Tales From The West: Four Seasons in the Owyhee Country - My Newest E-book!

January 2 2020

I’m thrilled to share with all of you the release of my latest e-book: Tales From The West: Four Seasons in the Owyhee Country.

It’s a collection of essays that take place in the present day Wild West: Southwest Idaho.

You’ll get a taste of four seasons of a unique outdoor life: with nature, animals, local history, and horse rides and hiking adventures in the Owyhee country. The photos accompanying each essay give you a visual glimpse of the area.

From experiencing wild thunderstorms, flash flood and wildfire, to horseback riding on cattle drives, among wild horses, along trails of old gold miners, and through a biblical swarm of Mormon crickets, to startling and entertaining encounters with cows, birds, rattlesnakes, and cougars, you’ll see that a life in the West nowadays isn’t that far removed from life as it was 150 years ago.

“In case you’re wondering, it’s the southwest corner of Idaho I’m talking about. It’s nearly 7700 square miles of high desert sagebrush, rabbit brush, the Owyhee mountains, pronghorns, deer, cows, and a few herds of wild horses.

If you’re charmed by the ways of the Old West, it’s easy, when you’re out riding a horse or hiking, to imagine you’re still part of that time period. Squint your eyes into the sunlight, and you’ll see the dust from the old cowboys chasing the cows or rounding up the broomtail horses.

Life in Owyhee means a life steeped in Western lore, Wild West adventures, horses, Ravens, and nature. It means beauty in every corner, under every rock, in every storm, spring, summer, fall, and winter.”

Tales From The West: Four Seasons in the Owyhee Country is available on Amazon as an e-book at:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0838Z7C5Q

A soft-cover option will be available in the new year. 

Happy reading!

A Staggering Murder of Crows

Monday December 29 2014

It’s the best kept spectacle secret around Seattle.

Thousands of crows (a group of crows is known as a “murder”) fly in to this spot near Bothell, Washington, to roost each night, particularly in the winter. One estimate was about 10,000 crows, but it sure looks and sounds like more. They start streaming in from all directions about an hour or so before sunset, and they spend another hour or so changing roosts and picking up last-minute snacks and generally shrieking as much and as loudly as possible. It sounds like round waves of cheers at a Seahawks game, just as deafening, only much more piercing.

The roost is in and around an office park and a creek and wetlands. At dark, you wouldn't know there's a single crow around because they've finally all gone to sleep. Come morning, they disperse in all directions for the day, then come back to roost again at night. It’s a spectacular, unbelievable sight, and a gloriously raucous ruckus to behold!

The video will give you a taste:


or link:
http://youtu.be/hL22QbY2vgQ

Just Me And...

Friday September 16 2011

Nothing. For miles around.

No cows, no cats.

No humans, no horses.

No deer, no donkey.

No noise, no life - nothing for miles around.

Solitariness.

But look again:


...at the Owyhee skies and clouds - a presence sculpting a shifting personality onto the mountains.


... a watching vulture, part of a rock until I get too close; then a brief silhouette.


... a wild mustang stallion pile, marking his territory.


...obsidian flakes, an old rock corral - traces of the past.


Listen harder:


...quail, canyon wren, the sigh of the breeze, wafting down over the Owyhees, whooshing down the Owyhee front, passing over me on its way to the Snake River.

For miles around - just me and Owyhee.

Fog

Tuesday January 6 2008

The evening walk in the snow up Bates Creek reveals storm clouds - snow and fog and wind - hanging over the peaks of the Owyhee Mountains ahead. A strong steady breeze tumbles down Bates Creek into my face.

Behind me, there is a presence... something stalking me. Massive, quiet, gray, ethereal...


Sometimes fog rolls its way down the canyons, sometimes it snakes up the canyons, sometimes it rolls over the tops of the mountains and hangs there like a tablecloth. Sometimes it defies or ignores the wind; sometimes it uses it. Sometimes it moves in and settles overhead for a while, cloaking and damping the earth's surface with stillness; or sometimes it just passes right on through with a purpose, on a mission, blotting out the sun only for a brief moment in time, continually rolling and moving. Sometimes it covers a large area; sometimes it singles out a lone canyon to travel.

Tonight it works its way southwest from Oreana up the Bates Creek drainage - shielded from the wind - and when it comes to the junction of Bates Creek and Pickett Creek - where Bates Creek turns northwest and tunnels in the wind - it simply ignores the wind battering it from the side and continues on, choosing to skip Pickett Creek, and instead picks the next wash to travel up. There it continues its silent southwest uphill glide, its fingers sending up little wisps just visible above the ridge, marking its progress. As I walk to within one hundred yards of the fog, the temperature drops 10 degrees, as if I were passing through a physical barrier. This fog carries its own temperature zone.

It's not a living creature... or is it? It is a Thing, a phenomenon with a life of its own, no rules that govern it, other than the whims of Nature. It's like floods (read any of Craig Childs' wonderful books on floods in the desert) or tornadoes, only it's the non-destructive variety.

It's a quiet little gift of nature passing through this evening if a lucky human is there to witness it.