Coyote Crossing

Cathedral Range, Thanksgiving 2007

Along the Tioga Road, Yosemite National Park

Thanksgiving was always his day. Almost two decades of a house full of people each year, him begging for snacks at the center of it. The first time the holiday rolled around after he died we couldn’t

Desire Lines

Longing defines the storied heart. Contentment is pleasant enough, but it kills story. “And they lived happily ever after.” Fukuyama arrived at this realization, though his dystopia — unlike those of Orwell or Huxley — was unintended. But he knew

Dodging the random beautiful

I have been thinking about love these days.

This is of course nothing new.

Relationships end and they begin, relationships maintain themselves and they wither. These days I am both buoyed by love and burdened by it. The last vestiges of my

Watching the trains go by

A quick note from out in front of the Nipton Trading Post. Sitting here with The Raven seeing the storms roll across the valley, a promise of rain so far unkept.

It rained here yesterday but good. The road washed out a little up toward Mountain

Nipton

[At around seven o’clock I’ll be reading the bit below as an introduction to my writer’s group. Thought I’d share it with you here as well.]

The little house I moved into last year was 400 feet from the Southern Pacific’s main line between Las

End of November

The valley here runs south to north. At sunset the shadow of the Clark and Ivanpah mountains creeps across the valley floor, a second hand marking the time in yards. From where I sit, a mile up the washed-out road to the Lucy Grays, I watch the

Vox Clamantis in Deserto

If the next President makes good on his promise to expand the use of nuclear power plants, the desert will pay.

The desert always pays.

Even if it’s the “safe nuclear power” that those of us in the extreme environmentalist community care about.

Full Moon and Crescent Peak

… (continues)

Desert Magic

I was pleased with the way the Phantom Seed reading went in Riverside in Saturday. The new issue of Phantom Seed looks great, and there’s a serious pile of good writing there, as well as my pieces “Kessler Peak” and “Epilobium.”

The event drew a

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

Letters from the desert: Tortious Conduct

Thunderstorms rolled in this morning, one or more from each of the four directions, and the smell of wet creosote was thick on the wind.

I decided to go get my mail. This involves about a forty=mile round trip. My mail tends to pile up in the box

Regarding The Raven

I walked out into the desert today after an afternoon of thunderstorms. The sun set, as it will, and I sat in the darkening on the gravel berm of the unmaintained road I’d walked along for a half hour or so.

The night desert sky, pale northward

Letters from the desert: The Lucy Grays

In the last few days the weather has shifted, the days’ highs under 100 degrees consistently for the first time since early July. The shift was sudden. On Saturday The Raven and I braved temperatures of 115 degrees along the Colorado; by Sunday

Letters from the desert: Light and Sound

This valley I live in is quiet.

It’s not silent. Sometimes, in fact, there is a hell of a lot of noise here. Eighteen-wheelers roar down the road in front of my house fairly often, as do RVs ridiculously towing boats through the desert toward the

Letters from the desert: Seeing stars

Another sunset, another sky over the Clark and Ivanpah ranges turned by imperceptible increment from deep blue to blood red, the slow tilting of earth and air erasing shade after subtle shade from sky. Soon all that is left is sanguinary. Soon that

Wee Thump at DesertBlog

Larry Hogue was kind enough to invite me to post at DesertBlog, and I’ve put a post there describing the small wilderness area a few miles from my place in … (continues)

Letters from the desert: Full Disclosure

Ed Abbey had a wife and kid in the trailer with him in Arches while he wrote some of Desert Solitaire. Despite the opening of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, the old fighting tomcat did not actually leap in through Annie Dillard’s window and knead her

Letters from the desert: Hawkmoths

In September I sat near here for three days watching a cloud of butterflies move through the desert. There were desert swallowtails, millions of them in yellow and black pursuing anything red or orange through the Joshua trees, including the

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

Letters from the desert: My home for the summer

The house I’m living in for the summer is sufficient to my needs, for the most part. It keeps desert dust out of my eyes when I sleep. It provides a bit of privacy from my neighbors and holds up a few strategically positioned water pipes.

Those