Progresso, New Mexico
Progresso, New Mexico shuddered. Cecile imagined the path their conversation would follow when she called Miguel Gutierrez on a phone only a handful of people could reach. Their conversation would drip the false notes of excessive cordiality only criminals can...
Ruby, Washington
Ruby, Washington kept waiting for a rainbow. Cecile kept herself focused on how Miguel Gutierrez figured out she had raided the cartel’s bank accounts. Something stopped him from taking her bait. He should have concluded his brother Balbino had stolen from him, at...
Metaline Falls, Washington
Metaline Falls, Washington sank deeper into the folds of the Colville National Forest. When they woke up the morning after their neighbor’s birthday party, Cecile was gone. She was always first to get coffee going. That was what set the gentle rhythm in the darkness...
Platora, Nevada
Platora, Nevada waved goodbye like a maiden aunt draped in faded calico. Caroline went into the kitchen to pour another cup of coffee and lit the last of her Marlboros. Dorothy chimed in. “These are clearly injustices. If these injustices ever make their way to...
Trout Fishing On The Pit River
Trout fishing on the Pit River might come back someday. The guide didn’t sound hopeful when he told her this. Conviction seemed drained from his voice. He told her the water was changing and not just because it was clogged with sediment. Every aspect of the river...
Nara Visa, New Mexico
Nara Visa, New Mexico seethed, as did Caroline. “So we leave the oilfields crippled. They’re splintered, all smashed up. The pipes are twisted and torn. Pumps are shot through. The blades in their impellers are bent and their motors are fried. “And we’re hundreds...
When Teddy Roosevelt Went Camping In Yosemite
When Teddy Roosevelt went camping in Yosemite, back in 1903, the President took no chances on getting cold. It was the middle of May. The first night in Mariposa Grove he bedded down with just shy of forty woolen blankets. The second night, those blankets paid off...
Angel Fire, New Mexico
Angel Fire, New Mexico is rarely visited by angels anymore. Caroline points to the framed picture of Teddy Roosevelt in the dining room of the little house in the Santa Monica Mountains. “Here’s what he said. He was in Memphis to give a speech. I think it was 1907. ...
Golden Yarrow
Golden Yarrow didn’t usually make it much past the Fourth of July. Her neighbor on Kanan Dume Road explained its first spurt of growth. The plant would sprout delicate white threads which cloaked all the little leaves. Then, after the June Gloom, the flowers would...
Riddle, Idaho
Riddle, Idaho remembers what it was like to call somebody up and get an answer. Somewhere in the Santa Monica Mountains, Caroline curls along Mulholland. She catalogs a life of close calls. All but one make her smile. Coming up on a curve, she bends into it like a...
Her Neighbor On Kanan Dume Road
Her neighbor on Kanan Dume Road ambled over one morning and invited them to his birthday party. He was about to turn seventy-seven. He liked Caroline. She reminded him of his granddaughter, although when he considered the reasons why, nothing came to mind. He...
Quinn River Crossing, Nevada
Quinn River Crossing, Nevada shook off the slights. Rather than listen to the wind and the thrash of boughs, the thin rustle of leaves and punches landed by gusts, an unknown woman listened to the sky itself. What she heard were echoes. She fancied they were answers...
Latigo Canyon Road
Latigo Canyon Road clings to cliffs with the assurance of an elderly undertaker. They took the hairpin curves slowly, five of them in a recently acquired Mercedes GLS, on their way home from a hike to Castro Crest. They talked about what masks to wear and settled on...
Naples, Idaho
Naples, Idaho couldn’t care less if those fancy tourists drive straight through. Let them go. Most of them are snooty. And the people in Naples Idaho, like most Americans, probably don’t spend much time considering all the chemicals frackers shoot deep into the...
Castro Crest, California
Castro Crest, California was lost for another morning, tamped deep into the marine layer. They couldn’t see it from Latigo Canyon Road. An impromptu hike got them out of the little house on Kanan Dume Road. “And I don’t plan to get caught,” Caroline muttered to no...
Baker, Montana
Baker, Montana wonders what happened to all the people the railroad brought in. It’s been more than a century now. All those hopeful, hardworking immigrants swindled by railroad lies. It was too late when they found the land didn’t live up to its billing. So they...
Cornell, California
Cornell, California may have been close at hand, just up the road, but perhaps the mind of the town was elsewhere. That’s how it went in the Santa Monica Mountains. Nothing quite as it seemed, impressions splintered and sent off to float in the breeze. At the dining...
Animas, New Mexico
Animas, New Mexico welcomes the return of its ghosts, revered ancestors who winter in Palm Springs. These ghosts have seen too much. They have shivered in the presence of hydraulic fracking. They have trembled way down there below the earth’s sacred surface, a...
