Out On The Otay Mesa
Out on the Otay Mesa, the oldest gray wolves turned blue in the moonlight. You could watch them glow but you couldn’t hear them. No matter how hard you listened and no matter how soft the wind, there wasn’t a sound.
They Broke Down In Barstow
They broke down in Barstow, just like the oracle in Las Vegas said. The dust storm made it rough. Right away they were engulfed in brown clouds that spread like nasty rumors.
High Tide In Avila Beach
High Tide in Avila Beach, California hit before sunrise. The most brutal waves came skidding in crossways. They knocked out a few pilings along the pier and sent the sea lions out to deeper water. After high tide, bacon aromas from town rippled through the fog down...
Trouble In Thatcher, Colorado
Trouble in Thatcher, Colorado rarely appeared. When it did, wind carved snowdrifts into what the older bighorn sheep knew to be warning signs. The elders harbored grave misgivings.
Late At Night In Las Vegas
Late at night in Las Vegas, so late the first sun was already tinting the Spring Mountains, they left Binion’s by the side door. The sidewalks along Casino Center Boulevard were empty. Every peril dodged and every temptation tamed, they walked out with a bundle.
The Woman In The Delhi Colorado Sweatshirt
The woman in the Delhi, Colorado sweatshirt was still on hold with the insurance company after an hour and a half. Her phone was just about out of juice and she’d left the power cord at her sister’s, so she mixed up another Bloody Mary.
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.
