Never learn For the bored traveler Up went a sign About the old settlers And then a roof From rain and the sun It was proof Fly-in, the swallows Mouthful by mouthful, Mud Dabbed and packed from bovine wallows Thankful for the shelter Grateful for the roof Then it
It is best to be still The armies of the ignorant are on the march They have seized the ramparts of knowledge They mock with their knowing ignorance An ink-black foul water It flows from the hinterlands It gathers the regrets and anger Latent in untended souls It wets
It all started as I noticed some movement on the great flat meadow below us. I had watched the elk herd yesterday and walked to within a half mile or so of it. We were camped along a high road in western Montana on an open slope with copses of
Moon haunted Owl hunted Iron-horse contoured Limestone heighted Sleet hissed Sun seared Elk hallowed Wolf howled Land waiting For bison wallow
Wells Nevada is one of those many interstate towns that did not survive the Interstate. A dilapidated downtown with plenty of boarded up old hotels. Everything new moved closer to the interstate and left whatever soul it had in the old part of town. Wells is located, spectacularly, at the
Here in northern Nevada the space is so boundless that it seems the cartographers have given up on names. Never reluctant to have a Rock Creek every few hundred miles I find myself in Nineteeen Mile Canyon for a couple of nights. Why? Primarily because I was tired of driving
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
Landscape Photography (film and digital) and Stories (true and otherwise)
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
One abiding aspect of modern life is the emphasis on management. I know because I worked most of my life in management. Good management is good because it reaches its objectives quickly and effectively. Man (mankind) is at the heart of management. This of course is not an accident. Management