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Posts tagged ‘hiking’

“Sauk Mountain, North Cascades, Washington” in EarthLines

The spray paint surprised me: neon orange slashes across a rocky trail crowded with glacier lilies, the season’s first flowers in the high meadows above of my house. About a half mile from the parking lot, the paint marks the end for a 54-year-old woman shot dead here last August, an incident I’d forgotten until crossing these remnants of forensic analysis. Though it’s been many months, the bright lines and directional arrows still highlight the locations of the killer and the victim, the latter located 50 yards downhill, four switchbacks from the gun. Read more

Fishing for stories: Winter article and 2011 column

While settling in Onalaska, Wisconsin, last winter, I snapped this photograph of our new home’s mascot, the bluegill (Lepomis macrochirus), a member of the sunfish family. In fact, our little town bills itself as the Sunfish Capital of the World thanks to Lock and Dam No. 7 on the Upper Mississippi River, which creates an angler’s paradise some three miles wide to the bluffs of Minnesota. Read more

High Country News: Gary Snyder, Jack Kerouac, and lookout tales in the North Cascades

Good news! My North Cascades-inspired essay, “Busted Beer Cans and Baby Culture,” was published in High Country News, appearing in its magazine and on its website, www.hcn.org. Read more

Memories like mountains: Using photos for route finding

Pen in hand, where do I start? My mind races with landscapes, family and friends, good times and heartbreakers, journeys beyond count. The memories stretch across decades, scattered like ten thousand riverbed rocks, each small enough to hold in my hand, uniquely jewel-like, yet all of them born from the same incomprehensible source, some mountain far upstream beyond view. There’s no trail here. It’s route finding like I’ve never known. Read more

“I ain’t old, just seasoned”: A rookie ranger’s delusion

My wife says that if country songs were personal anthems, mine would be Toby Keith’s “As Good as I Once Was.” Maybe she’s right. I sure was singing it two summers ago when I rookied as a wilderness ranger for North Cascades National Park. Read more

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