This first ran Sept. 22, 2010 — the same time of year as now. It’s not clear that the auction is still going on, and maybe it’s been replaced by a 5K race, and maybe by a bunch of other auctions in different places. The clinic is building a new home and has a lot […]
Miscellaneous
Mom spreads maps over the dining room table. They’re oldish, not ancient, but the home I see in them is not the home I know. They are all of Colorado—mostly cities at the nexus of Rocky Mountains and High Plains, 40, 50, 60 years ago. The outpost of Ward, a funky old mining town up […]
I had a conversation with an owl the other night. It was a barred owl, a pretty common species in the woods around our cabin in central Virginia. The bird got going early—well before dusk—and I happened to be outside with my native wooden flute (purchased from this lovely flutemaker in Canada), so I found […]
Returning to this creek was my stepdad’s idea. At 78, he wanted to try it again, but do it right this time. Twenty-some years ago, when we first hiked this mostly untrailed alpine canyon in Colorado, we planned it as a day trip with a car at either end for a shuttle. My mom was […]
On July 30th, 2014, the sky turned black in the middle of the day and a thunderstorm rained tar on our car. That was the final straw of the Yellowknife wildfire season for me; I brought my then-4-year-old son down to Calgary to attend a day camp until the air cleared up North. Back then, […]
On the night of January 8, 1970, I was an A-37 attack jet pilot returning to my home base of Bien Hoa after a mission over the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. It was 1:30am as I reduced the power to separate from my leader and then zoomed the aircraft to 20,000 feet so I could […]
I’m on a backpacking trip this week, which makes it as good a time as any to revisit one of my favorite posts (or, more accurately, to make you revisit it). Although Colorado, our home since early 2022, doesn’t have quite the same abundance and diversity of rentable Forest Service fire towers as did the […]
The other day my dad, who is 93 and losing his mind in dribs and drabs, asked me over the phone if we could FaceTime with his parents. I didn’t lie. I said, well, the technology is advancing quickly but it’s not quite advanced enough to reach them where they are. (True!) Maybe someday? I […]
