Secrets of Smith Basin
“There’s dynamite in Smith Basin,” Nancy said simply. “Yep. I’m sure Jack put it there. We was up there doing some diggings for gems. If I remember right, he’d kept a powder cache up there in a cave.” She smiled while looking past me, rocker creaking next to her too-hot-for-me-to-stand-it…
The Peace of Pigs
A pig will eat you. It isn’t personal—it’s just how pigs are. They are omnivores, and as such, are not opposed to sampling human if the opportunity arises. I would never lay down in the grass in a field of pigs. I’d be quite happy to do it with a…
In Black and White Wedlock
“You married a Border Collie,” my rancher friend, Dan, simply stated as we drove across the Big Sky country of western South Dakota. Badland buttes dotted with junipers on a sea of high plains grass raced by my window. Dan’s fifty square mile “33” Ranch was stuck between two waves on the prairie ocean. The…
The Chemical Roundup
The field was curiously brown in the height of the green season. It was early August, and the stand of dead-looking meadow grass stood in grim contrast to the verdant fields all around it. Despite its tawny complexion, my neighbor Tom swung the gate open, and 96 head of his hungry cows and their calves…
Unleashing a Genie
Soil agroecologist Nicole Masters, daughter Melanie and I were standing on the windswept shoulder of a peak high up on our Hat Creek grazing ranges that a precipitous and narrow jeep trail meandered over. Before and just below us was the sweep of Bear Basin, an unbroken 15 square mile bowl of coursing green grass…