Totality – it’s the word used to describe the one minute and fifty-four seconds during which I witnessed the moon completely covering the sun on August 21, 2017, as a total solar eclipse swept across North America. I would also call it transcendence. I hope those 114...

Two granodiorite cobbles sit on my desk. This shouldn’t surprise you, seems my desk has almost as many rocks as papers on it. These cobbles are similar in size and shape and rock type. Each is spheroidal, shaped on the shores of British Columbia in an area where...

I walked into my father’s room. He sat in his blue easy chair, wearing a maroon turtleneck and gray sweat pants. His hair and beard were freshly trimmed. He looked dapper, for Dad. And he was awake. A good day for a visit. But he seemed to be fussing with something in...

This rock is very old, though new to me. I recently picked it up on one of my many desert walks. Having rained the day before, it was rinsed clean and sparkled in the sun. Its glistening was irresistible to me – like a bottle cap to a raven or a tennis ball to a...

I brought my camera when I walked in the desert today. A blog needs images, right? Right. But not this morning. It rained yesterday, and the prickly pear fronds are swollen with the storm’s bounty. But it’s subtle, and the pictures just look like prickly pear, not...

[vc_row][vc_column width="1/2"][vc_column_text]For me, if something’s worth doing, it’s worth learning to do it well. And that means going to school, perhaps in a traditional way, perhaps not. Schooling I didn’t walk out of high school and into my professional life as...

I thought I was going to write about blue today, but it's going to be sky blue pink with yellow polka dots instead. When I was a kid, if you asked my dad what his favorite color was, sky blue pink with yellow polka dots was his answer. Maybe that gives you a sense of...

Sometimes I don’t hold the rock, it holds me. Some rocks don’t get stuffed into a pocket, then put on a shelf. Sometimes I nestle into a nook where I fit as well as a rock might fit in my hand, and make a memory to hold. Last October, backpacking into the inner gorge...

Waking before dawn with today’s to-do’s scrolling through my mind, I felt choked up just brewing a cup of tea – compile tax info, update Dad’s expenses, call the accountant, brush the dog, vacuum up the dog hair, do the laundry, work a closing shift at the bookstore,...

…to accept what is. My old dog, Sandy, is almost thirteen. We walk together nearly every day on the trails at the base of the Sandia Mountains for which he is named. These days his walk can wobble. When a jackrabbit crosses his path, he speeds up to a teetering trot,...