly, these incredible trees are threatened by the invasive hemlock woolly adelgid, making conservation more important than ever.

This blog is part field journal, part nature notebook, and part love letter to the forests, oceans, and wildlife that make our world worth protecting. You'll find species spotlights, conservation topics, field notes, nature photography, sketches, folklore, and whatever catches my eye on the trail.

A few weekly themes you can expect:

🌲 Tree Tuesday

🪶 Wildlife Wednesday

🌼 Flora Friday

🍄 Forest Floor Saturday

Whether you're here to learn, wander, or simply appreciate the beauty of the natural world, I'm glad you found your way here.

The woods have always felt older than the rest of the world.

Not just old in years, but old in memory. The kind of old that settles into creek beds, pine roots, owl calls, and fog hanging low over the hills after rain.

I grew up in Pennsylvania surrounded by forests and stories. Somewhere along the way, I became fascinated with the creatures living just beyond human noise. Raccoons washing their hands in creek water. Snakes disappearing silently through leaves. Owls flying like ghosts between trees.

This blog is a place for all of that.

Part field journal, part biology notebook, part wandering thought collection.

I want to study wildlife biology someday, especially conservation and animal behavior, while also writing about the wild world and the people trying to protect it. So this space will probably become a mix of science, storytelling, ocean obsession, forest thoughts, and whatever strange creature currently has my attention.

Maybe nobody reads it for a while.

That’s alright.