April 2009
1 post
8 tags
20090406.1
University of Oregon
Eugene, Oregon
Visibility is unlimited, the pilot says. We’ll be able to see from the Grand Tetons to Arizona. Later, a mustachioed, middle-aged Cincinnati businessman sitting beside me upon noticing that I’m taking in the large breasts of a woman sitting across the isle: I can see the Tetons all right. And they are grand.
The train from Portland is nice....
March 2009
2 posts
8 tags
Canyonlands National Park
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Driving to The Needles, the southeast district of Canyonlands National Park, I’m listening to Fresh Air. Terry Gross is interviewing Mudresh Mahanthappa, a jazz saxophonist and composer who combines post-bop jazz with Carnatic...
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San Rafael Swell
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The canyon country does not always inspire love. To many it appears barren, hostile, repellent—a fearsome, mostly waterless land of rock and heat, sand dunes and quicksand, cactus, thornbush, scorpion, rattlesnake, and agoraphobic distances. To those who see our land in that manner, the best reply is, yes, you are right, it is a dangerous and terrible place. Enter at...
February 2009
2 posts
8 tags
Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve
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After miles of the winding canyons and passes of the Gunnison Basin, you enter southern Colorado’s San Luis Valley. It’s vast and flat, a section of Kansas lifted to 8000 feet, ringed in snow-capped peaks. And hidden in the corner are 30 square miles of the tallest sand dunes in North America.
The terrain ranges: a 14,000-foot peak, an alpine lake, a mountain...
6 tags
The B.F. Look
After a summer spent patrolling the backcountry of Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve, my friend and her husband, whose hair and beard had been spared the blade for many a month, were walking the streets of Juneau during an Alaska Marine Highway stopover. A (very drunk) man walked out of a bar and up to Bill, grabbed Bill’s beard, and gave it a good tug. “You’re a...