Mazama

I have always liked the word “serendipity.” Even better — serendipitous. This week I can use the word. While sitting by the river this past week, I had a serendipitous encounter. A young mother and her son happened by and found their way to the river’s edge. The mother soon reached down, overturned a couple of rocks, […]

A dime in my pocket, I headed to Dairy Queen on my blue Schwinn bicycle. It’s a Montana summer day in 1958, maybe 1959, and the thought of the treat I was going to purchase danced in my head: a cherry dipped cone. If you bit the swirled top off, you could suck up the […]

One thing (among many) that I have learned from the spokespersons for the fire teams is that wildland fires such as Cedar Creek and Cub Creek are anthropomorphized as living things with unpredictable behaviors. The can be directed, but they also have a “mind of their own.” When the rains came down last week, I […]

What a crazy, mixed-up summer it has been, full of fits and starts. Crowds of visitors; no visitors. Road open; road closed. Yellow skies; blue skies. Flames here; flames there. The summer of 2021 has been, to say the least, somewhat unsettling. When the North Cascades Scenic Highway opened in time for a long-planned trip […]

Instead of oppressive fire, smoke and excessive heat, this week I’ve chosen four positive cooling, refreshing topics: air, rain, clouds and movies. Air “Her arrival on the scene was like a breath of fresh air,” wrote W. Somerset Maugham in “Cakes and Ale” (1930). Being so described is most certainly complimentary. It is easy to […]

Who among us is not calamity weary? If it’s not the Delta variant, it’s the Delta fire area. If it’s not off-the-charts air quality indices, it’s potential flash floods. Then there are the angry yellow jackets. They were just hanging out waiting for their outdoor picnic/barbecue food when they were smoked out by the wildfires. […]

It seems a little ironic that I am writing my 100th column on my laptop in a friend’s “guest suite” as water-bearing helicopters fly overhead. We are on level 2 here, so may have to leave again with our horses in tow. As I write, the Cedar Creek Fire is a living, fire-breathing monster that […]

My first memory of fear and respect for fire was as a child watching “Bambi.” It was right up there with the flying monkey forest in “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” in eliciting adrenaline flow. I recently watched the YouTube video of the “Fire Scene” and had a renewed sense of my childhood fear of […]

With multiple firefighting aircraft overhead, smoke filling the upper valley, and Department of Natural Resources fire teams scouting our lane, once again the angst of summer wildfire has arrived. The packing “P” list is reviewed again: people and pets;  papers, phone numbers and important documents; prescriptions, medications, eyeglasses; pictures and irreplaceable memorabilia; personal computers/tablets, USBs, […]

Most everyone has a teacher or two who made a lifelong impression because of what he or she taught, how he or she taught, or how he or she made an extra effort to encourage your younger self. For me, the two teachers who made a lasting impression were both English teachers. The few school […]