Category Archives: Uncategorized

Heading south on the two-lane between Needles, California and Quartzite, Arizona, pulling my little camper trailer and listening to a fading radio station, I see a figure. Someone walking along the edge of the road. Not hitchhiking, carrying nothing, wearing … Continue reading →

I suppose you could apply this melancholy then-and-now reaction almost anywhere ‘wild’ these days, but the Colorado River below the Grand Canyon is such a blatant example that, for me, it becomes inescapable. I simply can’t be there without confronting … Continue reading →

Not easy to find a multi-day paddling destination near Montana in mid-winter. I knew I’d have to be creative in the winter months, so I thought about places I’d long wanted to explore by boat, and places where I might … Continue reading →

When I started this river-trip-a-month theme last May, I assumed that many of my sojourns would be solo ones. Marypat is still working, many of my friends have obligations that tie them down. I just didn’t think I’d be lucky … Continue reading →

Ah, the reluctant blogger returns. It has been a while, and things have been happening, so that partly explains my absence. Last May I gave notice that I wouldn’t be returning to teach at Montana State University. It felt like … Continue reading →

Over the winter months we rise in the dim dawn and sit together in the living room. No lights, across from each other, coffee in hand. Often we don’t talk. We each greet the day in our fashion, let the … Continue reading →

Five years now this tradition of Memorial Day paddling has gone on. Every year, we pick three rivers, many of them only floatable for a brief interlude each summer, and a group of us go paddle them, camping between. Fifteen … Continue reading →

Less than a block from my front door I run into a neighbor, clumping down the sidewalk in one of those surgical boots. He tells me he’s had three foot surgeries in the past year, and that now his entire … Continue reading →

What is it about a rainstorm that draws me out the front door onto the porch to watch it wash down? It pelts the road like buckshot, gathering, rivering, heeding gravity into streams and pools. Everything glistens and moves and … Continue reading →

Marypat and I were trying to figure how many times we’d gone to Utah over spring break. Has to be 15-20 since the early 80s. Canyonlands, Grand Gulch, Dark Canyon, Green River, Colorado River, San Juan River, Dirty Devil River, … Continue reading →