My Portfolio

  On the road…again! Afghanistan to Zambia Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek   Washoe Indian Encampment at Wrights Lake, California Only after joining the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy as a volunteer in 2009 did Footloose Forester rekindle his interest in geology.  Having the time to document his memoirs helped,...

On the road…again! Afghanistan to Zambia Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek   R is Rwanda   Never will the Footloose Forester be able to tie the events in Rwanda and Burundi together in a historical or insightful way. But since he traveled to both countries on various occasions,...

  On the road…again! Afghanistan to Zambia Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek   E  is for Ethiopia The highlands of Ethiopia are among the most beautiful landscapes on earth.  To see things that way, one must always remember that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  So,...

On the road…again! Afghanistan to Zambia Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek   The Grey Wall, Desolation Valley Wilderness Area   Haunting personal memories of the past are sometimes ugly ones, but in repeated exercises to maintain mental health, most of his preferred recollections induce smiles and pleasant thoughts. ...

On the road…again!!! Afghanistan to Zambia Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek   Giving Up Barbershops Except for the one time he went to a barber in Gainesville, Florida before leaving for the Organization for Tropical Studies study program in Costa Rica in 1970, the Footloose Forester decided to...

  On the road…again! Afghanistan to Zambia Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek   Travels By Train On his first travels west of the Rocky Mountains, the Footloose Forester had a premonition that he would never again be as happy as he was in the mountains.  Seeing the Rockies...

  On the road …again! Afghanistan to Zambia Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek   Trinity Center, California A few memoirs are related almost exclusively to forestry ventures, and some of the very sweetest memories are about the sights, sounds and events when Cal-Pacific Forest Consultants had a contract...

  On the road…again! Afghanistan to Zambia Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek   Uniform or Not, Civilian or Not   Uniform or not, civilian or not, many of us who spent more than a year in Viet Nam saw lots of action of one form or another. There...

  On the road…again! Afghanistan to Zambia Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek   THREATENED WITH EXTINCTION Attalea   crassispatha (C. Martius) Burret, the "Coco rosse" known only to a handful of botanists and the Haitian villagers in the Southwest of Haiti, may be one of the rarest palms...

On the road…again! Afghanistan to Zambia Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek   Getting To Morocco On A Pass With a hand-written copy of the Rhein-Main flight schedule in his back pocket, Footloose Forester was not sure where he would end up during his first leave period from his...

On the road… again! Afghanistan to Zambia Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek   On the road… in Germany   Neuschanstein Castle in Bavaria   Visiting Dachau Prison, the site of a World War II concentration camp was on his travel agenda.  So was spending a few hours during...

On the road …again! Afghanistan to Zambia Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek   A is for Afghanistan His urge to visit Afghanistan was precisely as James Michener described in his book "Caravans."  That was many years ago and he has forgotten just what Michener said in the book...

  On the road…again! Afghanistan to Zambia Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek   Return to Tuy Hoa (in Google Earth)   Thoughts of Viet Nam keep returning in his dreams.  Some memories are clear but others are confused, especially about why the Footloose Forester was there, in the...

  On the road…again! Afghanistan to Zambia Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek   T for Trinidad Trinidad is probably carved out of South America.  If you look closely at a map of Venezuela, you will see how closely the coastline adjacent to Trinidad suggests that Trinidad once fit...

On the road…again! Afghanistan to Zambia Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek    Italy Joe Pellek was the first one to note that the bathroom in our hotel room in Genoa was all marble tile; the walls, the floor, and the quaint bathtub.  Even the floor in the bedroom...

  On the road… again! Afghanistan to Zambia Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek   French Bread Why can’t anybody in the USA make decent French bread?  With all due respect to each and everyone whose taste buds may be on a different scale of acceptability from his own,...

On the road… again! Afghanistan to Zambia Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek   C for Costa Rica The Switzerland of Central America is known as the country that has the most stable democracy in Latin America. Costa Rica is also a magnet for studies in tropical ecology, whether...

On the road…again! Afghanistan to Zambia Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek   On Tree Planting Foresters and laymen alike agree that planting trees is a desirable thing to do.  Homeowners most often plant fruit trees or flowering ornamentals on their properties to enjoy the fruit and/or the foliage--for...

  On the road …again! Afghanistan to Zambia Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek   M for Malaysia Getting kicked out of the University of Malaysia library was not what he expected, but then again, the Footloose Forester tried not to clasp to fixed notions about people, their national...

  On the road…again! Afghanistan to Zambia Chronicles of a Footloose Forester By Dick Pellek   Drink the Water   Once again during his later years, the Footloose Forester was inspired by a dream to craft a chronicle about something that might not otherwise stand alone as an interesting story. As...