Archives
Yesterday I said my mom loved god, my dad loved the woods, and my school told me to love America. Sorry mom…couldn’t go the god route, and certainly nothing in my history as an American has convinced me that this country deserves unqualified love. While I treasure the geography of my land, I find it much harder to feel love for a number of my fellow Americans: the racists, the greedy, the… Read More
Trees are the best plants of all. In their variety, their beauty, their practical and life-saving contributions to every other thing on the planet. I grew up spending long summer days roaming around in the woods, often with a book. I am a Dendrophile too (a person who loves trees, forests). Dead trees: battered trunks, broken branches, fallen logs, scattered limbs…in some ways more fascinating in their stark jagged shapes…almost threatening…prickly sticks… Read More
el rio grande The Rio grande flows from the continental divide like a golden thread, taking the loneliness out of the Colorado mountains. The eyes of dead apache warriors express their sorrow with silent renegade war cries, as the Rio grande meanders through New Mexico.Tooh-ba-aadi is an ancient Navajo word for a south flowing river. It flows through Tejas like a carancahua red cloth, it cuts through chihuahuas, coahuila, Nuevo Leon and… Read More
More time on bosque walks. Many delicious quotes and poems. Many photos. Many miles. Another morning in the woods tomorrow. This pathway through the pandemic. “With the first step, the number of shapes the walk might take is infinite, but then the walk begins to define itself as it goes along, though freedom remains total with each step: any tempting side road can be turned into an impulse, or any wild patch of woods… Read More
“That’s the best thing about walking, the journey itself. It doesn’t matter much whether you get where you’re going or not. You’ll get there anyway. Every good hike brings you eventually back home.” (Edward Abbey) “All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.” (Friedrich Nietzsche) “I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want… Read More
Coronavirus weeks are much like any other week…well except for the fear … and figuring out a reason to shower…and wondering if Delta will return all that tickets-to-Africa money…and going to the store looking like the Lone Ranger…and pondering the how a world that can be so IT and AI smart, just argues and pontificates while the bodies pile up from a new disease, insisting that the ‘only thing we have to… Read More
What better way to end the holidays than with those wild California kids. They made the Thanksgiving holiday so much fun, so full of pleasure and joy. Today it’s a rainy (seventeen snowflakes around noon) wintery day; Friday actual snow is projected but this is Albuquerque so what are the odds! Enjoy….
Our world is taking on a bright golden hue…our natural world, not the human or political one unfortunately. Fall is beautiful in temperate zones and we snap and post endless photos of the gold and the red and the glory of it all, and repeat the process year after year. Here is my annual contribution to the too-muchness of autumn photography. It was quite a week, starting with last Sunday’s marathon,… Read More
I did it…No, not the 26 mile long real marathon…but close. The 10K walk. Close enough. I’m even a little bit proud of the results. Out of 95 10K walkers I was 62…and only two people were older than me and they both were faster…two old guys…I may have to have them disappeared before next year. Come to think of it, at our age we really don’t need much assistance to ‘disappear.’… Read More