This morning’s wildfire smoke started me thinking about our last big snow. It was December 2006 and it was a big one for the upper Middle Rio Grande valley. A record-setting 11.3 inches landed on the airport in Albuquerque. We got close to a couple of feet up here in Placitas. That is my late …
Maybe it’s because sandhill cranes are starting to return north from our Middle Rio Grande Valley that I keep thinking of this Assiniboine story about the creation of seasons. I came across the story in an essay called Long Time Ago by the late James Welch. I liked his line, “It is remarkable how logical …
The demon dog toy got me again. But this was the last time. It most recently had resided on top the of the bedroom bookcase, high out of Cowboy’s reach and any prospective victim’s path. Always hard to see because it’s flat like a whoopee cushion and brown like everything else around here, it had …
Cowboy and I haven’t been able to see Sara for a couple of days. You know, all that stay-at-home and social distancing stuff. But we’ve gotten postcards. Here she is watching a sea lion on Animal Planet, a favorite TV show, with Rescue Dad Mike. And here she is all bundled up by Rescue Mom …
Happy birthday, Cowboy. March means you are three. The start of Daylight Savings Time seems like a good day to call yours. You are easy to associate with a lost hour of sleep. But I’m glad you are on my case. Your were a sick pup when you came. I’d say you’re plenty healthy now. …
This ship of state — this self-obsessed, rusting hulk of retired newspaperman — steadied the moment I felt the stillness of the coming autumn air. No pain this morning, only a sense of the gentle season ahead. I put out fresh water for scrub jays, finches, titmouses and Texas antelope squirrels, grateful that the rattlesnakes …
Sure, the aches and pains mount as I near 69, but the more immediate perils might simply be dumb moves at home. Today, I subjected Cowboy to near-heatstroke by walking on our exposed mesa top way too late in the afternoon; lost my cellphone, loaded against better advice with personal information; and, in the pre-dawn …
I study this photo when I have trouble squaring things away. Actually, I have a similar view walking home every night with Cowboy, Placitas dog pal No. 4, but these clouds brought more game than usual. I guess it was the death of a friend in Santa Fe — Tom Day — that threw me …
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 …
When the days end like this … and the dogs look like this … we start hopin’ for more of this … Notes on photos: Big brown dog with water bottle is Sara, Cowboy’s good friend, owned by neighbors Lori and Mike; sun setting behind Cabezon with plenty of wildfire smoke trapped down low; yours …
dream ranch 