The Man In The Pismo Beach Condo
The man in the Pismo Beach condo squinted through the rain down to the Ventana Grill. That’s where she wanted to go and they had a fine evening. She brought back all the missing light and then some. Then he walked away from the window, made a grilled cheese sandwich...
President Chester Arthur
President Chester Arthur wasn’t aware of the admirable precision of their language. Like most Americans, he figured the Hopi got along with a limited collection of ancient grunts. On a crisp day, he signed the executive order shortly before Christmas in 1882. The ink...
Dancing By The Freeway
Dancing by the freeway he floated above the onramp. He fluttered in the first thin layer of fog that settled in after dark, but all that was just a memory now. They had him cuffed in a windowless room. Air conditioning thundered and voices murmured. Maybe he...
Rockport, Washington
Rockport, Washington awoke to the kind of snow they knew would be with them for months. They agreed to scatter. It was a graceful decision made without prickly discussion or drama. None knew how it was arrived at or even how their discussion began. They forgot it...
The North Cascades National Park
The North Cascades National Park shivered. There was a side of him she didn’t know. His disappearance came with cruel swiftness and a black grief unnerved her. It plunged a few splinters into her faith and they weren’t as easy to pluck out as she expected. In the...
Thomas McKennan
Thomas McKennan had a short run. For just 11 days during the summer of 1850, he served as our Secretary of the Interior in the Millard Fillmore administration. He didn’t want the job, bowed to pressure, immediately regretted his decision and got out when the going was...
The End Of The Line
The end of the line arrived with a silvery jolt. For a few days the grim faces of five oilmen rolled across the hungry currents of the news cycle. The networks grabbed footage from a stream which originated in the dining room of an elegant hacienda in northern Mexico....
What Teddy Roosevelt Wrote In 1916
What Teddy Roosevelt wrote in 1916 reminds us of the essence of conservation. In his book A Book Lover's Holiday in the Open, he made clear his position on balancing present and future appetites. “If in a given community unchecked popular rule means unlimited waste...
The Big Lie
The big lie was something they all knew about. How it was put together and why. The way the big lie started off followed a reliable formula, little lies bundled up together, which to the casual observer were unconnected. On reflection, they conjured up strands of a...
Oilman #5
Oilman #5 liked to read about where you could live like a king in a foreign country. He loved America and loved energy independence. But there was also the shame and embarrassment he felt for the anti-fracking turn his life had been forced to take. He felt he could...
Oilman #4
Oilman #4 figured there wasn’t much difference between a sheep in wolf’s clothing and a wolf in sheep’s clothing. So he tried to land a job as a lobbyist. At first, he knocked on the doors of the better funded environmental organizations. He positioned himself as...
Oilman #3
Oilman #3 told his wife the two of them would be running a Korean BBQ franchise. She wasn’t thrilled with the plan. Asian food wasn’t to her liking and neither was the shabby franchisor who flew in with a three-ring binder and told them what to do.
Oilman #2
Oilman #2 weighed his career options with considerable care and decided to follow the call to become a man of the cloth. The transition felt natural. After more than one investor presentation, he had been complemented on his persuasive skills. Why not establish a...
Oilman #1
Oilman #1 lost all his money paying lawyers. Then he took a job selling Cadillacs, quickly decided he knew more about the car business than the men he worked for and quit. He put together a line of white label skin moisturizing products and put them up on Amazon,...
Columbus Delano
Columbus Delano covered a lot of ground. Banker, lawyer, congressman from Ohio, his ancestors came over on the Mayflower. After the Civil War, Manifest Destiny still roaring after thirty years, he was appointed Secretary of the Interior. In 1871, when the federal...
The Crack In The Sky
The crack in the sky was ragged on top, smooth on the bottom, and full of the same kind of bronze you could see in Golden Yarrow. She knew it wouldn’t last long and as the sun rose up into the clouds the crack would fade into the same gray that filled the rest of the...
Fishtail, Montana
Fishtail, Montana had a knack for tackling thorny issues. This could have drawn global admiration had anyone bothered to pay attention. The problem plaguing Caroline and her cohorts was the fate of the five oilmen. Number six, he was off the board now, hauled away by...
Encampment, Wyoming
Encampment, Wyoming wondered how myths of the American West held up so well when everything else seemed to keep breaking down. So much held sacred for so long, a bunch torn to shreds, tossed into the wind by careless people. Just because a story was a myth didn’t...
