unfazed by my intrusion
dropping from the stony elevations.
sandstone bluffs shadow the river.
the prairies beyond.
mountain men, gold miners.
the sky-high world of the rain forest canopy.
dingoes steer clear of cultivated country.
the seriousness of the Fence is immediately clear.
keen enough to detect the squeaks and scrabbles of mice tunneling under the snow.
that bull forgot all about me.
a snout full of snow is a small price for a meal in February's exhausting cold.
clouds chased each other about like bear cubs on a hill.
pillars of creation.
essential for telling how far away the galaxy is.
It's 1999. You're dead What do you do now?
a glimpse of early Roman gamesmanship.
an arctic explorer.
time exposures.
the Etched Hourglass Nebula is actually a shell of gas expanding from a dying star.
bleached driftwood skeletons.
on the tundra sedge.
silver braids of glacial silt.
grizzlies prowl on this naked sweep of earth.
where caribou and conflict thrive.
the death of a bowhead still excites community youth.
it doesn't look good out there.
kings, reds, humpies, dogs.
frigid air boils with scorching exhaust.
the cathedral project.
miles from prosperity.
in this otherwise thing and unrevealing book.
crumbling like week-old bread.
the pheasant hunter fires three times.
I dawdle.
early winter's translucent frost glazes the brittle ones and bristling needles of a fallen pine.
a tumbling matchstick in the snowmelt flood.
where scouring erosion lays bare the sinew and substance of the earth.
the driftwood of abandoned dreams.
cast in sharp relief by the setting sun.
a driftwood gallery conjures visions.
endlessly shaped and shifted by the water's sculpting power.
dawn reveals the riverbanks.
the last best river.
fluid emblem of vast western spaces.
the sun's passage across a steam-filled sky.