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canyon

goat train

in situ

three of Tom's latest

rivers & birds, Dec 17-28

Green River, Colorado River, Mancos River, Animas River, Rio Chama, San Juan River, Santa Fe River, Rio Grande/Rio Bravo, Pecos River, Llano River, Brazos River, (other/Texas) Colorado River, Pedernales River, Price River, Spanish Fork River

Turkey Vulture

Black Vulture

Great Horned Owl

Bald Eagle

Golden Eagle

Red-tailed Hawk

Cooper’s Hawk

American Kestrel

Common Raven

Red-winged Blackbird

Great-tailed Grackle

American Robin

European Starling

Western Meadowlark

Mourning Dove

Rock Pigeon

White-winged Dove

Eurasian Collared-Dove

Northern Mockingbird

Red-bellied Woodpecker

Ladder-backed Woodpecker

Downy Woodpecker

Red-naped Sapsucker

Northern Flicker

Monk Parakeet

Double-crested Cormorant

Snowy Egret

Spotted Sandpiper

Canada Goose

Mallard

American Coot

Belted Kingfisher

Mexican Jay

Blue Jay

Northern Cardinal

Dark-eyed Junco

Carolina Wren

Canyon Wren

American Goldfinch

House Finch

House Sparrow

White-crowned Sparrow

Black-Throated Sparrow

Song Sparrow

Say’s Phoebe

Black Phoebe

Yellow-rumped Warbler

Ruby-crowned Kinglet

Spotted Towhee

Tufted Titmouse

Vermilion Flycatcher

Greater Roadrunner

Loggerhead Shrike

New Mexico Traffic

Christmas - Marathon, TX

wrapping paper, pine cones, copenhagen tin

dog's breakfast

OK, so somewhere between September and this very moment, the lights went out here at Fish Without Faces. This was immediately followed by a lengthy struggle in pitch blackness, in the end resulting in a smattering of photos, a retreating army of roughly 400 gingerbread men and beasts, and the faint scent of ozone lingering in the air.

At this point I can't account for much else besides that. But here are a few additional updates from the past year or so:

a poem here.

a story here. and another poem here.

this article (p. 86).

and that article.

also, this article (p. 59).

more recently, this other article (p. 263).

Alright, that's about as close as I hope to ever come to setting up a Linkedin account. Now can I go out and play?

a garter snake up Maple Canyon, maples in the path to Diamond Fork hot springs, and strange middens on Black Hill, as we hunt for juniper mistletoe

September

(we) dove

Speaking of entering the adult world, we just bought our first house. Or, maybe more precisely, signed a thick stack of paper promises to incrementally buy a house while we live in it and treat it like our own. This is all still sinking in, but in the mean time we’re very pleased.

A few minutes into our first visit to the loan office we noticed a mother dove tending her nest, tucked under the eaves of the building next door, her dark yellow eye staring in at us through the window. On our second visit (more papers), we brought the camera. She was gone, but now there were eggs in her nest.

Once, a couple years ago, Ash asked me, “are animals poor?”

She was 5 at the time, and I think we had just been watching swallows build their muddy nests onto the steel girders under a bridge. “Are animals poor?”

She had asked essentially this same question a couple of times earlier. Once when we were walking along the Truckee River and saw a man in ragged clothes sleeping under a picnic table. And again when we were carrying all of our food and shelter into the mountains on our backs for the night. “Are animals poor?”

Where does one begin?

I think I probably started in with some Thoreauvian patter about how, well, that all depends on what you mean by poor. How we’re wealthy in relation to all the things we can afford to, or are glad to, do without, and so on.

She didn’t seem to be buying it.

“Yeah, but I mean if animals don’t have a nice place to sleep, like people, are they poor?”

This same basic question continues to come up from time to time.

When the power goes out.

When after walking across the great concrete bridge at the mouth of the Siuslaw River, we stumble into the rising smoke and bearded faces of a hobo camp in the ferns and pines.

When a deer limps across the road at dusk, followed by her fawns.

Or when, chasing a woodpecker into the eucalyptus forest behind our motel on the Mendocino coast, we instead find the handsomely tended tent-and-tarp shelter of somebody still not returned home from work for the day.

I’m still working on a better answer.

Related: the foxes have holes, hoboclowns & coelacanths, Hallelujah, Bum Again, thanks

Into the Mystic, and a procession of ontologies

One morning, earlier this summer, we were driving north along the Salmon River in Idaho when Van Morrison came on the radio.

We were born before the wind

Also younger than the sun

Ere the bonnie boat was one as we sailed into the mystic

. . .

Just about there, Tom called right out from the back seat, with something between amusement and scandal, “we weren’t born before the wind!” We had all day to get to Missoula, so of course, this led to a longer conversation.

“What do you think he’s singing about?”

And so it went.

We never set out to make positivists of these kids, as they come to us little animists, playing in the outskirts of our rational, grown-up world. But here is one game that we’ve played with them. I guess it doesn’t really have a name, but it goes something like this:

“Which came first, gates or bait?”
(Followed by speculations and reasoning all around, until resolved to everyone’s basic satisfaction.)

Which came first, poles or holes?

Red or black?

Jerks or jerky?

Shoes or blue?

And so on.

Here’s another. Is a thing good or bad? Grasshoppers, Snow, Cheatgrass, Lightning, and so on.

“Are roads good?”

“Yes, for people. No for prairie dogs.”

“Yes, for ravens. No for Raccoons.”

Anyway, you get it.

related: about toys, madrugada, 3 short improvised plays

~3,000 miles

Cove Hot Spring, washed out on the Salmon River

thee Boat Box

tonic of wildness?

launching a cork boat

a day late for Taco Thursday in Kalispell

found: notes from somebody's playground experiment

a murder of crows harries a dog in Portland

lost coast found

 more photos here & here