“Cannery Row in Monterey California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, … Read More
Caribbean Sunset. 35,000 feet
It was a cosmic gift in this season of giving. Aruba sent us home through a holiday light show. A circus parade of cloudtops roostertailing through shadows and light pointing to the outer membrane of this space bubble as one … Read More
Fly Fishing
Montana’s Madison River valley opened up like a Georgia O’Keefe flower. Big sky. Just past the cowgirl whose boyfriend lost his head, we spied a shotgun shack, a fixer upper we agreed would make a fine one-lane bowling alley. Helena … Read More
Big Ol’ Tetons
We expected to see bison, bear, maybe a moose. Not a bee. We waved at a dozen Buffalo Bill visages in Cody, Wyoming, and cruised into Yellowstone. Crossing the park, the traffic was sparse. The wildlife hid from us. Turning … Read More
Sturgis Surrounded
It was a butt-clenching rollercoaster ride on the Black Hills backroad to a park named for a man best-known for getting slaughtered. Halfway up the twisting mountain road to the park, our journey became a Custerfluck of swollen rain clouds … Read More
Dakota Impressionist
Always wanted to drive through a Van Gogh painting. South Dakota may be as close as I get. Endless acres of sunflowers, blooms big as your head. Along a roadside papered with Wall Drug signs, two museum billboards stood close … Read More
Fighting, healing and music.
We passed Cedar Springs and stopped in El Dorado Springs, where the Osage Tribe used to bring their sick to heal in the mineral springs. When Europeans settled the area, the Osage left for their own safety, and the springs … Read More
Road to Nowhere
Dare I drive the old road? Dismissed by a superhighway, this stretch of pavement beckons for diesel vibrations and the familiar feel of rubber. Brittle and crumbling, its most persistent passengers move up through the cracks, wave at the sun, … Read More
Return to the scene of the crime
This is a peek at a Missouri Life Magazine cover coming together. I’m at the helm of the second boat. The day before, that boat was damn near sideways in a thirty-knot wind. The story was fun, sanitized a bit … Read More