From Chalk bluff on the Jacks Fork… …to Rocky Falls and Blue Spring…
Scariest Cave Names Ever
Caves are fissures where evil seeps. And some of these must’ve been named by people who were scared shitless. In Texas, don’t stumble into Toad Frog Falling Floor Fissure, Left In a Lurch Cave, Coon Crap Cave, Putrid Pit, and … Read More
From Dark into Darkness
The wind picked up intensity, blowing loud as a Texas liar. I had forgotten the sound the wind makes when it ratchets into a cyclone. It whistles through the rigging, singing in a voice that rises in pitch with each … Read More
Bleach on the Streets
“Sedville will shine tonight, Sedville will shine. “When the sun goes down and the moon comes up, “Sedville will shine.” The old high school fight song rang true as we rolled into Sedalia. The sun was down, the moon was … Read More
Omar and the Phillies
The hotel staff dropped candles by our room at three pm. The satellite TV in the hotel breezeway lobby began cutting out late afternoon. Heavy storm interference. Islanders and guests took one last chance to squeeze out reassuring emails to … Read More
The Route 66 Bridges Across the Piney River
Four bridges cross the Big Piney River at a spot so rugged it was damn near the last section of Route 66 to be completed. We floated downriver into the shadow of each bridge, close together, from oldest to newest. … Read More
Ode to frost
Tonight your plants and mine sit outside under a carnival of covers. Old bedsheets and tarps. And six old deck umbrellas, cranky and unwieldly. My back yard looks like the circus came to town.
Crossing the Lexicon
“…ours is a mongrel language,” Mark Twain said about the world’s most expansive tool kit, “which started with a child’s vocabulary of 300 words and now consists of 225,000; the whole lot, with the exception of the original and legitimate … Read More
Strange Mussell Forkers
They were a ragtag gaggle of patriots. Somewhere north of Bynumville and Bee Branch, in the middle of an unicorporated area named for the Mussel Fork creek that runs through it, I met a most diverse group of Mussel Forkers. … Read More