Storm

The weather is nothing less than hideous. It is the hottest I have seen here; I have experienced daytime temps of 100 once or twice in the past 30 years but it is not cooling off at night, even in our high desert village perch at 6500 feet. It is simultaneously humid and dusty, veiled …

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No Expectations?

Not much courage, anyway. From the excellent long essay “Poetry Slam: Or, The decline of American verse”, by Mark Edmundson, in Harper’s for July 2013: “I  found myself once talking with a fiction writer, a woman of considerable achievement and reputation, about the MFA program in which she taught. I put forward the idea that …

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Classic

Lucky John Wilson has been presented with a classic TR3; a late one with the better  TR4 engine at that, but with the “wasp- waisted” body that always reminds me of a miniature Jag  XK120. Don’t you think so? His expedition to bring it from Ohio to NM was more arduous than planned. He had …

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Quite the Imitator

Steve’s post from a couple of days ago on Wildlife in Your Yard reminded me of an encounter we had with a gopher snake three summers ago (please correct me if I misidentified the species). Connie and I had returned from fly fishing on the South Platte just after dark one evening when we surprised this …

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Blast from the Past

 I wish I had held on to more of that hair. Taken near Lizard Head Pass, Dolores County, Colorado, summer 1976.

Quote

A writer cannot really grasp what he has written. It is not like a building or a sculpture; it cannot be seen whole. It is only a kind of smoke seized and printed on a page. – James Salter, Burning the Days

Query

I need a new header quote; the current one is one of the best ever but I like to rotate them. I have seen many good quotes but none universal or broad enough; they would qualify for a post but not as a header. With a readership like ours surely somebody can come up with …

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Another Litter

These are longhaired working mini- dachshunds, descended from Teddy Moritz’s dogs, like the late Diamond Lil but with a different coat; these will resemble short legged tazis. Watch this space. Babies Relatives, hunting with Teddy:

Two Falconers

Tim Gallagher, whose new book Imperial Dreams I have reviewed below, is visiting England and just sent this fine portrait of two generations of falconers. John Loft, on the right, is the living master of merlins,; he literally wrote the book on them, A Merlin for Me, a delightful but almost daunting combination of experience, …

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Summer Sound

La cigale ayant chanté Tout l’été … (La Fontaine) Wyoming cicadas photographed in Laramie by Carlos Martinez del Rio.