On the wind-swept high plains prairie outback of North Dakota, underneath a rusting vertical heap of green John Deere wheat combines, I discovered a Volkswagen beetle. It looked like a late 60s model in robin-egg blue and was partly crushed by the tons of rotting steel on top of it. I stopped, …
An Irish Blessing
A five hundred-foot pillar of cloud marked our progress on the otherwise monochrome of rolling sage that cloaked the expansive flats at the base of the mountains. The Pahsimeroi is sometimes called the “Big Valley†by local residents with good reason; it is a gently tilted valley up to 15 miles …
Cabin Fever
Cabin fever has a way of bringing out the unique in people. They’ll invent strange and sometimes vexing pastimes in those places under the brittle and icy veil covered by the darkness of a Northern winter. Take curling, for instance. Some of us will never quite understand why this ice-bound game …
War Comes to Idaho
Dear Friends and Partners, After the ground crew pulled wheel chocks, Howard Thompson, Flight Officer aboard the B-17 Flying Fortress fired up the 4 Pratt and Whitney engines while Commanding Officer and First Lieutenant Joe Brensinger worked through the preflight. It was late Tuesday afternoon, on …
A Thanksgiving Card From Alderspring
It was the weekend before Thanksgiving Day. Winter had already staked claim on the country, but we had to ride. Thirteen-year-old Melanie and I left the woodstove warmth of our cozy kitchen after a breakfast washed down with hot coffee. In the mudroom, we put on silk scarves and oilskin slickers …
Love on the Range
In retrospect, I know now that it was a love affair. Her name was Missy, and I believe it was mutual. I didn’t even try to keep it a secret from Caryl. I knew that she figured it out early in my forays into distant rangelands with the then nineteen-year-old Missy. We had been discovered in our …