Posted by admin on April 12, 2013 in
Musings Betty and I are going north to Moscow, Idaho, to screen our documentary film BRAVO! and as always, the prospect of traveling to a new location leaves me with—besides a sense of elation—a sense of trepidation…sort of, anyway. Not that I am on edge like I would be if I had to travel to Syria [...]
Tags: Big Hatchet, Bravo!, Bureau of Land Management, Chihuahuan Desert, Columbus, El Norte, Hermanas, Mexico, Moscow, New Mexico, Pancho Villa, pistols, quail, ravens, Stetson hat, Syria, Tres Hermanas, Undocumented, Vietnam
Posted by admin on April 6, 2012 in
Dust Storms,
Musings The wind blows in Idaho this time of year. Totes the angry vestiges of another aging winter. Grass leans, limbs break, birds balance in the tops of aspen branches that tilt away from the gales that holler off the east Oregon desert. Time moves east to west around here, the wind sweeps west to east [...]
Tags: Alamogordo, Apache, Arizona, Avignon, Black Range, Cloudcroft, Gila, hurricanes, Idaho, New Mexico, Palais de Papes, San Andres Mountains, Sonoran Desert, Spring, storms, typhoons, Western Bar, Western Cafe, white sands, wind
Posted by admin on February 10, 2012 in
Elko,
Musings,
Travel The halfway point of winter in the northern hemisphere has arrived here in Idaho with dry and warm weather. Trapped in some kind of drought, I suppose I should be saying stuff like, “We need snow in the mountains, we need rain on the flats,” or maybe I should be circling around dancing with my [...]
Tags: Arizona, Elko, Henry Real Bird, horses, Nevada, New Mexico, Paul Zarzyski, Ruby Mountains, snow, tamales, The National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, Wallace McRae, Wild Horse Crossing
Posted by admin on January 20, 2012 in
Travel Four days before Christmas last Betty and I ventured to Socorro, San Antonio and the Bosque del Apache on the Rio Grande River in central New Mexico. We went in search of photography and nature and hot chili. Dodging uncharacteristic assaults of big blizzards, we spent a day and a half seeking and photographing the [...]
Tags: bald eagle, blizzard, Bosque del Apache, Conrad Hilton, coyote, elk, green chili cheesburger, javelina, mule deeer, nature, New Mexico, Owl Cafe, photography, pintail ducks, raptor, road runner, San Antonio, sandhill crane, snow geese, Socorro
Posted by admin on October 21, 2011 in
Musings I am a desert rat and have since childhood mouthed dialogue about the beauty of the mountains vis à vis the desert. The mountains generally have no sand and wind that drives the sand and pits the paint job on your new Mercedes Benz, no short-legged plants, no spiny cacti, but trooping phalanxes of spruce [...]
Tags: Arizona, aspen, Autumn, bitterbrush, Boulder-White Cloud Mountains, cacti, cattle ranches, color, Galena Summit, ice, Idaho, Leaf peepers, maple, mesquite, New Mexico, palo verde, pronghorn, rain, Sacramento Mountains, sage, Sawtooth Mountains, sheep ranches, snow, Sonoran Desert, Stanley, Stephen King, Sun Valley, The New Yorker Magazine, winter, winterfat, Wood River Valley
Posted by admin on September 30, 2011 in
Musings Tuesday I went out back into the garden and picked a mess of green beans. Of all the things I harvest back there, the beans are my least favorite, not because I dislike their flavor but because they grow at just the right height for me to have to bend my knees and lean in [...]
Tags: agriculture, Arizona, beets, broccoli, Casa Grande, corn, cotton, farming, fields, green beans, irrigation, Lordsburg, mules, New Mexico, Pyramid Mountains, tomatoes, tractors, welfare
Posted by admin on September 2, 2011 in
Musings Betty and I had dinner last night with friends and we talked travel and places to visit, and the red rock country of the four corners area of the American southwest came into the foreground of our discussions and stuck in my mind all night and into this morning. It was 1963 and I had [...]
Tags: butchers, Charlie Yazzie, Chee Begay, Fort Defiance, Ganado, hoogan, Mishongnovi, mutton, Navajo, New Mexico, Old Oraibi, sheep, Shongopovi, St. Michaels, Window Rock
Posted by admin on August 26, 2011 in
Books I cleaned my office this last weekend and as I straightened the bookshelves, J Edward Chamberlain’s, Horse (Blue Ridge, New York, NY), fell on the floor. Horse is a narrative that laymen can read about how mankind and the horse have developed a somewhat unique, symbiotic relationship. As I hefted the book, an image of [...]
Tags: Arizona, betting, Casa Grande, Cloudcroft, cowboys, gambling, horse races, horses, hostler, jockeys, Los Conquistadores, New Mexico, pin ball machines, Prescott, quarter horses, Ruidoso, Sierra Blanca, Vietnam
Posted by admin on June 3, 2011 in
Musings Last week I was yarning with a couple of buddies about water witches. I snatched images out of my memory from way back in my life, thirty years almost and longer. We were standing in a RV park in Lakeview , Oregon and I have no idea why I got started on the subject but [...]
Tags: Douglas fir, geology, limestone, New Mexico, pine, real estate, water wells, water witches, well drillers, willow
Posted by admin on March 25, 2011 in
Musings Last Sunday, when the equinox bumped into Boise, Idaho, the wind scattered last fall’s leaves around and around the patio. Sullen clouds in both the east and west grayed the day as the full moon reveled in its gravitational attachment to earth, or so I imagined. Betty and I ventured out and tried to capture [...]
Tags: AK-47, April, Autumn, bamboo viper, Boise, California, Canis Major, Dante, Douglas fir, ferns, fillaree, Full Moon, Idaho, Indian wheat, leech, Leo, lupine, Lynx, M-16, manna, Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, mountain blue bird, napalm, New Mexico, pink-eye weed, poppies, ravens, robins, Sacramento Mountains, six-weeks fescue, snow, Sonoran Desert, Spring, starlings, Supermoon, Vernal Equinox, Vietnam
