A federal judge in Arkansas halted on Thursday, July 20, an ambitious Army Corps of Engineers plan to pump water out of the White River to help farmers in Arkansas’ Grand Prairie region irrigate crops. The suit was brought by the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) and the Arkansas Wildlife Federation (AWF), two groups that have battled the controversial project for over a decade claiming that it would do irreparable damage to the southern bottomland habitat along the White and Cache Rivers.

About a million years ago, through a wormhole, while I was still in college and Grumman aluminum was state of the art in whitewater canoes, some friends and I made a trip to Big Bend National Park in southwest Texas to float the Rio Grande through Santa Elena and Mariscal canyons. It was a memorable trip, the canyons were awesome, the water was exciting and the company was exemplary.

Remember the chaos theory — how the flapping of a single butterfly’s wings could produce unknown and unpredictable atmospheric change? Well the atmosphere must really be cooking because the hills are alive with the sound of flapping.

I have just finished by bird point survey for the Forest Service, which takes me to Mt. Mitchell and Roan Mountain. It’s a chance every year to get reacquainted with Western North Carolina’s high-elevation nesters.

I recently saw some previews for the documentary “Grizzly Man.” You may remember the story. Back in 2003, after 13 summers of camping among Alaska’s brown bears, Timothy Treadwell was mauled and partially eaten by a bear. A companion, Amie Huguenard, met the same fate.

“Daddy, Daddy come see!” called Izzy, my four-year-old daughter, running down the sidewalk to catch me as I was leaving for work.

“See what?” I asked.

Around 2 a.m. the other morning I was walking Maddie, my seven-month-old, around the house trying to convince her that it was still bedtime. We passed by our wall of windows in the living area and our yard was ablaze with fireflies. There were so many it even got Maddie’s attention, and she watched intently for a couple of minutes.

The only thing rippling more than the water through the rocky headwaters of the Chattooga is the controversy regarding the U.S. Forest Service’s ban on paddling in that stretch. It is a ban that has been in place for 30 years or so and doesn’t sit well with paddlers. Although paddlers have tried for decades to have the ban lifted, Sumter National Forest’s management plans of 1985 and 2004 both left the ban intact.

The other evening with toddler and infant asleep, my wife and I found ourselves alone as a thunderstorm rolled over the Balsams. We turned out the lights and watched and listened as the storm approached with the sky flickering brighter, the thunder growing louder. It passed with dull thuds and faint flares in the dark.

In 2005 the ivory-billed woodpecker rose from the ashes of extinction on the merits of an announcement from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. The bird had been rediscovered in 2004 in the Big Woods of Arkansas.