"It has been reported that I was seriously ill..."

---

"It has been reported that I was seriously ill -- it was another man; dying -- it was another man; dead...
As far as I can see, nothing remains to be reported." - Mark Twain

---

Whenever I stumble back upon a blog I've not read in some time, only to find it has languished, unposted to, since my last visit, I tend to wonder.  I wonder what the reasons are that the blog has not seen words, that posts have gone unmade for so long a time.  And I worry.  I worry that perhaps some tragedy has struck in said blogger's life, and that this is the reason for their absence from the 'net.

Archival Footage: Jimmy

Back around the turn of the century, my then-favorite print magazine, Mountain Gazette, held a "1000 Words" writing contest to see who among their readership could produce the most compelling story with this word-limit as a constraint. I submitted the following work of fiction just before the deadline.  

I got an email reply from the editor, M. John Fayhee, a short time later wherein he stated something to the effect of, "Our editorial board was, in truth, fundamentally split between your story and one other. Yours is a good piece of writing. But in the end they went with the other. Apologies."

I am pleased to report, however that after this rejection, over the course of the next few years, they nevertheless later picked up a few of my photos and also an essay I wrote for publication.

And, some years later, after Mountain Gazette was done as a print mag, Fahyee also used a quote of mine in his book, Colorado Mountain Dogs, too. A fact I discovered only after stumbling quite fortuitously into a author-reading/book-signing he was holding at a small bookstore in Salida, Colorado, a summer ago. He kindly inscribed the book I purchased "to a mountain gazette alumni."

Anyway, for the record, here's my runner-up "1000 Words" short story, adapted from the first few chapters of a heretofore yet unpublished work that I've been slowly pecking away at for years now which still bears the simple title: Jimmy...

Archival Footage: The Eastern Sedimentary Block Of Mount Elden

Heart Trail

The following graduate term paper was written and submitted by me "in partial completion of the requirements" for a Geology For Teachers course I took at Northern Arizona University in the summer of 2004, during what is probably best characterized as the second-phase (of four, I think) of  my post-baccalaureate academic career.

A significant addiction

“May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view.” – Edward Abbey.
Looking at the last few months of my Instagram and Facebook accounts, I've noticed a theme, and I believe it reveals a significant addiction which I have acquired over the course of many years.

To trails, as seen over the handlebars of a bicycle. And also to the tracks I've left behind. #BLE

Arizona Trail

Crap. Crap. Crap. [Updated]

(Warning: biopsy image below)

I was, no exaggeration, no more than one toe away from being done with my annual strip-for-it full-body skin-cancer screening today when my PA found this on my left Greek toe.

What the heck?

Gosh dang it.

The wild telegraph poles of Dry Lake Hills (part two)

Telegraph  F

Some time ago I wrote a blog-post about a set of old telegraph poles I'd found near Rocky Ridge Trail and the Elden Lookout Road.

Out riding this past Sunday, while passing through an area of the woods that recently underwent a large-scale prescribed burn, I spotted another old telegraph pole not too far off the north-side of the trail I was riding.  

It was quite charred on one side, but still recognizable as a pole, despite the damage it had recently incurred.