Coyote Crossing

Los Angeles

My old friend Andy Golebiowski, with whom I fought against wars and intolerance and stuff 30 years ago in Buffalo, posted a video on The Facebook last month. It’s a profile of Buffalo’s architectural heritage, gorgeously shot, and not even a little

Its name comes from the Chemehuevi for “clean water”

Last night, Wednesday night, I sat atop my sleeping bag and looked out across the Ivanpah Valley. The first-quarter moon was an hour from slipping behind the summit ridge of Clark Mountain. The Pleiades were a rough blur low in the east. They were

Leap

Two weeks ago, lying on my back at 7,400 feet watching the stars peer down at me through a canopy of piñon and juniper, it struck me — once again — that I have been fortunate.

I was in the White Mountains, trying to fall asleep after a day of

Good news! Surgery in the family!

I haven’t said much about this family member lately. In fact, my quiet was so pronounced and so prolonged that the person from whom I adopted this family member asked me tactfully not long ago whether said loved one had come to the end of its

Googling Carl Buell

I was looking for a particular image by my friend Carl Buell so I Googlimaged him, and was slyly happy that his painting of me and my dog was in the first page of results.

And I then realized it’s been almost five years since Carl painted it and

A treasured relationship sadly fades

We’re sitting at home today, and in between carting loads of laundry down to the laundry room — taking advantage of the fact that other folks in the apartment seem to be out of town for the holiday weekend, thus freeing the major appliances from

Well, you don’t get that sort of opportunity all that often

About 20 years ago I had a sweet little pet rat named Freda — last name Katz. Freda was one of the most affectionate, loyal and intelligent critters I have ever had the pleasure to meet, and this is Zeke’s human saying that, and Zeke set the

Cathedral Range, Thanksgiving 2007

Along the Tioga Road, Yosemite National Park

Thanksgiving was always his day. Almost two decades of a house full of people each year, him begging for snacks at the center of it. The first time the holiday rolled around after he died we couldn’t

Emerging

Yesterday, in Hagen Canyon Wash.

I feel these last weeks as though a few layers of gauze have lifted from my face. There is less weight on me. I doubt myself less. I look back less to the life I once had, and spend more of myself anticipating

Unfinished business

I am impatient with myself these days.

My life is, objectively speaking, good. I am loved. My relationship with The Raven is likely the healthiest I’ve ever had, and all my important exes love me. I know what makes me happy — being in the desert

That was a good day

Photo by Sharon Leach, taken May 1996

We slept out on the open desert the night before, after driving from the Bay Area through Reno and up the east shore of Pyramid Lake. We took the road as far as the truck would let us. The four of us walked

Back out from the outback

I’ve been asking people over on Facebook to donate to the Desert Protective Council as a birthday present, and today my DPC colleague mentioned she couldn’t find the link here. Because there wasn’t one! Here it is.

The last couple days have been

Half a century

I turn 50 on Monday.

In Internet time, that’s like a frillion years.

I spend so much time thinking in terms of ten-thousand year intervals, glaciers advancing and retreating like metronomes and continents waving to one another as they sidle on

A sweet little wistful nostalgic love poem

I wish that I had never met
the one who set my heart aflame.
All the decisions I regret
I made after I learned her name,
excepting those I’d made before.
I used to long to hear her voice.
I never do that anymore,
which seems to be the wiser choice. … (continues)

Desire Lines

Longing defines the storied heart. Contentment is pleasant enough, but it kills story. “And they lived happily ever after.” Fukuyama arrived at this realization, though his dystopia — unlike those of Orwell or Huxley — was unintended. But he knew

Bibliomancy

Running these days through the comfortable neighborhoods of West Hollywood has made me nostalgic for the garden I left last year. During the divorce and subsequent dislocation, I didn’t let myself miss my garden much. My enthusiasm for the garden

Dodging the random beautiful

I have been thinking about love these days.

This is of course nothing new.

Relationships end and they begin, relationships maintain themselves and they wither. These days I am both buoyed by love and burdened by it. The last vestiges of my

Mountains, ardent

It was somewhere around Mendota that I saw the hawks, a dozen of them, in a mixed flight of ravens around a stand of eucalyptus. The hills to the west were glowing, their sculpted structure plain in the slanted light. The Raven asked why the hills

Batholith

I do not remember the person I was back then. I recall the basic outlines of my life, but the memories replay by rote as tales told me long ago by someone else about another’s life. The dates are clear enough, the places somewhat dimmed, but my

Lunch Tuesday

This was for the best, you said, and I think
you were a little disappointed I agreed,
nodding against your shoulder in the parking lot.

A year since we met last, that day I loaded
a few last boxes into the Jeep, kitchen things
and what camping