A blinding blue sky arcs the vault above me. I am tethered to the earth by my imagination of gravity and a mass of billion year-old anorthosite forming the Sawtooth mountains. Glaciers have tried to erase these mountains and left them old and rounded like me. A cool high [...]
A couple of my grandsons are at the age where the word “nuts” makes them giggle. I show them a road-killed squirrel as a subtle message to look when they cross the street. “Are those his ‘nuts’?” they laugh. The problem with squirrels is the other kind of nuts. [...]
I grab the cute raccoon pup by the scruff of the neck and think I’m about to drop him into a pillow case. The pup has a different idea. He turns inside his skin and begins to rip my arm to shreds while shrieking with ear-splitting screams. At the [...]
As an earthwalker, I am simply passing through the world. I am fascinated by each step. Watching and observing, the world and nature. Chaos and quiet, light and dark. To me the rhythm of the world is a meditation in itself. Last night I listened to an opera: two [...]
When you are twenty, you go into the desert to find yourself. When you are seventy, you go to see what’s coming. South of Island in the Sky, north of the Needles and west of the Maze. The canyon lands of the west are desert. I spend the morning [...]
It’s called the basement of time. I am eight miles and five-thousand feet down the South Kaibab trail at mid-day. The temperature hovers close to 105 °F. My knees ache, and my body is tired. There is a rest house on the trail at this point, but it’s at [...]
I am on a journey through the Southwest. Looking for a little solitude in the desert. The solitude is offset by my conversations with strangers. Where are you from? Isn’t the earth amazing? Which eventually leads to… How do you see the environment? Today, I met Ranger Pete. I [...]
Passing through a door in the rock, Walking on ancient seas, Down through the basement of time, Following a desert wren. The canyons are painted by gods, Small hand prints here or there. Now I am the sun, the wind, the earth, A single grace note, in a world without [...]
I am in Donley County, Texas. The panhandle. As sparse as the spelling of its name. Flat, dry to the edge of the earth, and bucking a headwind. But something’s going on here. My eye catches a white wind turbine, then another and another. As I look, dozens fade [...]
I am heading from Portland to Coos Bay, Oregon. Having some extra time, I drive the back roads through what seem like endless verdant forests. The road winds through valleys next to streams, and the forests climb the hills and mountains to the ridgelines. It’s a good day. The [...]
