January

I ran into a friend the other day who gave me crap for not posting anything for a while. I appreciated it. This used to be my favorite time of the bird season. Not as many people to contend with. Peace and beauty of a remarkably different quality. The "certain slant of light." Snow concentrated …

The Face of Death

"Maybe we fear that the work we depend on images to do for us -- the work of immobilizing, and therefore making tolerable -- will be undone if we throw the image back into the flow of time." -- T.J. Clark, The Sight of Death (8) "I think we hide, necessarily, from an understanding of …

December Chukar Hills

The two years we lived in Washington, as I've said here before, were not the easiest two years for us. We missed the chukar hills, empathized with our dogs' longings for open hills of bunchgrass and sage, and just simply were unable to ignore the call to the hills. Local surrogates paled in comparison. When …

Legend

50 miles from home, I realized that I forgot to pack my extra shells for our hunting and camping trip. I sat there for a few minutes in the passenger seat in silence and mad at myself at my unthinkable mistake and embarrassed to say anything to Bob. I wanted to run off and hide. …

Remote

"As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote." - Herman Melville, Moby Dick. So far this season, Bob and I have been only hunting at higher elevations where the earthy golden grasses and light green sage colored hills meet up with the forested mountains. These are places to take advantage …