The brown paper bag I carried out of the bookstore wasn’t there for the sake of discretion. Truth be told, the bookstore refuses to handle plastic anymore. Ideally, the clerk told me, it was on the verge of going entirely bagless, so I was lucky to be handed a brown paper sack. But it was raining, […]
David Feela
Posted inWotr
Neighbors who visit my backyard in the dead of night
Not long ago, in the middle of the night, I woke to the sound of snickering outside my bedroom window. I lay still, ransacking my brain for ideas on who might be out there, playing a trick on me, though by this point I had a fairly good idea of the culprits. I reached for […]
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There are too many unwanted backyard horses
I was sitting in a comfortable chair one evening, reading a vintage book about the Old West, when I happened to glance out the window to see a horse cropping the grass along my driveway. I don’t own a horse. I don’t want a horse. Too many of my neighbors own horses, only to let […]
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Don’t lock us out of our land
When I parked beside the locked gate at the Forest Service’s recreation site, a hefty entrance sign that had been bolted together out of four-by-fours lay flat on the gravel. The steel tube where campers were supposed to deposit their fee had an autumn shade of rust spiraling up its trunk. A welcome sign had […]
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Shifting gears to a brave new world of Lycra
After riding for 25 years atop my old English 10-speed with the skinny steel wheels and tape-wrapped handlebars, I finally bought one of those fancy, 21-speed mountain bikes. When I got the new bike home — they don’t call them bicycles anymore — and leaned it against the wall in my garage — where did […]
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Live fee or die
We grumbled, but paid the nearly 50 percent fee increase for registering our motor vehicle in Colorado. And we also paid the registration fee for our camp trailer, which had nearly doubled. I felt as helpless as Jack in the Beanstalk, when he hid under a bucket listening to a giant stomp around shouting, “FEE-FI-FO-FUM.” […]
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Off the road again
Jack Kerouac wrote his entire novel “On the Road” in just three weeks. He used a continuous roll of teletype paper, as if pausing to put in a new sheet of paper would have caused a pile-up on his imagination’s highway. Lawrence Ferlinghetti said that Kerouac provided us with “a vision of America seen from […]
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I’ve got the power
It isn’t like one of those holiday scenes with a flurry of snow swirling, caught inside a vigorously shaken globe of winter wonder. It’s only a glass cylinder about the size of a three-pound coffee can, attached to my telephone post. A silver disc spins inside it. Vaguely resembling a CD player, it’s known in […]
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Scooter blues: When you’re environmentally correct and get no respect
I wish I knew why Harley riders stare straight through me when I’m coming down the street on my scooter from the opposite direction. Sadly, I’m beginning to suspect American motorcyclists of subscribing to a caste system in which Harley Davidsons occupy the top tier, followed by the Euro-touro blends, the bullet bikes, dirt bikes, […]
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Praise the Lord and pass the pancakes
Drive across the West along the Interstate and you’ll get the impression that sleeping, eating and filling up the gas tank are the activities we hold dear to our hearts. Of these three, however, the greatest seems to be eating. I’d stayed overnight at a motel no driver could see, much less imagine, just off […]
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The trailers of Montezuma County
It’s like a soap opera romance, this ongoing affection of mine for the old-style single or double-wide mobile homes, more commonly known as trailers. To me, their appeal is strongest when I’m driving a gravel county road, and out in a field I see one, perched like an alien spacecraft on a few open acres. […]
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Buying used gets him enthused
Westerners are packrats. Blame it on the availability of flea markets or just the size of our backyards. My house is no exception, except that most of my stuff comes from the midden heap, which doesn’t mean I’ve been pilfering artifacts from sacred sites. The Anasazi used to dump their trash much like many of […]
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Breaking for freedom in the New West
My neighbor owns a horse. I see it standing in the field across from my house every morning as I leave for work, and when I come home the horse is still waiting there, like a picture of grace and power that has no place to go. My neighbor rides the horse up the road […]
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John Muir, go home
Any experienced summer traveler through the West might have pointed to my wife and me as classic examples of clueless tourism: “See what you get when you travel without an itinerary? When you think camping has something to do with owning a tent?” I can hear them stifling their snickers, trying to sound sympathetic but […]
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The ego has landed on the California coast
If you ever want to see the epitome of what we in the West call a “starter castle,” I recommend you visit close to the real thing, the Hearst estate on the California coast. This once-upon-a-time bastion of privilege conquered by the California State Park system sits on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Close […]
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Risk important in outdoor adventures
We watched the steady stream of tourists snake its way toward Spruce Tree House, the only Anasazi cliff dwelling at Mesa Verde in southern Colorado where the federal agency allows visitors to guide themselves. It had been single file since leaving the museum, so we heaved a collective sigh. Petroglyph Trail, which runs one and […]
Posted inJanuary 20, 2003: A breath of fresh air
A winter drive into oblivion
Sometimes it can’t be helped, that long drive across the West, rolling the odometer like a slot machine that promises to pay off with just one more spin. The gas gauge hovers around half and it looks like you’ll get there without stopping again in the middle of who knows where. Home is all you […]
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When whiteouts in winter seem like forever
Sometimes it can’t be helped, that long drive across the West, rolling the odometer like a slot machine that promises to pay off with just one more spin. The gas gauge hovers around “half” and it looks like you’ll get there without stopping again in the middle of who knows where. Home is all you […]
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Of mice and me, or how I paid a fee and built a better mousetrap
I never planned to improve upon any kind of mousetrap but for some reason it appears I’ve done exactly that. This is how it happened: Every year my wife and I spend a few days avoiding the summer heat of western Colorado by camping high up in the White River National Forest. For the past […]