Eating A Mountain
I take off one afternoon to run up a mountain above my home to look for the false morels that sometimes grow in the burned forests there. It’s one of the mountains that feeds my family, one of the mountains on which we are fortunate enough some years to take a deer or...
Roger Pinckney: High Priest of Daufuskie Island
Most of us can say where we were when some big historic event happened. Well, I can also tell you where I was the very first time I ever read Roger Pinckney. Yes, that first paragraph of his was just that good. When I first discovered Roger,I had just recently...
The Old Timer, Wandering Always Like The Wind
I have often sat, solitary, in twilight’s slow dissolution to gray, awaiting the unmistakable sound of hooves as they rustle their way through the dusk. It is a time of relentless solitude, and in the whispered vespers of the hemlocks, there is a fleeting sadness that...
The Day I Found Myself – A Wood Duck Hunt
The day I found myself, the wood duck came full-speed. From upriver and darting among cypress and willows — spilling air from his wings. Things had not been going particularly well, one single and specific vehicle of distress difficult to identify. Perhaps it was...
Dennis Anderson – Art With Attitude
“Dennis identifies with big, powerful animals; the bold and the dangerous,” Smith says. “But he shows you some nuance of them that you’ve never seen. It’s like he knows we have some preconceived notion of what a certain animal is, so he doesn’t bother with that.” The...
Robert Ruark: A Man of Startling Contrasts
Robert Ruark could be a tough and cruel rogue, but he was also considerate, fun-loving and generous to a fault.
The Cremation of Sam McGee
An unlikely life. He was an English banker who ran off to America at an early age. He nearly starved in Mexico, bunked in a California bordello. He passed himself as a cowboy, farmer, lumberjack, Yukondog-musher and gold miner. He drove an ambulance in the First War...
Bing Crosby: A Man for All Seasons
On Christmas Day in 1941, millions tuned their radios to Kraft Music Hall, NBC’s hit variety program hosted by Bing Crosby, one of Hollywood’s brightest stars and the best-selling recording artist of the 20th century. Bing was in the middle of filming Holiday Inn with...