It was toward the end of our latest summer of record heat and weirding weather that I finally got to go up into California’s White Mountains to see the ancient bristlecone pines. The mountains aren’t far from the Sierra Nevada with its ample lakes and waterfalls, but they are a world apart, baking in the bigger range’s rain shadow, a province of dry...
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I will confess that I have not read the federal indictment, released last week, that accuses former President Trump of the improper possession and hiding of classified documents. But like many other people, I suspect, I did see the widely disseminated photos of heaps of banker’s boxes piled in various rooms in the Mar-a-Lago. The one that hit closest to...
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spring The evening grosbeaks have been peeping and cheeping pretty much every morning in April, snacking on elm buds and drinking from the creek that’s been running alongside the tracks since the deep freeze of winter left us. The grosbeaks aren’t unusual, as they show up every spring, but the creek is. Old Town Spring often leaks and trickles a bit...
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The first day of spring—March 20, in this year—wasn’t very springlike here in Flagstaff, with rain and snow showers coming on a gusty day of clouds and near-freezing temperatures. More of the same, in other words. It’s been a harsh winter in northern Arizona. As storm after storm has pummeled the high country, the snow days have piled up as high as the...
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By the time I got to The Drive, I’d gotten damn used to small-d driving: all those errands through suburban mall-land, returning home late through the mercury-vapor streets after nights out with friends in some Chicago neighborhood or other, the longer expeditions that took varied combinations of friends, often overnight, to visit someone at a college in...
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