Book Soup On Sunset
Book Soup On Sunset had what they were looking for. He bought a copy of Desert Solitude by Joseph Wood Krutch. She picked up The Land of Little Rain by Mary Austin. After Book Soup On Sunset, they stopped at Musso and Frank for cocktails before driving back to the...
Mesquite Trees
Mesquite Trees take it on the chin when summer monsoons swoop in. The storms display unflinching fondness for tearing down mesquite trees. Summer monsoons thrash heavy top growth, snap branches, bend slender trunks and yank out flimsy roots. The root systems usually...
Kanan Dume Road
Kanan Dume Road curled off the Pacific Coast Highway into the Santa Monica Mountains and ran all the way to the 101. They rumbled up past Mulholland and turned onto a dirt road. It twisted with unlikely confidence into a serpentine canyon. The canyon light faded...
Westbound On Sunset Boulevard
Westbound on Sunset Boulevard she dissected morning traffic with the precision of a pirouetting scalpel. The Porsche Cayenne sailed through Brentwood and Mandeville Canyon, past the Riviera Country Club and down to the Pacific Coast Highway. She knew these...
Casmalia, California
Casmalia, California never recovered from the 1863 drought, just as some people never recover from the absence of good manners. He was a pale man with wiry hair and awkwardly sharp features. His Harvey’s Lake Tahoe satin jacket was draped over the back of his chair....
At The Wayfare Tavern On Sacramento Street
At The Wayfare Tavern on Sacramento Street, the San Francisco Financial District lunch crowd thins out after their corn soup and Skuna Bay Salmon. They are, for the most part, intelligent and accomplished people but the interest they once held for her has long...
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...
