dream ranch

The writer Ivan Doig, born in White Sulphur Springs, Montana, died at home today in Seattle. I don’t know what to say except that I am saddened, that he was one of my favorites and that he seemed to be thoughtful and hard-working throughout his life. His writing talent is for all to enjoy in this book. I have read it more than once and, I’m sure, will read it again down the road. This copy is the last thing my mother sent me before she died at home at Lennep, Montana, in 1979, shortly after its publication. It will always be on my top shelf.

Winded before the start

no comments

April 9, 2015

Few things look sillier to me in newspaper retirement than breathless newspaper speculation about who will win the major party presidential nominations in 2016.

I used to do it myself, of course. It’s standard fare for politics writers and editors. And speculation is one of the easiest forms of journalism. But, these days, I tend to yawn as the horses chomp on their bits on the way to the starting gate.

I’ve been more worried about breathing two-days worth of wind-driven New Mexico pollen and dust.

So, I didn’t study hard when I came across this headline this morning in the New York Times:

“The G.O.P. Presidential Field Looks Chaotic. It’s Not”

Neither was I blown away when I read in the Times that:

Lincoln Chafee Explores Presidential Run as a Democrat

“With no advance warning, the Democratic race for president got a surprise new contender on Thursday.”

I wouldn’t call my reaction surprise, although I was prompted to remind myself on the Internet that Rhode Island (4), where Chaffee is a former governor and U.S. senator, has one fewer electoral votes than New Mexico (5). It’s not a state that gives you much of a head start.

I was slightly saddened to read, though, that, “Mr. Chafee’s news caught political observers off guard.” Speculators always hate being scooped by the horse’s mouth, even if the quote news, as in this case, is only a quote exploratory move.

And I am glad there is no chaos in the Republican presidential field, according to the Times. But even there were, I think I might just wait and see who’s left standing. From an entertainment perspective, things haven’t yet reached the rhetorical level of a pre-fight weigh-in.

I didn’t bother to look for the latest Hillary Clinton news. I figure at least two or three feverish stories will come my way before the day is out.

I’m interested in who’s lining up at the gate, but I’m also aware that the nominations — although often predetermined — won’t be formally made until July of 2016.

As for voter participation, I sense that I won’t have much impact in the interim, as the big wheels of campaign finance and get rolling and media provide plenty of gas for trial balloons.

Nor do I feel like I’m going to get much individual attention in this period of candidates testing waters thick with self-importance.

I still get Internet pleas for money from all kinds of candidates — probably because I am registered as an independent — and I was a little indignant when I got a note that began this way from Rand Paul — on the very day he told us he would run:

“Dear John: I don’t have much time … “

Morning’s progress

no comments

April 8, 2015

Woke up happy. Then got angry.

Montana spring break

no comments

April 7, 2015

hopecamp Sister Hope had a little time off. Husband and son went to visit relatives. Got someone to feed the horses. Took a little car-camping trip to where she grew up; took pictures of lunar eclipse from White Sulphur Springs and spring weather at Martinsdale Reservoir; all on way to see Angus cattle on former neighbor’s 125-year-old ranch. (Photos by Hope Harper).

Field notes: Retirement

no comments

April 7, 2015

So far, retirement means:

Unlimited time to read but also dozing off at the drop of a hat.
Confused dog with disrupted sleep schedule.
New colleagues: Health care workers, insurers and Social Security staff.
Possibly excessive attention to meal times and nutritional values.

Fortunately, I am still alert enough to also keep my eyes on the sky.

Faith, bacon and space aliens (from 2015)

no comments

April 4, 2015

After wrestling with life-and-death questions involving bacon, the Good Friday pilgrimage to Chimayo and the opening of the Trinity atomic bomb test site, I chose Cheerios for breakfast and felt righteous until my worst blood sugar crash since Larry Calloway and I encountered space aliens deep in the Weminuche Wilderness.

Today, I started the day right. I had a bacon-and-egg sandwich along with my black coffee and read an old Paris Review interview with the writer Annie Proulx. Then I remembered two other favorite, late-starting authors, A.B. Guthrie Jr. and Norman Maclean.

Annie Proulx gave me a laugh and improved my outlook on life.

INTERVIEWER You were in your forties when you wrote the first of the stories from Heart Songs. Do you think you had a late start when it comes to writing fiction?

PROULX Well, I did, yeah. But so what? Why should it bother anybody when somebody starts to write?

INTERVIEWER It’s fewer years writing the stories that you seem to enjoy writing.

PROULX Oh, yeah, I suppose, but that’s OK too. The world is spared lots of crap.

I got a late start understanding breakfast foods.

For almost 50 years, I thought the Gold Standard of breakfast fare was a bowl of cereal with milk, often with added sugar. And, in school and on the trails where I spent many of my free hours, I often experienced debilitating blood sugar crashes, which I would invariably address by eating something sugary and starchy.

A friend steered me to an ayruvedic, who said my eating pattern was only jacking up my blood sugar level and spiking it again after the inevitable crash. I immediately understood my wavering attention span throughout my school years and sudden exhaustion on backpacking trips that wouldn’t be cured even with the ingestion of two or three healthy-looking granola bars.

I was in a near hallucinogenic state one evening back in the 1980s, after my writer/journalist friend Larry led me from a train stop at Needle Creek on the Animas River in southwestern Colorado up to the Chicago Basin and, the next day, over Columbine Pass to Vallecitos Creek. We were on our way to Hunchback Pass, east over the Continental Divide to Beartown and on down the Rio Grande headwaters to my truck at Sky Hi Ranch.

I believe I had consumed granola bars for breakfast and lunch — these were pre-Clif Bar variety — and probably popped another while Larry prepared to fish the upper Vallecitos for dinner. I was crouched down in camp, building a fire, a convenient position since my much of my brain had shut down and my legs had felt like linguine since noon. Three or four thousand feet of downhill will do that to you.

I don’t know who did a double-take first as two figures marched out of the trees upstream, wearing rubber suits, helmets and carrying big, elongated objects over their heads. It took a couple of moments to realize they were men.

Crazy men. Carrying boats over their heads, they had come down from Stony Pass, near Silverton, then climbed over Hunchback Pass to drop down again to kayak the Vallecito.

That trip — even though the kayakers were real — was the acme of my blood sugar problems. I Continue reading

Field notes: Blue sky and open questions in New Mexico

1 comment

April 3, 2015

While pondering this morning whether to cook bacon for breakfast, my mind was diverted to coinciding events in New Mexico: the Good Friday pilgrimage to Chimayo; the Trinity Site opening at White Sands; the full moon coming.

Is New Mexico unusual? All I’m sure of is that the skies seem clearer here. You know how those painters talked about the light. So, why do we live here despite the weight and pain and frustrations of enduring poverty?
Do the light and relatively small human presence simply and more clearly reveal, or sharpen, contrasts? I am trying to figure out why, the older I get, the more interested I am in painting as a form of expression or understanding.
Back to the bacon. It’s left over my sister’s Hope’s recent visit. Do I throw it out or cook it up, despite my coronary artery disease? I have that, in addition to lung cancer. But it’s a fine morning in New Mexico. I am recently retired and my dog was beside me when I woke. The sky is blue, of course. Another cup of coffee, perhaps.

Field notes: Spring, no foolin’

no comments

April 1, 2015

Trees started leafing out at my elevation in Placitas a couple of days ago, including this desert olive on the east side of the house. Nothing like their green in the morning light — it’s very soft, or the receiving leaves are — and I can’t quite get it on my little point and shoot. Maybe you just have to be there.
I’ve always grumbled about April Fools’ jokes, maybe just because I’m slow to catch on. I laughed to myself this morning, though, recalling one the Santa Fe Reporter did in the 1970s, as its cover story no less: Palace of the Governor’s sold to a group of Texas investors. I think then-owners Dick McCord and Laurie Knowles took heat for it. I don’t remember laughing at the time, possibly because I had not yet migrated to Reporter employment and was working for The New Mexican, where reporters in the olden days — when John Bott was editor — were responsible for matching everything the upstart weekly had exclusively. And, as I say, I’ve always been slow on the uptake. Maybe not yet having recovered from Frank Clifford’s investigation for the Reporter of Santa Fe County property taxes — Maytag mansion owners pay $1 a year — I probably groaned when I saw the alleged Palace of the Governor’s scoop on that April 1 many years ago, “How am I going to top this.” I can still see McCord’s sly smile, and I’ve learned to check the date, as I had to do today on Joe Monahan’s blog, which gets credit for tripping me up at age 65 on this date in 2015.
Impressed by the Ken Burns-produced PBS documentary on cancer research and treatment that last two nights, and will tune in for the final tonight. In awe of the commitment of doctors and courage of patients, and the history of research is exceptionally well presented.
Also worth checking out on the cancer score, in case you missed it in January, is a piece I recently re-read by George Johnson of Santa Fe, author of the Cancer Chronicles. Here is a link to his “Why everyone seems to have cancer.”
Awaiting new imaging later this month on my own Round 1 of lung cancer treatment, and I’ve found the waits in treatment are learning experiences all of their own. Time slows, if not halts. Maybe it’s a good thing the chemo and radiation have left me sleeping nearly ’round the clock.
First wildflowers also are out in Placitas — as always led by the unfortunately named Fendler bladder pods. Because of late winter moisture, I think there will be carpets of them soon. And, despite their name, they’re pretty spectacular.

Field notes: New trail

1 comment

March 26, 2015

Felt new trail lay ahead this morning.

First round of cancer treatment ended Wednesday. Follow-ups to come, but didn’t have to drive early to Albuquerque for the first time in a couple of months for radiation or chemo. Retirement from the Journal announced Tuesday, and didn’t have to head there either.

Hope, in the hat, on late afternoon walk with me, is on her way back to Montana after a five-day visit, dropping Will off first with Winifred, Tom, Nancy and Adam for a spring-break stay in Utah.

Weather service said clouds at sunset last night meant weather coming in, but it dawned clear.

Tried sleeping in, but Coop wasn’t going for it.

Field notes: Milestones

no comments

March 25, 2015

GENESIS by Otto Rigan at Spaceport America. (Photo courtesy of Otto Rigan)

— This morning is the last of Round 1 of lung cancer treatments — the end of a coordinated radiation and chemotherapy plan to first shrink the tumor and then get rid of it, hopefully, with surgery. Apparently, I won’t know much about the effects of Round 1 until late April and CT scans. There are hints, professional and self-generated, that it has gone well, but the tumor was big and in a tricky place and lung cancer is tough to treat.

— I can report this about the initial phase of treatment that began Feb. 12: I feel good. In fact, I have felt increasingly better as treatment has progressed. Yet, I am reminded this morning that cancer is its own deep universe. A tumor 1 centimeter in size can contain a billion cells. That sounds like a lot of potential meteoroid matter. More chemo might be called for.

— I was little jarred yesterday by the announcement of my retirement from the Albuquerque Journal, where I have worked for the past 33 years. Of course, I knew it was coming, but it is something else again to see it in print, in an email to staff. The Journal was the last and long stop in a 41-year newspaper career, but, in a time sense, it has come and gone at warp speed.

— I’ll choke up if I talk about all the kindness the Journal’s ownership, management and staff have given me in the end. So, moving on….

— I think this newly installed sculpture at Spaceport America by Otto Rigan is fabulous. Well done, you all. Even if Virgin Galactic never gets a celebrity-loaded space tourism flight off the spaceport runway, the architecture and art alone would make it worth the drive to the middle of nowhere. I especially appreciate this photograph since I napped through the planetarium show on a trip to the Museum of Natural History and Science on Sunday with sister Hope, nephew Will, sister Susan and her partner, Dick.

— Hope and Will depart for Salt Lake City today to see sister Winifred, before returning to Montana. We had a great visit that I will remember always.

— And sister Hope left me more to think about, even after a series of conversations running to midnight, ranging from poetry to horses. She doesn’t like Western movies: “Bad horsemanship and too much gunfire,” she says. Guess I’m going to have to pull my wanna-be Resistol down and drugstore-cowboy up if I’m going to keep on watching. Hope is the real deal.