As you may have seen, in February I am embarking on the first ever Log Cabin Month. It began, technically, on January 30th as 2026’s inaugural Log Cabin Weekend, in which I also observe Saturday from the majority of internet activities. I did this a few times last year but generally lacked the fortitude to make it a regular occurrence. By Sunday afternoon I knew I would continue it. This is going to get needlessly complicated (which is a teaser for this week’s recipe), and will probably only matter to readers who love rules like I love rules. If that’s not you, go ahead and skip to the next paragraph after this subsequent one.

On Saturdays the Log Cabin is a little less off-the-grid. It’s like my grandparents’ actual log cabin that they had when I was growing up, which is to say an a-frame not made out of logs at all and situated in the tiny town of Manila, UT. This cabin is not as disconnected from the outside world as the famed fictional Sunday cabin located deep in the woods. While the latter is stuck in the 90s, the former has some connection to the 2000s. It has a Playstation 5 in it, for example. And it has some streaming capabilities (though barely, just enough to watch the season finale of Fallout on Wednesday before we cancel the last of our streaming services). Saturday Log Cabins still don’t have podcasts in them, or Instagram, Threads, Tik Tok, Bluesky, etc. But I can send off a weekly missive to the masses (or 400 or so of them out of the combined 200k who follow me on those platforms) through classic newsletter technology. And while the focus is still on physical medium, I can stream all the Carly Rae Jepsen I want. That’s what February will look like in its entirety, with the original hard core rules still observed on the Lord’s Day.

If you skipped that last paragraph, the long and/or short of it is that the only posting I will do will be on this newsletter, however you are reading it. The newsletter will get a little chunkier, I imagine, because it will have a week’s worth of what I would have normally posted elsewhere. Also mildly unrelated, I’m going to read all of Jane Austen’s finished novels because why not. By the time of this publishing I believe I will have finished Pride and Prejudice. At the moment of this writing Mr. Wickham has done a most dishonorable thing.

This Sunday we walked along the Provo River Delta and saw a lot of gulls and ducks, some bald eagles, a great blue heron, lots of evidence of beavers, sparrows, woodpeckers, and some American kestrels. I reflected on how far Utah Lake has come in the ten years since we moved to Utah County, and how much more again it has come along since I first saw it at the Missionary Training Center in the year 1998. My state colleagues may disagree with me on this point, but much of this miraculous (and still ongoing) recovery can be directly tied to the presence of a federally listed species, the June sucker.

This push and pull of state management vs. federal jurisdiction that is triggered by listing under the Endangered Species Act will necessarily need to be simplified, otherwise this newsletter would spiral into book length. I hope that points you disagree with herein can be forgiven by my brevity, and not a lack of understanding. I often hear in my day to day work life among local biologists and managers that states are better at managing imperiled species. Among non-profits and advocates, there is a general attitude that some species’ management simply belong in the hands of all Americans, and should never be turned fully over to untrustworthy red states. These are oversimplifications of a spectrum of attitudes where I find myself sympathetic to at least some of the critiques.

As an example of where some nuance can be found, let’s look at Utah Lake.

At the time that Mormon settlers arrived in Utah, there were 13 native species in Utah Lake, today there are 2. Utah Lake was once so abundant in fish that the Indigenous Timpanogos people considered it sacred, and would host an annual fish festival attended by other Ute and Shoshone Tribes. During the festival there was dancing, trading, horse-racing, and an opportunity for young men and women to find romance with members of other bands. The intervening post-European years were not kind to this sacred water body, to say the least. Overfishing, polluting industry, and over-allocation of water for agriculture has led to a much degraded lake. One that has become something of a joke to Utah residents.

I have become a bit prickly and defensive of what I now consider an underloved gem with almost limitless potential, but I know full well how much of its reputation as something Utah County residents were ashamed of was well-earned. The ignominy seems misplaced. Folks here seem ashamed that it exists in its state as if it were an unfortunate inevitability, not that we caused this.

Enter the much-maligned ESA. The Endangered Species Act often feels like more stick than carrot, if you’re a developer, but the carrot part is there and shouldn’t be ignored. The existence of an endangered species feels like (and is) a big headache if you are an (alleged) grifter who wants to build islands in the middle of a lake, for example. It also complicates things like building roads, wind and solar farms, public transportation, housing, oil wells, and other trappings that many of us both hate and depend on. These are usually surmountable–it’s very rare that the ESA stops development altogether–but the additional costs and schedule complications can be onerous.

From a conservation standpoint, it’s also deeply flawed, as any 50 year old law would be. It’s inconsistently applied and can seem arbitrary, both in which species get listed and its enforcement. There are no shortage of sticky situations that arise from an imperfect law that can be wielded erratically, like when one species that is listed as threatened or endangered competes with another at-risk one that is not. At times the control of predators is deemed necessary for the survival of a struggling species. Or an endangered predator/grazer may even depends for food on an equally dwindling prey animal or forage plant.

That all makes a lot of people’s jobs a lot harder (and gives some of us jobs to begin with), but at least from my standpoint, there is no way Utah could have accomplished what it has at Utah Lake without federal funding allocated because of the Endangered Species Act. The motivation for delisting and the flexibility that comes with it is a very strong incentive that creates unlikely and effective partnerships. Those resources combined with the deep expertise of state biologists doing on-the-ground surveys and recovery efforts have led to some of the greatest conservation successes I’m aware of whose benefits far exceed those to a single species. These are not limited to cleaner water and air, nice recreation facilities, great birding, and a slow-building but meaningful swell of support and pride for neglected resources.

Just the threat of a species being listed can trigger meaningful action that kicks in to convince the federal government that states can work together to prevent listing, like we have seen with the greater sage-grouse. And even when a species is delisted–the whole point of the ESA–state guidelines and management plans are required to keep the species from being relisted. June sucker is currently under petition for delisting, and projects like the Provo River Delta are a big reason why. The surrounding area is under extreme development pressure, including industrial development virtually next door to the project. While this can be demoralizing, it makes it even clearer how important the timing of a handful of diligent people was to make the land and water right purchases when they did.

Shifting gears to a much larger and cataclysmically more imperiled body of water, these musings on our stroll were particularly striking given the policy backdrop. Recently the Wilson’s phalarope was advanced for a status review to be listed, which has huge implications for the Great Salt Lake and the state as a whole.

From the article:

If Utah Lake was in dire conditions when I first saw it as a 19-year-old, the Great Salt Lake’s plight is almost immeasurably worse. Everyday Utahns can be forgiven for thinking that the Great Salt Lake is a deadzone of biodiversity, but it’s a rare and vital ecosystem with worldwide consequences. Ten million birds depend on it, including somewhere between 50-90% of the world’s eared grebes. It also supports 80% of Utah’s wetlands.

As of this writing it’s only 35% full, 54% of its shoreline is exposed, and its salinity is approaching levels that are ecologically catastrophic. The exposed lakebed is spreading toxic dust clouds that threaten respiratory health in humans (and wildlife), including arsenic levels that are 100 times levels considered safe. This is all as we are most of the way through the worst snow year in Utah’s recorded history. 95% of our summer water comes from the locked-in reservoirs of water in our mountain snow, and we have about half the snow in the mountains than is considered “normal.”

You wouldn’t know it from reading Facebook comments, but there have been some impressive strides to address this beyond prayer. That being said, a problem that is hundreds of years in the making can’t be fixed in a year or two. At the same time we don’t have the luxury of taking it slow. Unaddressed, it’s about as bleak a situation as I can imagine.

While cleaning the kitchen and making dinner, I put on Hellboy II: The Golden Army and wow does that movie frickin’ rip. It’s not only one of the coolest looking movies I can think of, but it’s also remarkable in that it has one of the most sympathetic villains I can think of in a comic book movie. Every adversary’s death is sad. The elven Prince Nuada has seen his people driven by relentless human expansion to hiding in subway tunnels and sewers; every treaty and agreement made with humans broken. Nuada has realized that the only way to save the elves is to restart and decisively win the ancient war between the species. His father, the king, disagrees:

Nuada’s tactics are extreme and cruel. In one case he attacks Hellboy with a massive forest elemental, the last of its kind. To save New Yorkers, Hellboy kills it, but not before Nuada says this:

The dying of the arcane creature is deeply sad. While we know this is not a real being, it represents something we’ve all seen disappear from the earth: green, living, vibrant life full of mystery and surprises. It is a poorer world without such things.

The world of Hellboy is one in which there are elves and goblins and all manner of magical creatures being pushed further and further into grimy corners by unceasing human expansion. The movie grieves this loss while the protagonists fight to save the lives of humans who don’t particularly care for the supernatural misfit team of the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense. It reminds me of how much disdain I sometimes hear in my community and online for my colleagues whose only crime is trying to maintain or restore a vital Earth where humans can live a healthy life.

As far as magic goes, you should see Wilson’s phalaropes. They’re astonishing little birds. One of the few bird species where the females are more visually strident than the males, dads do the majority of the raising of young while females immediately search for new mates. Therefore the males are competed over by female phalaropes (called polyandry, in case any adventurous women reading find a kindred spirit here and want to give themselves a title) and need the additional adornments to set themselves apart. They swim in tiny, relentless circles to churn up the water and create a column in which aquatic insects are forced upwards. There’s something hilarious about these frantic little spinners, and the world would be less magical without them. The Great Salt Lake is the most important stopping point for the species. And while I have severe misgivings about the administration in charge while this listing decision is taking place, I still have hopes that they can be unwitting little heroes in a fight to save the world.

We also watched Sense and Sensibility, which I had not seen before and found to be wonderful. I have had to face the twin facts that based on the excellence of the three film adaptations I’ve seen, Jane Austen must be one of humanity’s finest writers. And I have never read one of her novels. As I mentioned at the top of this post, I plan to use my social-media/podcast/streaming tv show free time to remedy that sevenfold this month. The 2005 Pride and Prejudice movie is Kristin’s favorite, so I’ve probably seen it a dozen times. While I consider the film more or less perfect, I’m enjoying the additional nuance of the book so far. Though I’m halfway through and feel like most of the things that happen in the movie have happened already so I have no idea what comes next. Maybe a big sea battle? I’ll keep you posted.

Albums I listened to include:

The Firewatcher’s Daughter, Brandi Carlile

Stay Gold, First Aid Kit

Deltron 3030, S/T

The Bouncing Souls, Hopeless Romantic

Weyes Blood, Titanic Rising

For dinner I made my (locally) famous fried chicken sandwiches, the recipe to which I am including below. I call these Double Marinated, Double Battered Chicken Sandwiches or Fried Chicken Sandwich Squared. They are adapted from two recipes, one from the unfortunately titled “Cook Like a Man” cookbook published by Esquire, the other from the Blue Apron cookbook. Each recipe calls for a marinade, and once when shifting gears halfway through, I ended up using both. They turned out so good I’ve been afraid to experiment further and somewhere in the process ruin the magic. The night before, I brine the chicken in a peppery Coca Cola based brine, then in the morning drop the brined breasts into a buttermilk and cayenne marinade until it’s frying time. To ensure that the batter doesn’t slide off, be careful to let the oil return to 350 degrees each time between batches.

The coastal or Humboldt marten was thought to be extinct by the mid-1900s until a Northern California population was found in 1996. Today there are four known populations, but little has been known about them. A new camera-trapping study was published late last month that gives researchers and managers a better idea of what kind of habitat these adorable Shai-Huluds-with-legs depend on. One of the biggest hurdles in restoring struggling populations is filling these baseline data gaps. And not a moment too soon. It’s estimated that these little fur tubes were trapped to near-extinction and have lost 95% of their habitat, mostly due to logging, drought, and wildfires. You can read the study (paywall-free) here.

Ingredients:

Brining:

4 cups Coca-Cola

1 tsp liquid smoke

2.5 Worcestershire sauce

1 tbs hot sauce (Tabasco, Frank’s Red-hot, Cholula)

3 tbs coarse salt

3 tbs black pepper

Marinade:

1 tbs paprika

1 tbs garlic powder

1 tbs onion powder

1 tsp cayenne pepper

3 cups buttermilk

Thin chicken breasts (it doesn’t matter how many that much, just ensure that it’s submerged by the marinades), cut into sandwich-sized cuts

Buns

Butter

Cole slaw

Pickle slices

Hot sauce (as needed–I like Melinda’s Ghost Pepper Buffalo Sauce)

5 cups all-purpose flour

Cayenne pepper (to taste)

Canola oil or other oil with a high smoke point (it needs to get to 350 degrees)

The night before:

Whisk the brining ingredients until combined

In a bag or large bowl, add chicken and then cover with brine and store in the fridge overnight

The morning of:

In a new large bowl, combine the buttermilk mixture and transfer brined chicken to buttermilk mix. You want the original brine to cling to the chicken, and discard the remaining brine

When you’re ready, get 3-4 inches of oil heating in a cast iron pan or wok (or whatever you have that is big enough) at medium high with a thermometer and watch it until it reaches 350

Combine flour ingredients in a large bowl

When the oil is hot enough, start dredging the chicken straight from the buttermilk mixture to the flour, then back to recoat with buttermilk, then dredge in flour a second time. Make sure that there are no patches of buttermilk still showing that are not covered in flour. carefully slide the 3-4 cuts of battered chicken into the oil (however you can fit without them overlapping each other). After 5 minutes flip the chicken, and fry for another 4 minutes. Remove to a drying rack underlined with paper towels and check the internal temperature of the chicken to ensure that it has reached 165 degrees. This part may require some trial and error on timing based on the thickness of the chicken breast. Chicken that is undercooked after frying can be finished in the oven at 350 degrees covered with foil so as not to darken the crisp outside. It will still be good!

DO NOT add more chicken to the oil until the thermometer has returned to 350 degrees, or the batter will slough off and you will say swear words.

Allow the fried chicken to cool and dry on the drying rack. Assemble to your tastes. I like to butter and toast the buns in the oven or a toaster oven.

I am taking any and all submissions. Poems, art, essays. The only request is that the fit into the general vibe of what I do online, these include: ecology, domestic violence and sexual assault advocacy, books, recipes

Also, if you make stuff that you sell online, I would love to feature your products in anticipation of stocking season.

Feedback, chats, questions? Email [email protected]

Also check out the new Discord chat to hang out with like-minded folks interested in wildlife, social justice, and (dare I dream) Dungeons and Dragons(?!)

The link is only good for 30 days so if you’re a latecomer you can find the Discord at Howies_everythingclub