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Rio Grande view

Looking down at the Rio Grande

Here you go. Out into the cold, clean air for a thirty-seventh anniversary hike. The trail was rough, up and down with large rocks to step around and plenty of holes to break your leg. “I’m not going up there,” she said, at an uphill section that resembled a barely-groomed rock slide, but she did. [...]

Paradise Calling

old adobe scene in Taos

Vanished neighbors’ hovel from our kitchen window

Another pack rat in the trap beneath the sink! That’s three in a week without changing the peanut butter bait: just toss the carcass outside for the magpies and coyotes, reset the trap, and put it back right where it was. Economical and efficient. Moving right along, I heard a gopher two nights ago on [...]

Living Through the End of Empire

Kathy at the wheel

Post-breakfast, heading to the studio

The love pours out of me. I’ve always said I loved her, but this is different. It’s as if a dam has broken. I can feel the channel widening as it flows. It started when I realized I had a choice, when I pulled my attention back to what was right in front of me. [...]

Fire in the West

forest fire smoke as seen from Taos

Heavy smoke from out there, somewhere. (Looking back into the plume.)

I keep thinking she’s in the bedroom asleep, and then I remember I took her to the airport in Albuquerque this morning. She landed in Minneapolis at almost the exact moment I hit the last stretch of bumpy dirt road on the way home. I cried a little on the freeway. All my sins, you [...]

Aging Badly But with Style

yers trooly

It’s all right Maw

Oh, I am a piece of work. God must be keeping me alive to see just how the story ends. You know how when you drop your guard and trust the world, the universe provides exactly what you want, and then you run away? You don’t? Anyway, I caught myself in time, but it was [...]

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