Baker, California
Baker, California was not a place she wanted to stop. Off to the east the dark sky was still coy. A gauzy gray blotch of gray began budding in the black. She was still on the western slope when she saw the first lightning flash. She eased off the gas and glided...
Sansome Street
Sansome Street worked out fine. A pair of Robert Rauschenberg prints hung in her thirty-ninth-floor office. As intended, the Segno Scriviana desk drew puzzled looks. With deliberate delicacy, the inviting room displayed a view of San Francisco out of towners found...
The Poison Fracking Leaves Behind
The poison fracking leaves behind shows up in what the oil and gas industry politely refers to as “produced water.” This is perhaps more accurately described as poisonous wastewater. It’s the water left behind after it has been injected at high pressure through a...
Rocca Place
Rocca Place was a short street a short distance from the Hotel Bel-Air. The restaurant manager made his obligatory rounds. After coming back inside from the patio, he ordered an assistant server to wheel out a space heater. The assistant server was observant, which...
Modoc County
Modoc County took her by surprise. This was a less cluttered California than she was accustomed to. She planned to spend a week or so in Alturas, exploring the Clear Lake National Wildlife Refuge, the Lava Beds National Monument, the Modoc National Forest and the...
Pastura, New Mexico
Pastura, New Mexico patiently awaits answers to a timeless question. If the veil is torn from a mystery, does the mystery still exist? When tugged, does the veil resist? Is this veil something we should even approach? Or is it best we stay away and allow the mystery...
Massive Hydraulic Fracking
Massive hydraulic fracking with nuclear bombs must have seemed like a good idea at the time. In the mid 1960s, energy company geologists had hit the jackpot. Actually, what they hit was a collection of a blemished natural gas jackpots, each of which came with a...
Bel Air Road
Bel Air Road ignored surrounding unpleasantries. The neighborhood occupied itself with the morning’s more uplifting intrigues and necessities. Nothing untoward appeared to be taking place at the Hotel Bel-Air. None of the guests at breakfast on the patio suggested...
Alturas, California
Alturas, California is where the call came in from her brother. He told her he had been designated as executor for their father’s estate. Settlement would take some time. Her father had left a sealed envelope with his attorney, to be delivered to her as soon as...
Melrose, New Mexico
Melrose, New Mexico drapes itself across the desert like an exhausted starlet. If we are shaped by the surrounding land, our outlooks fashioned and framed by natural surroundings, what are we to make of this? If endless weeks of rain turn a mood sour, what about the...
Trouble At The Teton Dam
Trouble at the Teton Dam, the worst trouble imaginable, the kind unbound by hubris and amplified by assumption, could easily have been avoided. All it would have taken to prevent the dam’s collapse was a better understanding of fractured rocks embedded in canyon...
The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf
The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf in Rancho Cucamonga roared. It could not have been busier. She followed a 1964 Chevrolet El Camino out of the chaotic parking lot onto Haven Avenue and turned away from the 210. In a few minutes she was in Heritage Park. Here it would be...
Miles City, Montana
Miles City, Montana never entered into the conversation. The town never crossed their minds. Perhaps it no longer existed, or, if it did, all that remained were ragtag memories of drunken soldiers asleep in the snow. The two of them had other things to discuss. Over...
Leadore, Idaho
Leadore, Idaho never looked better and never looked back. Her own bout of looking back, sifting through her values was tiring. She now felt as if she had slogged through the toughest stretch of her thinking. Her rage was tamed. She was no longer disgusted with a...
Skull Valley, Arizona
Skull Valley, Arizona sat still and waited for something astonishing. She was still distraught, attempting to weigh the merits of vigilante violence. These bad behaviors America couldn’t seem to wash away, why not unleash them against people who poisoned the land with...
Bagdad, Arizona
Bagdad, Arizona never gave up on the possibility it might someday capture the attention of a visionary who would embrace the town and fulfill its promise. She had the far stool at the counter of a café outside Bagdad, Arizona. The yellow Formica was faded and...
Tyrone, New Mexico
Tyrone, New Mexico crumbled like a well gone dry. But it was still a good town and would probably always be one so long as the frackers stayed away. All she wanted was to get on with things. Any sliver of rational thought would have been welcome. She had been...
Carey, Idaho
Carey, Idaho was where she remembered what her father had told her, that geography sleeps with destiny. They go to bed together and wake up in different rooms, separated by boosters and bulldozers. In the west, where chapters of history are written on crusty deserts,...
