a year ago last weekend, alan, erick and i drove an e-corps rig which will not be named up to colorado--staying on the way up on national forest land--for a training, and our meandering journey home (the particulars of which i will also leave unmentioned) can only be described as an adventure ( Read more... )

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my path once again crossed that of alan venneman the same weekend laura moved into a house in terlingua. alan was making his roundabout way to new mexico--where he had taken a job for the summer-which as luck would have it included a spur south into the big bend. i stayed, almost as if by the law of inertia, at laura's new place for the vast ( Read more... )

some substances are undeniably essential elements of the universe, an admixture of which (no doubt) all objects, experiences, consciousness, events, and perhaps even the deep underpinning or armature beneath it all are sculpted. few would contest that coffee is one of these elements. peanut butter certainly is. don't believe me? just consult ( Read more... )

the spires and slabs of the austin skyline, on a clear day viewed from the southeast with the balcones escarpment rising up behind them--the front marches of the hill country--useta could put a lump in my throat and almost bring tears to my eyes.

welcome to what they are talking about when they say 'the wild west.' progress, tx to be exact. progress is a typical turn-of-the-last-century startup western town. it has been platted and the property maps filed with the appropriate authorities at the county courthouse in alpine. there are plots designated for schools, churches, a college, and ( Read more... )

i never used to wear a hat so that i could receive revelations from the gods. now i wear one at all times to keep my thoughts from floating away.

we dug and planted a garden at the remuda. beans, cucumbers, jerusalem artichokes, from seed. tomatoes, peppers, marigolds (for pest control), from starts. we also planted summer squash but have seen nothing of them. the plot is roughly ten by ten ft and surrounded by a fence we built. this is made of some orange plastic construction netting, ( Read more... )

on the south rim of the grand canyon, so im told, there is a gift shop overlooking the chasm. perched right on the canyon's ledge, the windows of the gift shop command a breathtaking view of its depths. on the opposite wall, it has been related to me, there hangs a huge flat-screen television, from which crowds of visitors to the shop can view ( Read more... )

In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. [...] In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic ( Read more... )