I must have been reading Shakespeare (Aeschylus?) when I first came across the term Deus Ex Machina. Loosely translated from the Latin, it means God Out of the Machine. It refers to a plot twist at the end of a play where the hero is saved against impossible odds. I
Writing last week about Wendell Berry and my father kicked in some good memories growing up. You’ll have to bear with me. I’ll be back to the standard fare next week. Even though my relatives would tell me that my father was proud of me, I knew the
When things play out - sometimes seemingly against all odds - it can give us the feeling that all is right with the world. …and Don’t Forget to Write….. If you’ve written to me the last couple of years and I haven’t written back, it’s because of a
Wendell Berry died yesterday in his home in northern Kentucky. I was originally going to call this piece The Unsettling of America in reference (homage?) to one of Berry’s more incisive collections of essays on place and farming and community, but I settled upon this one. If you’re
In his important* book What It Is Like to Go To War, Vietnam War veteran Karl Marlantes takes a moment to describe an old NCO (non-commissioned officer), ‘Gunny Mike’. The year is 1969. I've either taken directly from, or paraphrased Marlantes below - Gunny Mike was close to
Another essay by my pal Chrissie Oken. She's a climbing ranger in Denali National Park There is nothing quite like the exquisite stupidity that comes with experience. The same ease that allows us to function smoothly after years of repetition can also slip us into surprisingly dangerous situations
Q: When is it wrong to be right? A: When it almost kills you. A few years ago, an avalanche forecaster well north of here issued an Avalanche Warning. When people rolled their eyes at the boy crying wolf, he doubled down and decided to prove himself right. Pretty soon,
I spent many years in this cabin in Lupine Meadows, but in many ways, I was only a guest. ❄️ The bats and the mice wonder When their guest will leave. The pronghorn, too, were seasonal guests.
(previously published last winter in The Avalanche Review) WARNING! Books like these are not for everyone. They’re only for people interested in how to make better decisions, not just in the alpine or the backcountry, but in our day to day lives. There was an era when the conventional
(I’ve adapted Los Dos Reyes y Los Dos Laberintos de Borges). Long ago, in a faraway land, there lived two brothers, kings who ruled his own kingdom and between these kingdoms rested an uneasy detente, for the brothers only pretended to get along. The one-eyed king lived in
Whenever we are confronted with an important decision, *Conventional Wisdom* dictates that we look at and weigh various options, minimize the risks, and set forth upon a course of action. But there are certain situations when, as long time cop and risk consultant Gordon Graham describes, there’s “No time
We were in Alaska last week visiting friends. One of our stops was in Talkeetna to see Tucker and Chrissie. They are climbing rangers for Denali National Park. Chrissie let me publish her essay Ante Ora Parentum here; though she previously published it on the Denali Dispatch page. You'