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Sunday at 7,500 Feet

Mountains north of Taos in fall color

Changing scrub oak thickets light up burned over mountain

For the last nineteen years, I’ve lived within 30 miles of scenes like this. Could have been doing something else, I guess, but hey. To me this kind of space and clarity comes close to peak existence. It ruins you for ever moving to a city, though. We ate our sandwiches at a pristine picnic [...]

Incantation

Early morning sun

Early morning sun lights up the California smoke across the valley

This morning after visiting the bathroom, my wife crawled back into bed around 5:30 a.m., pulled the covers up to her chin, and said, “This is the end.” (Driving by those houses yesterday had something to do with this, the way it always does.) I put my arm around her, held her close, and felt [...]

One Evening in the Wind

Kathy at the top of the driveway

“She lives (in a time of her own)”… – 13th Floor Elevators

Some days my only exercise is a walk to the top of the driveway to smell the air and scan the horizon. Today, this Saturday morning, is different. I will change the spark plugs on the car, buy tequila and lotto tickets, and maybe visit the storage unit—a ritual push against the tourist traffic, that, [...]

A Great Hurt

Llano Quemado

Wrecked bird feeder w/abandoned house

America was building prison camps. “The people in this country have no heart,” the young brown-skinned mother wept as the blackshirts finally released her daughter. Reunited but not safe, they both faced deportation back to violence and death unless they joined the thousands in the desert or in wire cages inside concrete caves, where the [...]

Dodge Dakota

More than just a truck you know

It was long, a kind of dark gray (“black”) speckled fabric, sleeveless, reaching to her ankles. She wore it often back in Maryland and afterwards, when she was teaching, too, I think, but it was long gone in our movings, cleanings, and impulsive weeding of possessions that were spoiled and no longer right. I remember [...]

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