“There are men in the world who derive as stern an exaltation from the proximity of disaster and ruin, as others from success.” Winston Churchill In 2001, I had the opportunity to travel to the “new” Russia. The USSR had dissolved a decade before and the country was full of optimism for the future. It also had a new president… Read more →
Category: Travel Stories
A Few Thoughts on Winter and Our Fellow Travelers.
A bobcat is traveling around the homestead these days, teaching snowshoe hares and ruffed grouse to pay attention, a good and proper thing for a bobcat to do. I see its tracks rambling through my woods. I also had the good luck of a sighting a few weeks ago. In my years in this neck of the woods, I’ve seen… Read more →
A few thoughts on the “wall” that is really an inefficient fence.
Having survived COVID and feeling sort of — but not completely — immune, I recently traveled down Mexico way. I didn’t go into Mexico, except just a tiny bit, because a.) I didn’t take my passport with me to Arizona, and b.) even if I had, I didn’t want to sit in traffic for an hour to get in and… Read more →
A few thoughts on pure-d B*** S***
The weather has been unseasonably warm, if you haven’t noticed, and I’ve whiled away a few days getting reacquainted with the prairies and island ranges of central Montana. Day before yesterday, I drove from Chinook through the Bears Paw Mountains, crossed Missouri on the Sanford-McClellan Ferry and found a camp in the Upper Missouri Breaks National Monument. Last night, I… Read more →
Winding Road, Next 99 Miles (8 am at Apgar)
I climb out of Montana only to fall into Idaho and a sign appears yellow and black in the late June gloom like a yellow-jacket warning flying by in the dark “Winding Road, Next 99 Miles” US 12, Lewis and Clark Highway Lolo Pass to Kooskia (leave off the “a”) the longest continuous paved curve in Idaho I look… 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 →
Visiting Chief Joseph — September 19, 1999
“NEZ PARCE CMTY.” — An excerpt from Side Trips From Cowboy Journal entries, September 19 — Dawn, The Keller-Nespelem Divide, Washington. I have just met Alfredo. He and his crew of five young, Spanish-speaking men showed up as I stuffed my dew-soaked bag into its sack. They turn their music up, bring out chain saws, hard hats, gloves, chaps, goggles.… Read more →
Bizzarity: A 22nd visit to the Nez Perce Cemetery at Nespelem
Of stolen art, murdered mountain lions, Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce, prisons with no walls and the Capitol Christmas Tree. It is still morning in Nespelem, but just, and a little foggy near the hilltops yet. A southbound sun has about won the fight with the fog in spite of the resistance of a high, thin layer of cirrus… Read more →
The Girl Who Needed Glasses
There were four of us who arrived in Russia together; Gerald, Hazel, Eugene and I. We arrived in Moscow as most Americans do, dead tired and unprepared for the seemingly eternal phalanx of forms and uniforms one must pass through to enter the Mother Country. Time is already distorted for someone who has just flown half-way around the world, and… Read more →
Nespelem, Washington — September 21, 2014
“He was not a war chief, you know. Some things they say he did, he didn’t do.” — Marguerite, who introduced me to Thunder-Rolling-in-the-Mountains It’s a long way from Las Vegas, Nevada, to Nespelem, Washington, in the hilly scrub and sage country north of Grand Coulee Dam — a long way and a long time. But I’m reminded of the… Read more →