Behold the magic piñon! Do you have any idea what you’re looking at? The dark areas are crystallized resin. You can see it extending in a shallow curve across the cut face of the wood. This particular piece is about five inches wide. It came from the top of a mountain and was probably here [...]
Garden of Eden
Apologies to the ghost of Earl Scruggs
My wife got back from her exercise session around 7:20 a.m. Amazingly, I was dressed and standing in the driveway with my camera when she rolled in. It wasn’t the fog, but the little panic thing that woke me up. That miniature black hole where all your good thoughts go to die. The thing that [...]
The terrible high desert strikes again
This is somewhere near the bottom of the Rio Grande Gorge, maybe twenty yards above and fifty in a straight line from the river. The top of the cliff is 800 feet above. The scene is more unusual than you might think. The humongous boulders, for example, but especially the really sturdy sagebrush and a [...]
This section of the trail I call “The Falling Place,” because twice something knocked me down…
This is where I go hiking. Usually I walk two miles out, then turn around. Sometimes I go farther. If I kept walking, the loop back to the parking lot would take nine miles. Now that would be some exercise, about three hours’ worth! As it is, by doing this every other day for over [...]
I know, I know… Just do whatever the hell it says
The wind howled long and hard outside last night. Every now and then a dead branch from the giant elm growing out of the side of the old adobe clattered against the roof or just missed the kitchen window. If it wanted to get loose, however, it would have had to fight a whole lot [...]
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