Coyote Crossing

Letters from the desert: Dark

A few hundred miles of desert two-lane at night, no radio nor moon nor competing traffic to interfere with the cascade of thought, and the dark folds itself in around my pallid headlamps. The high-beams have developed a disconcerting tendency to go

Letters from the desert: Jarhead

At the wheel on Saturday afternoon, The Raven flinched. “What the…?” A low black sports car came out of nowhere behind us on Kelbaker Road, passed us doing at least 40 miles per hour more than our sedate 60 or so, and straddled the center line as

Letters from the desert: Good news about the devastating Hackberry Fire

I took it upon myself to answer the implied question I posed here, about the existence — or lack thereof — of surviving piñon pines in the Mid-Hills.

I drove up into the burn zone Tuesday for my first thorough look at the place. I’d been up there

Dark Mojave Skies party, October 25

I’m going to be here, and I hope you will … (continues)

Comment on the Draft Alternatives Working Paper for the Southern Nevada Supplemental Airport EIS

In the evening of October 1, two days before the deadline for public comment on the Draft Alternatives Working Paper for the Southern Nevada Supplemental Airport Environmental Impact Statement, I left the little house I am renting in the Ivanpah

Beauty

It is raining, a little. The wind off the little storm front brings the temperature down to a positively comfortable level. It’s almost cool. Not even 80°, and the scent of wet juniper and rock hangs in the air.

How long has it been since I’d

Letters from the desert: This life

It all begins to fall away, these days, the longing and the difficulty, the nostalgias for old pain. I drive these desolate roads alone, content, the sky turning unimaginable shades fading to black. My headlights illuminate only a short stretch