Land in the Sky: Sometimes We Sit
Sometimes we sit in this place, just stare out the window at mountains and forests and parking lots. This is Alaska and that’s what happens here. Elsewhere it’s another story. And another. And yet...
View ArticleLand in the Sky: Elephants
We are sitting at the bar in the Blue Fox in Anchorage, Alaska. It’s an election year and the TV is tuned to the National Geographic channel. Right now it’s a show about elephants. On the big screen we...
View ArticleLand in the Sky: Dog Days
For the last three months, the collies and I have grown accustomed to hearing the song of the wood thrush during our sunrise walks: one bird here, one bird there, each singing from his own leafy perch....
View ArticleLand in the Sky: Accidental Monument
High on one of the highest peaks in the Catskills, just below the summit, in balsam-brake and moss, close by Rip Van Winkle’s now-depleted spring, we came upon the wreckage. Broken wings, battered...
View ArticleLand in the Sky: No Going Back
Thirty years ago, my friend Charlie and I got lost while backpacking in the northeast corner of Yosemite National Park. It was all my fault but that’s a long story, almost as long as the “shortcut” I...
View ArticleLand in the Sky: Hudson Valley Landscape
Sometimes get into the car and just drive roads unfamiliar or simply unremembered perhaps from childhood past fading farms with ruinous silos collapsing into goldenrod profusions empty of monarchs what...
View ArticleLand in the Sky: After That Visit to Walden Pond
When we emerged from the cocktail lounge, it became clear–largely because daylight had returned or maybe had become something other than it ordinarily is–that we should have stuck to beer and ignored...
View ArticleLand in the Sky: Another Mountain Excursion
The collies sit for hot dogs as well as cheese, what good boots these are, this Election Day summit of Wittenberg Mountain, heart of the southern Catskills, broad picnic scenery, drowned towns of the...
View ArticleLand in the Sky: On Labels
Today at a supermarket in the Catskill Mountains I saw a bottle of vegetable juice adorned with remarkable labeling: “100% Juice with Added Ingredients.” What manner of adjective is this percent? I...
View ArticleLand in the Sky: Accidents in North American Mountaineering
East of the Catskills I park close to the summit of Mount Walmart. This prominent snow peak reminds me of Mount Jefferson in the Oregon Cascades. It can be tricky. Today the route looks sketchy. The...
View Article
More Pages to Explore .....