I mixed an ounce and a half of Tempo wettable powder with a gallon of hose water in a hand can. The brass handle on the top of the can doubled as a pump. With it, the pump, I loaded a couple of psi into the stainless container, began to spray the eaves of my […]

A flash of white drew my attention. I walked over to pick up the litter and restore balance to the wilderness but am tested when the piece of trash turns out to be a bit of shit-covered toilet paper. Jerks, I think. I popped the straps off my shoulders and removed my backpack. Within the […]

These heavy clouds with moisture pent, Did snag on jagged peaks and rent. But once their snowy burden spent, The darkness cleared, magnificent. I looked west, warm in a down jacket, and raised my camera. The beauty of these hills is something spiritual, and nothing sets off that splendor more than morning sun and a fresh […]

A mosquito man’s responsibility lay within the boundaries of his assigned zone, and the job was simple—to kill the larvae in your zone before they hatched into biting adults. The selective insecticide used in the treatment of water-borne mosquito larvae left most other life in the source, the beetles, the tadpoles, the mayfly nymphs, unscathed. […]

I threw a leg over the torn saddle, started the motor, and backed the Polaris four-wheeler down the ramp that led from my truck’s tailgate. I let the rig idle while I filled my shoulder bag with material from a five-gallon bucket, and checked the levels in the seeder hopper. Silica sand coated with mineral […]

Lyle sipped his coffee and stared out into the street that ran behind his two bedroom, one bath ranch style home. As he sipped, he left the cup on his lower lip and his moist breath mixed with the hot liquid fogging his glasses then clearing, fogging his glasses, then clearing. The road and all […]

The mouth of the canyon yawned wide into a sleepy Owens Valley. My soles crunched and chewed at tiny tan-gray pebbles as I moved, but it was the gate’s granite incisors rising, sharp and clean that held my gaze. These fangs looked ominous and predatory as the day’s new light amplified the jagged topography. I […]

It is a false equivalency to deduce a giddy mountaintop based on how one feels on the summit. A mountain can’t be giddy. I am giddy. I am on the summit. The summit is, therefore, giddy. No, no, no. That’s silly, the summit was the summit, and I simply stood there. But there was something […]

You feel it on the approach, The unknown, unknowable, The void. A mix of postcard beauty and insecure footing. A fear of where you’re headed, Ultimately. It’s quite but for The wind, Distant rockfall, And the sound of your own deep breaths.

It’s June and there are Christmas lights still hanging on the wooden fence that separates the parking lot from the patio, keeping the beer-swilling riff-raff legal in their choice to drink outside, “No alcohol beyond this point”. They’re out now, the lights, not the riff-raff. And the bulbs are not the typical green and red, […]