Category
When I told my friend Gray that the final drop-off in the Wolf River rapids in central Wisconsin was a Class IV, he scoffed. He was of the opinion that any river that could be run by inexperienced rafters, many of them unable to paddle in a straight line and…
Read more“Chuff-chuff-chuff,” came the sound. I stopped dead in my tracks and listened.I had been hiking the trail high in the Bitterroot Mountains of western Montana for well over an hour and seen no other person. There it was again. “Chuff-chuff-chuff,” like an animal panting. A signboard at the trail head…
Read moreWandering the streets of Boise, I came across a homeless guy picking through the trash. I was just finishing my lunch, a McDonalds #1 value meal, which, if you don’t already know, is a Big Mac, soft drink and fries. Foolishly, I had agreed to super size it, which meant…
Read moreYou would think that jumping out of an airplane at 13,000 feet would be terrifying but for Belle and I it was more of a relief. The whole experience had not started off well. The previous day I had gotten a call on my cell phone while we were in…
Read moreHere’s what I learned from the media on February 18th: Justin Bieber is acting strangely. He wore a gas mask in public for no apparent reason and stormed out of his own birthday party. Here’s what I learned at Kitt Peak Observatory on Saturday: Early in the afternoon of Friday,…
Read moreMy poor wife. She was lacking something. She was suffering a deficit. She had a hole where her experience of America had been. She had never been to Yellowstone. Worse yet, she had never seen the Grand Tetons or been to a rodeo. It was a tragic thing. Think about…
Read moreFly Fishing has taught me to respect fish. In two days of fishing in the mountains outside Denver, Colorado I managed to hook a surprising number of rainbow trout. Yet during that same time I managed to hook myself no less than nine times and each time it was a…
Read moreOn April 20th, 1999 two students entered Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado and opened fire. One of the students, 18-year-old Eric Harris, had a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun and a 9mm carbine with thirteen 10-round magazines. The other student, 17-year-old Dylan Klebold, had a 9mm handgun with one 52-, one…
Read moreWhen Chicago mobster Anthony “the Ant” Spilotro started burglarizing businesses in the Las Vegas area, the federal government and the Las Vegas gaming commission had had enough. So had the mob. Spilotro had been drawing unwanted attention to the mob and making things difficult for them. So they beat him…
Read moreA bright, enchanting New Mexico morning. I pull onto the interstate, old 66 running beside. The land slides and yaws like water in a bucket, waves of rolling terrain, an ocean of ochre colored grass flecked with sagebrush and streaked with greens and reds. The mountains heave themselves up, haughty,…
Read more
