I had hope for a clearer day when I saw a streak of golden light from bed but was reminded how dry the ground was as I rose. I absorbed various facts as I put water out for the birds, made coffee, fed Cowboy, read the news. It’s still smoky to the west, over the …
The sky is so gray with smoke sunrise doesn’t wake me. Western wildfires in June are predictable, but with climate change they seem more frequent — and larger. The smoke this Thursday morning, June 18, 2020, obscured the Sandia Mountains to the south and Indian Country mesas to the west. I could barely make out …
Morning rain in New Mexico and thugs going down on the East Coast can really mess with your writing. You know: You start feeling all cozy and don’t want to get out of bed, seduced by rare rain in the high desert. Your brain starts thinking with introductory clauses and you end up staring at …
Nothing like: a “you’re stable” report from the good people at Presbyterian oncology, three years out from treatment; a celebratory shredded beef burrito with green chile at the Range afterward; returning home to Cowboy and my books with a view up the camino of thunderheads rising to the north. I will savor those parts of …
People I used to work with will get a kick out of this: I dreamed I lost my voice in the newsroom. Mid-sentence. Looking down a row of desks at younger reporters and editors before my retirement, questioning without being asked a crowd-count methodology at a political event. Despite some darting of the eyes, they …
This really is about me and not my 19-month-old dog, but sometimes I think my self-knowledge might not be much deeper than his. I have been struggling lately with too much news and a lost appetite for fiction. You see, I grew up thinking I would be a fiction writer. But my newspaperman instincts …
dream ranch 