Mammoth tusks. Images of ancient ivory filled my mind as I followed the mud and ice track in my pickup, meandering off the high ridgeline of the Continental Divide yesterday. It was a lovely day for the drive into our county from the Montana outback. I'd only passed one other pickup over the last …
The Pine Contortionist
The surf is pounding hard against solid rock as I write this. February winds drive breakers that hammer the basaltic pillars and haystacks dotting the shoreline and send spray rocketing skyward. Caryl managed to score a super reasonable house on the bluffs perched precariously along the Oregon …
Blue Nights
I can tell it's going to be cold tonight. All day, I've been stocking the woodstove. Even though a propane heater in the living room keeps the chill down for the kids playing, in the kitchen it gets cold if you don't keep feeding the iron beast. Our house is old, built in the 1940s, with a …
Follow the North Star
It was cold and lonely at midnight in October. The range was dead quiet after exhaling its last deep breath of fall. It was a decisive switch to full on senescence—dormancy after the frantic production of high-altitude shortness of a 60-day summer. Except for the stars poking through the …
Winter Cold, Winter Quiet
Dear Friends This week, we're featuring a photo essay from my oldest daughter, Melanie. She is the keeper of the horse on Alderspring, and it's her work to care for the 40 or so that are our faithful partners. For most of them, work starts up again when springtime slips in and green grass cloaks …
Life Rests on Leaves of Grass
Despite the pitch darkness, the boys headed out on the windswept polder, together pulling a narrow wagon bearing 8 empty milk cans. “Polder” was the word they all used when referring to land taken from the sea. All of them lived and worked below sea level in this place; some of the more …