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2003-2004
Believe me, I know. The only thing more troubling than widespread discontent in line is when the lift itself stops and progress in that line - little working model of civilization that it is - grinds to a halt. Then the rational masses are reduced to a stupid, immobile, bovine collective wondering when we're gonna moov again. We're wondering it right now, but the big green wheel still isn't turning, the chairs aren't moving, and people keep coming. Me! I just want to get back in the trees, back in sync with nature, hook up with those dudes again, and go someplace less complicated. I dunno where, maybe lift 8. - Joel Tracy, "Life in the Slow Line," January/February 2003
After a week of anticipation and apprehension I find myself boarding a plane in Albuquerque for the first leg of air travel. On the plane from Houston, I ask my U.S.-based flight attendant what she knows about the situation at the end of our flight. "We can't stay in Caracas any more. It's too dangerous. American Airlines doesn't even fly there anymore. Good luck," she says. Another flight attendant, this one based in South America, comes by with the immigration paperwork. There are 16 other fools on the plane. In heavily Spanish-accented English, she gives the passenger in front of me a choice between two forms. I assume the plane is connecting onward from Caracas, and when she asks which form I want, I say, "Venezuela." She gives me an "Are you sure?" look and hands me the papers. When I look at the sheets I immediately recognize my mistake. She had said, "Venezuelan or Turista?" It turned out that Turista isn't another country after all, and I am quite sure she doesn't think I'm a spy. - Chris Bettin, "El Corozone de Venezuela," March/April 2003
From persistence and lively, wind-muffled cursing arises a condo-size tent with a profile fit for a MASH surgical unit. Sure enough, within 15 minutes the first "RRRRRRiiiiiiiiiiPP!!!!! is heard, followed by screams of excitement from its five or six residents, each apparently with their own room. There is a partial collapse and more furious flapping and ripping ensues, interspersed with desperate cries for more duct tape. Bent poles are given triage, stakes are hammered deeper and guy wires are actually utilized the second time around. This time the condo holds. - Jim Mimiaga, "Out On The White Rim," March/April 2003
Tragic as they were, the fires of 2002 reminded us that we can no more fireproof our forests than hurricane-proof our coasts. Fire is a part of the landscape and, in forgetting that, we got burned. - Tom Fry, April/May 2003
You see, inside our camera, a single 35 mm roll of 24 exposures can last over a year, which is theoretically capable of producing photos that merely remind us of people we currently know. - David Feela, "A Picture Is Worth Maybe 25 Cents," June/July 2003
And then I realized The Truth at last: My philosophy is No Philosophy. Now, this might started most people - I mean, aren't we supposed to know who we are, what we stand for, what we're working toward? Yet, my writing - and life, therefore, since, as my wife always points out with some chagrin, my life is literally an open book - can only be seen as the record of the mad ramblings of a man with no obvious point or pursuable advice for anyone who, like most people, might be reading in search of some guidance toward The Way for living a more rewarding, meaningful, significant life. I now know: I have no Way to offer. - Ken Wright, "Writer . . . without a cause," June/July 2003
And if you're flying in, well, I haven't done it myself, but I've heard the Telluride airport is almost as much fun to fly into as driving over Red Mountain Pass in a snowstorm. But seriously, it IS fun to get to Telluride and, once you're there, you really feel as if you've earned it. - Sean Cridland, "Reveling in the Telluride Wine Festival," June/July 2003
Wright's evolution of self is laid out cleanly, without self-pity or self-aggrandizement. He is clear as to his roots: ". . . If I were forced to file a form about it with the government, under ?Tribe of Origin' I'd pencil in New England Redneck. I mean ?redneck' in its best sense, its operational definition: that uniquely American critter, the blue-collar outdoorsman with the butt-white back and sun-fried head." - Kate Niles, Book Review, "Why I'm Against It All, by Ken Wright," June/July 2003
They are blood-feeding parasites that take their "blood meals" from a living host - most often a mammal such as a dog or a human or a squirrel. These creatures are only as big as the head of a pin. But, they attach to their chosen hosts until they become bloated and full, and then drop off. The females use that "blood meal" to feed their offspring - sort of like a perverted version of a mother feeding milk to her child. No, you are not about to read a horror story. This is simply a brief look at the life of a common tick, a life that is surprisingly very involved. - Shirena Trujillo Long, "All About The Tick," June/July 2003
If it weren't for declared wilderness and acres of public land, the Colorado mini-castle movement could potentially buy up every inspirational panorama in the state under the self-serving philosophy that if a mountain exists and nobody has built a house near the top of it, then it's impossible to hear anyone sigh. I know, at first that sounds ridiculous, but California residents are already battling in court to establish public ocean access where private homeowners have literally built a wall of mansions between the land and the beaches. And let's not forget, though we think of our lives here in the West as high and dry, that a tide of human flesh is forever rising, lapping closer and closer at the foothills of Colorado. - David Feela, "The Ego Has Landed," July/August 2003
I have to come out of the closet here, though: I'm a notorious camping poacher. Even as a kid I instinctively understood, long before I read about Zapata, what he meant when he argued that "The land, like the air we breathe, belongs to everyone, and to no one." So, camping illegally has been a favorite game since I was young. And I have to admit it: I never quite outgrew this primordial impulse to treat the world as my very own. - Ken Wright, "Webb & Anna's Excellent Adventure," July/August 2003
Free. Free is a word that in 15 years of riding a bike I have never associated with my sport of choice. Everything costs something, and it's never cheap when it comes to riding a bicycle . . . the only free thing I've ever received while riding a bike was a can of Busch chucked at my head at 50 mph and a whistle. - Brian Fornes, "Gravity Bustin' Gondola Ridin' Mountain Bikin' Telluride," July/August 2003
Once past the various palpitation-inspiring switchbacks, Rod pulled over and jumped out, yelling, "mountain treats." Once the rest of us realized we hadn't been left to catapult over the edge, we followed. He had located several large bushes of raspberries. They were plump and sweet and we ate our fill while picking out a restaurant for breakfast from a couple thousand feet above Telluride. - Chris Bettin, "Into Thin Air," September/October 2003
Why do I bowhunt? Because it's right for me. In fact at this stage in life, it is me. I've been flinging arrows since I was old enough to kiss the girls and like it . . . plenty long enough for archery to have become integral to who and what I am. And what I am - I've been told and don't deny - is a Pleistocene throwback. A friend once sent me a Gary Larson cartoon depicting a burly, hair-shirted Neandertal driving a pickup truck with a stone-tipped spear mountain in the rear-window rifle rack. At the bottom of the 'toon my friend had scribbled "Dave Petersen in a nutshell." Bull's eye! - David Petersen, "Why I Bowhunt," September/October 2003
Brave men, no doubt. But Powell soon discovered the catalyst behind their bravado: When the boats land on our side, I find that the only things saved from the wreck were the barometers, a package of thermometers, and a three-gallon keg of whiskey. The last is what the men were shouting about. Typical river rats. I know the type. - Ken Wright, "Lessons From The River Tribe," September/October 2003
I live for autumn. All year long I have reveries of those cool beautiful days to come, and memories of Octobers past. It is the most alive, the most heartbreakingly real season in my bones. I love the chilly winds and dying leaves and the first snow flurries that sweep intermittently down this lean valley. I adore the harvest smells around me of ripe and rotting fruit, of the last alfalfa cutting. Nervous horses with their heads raised, flared nostrils tautly sniffing arctic odors, make me feel like singing. And I long for the gorgeous death of that high-country season when the mountains pulse with a pellucid varnish of winter whiteness, and the spears of a million bare aspens - only moments ago bursting with resplendent foliage - create a soft gray smirrh across jagged hillsides. - John Nichols, "The Last Beautiful Days of Autumn," October/November 2003
. . . despite their popularity, I have never exited a ski swap glowing with self-applause over my shopping acumen. Instead, I've always slinked home feeling as if I jut picked up a homely straggler at a corner tavern at 2 a.m. Initially, I'm giddy over leaving the swap with something in my arms. But upon returning home, the shocking reality of my sorry purchase sets in causing me to openly vex, "What in cold hell was I thinking?" I then start pulling down shades and locking doors hoping none of the neighbors saw me dragging it in with me. My problem, or so I've been told, stems from always entering late. And late in ski-swap terms means 25 seconds after the doors open. Arrive after and chances of finding a fashionable parka or a well-tuned board are as improbably as actor Ned Beatty having never heard someone at a party mimic a squealing pig sound behind his back. - Jeff Wozer, "Disgrace and Dejection on the Ski Swap Floor," October/November 2003
Grateful Dead tunes drift out into the large room from a portable stereo. There are a few pieces of equipment here and there, a rack of skis on one wall and a refrigerator against another. A trash can sits to our left; later, I find out, that as the business's first physical asset, it has sentimental value to its owners. For ScottyBob Skis, a company that developed its product through trial and error, and a passion for innovation, there is a certain appropriateness to that. Indeed, if Silverton Mountain is the anti-resort, then ScottyBob Skis must be the anti-company. - Dave Welz, "ScottyBob: Handmade Skis and Big Ideas in Silverton, Colorado," December/January 2003-04
We stumbled by the modern trophy homes lining the ecological equivalent to genocide. A real-estate investor recently told me, "It's a shame what those elk do to that golf course." I replied, "Well, at least there are less of them now than before it was built." As we passed the housing development entrance with its ironic graphic of an elk standing on top of a golf ball, Bruce cupped his hands to his mouth to form a megaphone and yelled, "Fuck you, Homogeny Ranch! You ruined this valley!" He got his whole body into it and was encouraged as lights began to pop on in the living areas of those monuments to ostentation. I joined in, and before long we had enough light to safely walk home by. - Chris Bettin, "Truth Inaction," December/January 2003-04
Thankfully, our time in Las Vegas ended and we returned to our under-stated home in the desert Southwest, a location that will, hopefully, never achieve the status of a world-class destination. Unless, of course, someone divided that geographical point where the four states come together into 50 narrower, pie-shaped segments. And let's say we invited 46 governors who had a little extra time to a free Southwestern-style luncheon. Who knows? If the time-share business is busting loose, the market in sharing geographic landmarks might be just around the Four Corners. - David Feela, "Sins of Omission," January/February 2004
"Don't just exist - live!" Back in mid-century Oklahoma, my fifth-grade homeroom teacher, Mrs. Edith Pryor, scribed that advice in flowing cursive on the big green "blackboard," making quick barking sounds with the chalk. As banal as that proclamation may seem at first glance, its simple, self-evident wisdom has helped to shape my life, via a long series of decisions, into a form that I find valid. From here in the midst of my so-called peak earning years, granted, that shape does not appear to include the possibility of retirement. Yet, when you love your work - when life and love and place and profession all are of a piece - who wants to quit? - David Petersen, "Almost Home: A Walk In The Winter Woods," January/February 2004
It just wasn't my winter. I had been living in a 3-year-old trailer since November, and over the next month every inch of pipe in it had frozen solid. What's more, I had three feet of snow filling up my wood stove and my girlfriend had just left me for someone with a better heater. - Luke Auld-Thomas, "Stinky Cheese, Love, and Cocoa," January/February 2004
How did I become so cynical? Have I turned into this callous monster that doesn't care about anything? How did I lose that excitement within myself, that child-like innocence when the world was fresh and new? Outwardly, I seem genuinely positive but within the dark caverns of my personality there is this negative being. My cantankerous self hates weddings, accuses children of being immature and wants to start a fight club so I can take on my sixth-grade teacher, Sister Valleria. - Terry Maloney, "What I Have Lost," The Final Word, January/February 2004
"I live by my wife's clock," the batter states, continuing his conversation with his three teammates as he steps up to the plate (a Frisbee). "Yeah, and you're here 'cause it's now half-past can't," taunts the second baseman/shortstop/centerfielder. - Ken Wright, "Men's Tripping," March/April 2004
"Have you ever had dreams where you're naked?" "Have you?" This was decidedly not a conversation between Scandinavian men, but between my wife and my son. I functioned as mere observer and eavesdropper. I think it was about development of nurturance or basic biological issues or some such. Private conversation, anyway. This discussion provided way too much information for someone who grew up in the North Woods peering out a picture window. - Dave Sigurslid, "From the Journal of a Disgruntled Biologist: Males and Coddling," April/May 2004
We need an army of Sagebrush Patriots, a diverse but unified force of Western people - not just organized environmentalists, but fishermen and hunters and ORVers, alongside backpackers and mountain bikers and loggers and ranchers - standing together as a vanguard for the future. - Ken Wright, "Call Me A Sagebrush Patriot," June/July 2004
As a kid, I loved my bicycle, a contraption that must have been designed by another child as the most efficient means of escaping one's parents. I could ride for miles with a Freezy Pop hanging from my lips, sucking its sweet nectar until my tongue turned blue. But now, if I don't get a good cup of coffee running through me in the morning, I'm likely to lose my balance just trying to stand up. My tongue may not be blue but my teeth have acquired an antique shade of yellow. - David Feela, "Chain Reaction," June/July 2004
I make the perfect cast - not a good or even great cast - I mean the perfect cast. The line rolls out like a red carpet before royalty and the fly lights on the stream's surface without a ripple. The Cast, as I've come to call it in my countless tellings of this story, is followed by a flawless drift - which is the art of making an artificial bug look real to fish - and I see it. A big brown trout emerges from the shadow of an undercut bank, slowly rises to the surface and . . . slurp . . . takes the fly. After a fierce struggle, the big brownie is in my net and I'm on my knees in the shallow water removing the hook from its mouth. As I look up from first admiring then releasing my catch, I see the snow-capped mountains of the Continental Divide through a valley of pine and scrub oak divided only by the rushing ribbon of blue water before me, and I hear the faint rumble of Silver Falls less than half a mile away; I realize that this life-enriching moment is possible because me dad taught me how to fish . . . and how to approach life. I wish he were here right now. I feel a wry smile of my own coming on imagining what he'd say if he were. "Wow, that's a nice fish," he'd say. "Way to go. Now it's my turn." Like a kid at Disneyland, he'd have loved this place. - Jay E. Baldwin, "Days Spent Fishing," July/August 2004
I live to bowhunt September elk. As the season nears each year I almost tremble in anticipation of the forthcoming symphony of genuine bugling and the heady incense of pheromone-perfumed bull wallows. I'm frankly addicted to it all and to being an active part of it all. But when playing my part becomes undeniably disruptive, it's time to show some respect and restraint. Just because we love hunting at a certain time of year and in a certain way and have been doing it long enough to consider it tradition, or even a "right" (the most abused word in America today), doesn't in fact make it right. - David Petersen, "The Silence of The Bulls," July/August 2004
I asked my guides if I should be concerned about any animal life in the cave. I was thinking, of course, of black bear dens or perhaps a roving band of Morlocks. I was told that only bats, pack rats and albino spiders were potential encounters. Comforting. - Chris Bettin, "My First Time . . . Caving," September/October 2004
Cross quill and wrench as a magazine logo, and what do we get? A thinking person's pirate flag! A promise to seriously address serious issues, no matter the feathers that ruffle, to seek and tell the truth, no matter how unfashionable, to continue the culturally essential and essentially honorable role of troublemaker, to stand for something more than piggish consumption and profit and to do it all with style." - David Petersen, "Happy 6th Birthday Inside/Outside," October/November 2004
This wasn't just any day, though. It wasn't even just any other powder day: This was My Greatest Powder Day Ever - although I will grant that "greatest ever" powder days are, like sex, circumstantial and never the "ever." And also like sex, it wasn't that it was such a big or deep powder day, it was the style of this day. The snow was just deep enough . . . and it's flesh was just light enough . . . it was like the coordinates of those two variables were intersecting into a single, glorious, point - a frozen "GEE!"-spot - that we arrived just in time to catch. - Ken Wright, "Doing It," November/December 2004
"You know," the repairman said in a soft voice, "when there's no dipstick on an engine the oil has got to go into the gas." I knew what a dipstick was, and now I knew how a dipstick felt. - David Feela, "An Ounce of Oil, A Pound of Humility," November/December 2004
Mr. Otis never thinks too much. Never worries, though he sometimes seems to fret. At the moment, having spontaneously decided the best route home from here, he is feigning in that direction - running ahead and circling back, urging me to follow, eager to engage the shortcut climb. Sensing that my attention has shrunken inward again, he grabs a fallen limb the size of a pool stick and charges toward me, wagging the bait, teasing, tempting me to try and grab it. Predictably, when I reach for the carrot he whips around and runs ahead - then stops and waits and wags, luring me on, coaxing me out of my melancholic funk and into the challenge at foot. "Okay, pal. I'm coming." "Christmas Eve," I sigh again, taking a deep hit of cold air. Flinging one boot in front of the other, I launch into the homeward stretch. There's a party to enjoy tonight, I remind myself. Food, wine, women and song. And a whole houseful of dogs. And why the hell not?" - David Petersen, "Christmas Eve: Almost Home," November/December 2004
"It started like this: people were addicted to skiing. They didn't want to work. That made them bums - someone who asks for and gets something free. To soften the negative label, they inserted the word "ski." See how that works? - Amy Maestas, "So Long, Ski Bum," November/December 2004
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