Vignettes

I love the sound of birds singing, especially early in the morning. And then there’s the sound of an approaching storm when the birds pause their song, and the breeze picks up—slowly at first and then building as the sound of thunder cracks a dark sky. I also love the sound of a gentle breeze in a mountain meadow that jostles spring flowers. And there’s the sound of water either trickling through a mountain meadow or splashing its way through rocks that were strewn down a mountain ravine. But...

Recently my wife and I decided to rattle snake proof our desert courtyard. Five years earlier we had placed rot iron fencing on two sides of that area as a means of staying visually connected with our desert landscape. But that rot iron fencing had its downside. It offered easy entry to many desert critters—including rattlesnakes on four separate occasions. The fourth time, when a 2 ½ foot rattler curled up within a foot of our patio door, was the last straw. So, it seemed only right that we ...

Last summer as I was about to walk with family near New Mexico’s Organ Mountains, I noticed two young men leaving the parking lot headed toward the same path we had chosen to walk. Although I hadn’t expected to have the path to myself, I was more than a little put-off to see that one of our fellow hikers was carrying a rifle. What was more disheartening was that he appeared to ignore the totally obvious “No Firearms” sign posted at the trailhead. As they moved quickly ahead of us, our pleasan...

Jess and Pat (or Pat and Jessie) were our neighbors. Their modest ranch style home sat on a hillside at the end of our long driveway in a narrow Western Pennsylvania valley just outside the tiny village of Taylorstown. Pat and Jess had a chicken coop behind their house, a swing near the little stream on the east side of the lawn, and a garden near the road on the west that often got pummeled by Western Pennsylvania thunderstorms. As with many homesites in that part of Appalachia, Pat and Jess...