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Skiing came to Sun Valley—as it came to all of us—by a roundabout manner. Having existed in Norway for centuries as a form of transportation, it was little regarded as a test of courage and agility until the mid-19th century when those nutty Norwegians embraced the death defying thrills of…
Read moreIn 1945 at the end of World War II a soldier named Bob Rodgers found himself stationed in the German province of Bavaria. While there, he fell in love with the people, the food, and the charming Bavarian architecture. After returning home to Seattle, he took a job as an…
Read moreSometime during the night of November 7th, 2018 the winds shifted over the Sierra Nevada. Winds blowing east from the Pacific were supplanted by winds blowing west out of the Great Basin of Nevada. They gathered strength as they swept down the slopes of the mountains and entered the canyons….
Read moreOn December 6th, 2020 San Francisco locked down for the second time in nine months. You could almost hear the collective groan from residents long accustomed to enjoying the lively social life the city has to offer. For at least the next eight weeks San Franciscans were to remain in…
Read moreTell someone you’re going to Fresno and you’ll get a strange look. It’ll be the same look whether you’re in California or out, sort of a why-would-you-want-to-do-that look. That’s because Fresno is the red-headed step-child of California cities. The fifth largest metropolitan area in the state, Fresno has no iconic…
Read moreThis self-guided tour of the Charles Manson murder sites in and around Los Angeles is designed to take three hours. By following the map below, you can see the principal sites described in the following narrative and form a deeper appreciation of the events that took place between July and…
Read moreAs a child he witnessed magic. Among the spires of orange and russet rock, in the shadows of parapets ribboned with plum colored bands left by long receded seas, he watched as the Hopi medicine man placed the tip of an eagle feather against his mother’s neck and sang. His…
Read moreMy brother Curt and I were sitting in the dining room of the Little America Hotel in Flagstaff, AZ after our ski trip to Telluride when I said, “Look something up on your phone, will you? See if you can find out the steepest pitch a person can ski without…
Read moreSouthwest Texas is vast, and mostly empty. From San Antonio to El Paso, a distance of 550 miles, no town larger than 9,000 people exists. In the entire region, an area about the size of California, the population does not exceed that of Rhode Island. In the 1880s the region…
Read moreShe was not a good student. She had tried college and it hadn’t really worked out. She had fallen in with a hard partying crowd, musicians and such. It was a weakness. So she quit school and moved to Los Angeles, thinking she could become a singer there. But that…
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