I left some books behind on move overseas in the late 1960s, including my treasured 1964 copy of Starr’s Guide to the John Muir Trail. The Sierra Club publication got a little mildewed over time but two thoughtful friends in Mill Valley, Ca., found it and returned it to me in 2015, with this 1966-1967 …
I remember where I attempted to read Tolstoy. It was in a lantern-lit tent at 11,000 feet in the eastern Sierra Nevada while constructing a five-mile section of the Pacific Crest Trail in 1972. We started in July and got snowed out of our 15-man camp at Chicken Spring Lake in October. Our section of …
I am 99 percent convinced now that there is not a novel in me, or at least that I am not capable of producing one. I’ve started enough of them to know that I quickly lose interest and, even if I could carry one through, know I probably would be embarrassed by the result. This …
The last thing I read last night, sitting up late, waiting out the wind, was Larry Calloway’s account of his trip with a daughter to Mississippi. He called it “A Tale of Two Stairways.” The superficial reason for the title was his discussion of two circular staircases. But Larry usually climbs higher. The staircases both …
I woke up on the wrong side of the bedroll this morning or at least I made the mistake of reading Twitter before climbing out to look at blue sky, rustle Cowboy’s breakfast and make myself a pot of coffee. Someone had complained about Serena Williams’s conduct at the U.S. Open in her title match …
from 2017 I was about to let loose with my latest personal essay when I encountered this buzzkill in The New Yorker: “The Personal-Essay Boom is Over.” I know I shouldn’t let my New Yorker reading pile up. I had heard rumblings of the essay crisis even before the May 2017 New Yorker piece by …
dream ranch 