Stepping to each direction, pausing with both hands on the catwalk railing, softening my eyes, I pour all of me into one leg, then the other. My day on duty at the fire lookout begins with looking in the four directions before calling the dispatcher, “Flagstaff, Turkey Butte.” “Turkey Butte.” “I’m in service, winds NW at six, precip .35 inches.” He...
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Music curled through the saloon in Crown King like a breeze of good will, lyrics a swirl of lively truth-telling, a three-chord aching antidote to firefighter woes and worries. Who scored hazard pay, who missed a fire on a day off, who was sleeping with who—the human shapes of fearlessness and foibles—stirred into the graceful guitar, sturdy drumming and...
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Early in State Fair, the only musical Rogers and Hammerstein wrote directly for the movies, a young woman leans out her bedroom window and sings, “I’m as restless as a willow in a windstorm/ I’m as jumpy as a puppet on a string. I’d say that I have spring fever/ But I know it isn’t spring…” which is about what I feel like on this April day, with a piece of...
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Some of you looking at a crack in a rock think, “Treasure?” Others of you cringe, thinking, “Snakes.” Or perhaps you consider weight, balance, rock integrity and think, “Handhold.” Rocks beg me to climb them, to use friction and muscle to ascend. Where did I learn that? It is a Sunday afternoon in the early ‘60s in Phoenix and cars go up and down Central...
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Small notes of music floated from a fountain of oak grove that had sprouted far enough off the dirt road to catch my eye but not draw my footsteps. The reedy small note of a harmonica sawed through an unfamiliar tune. From where I leaned against the hood of my truck, I couldn’t see the human source of the sounds. I looked for movement like I might look for...
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