May your hope always outweigh your doubt Till this old world finally punches you out… — Todd Snider, “Like a Force of Nature” It’s midnight on Saturday in my little shack, rain tapping on the roof. Just the dog and me and the music of the late Todd Snider. The barefoot bard of East...
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Range after range of mountains Year after year after year. I am still in love. ― Gary Snyder If you were to design a gateway to heaven, Spirit Pass would do: a deep granite bowl that scoops up a giant chunk of sky above a million-and-a-half acres of spruce-pine forest, silvery trout streams and crystalline lakes by the hundreds. Spirit Pass (not...
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US Route 93 shoots north out of Vegas as if it can’t stand the place, ditching the noise and nonsense of the casinos and the tedium of urban sprawl for the lean beauty of the high desert. Thirty years ago this week I peddled a grossly overloaded bicycle up this highway, intending a marathon trip west across central Nevada. Along the way I planned to...
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Oh the water Oh the water Oh the water Let it run all over me… — Van Morrison, “And It Stoned Me” A shining ribbon of water flowed through my childhood. On family picnics during the early sixties in Camden, NY, I toddled along the grassy banks of Fish Creek, enchanted as only a child can be. While my mother grilled...
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The dying palo verde is poor shade but will have to do. At noon the sky is cloudless, the temperature pushing 100. The tire is a puddle of useless rubber, a dime-sized hole gaping through what’s left of the tread. Pavement lies 15 miles to the north. I stretch out in the gravel wash and stare up at squadrons of bees weaving through the spiky, tangled...
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