Beaded Buffalo

 
“Far and away, the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.”
~Theodore Roosevelt, Sep. 7, 1903
Some questions are meant to go unanswered. Why, for instance, didn’t the rattler coiled a mere foot off the trail make me pay dearly for my haste and inattention? Reptile apathy? Divine [...]

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“Anyone can love a mountain, but it takes soul
to love a prairie.”
~Unknown
If a human can lust after land, then Mark and I were weak-kneed and breathless over Buffalo Gap.
Mark’s a man of high mountains, and I, too, share a fondness for the alpine regions. But we were both at a station in life when [...]

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“To keep your secret is wisdom; to expect others to keep it is folly.”  ~Samuel Johnson, 18th century English author
I know a place where the unicorn is the last one at the watering hole. It’s a tiny lake on the side of a mountain, encircled by forest primeval, and its still waters reflecting the surroundings [...]

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“We need wilderness because we are wild animals. Every man needs a place where he can go to go crazy in peace.”  ~ Edward Abbey, from The Journey Home
It was our first night out in the Kalmiopsis Wilderness, a rugged, dense-brush patch of southwestern Oregon that’s spitting distance from the Pacific. Earl, who’d struggled [...]

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“…the sensation is one of perfect peace, mingled with an excitement that strains every nerve to the utmost, if you can conceive of such a combination.”  ~ Wilbur Wright
True confession time. When perched high atop a mountain or a cliff cantilevered over some canyon, with nothing but sky and the occasional magpie before me, I [...]

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“Silence is the true friend that never betrays.” ~ Confucius
Poet Emily Dickinson once described herself as having an “appetite for silence.” In that case, you could say I’m a gluttonous hog insatiably slobbering at the trough of solitude. To me, incessant societal noise is a disease that can be cured only by visiting quiet [...]

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“I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape— the loneliness of it…. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show.” ~ Andrew Wyeth
When it’s 2 A.M. on a January night in the Rockies, and nature’s call has the most tender flesh on your body exposed to temperatures [...]

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“We need another and a wiser, and perhaps a more mystic concept of animals… In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and confident, gifted with…senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear.”
~ Henry Beston, “The Outermost House,“ 1928
There’s a razor-sharp line between naiveté and [...]

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“Prayer indeed is good, but while calling on the gods,
a man should himself lend a hand.” ~Hippocrates
The ashes of a cremated infant barely fill the palm of an adult’s hand. Like the cinders in a cold campfire, they are soft to the touch, almost delicate, and when scattered on the mountain wind they drift like [...]

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“I grow very fond of this place, and it certainly has a desolate, grim beauty of its own that has a curious fascination for me.” ~ Theodore Roosevelt, 1883
When you’re in mud so thick it can suck the socks and boots from your feet, it’s easy to see why they call the place “Little [...]

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