Pittsburg Landing
The canyon wren spirals over the backeddy, the hiss of my butane stove, and across the state-line…
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 […]
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, […]
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. […]
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 […]