I had a dog, and his name was Laddie.His middle name was “A.D.D.”He was a trial, a joy, and sometimes a baddie,and sometimes he even paid attention to me. “You, dog, were a pain in the ass. Sometimes. And all through your life with me. At intervals. But, you were also the happiest, most exuberant animal I have ever known.… Read more →
Category: Philosophic Musings
Winter at the River
The dog has paused his joyful romp,
quit rolling in the ermine crust
the world has grown since late last night,
to watch and listen, as I must,
to a world so still it must have a say. Read more →
A few thoughts about snails and cougar poop
Bits of life and death decorate the tread. Shards of hide and bits of white fluff mark where a snowshoe hare was consumed by something hungry. The list of suspects is short but impressive. A colony of ants confidently builds a residence in the center of the path, as if to say, “What bear?” Read more →
Spring, Muddy Feet and Rainbows
The world made a switch today, from lingering winter to progressive spring. I anticipate a time when we make a similar switch from this strange and scary time of personal isolation to a more normalized version of life, when every other human might not seem to be a threat. Read more →
Heart of the World
I am sitting amidst the high sources of one of the wildest, most beautiful streams I’ve ever seen; in one of the wild hearts of the world. The earth has more than one wild heart, and each is a center of renewal, resilience and beauty. Some are larger than others, but size has not much to do with the potency… Read more →
Food for thought: seven black jelly beans & slimy lettuce
My dad loved black jellybeans; licorice flavored, I believed, but — according to some who knows — actually flavored with anise. Whatever. I love black jellybeans too, and have a supply in my candy drawer with the Toblerone chocolate and peanut M&Ms. This evening, I made what a young friend of mine once dubbed “slimy lettuce,” a bowl of hand-torn… Read more →
God’s Will and Testament
God’s Will I, God, being of infinite mind and inscrutable body, do hereby declare My continuing Will and Testament, human edition. Planet Earth, I leave to its inhabitants, large and small, magnificent and mundane. The smarter should take care of the not-so-smart. I leave it to you to figure out who or what that might be. The rest of the… Read more →
On the Border of Complete Sanity: The Black Bird
This appeared in the July 16, 2015 issue of the Sandpoint Reader, for which Sandy Compton is an irregular contributor. Has it been hot or is it just me? OK. Damnably hot. Not hellishly hot, yet, but still. A friend pointed out yesterday that if global warming isn’t real, a great majority of the world’s scientists are idiots. Love that kind… Read more →
Growing Up Wild
When my mother was growing up and her children and her grandchildren, many of the kids living between Hope, Idaho, and Paradise, Montana, grew up wild, and they still do. Folks trying to get started in the Clark Fork valley often have to work so hard to plant themselves that there’s no time to cultivate the children, also. Instead, we… Read more →
May your children live in interesting times — a Chinese curse
This morning, I’m at White Bird canyon in north central Idaho. A red-tailed hawk sails along the bottom of a scree slope below me at the edge of the White Bird Battlefield segment of the Nez Perce Trail National Historic Trail. I am standing in a display that explains the beginnings of the Nez Perce War of 1877. Below me,… Read more →