One summer while home from college I waited tables at an Italian restaurant in Laguna Beach run by some racist Milanese who'd recently emigrated from apartheid South Africa. How they ended up in Laguna I'm not sure, but their attitudes about people struck me as not only offensive but ironic considering that the kitchen and …
Requiem
The moodTraced in the shadowAn indecipherable cause Heavy rain closed school today. Flooded roads. I got to work in the brewery; close. Yesterday we drove back from our quick trip east of the mountains. We looked but didn't find. We're out of shape and gravity keeps showing up for work. The Strait is mostly mud. …
Gyre
A year ago we said our final goodbye to Angus, stroking him as the pentobarbital dimmed his eyes, sweet boy reposed in the back of the Jeep now owned by the man and woman who bred him. A few weeks ago, on our final day as residents of chukar country, knowing later that evening we'd …
Peat Won
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita... About halfway through his life, Peat has finally realized his incessant hope for a sibling who'll play with him. It took less than a week. In Peat's five full years with Angus, Angus rarely deigned even to humor Peat's attempts to play. Peat never stopped trying, but whether …
Bloom One
Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. -- James Joyce, Ulysses Related by blood both to Angus and Peat, Bloom, finally, like the spring, has arrived. It's amazing our capacity for forgetting. The sudden shift of frame a puppy brings: Peat's now the mature, even stately, one. I expected …
Sea Change
appointed places set in motion like seasons. We are like salmonswimming against the mutation of current to findour heartbroken way home again, weight of red eggs and need. -- Gloria Bird, (Spokane), from "Images of Salmon and You" I grew up on the Pacific. 21 years ago I moved to Idaho. I thought I'd work …
Box Score
My 2020-2021 stats say something and nothing, like most stats about most things. You had to be there. Still, you get the idea. And these are mine, not Leslie's. She tracks hers like E.F. Hutton, the old-fashioned way, with a pen or pencil. I use a computer, which takes the data from my Garmin Alpha …
Bucking Chukar Hats, Finally!
Tried to get these in stock for Christmas, but the vendor misspelled "chukar" on the back. Believe it. Richardson 309 (left) and 112FP (right) Anyway, we're pretty happy with how they turned out: we've got a trucker and a solid canvas duck cloth hat, both from Richardson, and they're going to go fast, and not …
Reason
If one speaks it should only be to say, as well as one can, how wonderfully all this fits together, to indicate what a long, fierce peace can derive from this knowledge. -- Barry Lopez, "Children in the Woods"And then a Plank in Reason, broke... -- Emily Dickinson, from "I Felt a Funeral in My …
Tick Trouble
If you hike in the springtime, especially with a dog, you will get ticks. If you aren't vigilant in finding and removing them, you might pay a very high price.