I’ve always been fond of pebbles and cobbles, especially ones that are well rounded and polished.  They’ve travelled long distances, in rivers or maybe back and forth along beaches, in nature’s rock tumbler, rolling and rounding for thousands or millions of years by the force of flowing water.  When I was growing up in Illinois, … Continue reading PEBBLES AND COBBLES

According to vocabulary.com, the word ephemera was originally used as a medical term for an illness or health event that lasted one day.  The word later evolved to mean anything that lasts a short time, maybe a day or maybe just a second.  It might refer to anything, the very short life of mosquitoes, a … Continue reading ARMORED MUDBALLS

The northern Park Range of Colorado is bounded by the Sierra Madre Range in south central Wyoming, by North Park and the village of Walden to the east, and Steamboat Springs and the Piceance basin to the west.  I had never hiked or camped in the area, an odd state of affairs considering the mountains … Continue reading BAD DAY SCHMOOZING

One of my earliest memories of ancient humans involves Louie F.  Louie showed me his collection of Paleo-Indian arrowheads, spear points, pottery.  It was an impressive array of antiquities mounted in a large glass-covered case.  Louie grew corn and soybeans on 2,000 acres in northern Illinois farm country. He had a keen eye for tiny … Continue reading ARTIFACTS AND RUINS

Humans spend a lot of time skirting death but don’t think about it.  Driving at high speeds on two-lane highways requires concentration.  Some people don’t concentrate, they may be impaired by alcohol or drugs, or simply have bad luck.  Fifty-thousand people die in highway accidents each year, even with modern vehicle safety features.  During the … Continue reading THE END- PART 1

I’m driving east on the Lincoln Highway, old US-30 in western Nebraska, 10 miles west of Kimball.  Interstate 80 is only a few miles south, but I avoid high speed roadways whenever possible.  I’m cruising at 50 mph in a 65 zone.  The highway is essentially deserted, just the nearby BNSF railroad tracks, an occasional … Continue reading CREATIVITY

While recently browsing the nonfiction shelves at my local Denver Public Library branch, I saw a title that grabbed my attention.  The book, by Randy Frost and Gail Steketee, was titled Stuff.  Frost and Steketee are psychology professors who study compulsive hoarding and the meaning of things.  They are clinicians who’ve worked with hundreds of … Continue reading STUFF

Navigating Interstate 70 west of Denver is a painful experience for me.  Truthfully, I don’t enjoy driving interstate highways, except maybe in Montana where the speed limit is 80 and the lanes are deserted.   I-70 has changed in the last 40 years.  People now drive too fast on crowded, poorly maintained roadways.  But high-altitude road … Continue reading SYMMETRY

The Hotel St Petersburg was a nine-story monolith built in the 1970s during the period of extensive reconstruction following the Great Patriotic War.  The white Moderne-style building filled a long city block.  I stayed there while visiting the city.  In the mid-1990s it was run as a joint venture with a Finnish company.  That’s probably … Continue reading RUSSIA 1994

This essay was written in collaboration with David Vaughn. It all began with an exchange of texts involving shared experiences from the past, two stories of fated Volkswagen Beetles.  David had received a note in jest from Thaddeus, a text that jokingly included a picture of an old VW van, a colorful poster image from … Continue reading TWO BEETLES

Baxter (aka Crazy Bob, Mr Waggles, Baxter Boodle, The Bax, and Baxy) left us for a better place in December.  It’s been a sad state of affairs for us.  Baxter was a long standing member of our family, a sweet, gentle fellow.  He was a brown, cocker spaniel mix, a true gentleman.  Baxter’s mother was … Continue reading BAXTER

I’m boondocking today, comfortably slouching in my camp chair on the warm side of my Dodge van, protected from a chilly northeast wind.  The temperature is 48 degrees, the sky, a cloudless blue canopy.  I’m camped one half mile west of Hatch Point Road, 30 miles southwest of Moab, Utah, at 5,975 feet above mean … Continue reading CONSPIRACY

I’ve been fascinated by rivers much of my life, by the very nature of rivers and streams, their geology and hydrology, the history of their human interactions, and my personal experiences with them.  As an adolescent, I lived across the street from the Fox River in Geneva, Illinois.  The Fox flows south from its upland … Continue reading HEADWATERS

My son, Ken, knows me well.  He recently recommended the new movie release, Nomadland, staring Francis McDormand and directed by Chloe Zhao.  The screenplay is based on a book with the same title by Jessica Bruder.  The story features Fern, an introverted 60ish woman in the tiny mining hamlet of Empire, Nevada. She loses her … Continue reading NOMADS

I stopped briefly in Green Valley to buy groceries and check my weather app before driving to Madera Canyon.  It was late January and excellent weather was forecast, mid 60s, partly cloudy skies, light breezes, perfectly fine conditions for birding.  I drove east to the Santa Rita Mountains on the Madera Canyon Road.  The Santa … Continue reading BIRDS

I attended Catholic elementary school in Illinois during the 1950s.  Some 60 years later, two memories from that experience still stand out.  The first dealt with Hell, a really hot, pain-filled, agonizing place where the dead resided after committing a mortal sinꟷforever.  That description really scared me, especially after I ate meat on Friday a … Continue reading TIME

I’m not hallucinating from the effects of hypothermia, nor am I suffering from a deadly virus.  This essay does not address my vulnerability to risky stocks or ultraviolet light.  I often take photographs with different exposure settings, but that’s also about photons.  No trench coats either.  Exposure to new ideas is my intent, to reveal … Continue reading EXPOSURE

Several years ago while searching online for papers referencing my work, I ran across a disturbing entry.  I opened a PDF file, a document entitled Flood Transported Quartzites—East of the Rocky Mountains, published in the Journal of Creation and authored by Oard, Hergenrather, and Klevberg.  The authors were affiliated with Creation Ministries, an international organization … Continue reading PUBLISH OR PERISH

Bannock Pass is a saddle in the Beaverhead Range, a grassy summit on the Continental Divide separating Idaho and Montana.  I was driving from Dillon, Montana to Leadore, Idaho to do some hiking farther west in the Lost River Range.  The 7,700-ft crest was not the route of Lewis and Clark over the Rocky Mountains.  … Continue reading BIG SAUCE

“Your moniker should be Chama Man”, I said, “like Java Man or Peking Man”.  I meant that in the context of old archeological terms for species of Homo.  “I would be Denver Man”, I added.  I wanted to say “Teddy Man”, but didn’t.  We were on the Continental Divide Trail south of Cumbres Pass just … Continue reading CHAMA MAN

The sage covered prairie was surrounded by red and white sandstone monoliths, a stair-step collage of barren Permian surfaces jutting upward from the plain as sawtooth ridges, pinnacles, knobs, and arches.  Squaw Flat was the end of the road when I first visited in the early 1970s.  The air was hot and dry.  An old … Continue reading SQUAW FLAT