Looking for Nowhere

We are heading deep into Mormon country; southern Idaho. The first prescience happened as we descended from the green eden of the Henry’s Fork river into the fetid Snake river plains (flat, but potatoes!), Mollie woke from the passenger seat, sat up, and started sniffing the air vents. She

A Creation Myth

Preface: All cultures have creation myths. Their ambition is to set a people into the world and help explain their place in it. I have read many from the Native American tradition. They are a kind of verbal folk art to my mind. They do not set about being great

Bird Fight

When the local crows raise a ruckus around my house in town, I grab the camera and race outside. The dog barks as she is left inside and wants to join whatever I am up to. For a moment in the air hangs impending chaos and curiosity. The neighborhood crows

Plas-y Ial

Owain Glyndŵr hero of Wales was said to have rested here and hid to avoid a party of English soldiers during his fight with Baron Grey de Ruthyn that eventually led to the Welsh revolt from 1400 to 1415. The Ials or as we would say today the Yales descended

Yales of Wales Excerts

These are the histories of Pas y Ial as researched and told by Gordon Sharrat who was a descendant of Col. William Parry Jones-Parry who assumed the Yale name after Sarah Yale died with no progeny. He was active in the local history of Llangollen have published one book

Forest Evening

The wind blew as directionless and unsettled as the times. We caught you unawares. As were we. The snap of a twig, a head turn, and there you were, The camera caught you in the fading evening light, Vigilant, perhaps curious. And we, not intending disturbance, Wandered away on another

Hypothermia

I have suffered from the first stages of hypothermia on three occasions. Two of them were during the summer and one in the winter. None of them were life threatening because in each case I knew the symptoms and was aware of my vulnerability and still able to take action

Roswell

When you drive east in New Mexico, and drive far enough, you reach a sudden reckoning that they ran out of mountains and there is a distressing sense that they are also short of hills, even short hills. Maybe God gave up, or perhaps there is little appealing there now

CSKT Bison Range

We live at one end of ‘The Road to the Buffalo’ as the Inland Salish tribes called it. The route follows the Clark Fork of the Columbia into the plains of Montana where they would hunt and dry buffalo meat to take back home for winter. 'The Road to

Eternity

One day the oil will run out The gas will be gone Coal will move from the black and into the red. Engines rattle to a halt. Turbines spool down and whine no more Cars, trucks, forklifts, excavators, bulldozers, graders, dump trucks stop Refineries cool and congeal Factories issue smoke

Spring Again

The keening call and clatter of the merlin Snow turns to drops Then snowdrops A warm damp wind Timid, tense, birds halt at the merlin’s call Sharp swift swooping cessation of life The rattling taps of the flicker’s mate Sounds a lively retort of new life

Genius

The origins of words provide insights not normally available through traditional definitions or connotations, and genius is just such a word. Conventionally when we use the word genius we think of someone who is exceptionally smart or good at something. Albert Einstein is the iconic genius for many. The Greek