The old Inuit man stood at the airport gate wearing his caribou hide jacket and pants, mouton vest, seal skin boots, wolverine fur hat and bearskin mittens over caribou skin gloves. The Aleyska pipeline representative looked him over to verify that he had the appropriate gear for the North Slope before he could fly north […]
“Nature is not always benign.” Mark Tercek and Johnathan Adams, Nature’s Fortune When she went to pick up the pile of laundry, she discovered a rattlesnake hidden underneath. Slowly, she dropped the laundry back in place. Married to a rancher and living on a ranch for years, things like that didn’t worry her too much. […]
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Arthur C. Clarke As I stepped off the team bus before the game, I noticed a shiny penny balanced on the curb. Next to me, Mike noticed my hesitation. “Pick it up,” he said, “You saw it first. Maybe it’s good luck.” I shook him off and […]
The first snowdrop appeared just after the snow melted. A few days later, the yellow crocus showed up down the bed. Small green buds appeared on the currant and bridal wreath bushes, and a block away, the first blossoms appeared on a crabapple tree. Though it was early, spring was coming on. A bunny showed […]
My family lore holds that some of my forefathers (foreparents?) were Scots-Irish and the rest were English. There always seemed to be a divide in the extended family between the “rough side” and the “polished side” attributed to these genealogical differences. As I understood it, the Scots-Irish were originally poor Scots who had no land […]
“Chomp, chomp,” woke me up in the middle of the night. “Chomp, chomp,” it went on, “Scrabble, scrabble. Chomp, chomp.” It was coming from my dormitory closet. My roommate was gone, and the sound made me apprehensive. “Rats?” I wondered. “Scrabble, scrabble. Chomp, chomp.” I turned on the desk light and slowly approached the closet. […]
I never thought about heights until we went hunting down on a ranch in the Texas Big Bend. The place was huge, and the rancher drove us around in his war-surplus jeep looking for deer down in the canyons. He would drive fast across the rough terrain, steer for the edge of the canyon, then […]
“Easy to be hard, easy to be cold.” Three Dog Night At twenty below, I wasn’t sure the car would start, but it turned over quickly. The heater under the battery had worked, as had the oil plug heater. Apparently the dipstick heaters were overrated, so I had gone with the local mechanic’s advice. For […]
As instructed, I lay on my back and wiggled into the narrow opening. It was tight, and my headlamp did little to light up the darkness beyond the gap. Scraping through, I took a deep breath, and my chest pressed against the massive rock above me. Stuck! Fighting panic, I breathed out and wriggled the […]
In his cage, the young skunk lowered his head and stamped his front feet. “Tap-tap; tap-tap.” Then, he lunged forward, tail in the air, stopping less than a foot from my face. He would repeat this dance twice, but on the third lunge, he would swing his butt around and spray, aiming for my eyes. […]
Writes of Nature 