It's late summer and the Iowa prairie is flourishing with  a dazzling array of life and color.   Although impossible for contemporary Iowans to fathom the endless, horizon to horizon prairie vistas that greeted European immigrants as they rushed westward into Iowa during the 1830s and 1840s, today's grassland remnants and ongoing prairie restorations do provide the
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Subtle Transitions.        It's early August, and Iowa's woodlands are hinting of change.  The stunning lime colored brilliance of earlier forest greenery has slowly given way to the darker, more subdued hues of late summer.  Early season berries are but a memory, while the fruit of late season species are currently transitioning from the green
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  For those of us who enjoy breathing fresh oxygen --- as opposed to inhaling from an atmosphere composed largely of stifling, super heated, atomized water vapor --- the past few days have offered the most brutal week of summer weather so far.  On most mornings, sunrise dew points were excruciatingly high as humidity readings measured anywhere from the mid-eighties
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By Lowell Washburn - By the time July rolls around, I'm not usually spending very much time in the timber --way too much heat and way too much humidity for my liking.  But North Iowa's crack of dawn temperatures have been amazingly tolerable this week.  Heading out well before dawn this morning, I decided to try and find one last
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  Human preschool students are not the only recipients of early education.  The attached photo provides a good example.  The breeze was swirling and, although she caught my scent, this white-tail doe could not pinpoint my exact location.  Her reaction was one that every bow hunter has witnessed far too often -- the dreaded foot stomp. 
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