The whole trek would have proved relatively uneventful except for the last two hundred yards of the trail. I was in the lead of five other backpackers, returning to the trailhead. The hiker behind hollered, “Do you see the car?”
Posts tagged as “essays”
Do you shudder at the sight of low-life trailer-trash crankheads driving around in their beat-up Camaros? Do you nod solemnly when one of the big tv news actors presents a piece on how methamphetamine is now the Number One Drug Scourge of the United States? Are you shocked at video footage of police and firefighting personnel in radiation suits removing chemistry lab equipment from innocuous rural dwellings? It's everywhere, isn't it?
“Remember the void, Chuck. Remember the void.” Dramatically, the woman held his face in her hands, staring deeply into the void of Chuck’s eyes. “C’mon Chuck, let’s go.” We dragged him away from the woman…
The 15th Edition of The Encyclopedia Britannica informs us that according to existentialism, “… man is not a detached observer of the world, but ‘in the world.’ He exists in a special sense in which…
The viral video released this week by the Taliban trumpeting their victory in the five-for-one prisoner exchange that will bring Bowe Bergdahl back to the US to face the court of public opinion begins and…
During the first week of June I headed into the Yolla Bolly-Middle Eel Wilderness in the northwestern corner of Mendocino County. In the Wintun language "Yo-la" means snow covered and "Bo-li" translates to high peak. Doubt there will be snow, but peaks rise to the 7,500 foot range. The trailhead lies a few miles south of the three main peaks: Sugarloaf Mountain, Solomon Peak, and Hammerhorn Mountain.
My friend David Jouris, an eccentric mapmaker, photographer and quotation collector, has for several years suggested I create a web site called Walton Predicts. This suggestion stems from David’s amazement at my uncanny ability to make predictions that always come true. I have resisted creating such a site because making predictions is a sacred art, such prescience granted by the gods, which gifts I dare not taint with commercialization or anything smacking of self-aggrandizement. I am but a conduit for these coming attractions, an English channel.
When the Newman family first came to Anderson Valley in the late 1950s, it was as part-timers; most weekends during autumn, winter and spring, and all summer when my parent’s summer camp near Philo, El…