As I type this, it’s fifty-two degrees (11°C) and the backyard Lift-o-Matic is full of drying laundry. That means nothing on racks by the wood stove. Good. When it’s truly cold, nothing on God’s earth beats great blistering waves of actual heat from a real fire, but if it’s only middling cool like today, I’d [...]
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The neighborhood today
I couldn’t possibly make the left turn with a big red wrecker truck hanging on my bumper at sixy miles an hour, so I drove another half mile to where I had a turn lane, circled right back to the highway—empty now, thank God—and cruised toward town until I found the place again. There was [...]
Blooming chamisa below high-altitude ice crystals
Those are not summer clouds, alas. About a week ago I called my current wood guy, a rugged sort who lives some thirty miles away, to order up a cord of piñon. This marked something of a surrender for me. I’m in the middle of pretending winter isn’t going to come because we haven’t moved [...]
Mexican copper, grandmother’s clock, a silkscreen by my sister
It was one of those quiet, bright afternoons with a cool breeze hissing lightly in the piñons, the kind that make you slow your pace to listen to the gravel crunching underneath your soles, the ones where you’re completely there. We’d just been to a movie, the first one in fifty years, I joked. A [...]
Miranda Canyon idiots run the stop sign on that hill at 50 mph every day.
We’d just finished our Labor Day picnic dinner of ham sandwiches in the living room. The front door was open and the air was getting cool. I decided to change my clothes, since I was still wearing the same shorts and aloha shirt I’d put on to do a quick mile and a half walk [...]
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