“Tonight I am pulled back into a body crumpled on the pockmarked wood floor, caressed by incessant drafts of cold air. The cold air is clematis vine, tendrils snaking through the cabin, climbing my shoulders, my hips, dipping into my nostrils and ears. It corkscrews so tightly around my fingers, I can no longer feel them. It blooms on my tongue, now too thick to speak.”

—excerpted from “Wildness,” published in High Desert Journal, Issue 28—

“Canyon wren notes descend. In my heart, a crescendo: of joy, requited longing, a sense of homecoming. Here, in this aridity, amidst scent of sage and cliffrose, I know who I am. I know my strength and how to carry its subtle, remarkable weight. Here, surrounded by barebones earth, my being is laid bare. My being is resilient and true.”

—excerpted from “Memory,” Red Rock Stories, 2017—

“Above it lies Arches, a redrock wonderland hidden atop a plateau, concealing towers, fins, narrow defiles, and thousands of eyeholes in the stone, peering over the jumbled jungle of rocky millennia. Across the valley, there is the purling and tilt of Behind-the-Rocks. Southward, slowly lifting out of the valley, a sharp horizon line hides secrets. Pushing to its edges, atop the Wingate cliffs, one finds a million-acre bowl full of erosional ecstasies below. The Green and Colorado Rivers, along with their supporting cast of streams and ephemeral arroyos, have etched a topography of patience and persistence, an ordered chaos of canyons, spires, buttes and benches.”

—excerpted from Blow Sand in His Soul: Bates Wilson, the Heart of Canyonlands, 2014—

“Whenever I see a mano and metate—this or another—I think of it as a metaphor for motherhood. The little ones always grind down us big ones so we curve around them, accommodate them, cradle them. Our children do more to shape us, I think, than the other way around. Go ahead and believe you’re the one doing the shaping, but when it’s all said and done, take a look at how hollowed out you are. Take a look at how nothing else fits that hollow space like your child.”

—excerpted from “Mano, Metate,” High Desert Journal, Issue 25—

“Preserving the fruit, I bottle up bits of my ardor, to reclaim in moments of pang and privation. In those jars is the work of hands that have delighted in silken mud, that have caressed sandstone curves, that have cradled collections of stones and feathers and cedar beads. When I eat the work of these hands, I am ingesting moonrise over cottonwood trees, echoing thunderclaps preceding rain, sand and sage-scent carried on the wind. Everything that nurtures the fruit nurtures me. My jeweled jars tell a love story. There is magic in this place.”

—excerpted from “Jeweled Jars of Memory,” Capitol Reef Reader, 2019—

“Uranium is a shape-shifting element. Ever lonely, it seeks the companionship of carboniferous deposits. It infuses tree limbs and bones with its essence, slowly replacing the dead matter with its elemental self. It is constantly on the move, from deep in the earth’s mantle outward, migrating on the wings of water. Driving plate tectonics. It is a vagabond. And it resists identification, hiding behind a multiplicity of hues and concentrations.

In this way, it mirrors humankind’s shape-shifting nature, each of us wavering on the tightrope strung between our hopes and our fears. With each falter and overcorrection, we shift the terrain of history. And we fashion the course of our lives.”

—excerpted from “Meander: A History,” Mountain Gazette, Issue 180—

“Nonessential. Experimental. Of less worth than nonnative cattle. These are the terms by which a Mexican wolf lives. Is such a recovery plan perhaps more cruel to the canids than the extinction from which they were saved?
As one who has been moved by wolf song on the wind – a sound that is haunting, mournful, alive and keening – I want to see wolves restored to their historic range. I want to see atonement for the human-authored tragedy of wolf eradication. I want to populate the voids with wolves, replacing the heavy silence of their loss.
But I would rather find stillness in the land of the lobos if the alternative entails repeating history. I would rather not have wolves at all than subject new generations to past paradigms.”

—excerpted from “Mexican Wolves, Still Strangers in a Strange Land,” Writers on the Range, 23 Oct. 2010—

“Moab needs its eccentrics. It needs its darers and dreamers. They are the essential artists painting on the canvas of the day-to-day, reminding us that this life is less desperate – and more urgent – than we suppose. The eccentrics advise us that imagination is not a childhood relic, that dreams need not be confined to the brain, and that conformity is the first sign of societal heart disease. But eccentricity is a dying breed, relegated to the shadows – especially during tourist season.”

—excerpted from “When in Doubt, Pee on the Fire,” Mountain Gazette, Issue 183—

“This five-mile-wide, 25-mile-long valley on Colorado’s western edge arrived at its unique name – Paradox – thanks to an idiosyncratic Dolores River that meanders across the valley instead of through it, punching into towering walls at both ends. In a sense, the Dolores is a metaphor for the breed of quixotic and stubborn soul that has chosen to call the Paradox Valley home over the last century. Many barriers stand in the way of making a home here, but residents persevere.
There exists the path of least resistance; and then, there is the road to Paradox.”

—excerpted from “Paradox Valley, Colorado: The Half-Life of Belonging,” Inside/Outside Southwest, Nov.-Dec. 2009—

“The whole time you’ve been waiting to get to the money spot that’s worthy of bragging rights and interminable slideshows, you’ve been surrounded by expanses of redrock, fine coral sands, pungent sage, inviting potholes, forgotten drainages full of remnants of the past, canyon wren song, and the dizzying swoops of swallows. The first Indian paintbrush of the year is blazing at your feet, and the most beautiful cloudscape that no atlas can map is above your head.

In your search for that one brushstroke of Eden, you missed the whole damned canvas full of paradise.”

—excerpted from “A Hiker’s Guide to the Desert,” Mountain Gazette, Issue 177—

“So, ladies, here’s a proposition: Do something unexpected. Astonish a bystander with what the men in your life “allowed” or “trusted” you to do. And then inform that astonished witness that your actions sprang not from any Y chromosome in the room, but from your own goddamn, agency-loving, spirited and inspired self. Your first stop should be the voting booth. Move outward from there. Let me know how the experiment goes..”

—excerpted from “My Husband Let Me Write This,” The Sandpoint Reader, 13 Oct, 2022—

“The violet hour belongs to swallows.

This is the evening span when canyon walls glow with an interior luminosity, when the setting sun simply cannot account for the wash of colors across the land – colors that exist for this one expansive moment each day, hues that Crayola finds impossible to ensnare in wax.

This is the hour when light dances out its last breath before darkness descends, and its sweet death throes enliven the world.

And this is the hour of the swallows. Is it any wonder they swoop in circles of such ecstasy?”

—excerpted from “Hope is the Thing with Feathers,” Mountain Gazette, Issue 172—

“It is not a ghost town. If you listen closely, there’s a faint pulse. And if you stay long enough, the quiet cadence may even erupt into a car chase or conflagration. Amidst the shadows of memory in Cisco, Utah, there are new stories in the making. The town – population 5 or so, depending on the day – is not dead. However, its presence and its past are slowly sinking into an indifferent desert.
Most of Cisco’s buildings are in ruins. The wind has knocked all the right angles out of those still standing. The town’s broke-down vehicle-to-human ratio must be 50-to-1. Housewares are scattered across the desert. Amtrak’s California Zephyr still passes through town, though passengers and their dreams no longer make a stop here.
The only dreamers left in Cisco are oilmen. And the oilmen live elsewhere.”

—excerpted from “The Madness and Memories of Cisco, Utah,” Inside/Outside Southwest, Sept. 2010—

“However, cabins crumble and carvings fade, as do our bodies and minds. Succession, loss and the slow entropy of forgetting, while painfully poignant, make room for the next surge of stories and songs. And if we are fortunate, a heart or two will hold the spark of our memory long after the embers of our life are reduced to smoke. Remembrance becomes the greatest gift from – and for – the departing and the departed. Whether writ on a canyon wall, heralded by an empty water bottle, or carried silently in the depths of one’s soul.”

—excerpted from “Forgetting in a Landscape of Memory,” Mountain Gazette, Issue 188—

“I once promised my progeny to this place and my bones to this soil. I once opined that, perhaps, after five generations, my desert-bound genes would know this corner of the earth as I would like to know it now. The secrets would be revealed upon proof of requisite dedication. What happened to that dedication?
Our dreams hit the economic realities of Moab, and so dedication ceded its reign to the shine of a newly minted future. It feels like a betrayal that Moab could not provide us the chance to hope for something better… without also proffering the burden of untenable debt. It is a sadness – but not a surprise – that dedication and ardor were not enough. Ardor does not pay the bills.”

—excerpted from “Migration,” The Times-Independent, 20 Sept., 2012—

“Despite its remote location, Hanksville, Utah, has always been on the road to somewhere. In the early days, horse and cattle rustlers passed through, taking their loot to Colorado markets. It was a place of rest for the Wild Bunch outlaws. It has been a supply post for miners of many eras roaming the Utah desert in search of hidden fortunes. And now, the tiny town is a stopover for tourists traveling to Lake Powell, Capitol Reef National Park, the San Rafael Swell, and other redrock, outback adventures.
Hanksville is forever on the route and never the destination. Its population has remained virtually unchanged – around 200 residents – for a century. It’s a dusty piece of desert surrounded by millions of acres of undeveloped canyon country. Paradoxically, it is this isolation that guarantees the town’s survival. For over 100 years, it has been the only supply post for miles.
Hanksville is truly the middle of nowhere.”

—excerpted from “Where the Hell is Hanksville?,” Inside/Outside Southwest, Aug.-Sept. 2008—