On a theme of Billy the Kid, Muleshoe, and The Chiminea Debrief… We made Santa Rosa, barreling through snowfall so heavy it made me dizzy, performed a flawless locked-wheel skid at the entrance to the Santa Rosa La Quinta Inn, dumped our gear without ceremony, then headed back out into the storm to find some ...

Last week we butchered the turkeys. I can admit that I didn’t feel good about it–who would–but it was time. With the deep snow our henhouse simply wasn’t big enough for the turkeys and chickens to live in bird-harmony anymore, given that the turkeys were approaching forty pounds each, and acting like jerks. So, reluctantly–I ...

We are expecting snow here by the end of the week, along with much of the country, which means that the hundred or so winterizing projects I have been putting off can’t wait much longer.  I’ll admit to a touch of simple laziness.  A late fall warm-up seduced me into thinking I had more time, ...

Yesterday I was fitted for hearing aids.  I’ve known for some time that my hearing is in decline, and the tinnitus in both ears has been driving me crazy, so a couple of weeks ago I drove into town and took advantage of the free hearing test in Sisters.  I flunked.  I knew that I ...

Yesterday, near the end of a daylong cattle-buying adventure in the soggy Willamette Valley, I enjoyed quite possibly the best hamburger I have ever eaten.  I don’t throw out praise like this very often, so you can take it to the bank.  If you ever want a GREAT hamburger–that is, if you aren’t sulking around ...

This year I applied, through the government lottery system, for seven separate hunting tags.  I applied for, in order of importance for the ranch freezer, the following tags:  bull elk, cow elk, deer, antlerless deer, bighorn sheep, Rocky Mountain goat, and antelope.  A hunter is allowed only one bighorn tag in his lifetime, so there ...

Today’s piece is a new excerpt from The Hired Man, a novel in progress….       In 1946 Charlotte Mulroney was nineteen and bestowed with what his father had called “An impeccable conformation.”  Del was twenty two and home from the war, a wounded veteran of the Pacific campaign in a new hat and denim ...

I don’t know why it should be that late last night, while I was riding with T.E. Lawrence into the fires of Damascus, and only shortly after he had discovered the horrors of “The Turkish Hospital,” that I would have occasion to reminisce about dining with my father.  It might have been his devotion to ...

Today’s offering is an excerpt from The Hired Man, a novel in progress.      When he was a boy and a bull slipped the fall gather they would grain the mules.  Twice a day Del would whistle them up from the bottom pasture and grain them with barley and corn rolled in sweet molasses. ...

A few years ago, after losing my grandparents, my dad, and our son, in a rapid cascade of debilitating blows, I needed to get away.  Badly.  I was working seventy hour weeks as a narcotics detective, a notorious and occasionally dangerous grind of surveillance and door kicking, and what little time I had left was ...