Short hiatus

Off to Kansas City on the train tomorrow to get blood drawn and God knows what else in a Parkinson's study. Soon I hope to have a tablet or laptop, which may (or not) encourage more impulsive posting; but not yet, so blogging is hereby suspended for a couple of days. I will report anything of interest...

The Real Indy

Paleoblog reminds us that it is Roy Chapman Andrews' birthday. (HT Walter Hingley, once again). Naturalist, intrepid explorer, bone digger, hunter (he shot a Mannlicher- Schonauer 1903 carbine like mine, Savage Model 99's, and Savage bolt actions in .250- 3000), writer, self- promoter, and sometime director of the American Museum of Natural History, he was the closest thing to Indiana Jones in the real world.

Father Bakewell knew him, and he was a childhood idol of mine.He may have rubbed more modest scientists the wrong way, but he had a genius for finding remarkable things even while looking for others; his expedition discovered dinosaur eggs in a nest, iconic fossils which I saw and touched in Ulan Bataar, while looking for human ancestors.

His many books are still readable. You can join the Roy Chapman Andrews Society here.

Never let it be said that he was not an inspiration...

Place, Water, and Writing...

I was thinking about the proposed water grab on the Plains of San Augustin and thinking about writing as I put some notes together for Lauren, when I read this post by Chad Love on the Sand Hills and a little connection sparked across my synapses. I remembered how I used to use a passage from The Hidden West by Rob Schultheis to teach my students at Wildbranch how to write about Place. The following is from my preface to the Wilder Places edition of 1996.

"I learned to push my students to write in class, not just in their off-time; to handle short assignments with vivid writing , evoking favorite landscapes, putting real animals and people into them. I searched fro writers and passages that would inspire emulation. I introduced my students to essays by Annie Dillard, descriptions of tarpon fishing by Tom McGuane, poems by Ted Hughes. And I brought them a passage from Rob Schultheis' The Hidden West.

"On the first day of class I read them the passage that begins: "If the mysteries of the Great Plains have a heartland, it is the Sand Hills of Nebraska." Schultheis introduces the area with a disconcerting image (one with a structure I suspect he "stole" from Churchill)-- the grassy hills are a desert, a hidden one, with more secrets hidden inside them: "A sea inside a desert wrapped in a green prairie." He brings you, the reader, into the scene in an intimate, active way, with vivid language that owes nothing to the piling up of descriptive words that students often think characterizes "fine" writing: "...dig. Beneath the brittle grass and the thin smoke of soil you hit sand: you are standing in a sea of dunes."

"After setting the scene, he gives us a character, Martha Schaller, who was born there of a settler family. I don't know what kind of person the reader would first imagine, but Martha "was six feet tall and weighed about a hundred pounds, still wore the Levi jacket she had gotten for her thirteenth birthday, smoked little black cigars and had been a model in Paris. Her childhood had been a honky-tonk fairy tale." He sets her family in the ghost-ridden landscape:

'Once as she rode home at winter dusk in a swirling Great Plains blizzard, her horse spooked and she looked up and saw (she said) an enormous white wolf, three feet high at the shoulder, leap the barbed-wire fence and race away across the white prairie. There was also an eroded sandstone bluff back in the hills, and when you crawled in with a flashlight you found yourself in a vault that went as high as fifty feet in places. And there were bats: tens of thousands of the ruby-eyed little leather devils hanging upside down.'

The "story," all of three pages long, ends in tragedy. Martha's father and his pal blow up the bat cave in a spasm of unnecessary fear of rabies. The Ogallala Aquifer, the hidden sea, begins to dry up. Martha returns to find her father drunk at his desk.

'It's all over, he told her. Sand Hill's cattle ranching's dead. We got maybe thirty years left, and then the whole business is going to dry up and blow away; from Denver to the hundredth meridian, this country's gonna look like Afghanistan. The dirt farmer and the rancher's gonna be as fifty million buffalo, as dead as Crazy Horse, as rare as a set of Jackalope antlers. Ed Weicker and I and every other rancher in this county should have crawled in that cave with the goddamn bats and dynamited the door down from the inside.'

I look at my students, as hushed and moved by this set of characters in a landscape, this piece of nature writing, as by any short story or tragic play. And I say, "Go thou and do likewise: write me a piece of landscape that means that much to you. You have ten minutes." And I walk out the door.

The bitch is back...

The hag Coopers that is. I am a LITTLE tired of her. She doesn't take too many pigeons, and the ones she takes are probably not my best (though if any of my occasional flying pouter discussion group are reading, several half pouters of the bulky Spanish kind have so far outflown her), but she keeps them stirred up and nervous, and that's not really good at the beginning of the breeding season. Also, she goes right inside the loft, kills and eats a pigeon, and sits there staring at you. I like predators, but she's a little presumptuous.

So this time, we decided to take her five miles south and a couple of hundred feet higher into Hop Canyon, which rises up into the peaks of the Magdalenas. It is a lush riparian canyon and also hosts an affluent subdivision where people feed birds. Finally, I believe her nest site is at the mouth of that canyon, and as it is almost courting season I'm hoping she'll hang up there even if she's heading back to my loft.

In sequence below: She bit me! This better be your last time; Ready; Go! Gone...

As you can see. not even a good point and shoot, swung as fast as I could, can catch an angry Accip.

Art Market Criticism

Our neighbor Jean- Louis Lassez of Muleshoe ranch-- see below or an many Christmas posts- seems to have embarked on anew career as a- satirical? ironic? painter. I STILL don't get his Mondrian down there, but his Version of Munch's Scream makes sense. First he sent this one, titled State of the Art (Market):

After which he declared that the Queen, Angela Merkel, and other European heads of state were threatening to boycott his "master- pisses", so he came up with a version for them:

Dispatch From Mongolia (Lauren McGough)

These flights! They are amazing and addictive. I liken these eagles to Houbara spotter falcons, who somehow see that rust colored spot scooting along in the distance - and immediately become pure predatory power. Many times I never see the fox, I just trust that that is what the eagle sees. Once she's powered out over the valley, becoming just a speck herself, I often finally see the fox myself, and hold my breath as I wait for the two to converge. In a way, its like longwinging. My favorite flight style, which has a seemingly low success rate, but is spectacular to watch, is when the eagle keeps all of her height from the mountain and when directly over the fox, folds into a teardrop and stoops completely vertically. The fox has a lot of options to fool the eagle then, but I don't think I'll ever tire of seeing an eagle, all grace and raw power, stoop hundreds of feet.

There have been many great things, but I've also had some troubles lately. On a very windy day, we were on the mountaintop waiting for the slip, flying two passage eagles together. A fox appeared, we two slipped, and waited. The fox was clever, and disappeared. The eagles broke off pursuit and began to fly aimlessly, very buoyant in the wind. The mountain we were on was stupidly steep (one where you secretly hope you don't get a slip). It was impossible to ride down, we had to get off of our horses and walk them down, which took a good 20 minutes. By that time, the eagles had gone and we were baffled. We rode across the valley for a good half hour with lures until finally we spotted them soaring along another mountain ridge. If I thought the other mountain was steep, this one was a great deal more so. Suddenly both eagles stooped and caught a Pallas' cat on this mountainside. It was nothing but a stream of stones, no way one could ride up or climb (without equipment anyway, and even then...). We couldn't do anything but gaze up those hundreds of feet (it seemed that high) while the eagles broke in and started to eat their fill. The other falconer in desperation started to attempt to climb, but before I knew it both eagles had bumped, regained their soar, were soon specks in the sky, and then flew away upwind out of sight. What an awful, lonely, sinking feeling that is. You feel like such a puny, weak creature when you try to follow an eagle with nothing but a cheap pair of binoculars and a pony-sized horse.

But follow her I did. Or at least I tried to. And, defying all my expectations, I found her on a dead horse on the steppe, just before nightfall. I was able to approach close enough to grab her jesses...phew! The poor other falconer didn't find his eagle, and as far as I know, is still looking for her.

The continuing adventures of Lauren...

Text to come soon-- patience please!

Hands Off Our Water!

More here-- scroll down.

Dog Quote

"Dogs are like people. Not too literally, of course, but in the sense that the dog population contains a virtually infinite range of individuals – distinctive in physical structure, temperament and past experience. As a group, they are more loyal, more forgiving, more generous, yet less neurotic than people. Our relationship with each of them will be different; and it will be dynamic and change every day. We can make many generalizations about dogs, just as we can about people; but we must be thankful, rather than upset, when something works with one dog and doesn't with another. It is this powerful range of individual variation that makes bird dogs of sustaining interest for a lifetime."

Earl Crangle, via Daniel Riviera

Returning to Service

Mostly polishing off, with endless revisions, the Book O' Books, done for months but still being tweaked, also endless Good- But- Endless visitors, end of holiday and other serious food, arthritis and steroids and two major dog operations and too much to drink, and far too little to chase...

Any weariness in these lines is less about telling stories which I still love but about having to spend far too much packaging them, and knowing that if you don't watch out, they will sink without a trace. Or as frontier ornithologist Elliot Coues said, way back during the Indian Wars; "I have seen a mule's ears disappear in genuine mud..."

So, before resuming serious broadcasting on anything from literature to guns (can't have too many/ much of either) a few images. First: Bosque del Apache; the Rio's & the Fed's farm for wildlife, at Christmas, by John Wilson:

"Life has really not stopped, and the world is really not a museum yet"*. Old men still chase hounds, even if they need strong drink after...

All over the world...

Older men and younger women make art ("Their eyes, their ancient glittering eyes**..."

Peace still may need an AK 47 (The Madins with appropriate props near Hovdsgol)

But the old can still amaze the young: Joel Becktell, mother Niki, and Eli Frishman Dec 2012, Magdalena

All this & more coming in Q, 2013. Thanks all! * is Ted Hughes and I bet everybody knows ** is Yeats in Lapis Lazuli.

Eagle Woman

Image from Scott Elliot, Darne guy, veteran, PI-- and no, we don't know where it is from, though there is a faint air of Almaty fashion (use search bar) and Kazakh rock, as well as Asian hunting......

Water Grab on the Plain

Yesterday, local filmmaker Matt Middleton answered my last post with a link to his site against the amazing and as yet little publicized proposed rape of our watershed by a mysterious Italian billionaire who wants us to believe he is benevolent. This is hard to believe, as he wants to take all the water from the Plain of San Augustin, an area larger than Rhode Island and mostly known outside of our area for being the background for Jody Foster's Contact, which now supports ranching and wildlife, and pump it to commercial entities hundreds of miles away for purposes he prefers not to mention. (He talks of the "benefits" of putting surface water back in the ground-- what does he think wildlife and cattle drink?) At various meetings, his spin doctors have managed to give no answers, even to skilled questioners, environmentalists, lawyers, ranchers, and Libby; he is unintentionally building some unlikely coalitions. So far their slipperiness has not won them their permits, but they intend to come back. And make no mistake, they want ALL our water.

Up front: I agree completely with Matt's concern and passion, but severely doubt his Mafia theory, for many reasons. Any millionaire from Milan probably has more money in his coffers than all of Italy south of Rome, and either has no need of the Mafia or employs them when necessary. His is the kind of money that drives the pipeline from Canada to Chinese consumer ships in the Caribbean across the Oglalla aquifer with no regard to local ranchers or farmers. Besides, for historical reasons, (we) snooty northerners often tend to scorn the southern peasants and their "protective societies"; my father's people used to say that Africa-- meaning the corrupt Levant and the Moors, not black Africa -- begins at Rome.

Whether he is right or I am about the Mafia is immaterial. The control of water by either local communities or distant metropolises is the big issue to come in the arid west, a civilization made effectively of city states and their watersheds, just like the ancient Middle East and Central Asia. Matt is on the side of the angels, and I hope he makes a film about the whole deal, preferably without insulting half of my ancestry (that's a joke). Whether the controlling authority is the Mafia or the Chinese People's Liberation Army or Arab oil companies or Ted Turner or Texans, the west is getting tired of being a colony. Read his link to the San Augustin Water Coalition and keep checking it out. I will doubtless have more to say here and more length. Meanwhile, go to his site and see the pieces of his historical documentary Way Out There for a glimpse of the town and country we both love, now under threat from a power so remote that as far as I can tell its proprietor never intends to visit the land he intends to destroy.

Afterthought: I am sure Federico will think I am an alarmist, and have some pungent and true and uncomfortable, even necessary additions. But I am a scientist by training too, and when people will NOT answer questions except with "trust us"- I WON'T.

Publicity!

And an even more thoughtful one from Tom Davis here.

True Writing Quote

From Walter Hingley:

"Delay is natural to a writer. He is like a surfer—he bides his time, waits for the perfect wave on which to ride in. Delay is instinctive with him. He waits for the surge (of emotion? of strength? of courage?) that will carry him along. I have no warm-up exercises, other than to take an occasional drink. I am apt to let something simmer for a while in my mind before trying to put it into words. I walk around, straightening pictures on the wall, rugs on the floor—as though not until everything in the world was lined up and perfectly true could anybody reasonably expect me to set a word down on paper."

E B White, Paris Review interview

Attitudes to Predators

I just got an email from Al Cambronne, who has a new blog Deerland here, and book coming out at Lyons by the same name. He wrote an interesting post on how public attitudes toward three predators-- muskies, wolves, and (Bald) eagles differ as exemplified in his home state of Wisconsin.

I found the discussion stimulating enough that I replied at blog length (edited after more reflection):

Analogies between muskies, wolves, and eagles are... BIOLOGICALLY difficult, because as you surmise culturally different. Muskies have always been prizes, but pike which are similar in every way not always so-- persecuted in European trout and salmon water for one example.

I would say that both wolf and eagle are romanticized and revered by the same element of urban society. Some tribes do hold them sacred, which doesn't mean they don't kill them, sometimes cruelly. Wolves are serious stock predators, which doesn't mean we shouldn't let or encourage their return, but not by doing so on the backs and economy of rural residents. So-called reparations for lost stock, at least in NM, are held to such an absolute standard of proof as to be absurd-- evidence of wolf tracks and eaten carcasses is NOT enough even if wolves were seen chasing stock.

I think the urbanites who so want them might find a way to help pay, perhaps as subsidies to predator- harassed ranchers who must share their land. (That they might then demand a say in ranching practices might open up a bigger can of worms-- they know nothing whatsoever about pastoral life, and some ranchers know only a little more about wildlife, but some places both sides are polarized past compromise-- government's fault, another issue).I think confirmed stock killers should be removed, permanently-- good evolutionary biology too. The surprisingly widespread wolves of Europe rarely bother humans. Ranchers should learn the use of stock protection dogs like my Wyoming friends the Urbigkits. Urbanites should not romanticize individual wolves at the cost of harming humans who must live with them, but take it as a necessary compromise-- you get to hear wolves, problem wolves die, and the rancher is not driven off his land.

I think we should learn to live with a good amount of wolf- game predation-- another divisive issue, but the wild is the wild, and co-evolved species must find their way. Prey populations seem to be wobbling into an interesting balance in big wild areas like Yellowstone. We have a hard time seeing that wild populations are often not stable, but run to boom and bust, and that this is natural. Read Where the Wild Things Were. We have little concept of how important apex predators are-- which does not mean we cannot kill a few!

Eagles? Very controversial and even more complicated, but important to only a few. Legally both wind power companies and Indians can kill eagles, practically speaking almost at will. The first do it as a side effect but kill a lot. Some of the second do it even more crassly for money than the wind blades do, for powwow costumes which are no more religious than a prom dress, though their slaughter is defended by the likes of Leslie Silko as religious last I heard.

Complication number one: there are a LOT of Golden eagles-- five figures worth in the continental US. NOT analogous to wolves! Number two: eagles are still sometimes a significant livestock predator. I know of no recent persecution, but until last year (?-- not sure of the most recent decision), problem eagles were legally trapped and removed. Falconers used this population; in fact, trapped legally. Their take was reduced to SIX a year-- remember, recent studies indicate this is a common bird with thousands of breeding pairs!-- and may be ended for good. This does not sit well with eaglers, dedicated and fanatical even among falconers, who may bond with a bird for decades, while wind blades harvest ten and twenty times the annual number allowed to them, and natives-- I am emphatically NOT talking about the reverent Pueblos, who have a real attitude of respect-- shoot eagles for profit, brag about it, and are released by white judges.

I am, as a once- zoologist, inclined to manage populations biologically. If a harvest of sorts is the price to pay for having wolves back, fine with me. I would crack down on consumptive use of eagles by Indians, as opposed to sacrificial, and FIGHT for it-- no other religion is allowed to decimate a species. And I would allow the same biologically reasonable take on Goldens as applies to any other master falconer's raptor. (Balds are a less active predator, not as good for falconry, and protected for better or worse by the US civil "religion", though I know a guy in Canada who flew a male on whitetail jacks).

I have no trouble with the idea of shooting a wolf-- well, not a huge interest, but I have killed coyotes: Betsy Huntington is buried with the pelt of one. Hunted predators bother us less. Suburban coyotes are behaving in a scary manner in southern California and even Albuquerque, and "lions" can become even scarier when surrounded by gentle vegans (read the cougar book The Beast in the Garden) Specific population numbers are rather irrelevant, and stable is a different number for each species and region; there are always going to be low numbers of apex predators, and there soon could be a decent number of wolves; micromanaging by moving them in and out may actually be hindering them. Shooting persistent outlaws will like it or not "teach them manners"-- they are intelligent-- and keep them from eating our dogs & eventually our kids. And please spare me ideas of their harmlessness; the benign wolf of North America is a historical example of what scientists would call an "artifact", based on rapid settlement and and a historically unusual plethora of guns. Run the figures for Siberia or India-- or go to Native accounts, or Medieval ones (Lane?)...

Can't neglect fish: big muskies (also pike; the large predatory catfish like blue and flathead; alligator gar; even carp in non- wilderness waters). The huge ones are old breeders-- catch, photo & release! It is fine, contra "Throw Back the Little Ones*", to keep small fish & eat them...

*Donald Fagen has a new album out!

Necessary accessories

Within the last month, but in separate incidents, two Casper, Wyoming women made local news for their actions thwarting armed robberies.

The first was in early December. The setting: a local nail salon. A man entered the salon and approached the women inside about the possibility of purchasing some diamonds from him, a notion declined by the women. The man then began to pull a handgun from his coat pocket. Another client of the salon, there getting her nails done, reached into her nearby purse and pulled out her own pistol, suggesting the man needed to leave. He complied without adieu.

Lesson one: Don’t mess with chicks getting their nails done.

The second incident occurred at a Casper hotel this week. I’m familiar with this hotel as it’s the place where all the visiting authors (including myself and Rebecca K. O’Connor) stayed for the Equality State Book Festival a few months ago. In the wee hours of the morning, two masked men entered the lobby of the hotel and told the female hotel clerk behind the counter that it was a hold-up, with one of the men making a gun gesture with his hand. The clerk reached down into her lunchbox and pulled out her handgun, pointing it at the robbers, who then fled.

Lesson two: Lunch boxes can have multiple functions.

Jim laughs at me when I’m purse shopping. My first criterion is that the purse has to stylish, but the second test is that it must be big enough for my pistol. We who take the responsibility of personal safety seriously believe such items are necessary accessories.

Some lines...

From a short story by Phil Grayson, sometime Q contributor and local descendant, soon to be published in the literary magazine Aloud (links to come)...

"If you walk west from Avenue B late at night, you have to swim, but eventually you can get to the desert. Tack a bit south.

"The smoke comes up blue and nicotine, the blue manes of lions beneath the bonewhite moon at night, blowing upward in the strange African wind, looking westward always westward, toward the unseen plains so far beyond, where grasshoppers leap and fly and fall and leap again in the tall yellow grass and the perfect blue sky broken only by the burning sun, as yellow and summer as the tall yellow grass,leapt toward by grasshoppers, buzzing in their futile wings, only happy, always again to be airborne as they fall.

"They kiss and he leaves and walks south for one block, then in a straight line to the west, the hum of the highway there, the lights of New Jersey weak and muted like the lights of Juarez, beyond the river."

Tumbling Tumbleweeds

What drought and an invasive Asian exotic can do in a hard winter-- all this and zero at night, at Lee Henderson's where we chase things- photos from Lee. That is his house on the right in the third pic; in the first, that fencerow is likely higher than your head. Ranching for a living, like old age, is not for sissies.

Artists and Time Passing

Tom Quinn RACED through with wife Jeri today en route from her aunt's old house in Tularosa (no quail this year) over the subzero divide toward rainy Point Reyes.

The snapshot though hardly great connects a lot of dots. (As always right or double click to see bigger). Upper left is a Vadim Gorbatov original of Seton's Lobo, about a 19th century cattle killing wolf in New Mexico, done before he visited us here from our models. I know Vadim partly because he and Tom were on the original "team" of the Artists for Nature Foundation together, and I wrote about that late Cold War friendship for Tom's book. Below that is a little oil of a New Mexico horse by Jeri. The old Chinese poster is of a style that influenced Tom. (OK, the de Chirico has nothing to do with him-- it was Betsy's!)

Funny thing was that just the day before I had found this old snap of Tom's lifetime friend Russell Chatham (who also introduced me to Libby), with two less famous artists, Mary and Joe Bodio, in Boston a gazillion years ago-- 1992 I think. (My father and mother met when he was at the Museum School and she at Mass Art-- the legend says at the Tutankhamen exhibit; he abandoned art, at least professionally, after the war; she went on to fashion and advertising and eventually to watercolors).

Russ is back in the Bay Area, allegedly fallen on hard times. Vadim is in the hospital in Moscow, prepping for a serious operation. My father is gone, my mother cheerful but not wholly with us. Tom is battered but still standing, and y'all know more about me than you need. Still staggering!

"New" Petroglyph

... from none other than Andrey Kovalenko-- see below.

Andrey says: "This rock art is located in (تیمره) Golpaygan, Isfahan in the central part of Iran. GP Location is: 33° 38' 31.43" N 50° 19' 27.30" E. There have not been any scientific examination (Magnetic Polarity Chronology, Uranium Thorium, Carbon 14 HL) to date the age of petroglyphs in Kheomein and Golpayganm specifically but from other findings in the same area it can be said that the petroglyphs date back to Pre-Agriculture era — Isfahan - Iran."

Nomenclature

Annie Davidson sent our tiny aging, nostalgic, and usually goofy Zoo group (we have known each other since, what, 1970?) a provocative essay contra the Linnaean binomial system. I think she was poking a stick in an anthill, but I am afraid it pushed a few buttons! I was provoked to editorialize...

"The author's criticisms are valid, her conclusion unjustified. Linnaean terminology is bad but everything else is WAAY worse. I espouse and defend, here and elsewhere, a small c conservatism-- what works (and with many patches it has & does); rules known, universally accepted against chaos and a million competing schemes & memes. Think how losing the Latin Mass for idealistic reasons shattered the Catholic church-- I was there-- but she argues for tearing down a system that, I'm sorry, represents something even more universal.

"She is a bit historically uninformed, and naive besides. For the first, she states (always beware any use of 'obviously'!): "What is obviously needed is a naming system where the name, once assigned, does not change, even when scientific understanding of the organism's relationships changes. We would not have to worry whether a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.' But no SPECIFIC name can change without reassignment to another species-- only generic. Nomenclatural priority. It even allows stupidity-- Buteo jamaicensis for the redtail because it was first collected there, Canis niger, "BLACK dog or canid", for the red wolf, now an endangered "taxon" because it may be a natural hybrid but still nominally black... one stable name. WE ALREADY HAVE THIS, bound about by formal rules. She goes on: 'The irony is that there already is an informal system with that property. It is the much-maligned common name. The objection to a common name like "strawberry geranium" is that the plant is neither a strawberry nor a geranium. Why is that a problem? French toast is neither French nor toast, but the world survives.'

"Because who cares about toast, as long as you get it? Every language has many common names but there is only one formal name and even Russians (ie, those with a Cyrillic alphabet) and Chinese acknowledge it.

"The only schemes seriously offered to challenge Linnaeus are cladistic and 'correct' but are not NAMING systems which I expect are hardwired in our brains evolutionarily-- "Rational monsters" that would take a PhD to explain. I have heard it seriously offered that an organism's proper-- what, term?-- is a printout of a tree of however many pages showing its descent. I would find this an excellent adjunct of great interest- but what do you CALL it?? 'Cladistic tree # 545,353'? Instead, we are naming animals, doing what the late Vicki Hearne metaphorically called "Adam's task", calling the animals by name to know something about what they are, to be able to talk about them- inadequate but a start. To name is not to know but is there any knowing without naming in a speaking species?

"Systems like the author's, using pop names, are worse-- breathtakingly ignorant of history-- one popular book in favor, understanding the nature of whales, wants to "popularly" reclassify them as FISH. NO, NO, NO, NO! NO!

"Last thought: high in the Kazakh Tian Shan nearly a decade ago, a friendship formed when ornithologist Andrey Kovalenko, whose English is as awkward as my Russian, lifted his eyes above the peaks and breathed "Gypaetus barbatus!" I knew to look to the sky because I knew he wasn't seeing a snowcock on the ground, an accentor in the bush-- he was looking above the skyline to show me my first Lammergeier."

New Year Dogs

Tavi & Gaddi from Shiri

Feedback?

It has been suggested I grow a beard because of slowness & difficulty shaving. Hmmm-- I do not like it coming in, I do not recognize myself in the mirror; Canat in Mongolia though grinning said of this photo that I looked like a "big EEvan" (Ivan, ie a Russian), and though he grinned I do not know if he approved. But found this relatively youthful-- more than 12 years ago ie pre 50 pic of me with beard (& my favorite Gyr tiercel who died of Asper-- If I could find/ afford one like him I would buy or steal a horse or 4 wheeler & the hell with my legs...), and I don't hate it. What say, Q readers?

I suspect a beard would be ALL white now...

New Year at the Spur

Our annual tradition: seeing out the year at the Golden Spur Saloon. A selection:

House band: manager Monana Pettis and chef Linda Rael, heading up the ever- evolving 86'd Again, offer up a stomping rock version of Folsom Prison Blues:

(It is a matter of being a local I suppose-- it had to be pointed out that an oryx or a bighorn or a javelina wearing a hat are not usual ornaments for a band stage...)

Below: owner Darrel Pettis beams; Bobby Contreras show off his moves; bartender Cat Aragon smiles a BIT wearily (she teaches full time too); Juan Malvido is having too much fun...

Happy New Year from Querencia and the Spur.