Rusty Ring

@rusty-ring.bsky.social

1 month ago

WW: Sunset on the Columbia Plateau Somehow different from those on the Green Side.

Sunset on the Columbia Plateau

Somehow different from those on the Green Side.

rustyring.blogspot.com/2026/02/ww-s...

#GoldSide, #photography, #summer, #sunset, #WordlessWednesday

RustyRing

@rustyring.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy

1 month ago

WW: Sunset on the Columbia Plateau _(Another shot from my trek through Eastern Washington last summer.)_

Sunset on the Columbia Plateau

Somehow different from those on the Green Side.

rustyring.blogspot.com/2026/02/ww-sunset-on-col...

#GoldSide, #photography, #summer, #sunset, #WordlessWednesday

Rusty Ring

@rustyring.universeodon.com.ap.brid.gy

1 month ago

WW: Sunset on the Columbia Plateau _(Another shot from my trek through Eastern Washington last summer.)_

Sunset on the Columbia Plateau

Somehow different from those on the Green Side.

rustyring.blogspot.com/2026/02/ww-sunset-on-col...

#GoldSide, #photograph, #summer, #sunset, #WordlessWednesday

Rusty Ring

@rusty-ring.bsky.social

2 months ago

WW: Sky on the Hanford Reach Splendour in the hellfire.

Sky on the Hanford Reach

Splendour in the hellfire.

rustyring.blogspot.com/2026/01/ww-s...

#Columbia River, #GoldSide, #photography, #summer, #tea

RustyRing

@rustyring.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy

2 months ago

WW: Sky on the Hanford Reach _(Here's a photo from my outbacking excursion to Spokane last summer, taken on the northwest limit of the Pasco Basin, just a few hundred yards short of the Priest Rapids of the Columbia River. This view is west to Umtanum Ridge. [Open photo in a new tab to see it bigger.] I never get used to those electric Gold Side skies. People who live there walk around under them like nothing's going on, oblivious to the Greensider ratcheting off shots of nothing in particular above them. But I recommend you avoid driving these backroads – lowest elevation in the state – in July if you have the shadow of a choice. Especially if your truck has no air conditioning. A thermos of heavily-iced tea was all that stood between me and posterity.) _

Sky on the Hanford Reach

Splendour in the hellfire.

rustyring.blogspot.com/2026/01/ww-sky-on-hanfor...

#Columbia River, #GoldSide, #photography, #summer, #tea

Rusty Ring

@rustyring.universeodon.com.ap.brid.gy

2 months ago

WW: Sky on the Hanford Reach _(Here's a photo from my outbacking excursion to Spokane last summer, taken on the northwest limit of the Pasco Basin, just a few hundred yards short of the Priest Rapids of the Columbia River. This view is west to Umtanum Ridge. [Open photo in a new tab to see it bigger.] I never get used to those electric Gold Side skies. People who live there walk around under them like nothing's going on, oblivious to the Greensider ratcheting off shots of nothing in particular above them. But I recommend you avoid driving these backroads – lowest elevation in the state – in July if you have the shadow of a choice. Especially if your truck has no air conditioning. A thermos of heavily-iced tea was all that stood between me and posterity.) _

Sky on the Hanford Reach

Splendour in the hellfire.

rustyring.blogspot.com/2026/01/ww-sky-on-hanfor...

#Columbia River, #GoldSide, #photography, #summer, #tea

Rusty Ring

@rusty-ring.bsky.social

5 months ago

Good Movie: Smoke Signals "Any similarity to actual persons, living, dead, or indigenous, is purely coincidental."

Good Movie: Smoke Signals

"Any similarity to actual persons, living, dead, or indigenous, is purely coincidental."

rustyring.blogspot.com/2013/02/good...

#alienation, #FirstNations, #GoldSide, #movie, #review, #ShermanAlexie, #Spokane, #Zen

RustyRing

@rustyring.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy

5 months ago

Good Movie: Smoke Signals "There are some children who aren't really children at all; they're just pillars of flame that burn everything they touch. And there are some children who are just pillars of ash, that fall apart when you touch them. Victor and me, we were children of flame and ash." With an opener like that, you'd be forgiven for assuming this all-Native production is a heavy social justice film. _Psych!_ Sherman Alexie's Smoke Signals is a modest miracle. Written by a Native, directed by a Native, starring Natives, it takes place in the present, a place where Natives are pointedly not welcome. (Take it from a Scot: The Man likes his tribals historical.) Yet for a' tha' it's a very sweet movie, wherein innocence is not so much lost, as worked into whatever comes next. Thomas Builds-the-Fire (allegory intended) and Victor are frenemies from Idaho's Cœur d'Alêne reserve. Their destinies, like their pasts, are intricately intertwined, though they appear diametric opposites. Thomas is perennial odd man out: a fumbling nerd who seems to live in a world that's not there. Maybe he's a shaman. Maybe he's autistic. Could be he's both; each one of director Chris Eyre's scenes encode about twelve concurrent realities, any one of which is liable to surface at any time. And Thomas is his translator. He's the seer in Coke bottle glasses; the good son without parents; the helpless hero. Meanwhile, Victor is _too_ anchored in the physical, too distracted by hard-cold to understand how weak that can make you. To borrow Thomas's image, Victor is a pillar of fire, permanently glowering over iniquities by no means trivial, though compared to those of his congenitally happy companion they can seem so. Shackled together -- to Victor's enduring annoyance -- they will make a long, winding journey, first through the lovingly-rendered homeland of their ancestors, and then the entire American West. (In a refreshing turnabout, the part of the Southwest is played by the Martian landscape of Washington's coulee country; just an hour and change west, it is in fact as different from the lush Palouse as Arizona.) Throughout, rezgeist eddies and froths like the Spokane River. In the very first scene, a doomed couple hurl their newborn from a burning house, into the steady arms of a feckless drunk with the heart of a warrior. The power of that metaphor, and its accuracy, are breath-taking. And the beat goes on: basketball; frybread; mothers; fathers; automobiles; water; hair. The entire film crackles with aboriginal touchstones. You could write an MFA thesis on _The Symbology of Sherman Alexie's "Smoke Signals"_. (Send me a link if you do.) There's also a lot of (coincidental?) Zen in Eyres' world, where nothing is what it appears, yet everything is patently obvious if you can decide to see it. My favourite teaching: the boys voyage to the end of the earth with a jar of gold; come back with a jar of ashes. As Thomas points out, we all travel heavy with illusions. But the greatest fun comes from the palpable glee with which director and writer lay waste to Hollywood "Indian" conventions. "Hey Victor!" says Thomas, "I'm sorry 'bout your dad." "How'd you hear about it?" Victor asks. "I heard it on the wind," says the spooky medicine-kid. "I heard it from the birds. I felt it in the sunlight. And your mom was just in here cryin'." Later, having hitched a ride off-rez with two backward-driving contraries (another overlapping wink at First Nations tradition and politics), they're asked if they've got their passports. "But it's the United States," Thomas protests. "Damn right it is," says the driver. "That's as foreign as it gets." Anyone who has lived in a bush community will appreciate the sentiment. In fact, my own village once had a bootstrap radio station that broadcast traffic reports identical to those on KREZ: "Big truck just went by. Now it's gone." The boys fall further down the highway, Thomas's old-school braids and pronounced aboriginal accent underscoring the sense of spacewalking, until they arrive at last… on another reserve. One that is simultaneously completely different from and exactly the same as the one they just left. (Cough*_zen_ *cough.) Canadian viewers will be forgiven for assuming _Smoke Signals_ is one of ours; it's about aboriginals, and the cast is almost entirely Canadian. I guess that's both the good and the bad news. Good, because Evan Adams (a straight-up doctor in real life), and the more familiar Adam Beach, Gary Farmer, and Tantoo Cardinal, all act like they're not acting. And bad, because apparently there aren't enough experienced Native actors in the States to pull off such a film by themselves. Here's hoping that changes. Also terrific is Tom Skerritt, whose sixty-odd screen seconds, as a weary, competent Arizona sheriff, would qualify him for token white guy, if the moment weren't one of the movie's most memorable. And then there's Irene Bédard. Sigh. What can be said about this grossly under-signed actress that won't jeopardise one's monastic street cred? How about this: I esteem Ms. Bédard for her effortless performance, her deft, sensitive handling of a pivotal role, and her ability to imbue any scene with grace and immediacy. Contrary to rumour, my admiration of this accomplished thespian has nothing to do with the fact that she's, like, _virulently_ beautiful, pulling down six to eight thousand millihelens on a grey Tuesday. I would further like to deny categorically that I originally watched this film, or any other of the every single ones she's ever made, just because she was in it. The soundtrack here jacks up the property values as well. Most of it is the raw, powerful Colville musician Jim Boyd, singing lyrics by Alexie. A few others are chucked in for symmetry, notably the multi-layered Ulali masterpiece, All My Relations. It may be true, as Thomas says, that "the only thing more pathetic than Indians on TV is Indians watching Indians on TV", but this production goes a long way toward making the world a better place in the best possible way: by simply giving genius and insight a platform. I don't know if Alexie and Eyre knew this, but their movie isn't really about aboriginals at all. It's about humanity, all of us, as manifested in one of our ten thousand hoops. (And I was chaffin' you before; no way they didn't know.) So in the end, the most moving thing about _Smoke Signals_ is how aboriginal it's _not_. Alexie nails the thing in a final disclaimer at credits' end: "Any similarity to actual persons, living, dead, or indigenous, is purely coincidental."

Good Movie: Smoke Signals

"Any similarity to actual persons, living, dead, or indigenous, is purely coincidental."

rustyring.blogspot.com/2013/02/good-movie-smoke...

#alienation, #FirstNations, #GoldSide, #movie, #review, #ShermanAlexie, #Spokane, #Zen

Rusty Ring

@rustyring.universeodon.com.ap.brid.gy

5 months ago

Good Movie: Smoke Signals "There are some children who aren't really children at all; they're just pillars of flame that burn everything they touch. And there are some children who are just pillars of ash, that fall apart when you touch them. Victor and me, we were children of flame and ash." With an opener like that, you'd be forgiven for assuming this all-Native production is a heavy social justice film. _Psych!_ Sherman Alexie's Smoke Signals is a modest miracle. Written by a Native, directed by a Native, starring Natives, it takes place in the present, a place where Natives are pointedly not welcome. (Take it from a Scot: The Man likes his tribals historical.) Yet for a' tha' it's a very sweet movie, wherein innocence is not so much lost, as worked into whatever comes next. Thomas Builds-the-Fire (allegory intended) and Victor are frenemies from Idaho's Cœur d'Alêne reserve. Their destinies, like their pasts, are intricately intertwined, though they appear diametric opposites. Thomas is perennial odd man out: a fumbling nerd who seems to live in a world that's not there. Maybe he's a shaman. Maybe he's autistic. Could be he's both; each one of director Chris Eyre's scenes encode about twelve concurrent realities, any one of which is liable to surface at any time. And Thomas is his translator. He's the seer in Coke bottle glasses; the good son without parents; the helpless hero. Meanwhile, Victor is _too_ anchored in the physical, too distracted by hard-cold to understand how weak that can make you. To borrow Thomas's image, Victor is a pillar of fire, permanently glowering over iniquities by no means trivial, though compared to those of his congenitally happy companion they can seem so. Shackled together -- to Victor's enduring annoyance -- they will make a long, winding journey, first through the lovingly-rendered homeland of their ancestors, and then the entire American West. (In a refreshing turnabout, the part of the Southwest is played by the Martian landscape of Washington's coulee country; just an hour and change west, it is in fact as different from the lush Palouse as Arizona.) Throughout, rezgeist eddies and froths like the Spokane River. In the very first scene, a doomed couple hurl their newborn from a burning house, into the steady arms of a feckless drunk with the heart of a warrior. The power of that metaphor, and its accuracy, are breath-taking. And the beat goes on: basketball; frybread; mothers; fathers; automobiles; water; hair. The entire film crackles with aboriginal touchstones. You could write an MFA thesis on _The Symbology of Sherman Alexie's "Smoke Signals"_. (Send me a link if you do.) There's also a lot of (coincidental?) Zen in Eyres' world, where nothing is what it appears, yet everything is patently obvious if you can decide to see it. My favourite teaching: the boys voyage to the end of the earth with a jar of gold; come back with a jar of ashes. As Thomas points out, we all travel heavy with illusions. But the greatest fun comes from the palpable glee with which director and writer lay waste to Hollywood "Indian" conventions. "Hey Victor!" says Thomas, "I'm sorry 'bout your dad." "How'd you hear about it?" Victor asks. "I heard it on the wind," says the spooky medicine-kid. "I heard it from the birds. I felt it in the sunlight. And your mom was just in here cryin'." Later, having hitched a ride off-rez with two backward-driving contraries (another overlapping wink at First Nations tradition and politics), they're asked if they've got their passports. "But it's the United States," Thomas protests. "Damn right it is," says the driver. "That's as foreign as it gets." Anyone who has lived in a bush community will appreciate the sentiment. In fact, my own village once had a bootstrap radio station that broadcast traffic reports identical to those on KREZ: "Big truck just went by. Now it's gone." The boys fall further down the highway, Thomas's old-school braids and pronounced aboriginal accent underscoring the sense of spacewalking, until they arrive at last… on another reserve. One that is simultaneously completely different from and exactly the same as the one they just left. (Cough*_zen_ *cough.) Canadian viewers will be forgiven for assuming _Smoke Signals_ is one of ours; it's about aboriginals, and the cast is almost entirely Canadian. I guess that's both the good and the bad news. Good, because Evan Adams (a straight-up doctor in real life), and the more familiar Adam Beach, Gary Farmer, and Tantoo Cardinal, all act like they're not acting. And bad, because apparently there aren't enough experienced Native actors in the States to pull off such a film by themselves. Here's hoping that changes. Also terrific is Tom Skerritt, whose sixty-odd screen seconds, as a weary, competent Arizona sheriff, would qualify him for token white guy, if the moment weren't one of the movie's most memorable. And then there's Irene Bédard. Sigh. What can be said about this grossly under-signed actress that won't jeopardise one's monastic street cred? How about this: I esteem Ms. Bédard for her effortless performance, her deft, sensitive handling of a pivotal role, and her ability to imbue any scene with grace and immediacy. Contrary to rumour, my admiration of this accomplished thespian has nothing to do with the fact that she's, like, _virulently_ beautiful, pulling down six to eight thousand millihelens on a grey Tuesday. I would further like to deny categorically that I originally watched this film, or any other of the every single ones she's ever made, just because she was in it. The soundtrack here jacks up the property values as well. Most of it is the raw, powerful Colville musician Jim Boyd, singing lyrics by Alexie. A few others are chucked in for symmetry, notably the multi-layered Ulali masterpiece, All My Relations. It may be true, as Thomas says, that "the only thing more pathetic than Indians on TV is Indians watching Indians on TV", but this production goes a long way toward making the world a better place in the best possible way: by simply giving genius and insight a platform. I don't know if Alexie and Eyre knew this, but their movie isn't really about aboriginals at all. It's about humanity, all of us, as manifested in one of our ten thousand hoops. (And I was chaffin' you before; no way they didn't know.) So in the end, the most moving thing about _Smoke Signals_ is how aboriginal it's _not_. Alexie nails the thing in a final disclaimer at credits' end: "Any similarity to actual persons, living, dead, or indigenous, is purely coincidental."

Good Movie: Smoke Signals

"Any similarity to actual persons, living, dead, or indigenous, is purely coincidental."

rustyring.blogspot.com/2013/02/good-movie-smoke...

#alienation, #FirstNations, #GoldSide, #movie, #review, #ShermanAlexie, #Spokane, #CindySherman

RustyRing

@rustyring.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy

6 months ago

WW: Crane _(On myrecent visit to Spokane I was struck by the sci-fi aesthetics of this building going up on the far side of the river. The crane dramatically frames and accents the distopian structure below, its bold red steel startling against a classic vibrant blue Gold Side sky. Tourists often complain about cranes ruining their photos, but I find them uplifting.) _ Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Crane

Not always an eyesore.

http://rustyring.blogspot.com/2025/09/ww-crane.html

#GoldSide, #Spokane, #WordlessWednesday

Rusty Ring

@rustyring.universeodon.com.ap.brid.gy

6 months ago

WW: Crane _(On myrecent visit to Spokane I was struck by the sci-fi aesthetics of this building going up on the far side of the river. The crane dramatically frames and accents the distopian structure below, its bold red steel startling against a classic vibrant blue Gold Side sky. Tourists often complain about cranes ruining their photos, but I find them uplifting.) _ Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Crane

Not always an eyesore.

http://rustyring.blogspot.com/2025/09/ww-crane.html

#GoldSide, #Spokane, #WordlessWednesday

Rusty Ring

@rusty-ring.bsky.social

7 months ago

WW: Battered but not beaten Well-tempered fudo.

Battered but not beaten

Well-tempered fudo.

rustyring.blogspot.com/2025/08/ww-b...

#bodhisattva, #FudoMyōō, #GoldSide, #hermitpractice, #WordlessWednesday, #Zen

RustyRing

@rustyring.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy

7 months ago

WW: Battered but not beaten _(I made this fudo [look left; hanging from the bell] in 2009, for friends in Spokane County. When I took care of their farm for a few weeks 6 years later, I posted a photo of ithere. It was still looking pretty smart then, all things considered. On a visit last month I noted that 16 years' continuous duty in the desert hadn't done it any favours. But given the conditions, the old warrior still serves our patron well.)_

Battered but not beaten

Well-tempered fudo.

rustyring.blogspot.com/2025/08/ww-battered-but-...

#bodhisattva, #FudoMyōō, #GoldSide, #hermitpractice, #WordlessWednesday, #Zen

Rusty Ring

@rustyring.universeodon.com.ap.brid.gy

7 months ago

WW: Battered but not beaten _(I made this fudo [look left; hanging from the bell] in 2009, for friends in Spokane County. When I took care of their farm for a few weeks 6 years later, I posted a photo of ithere. It was still looking pretty smart then, all things considered. On a visit last month I noted that 16 years' continuous duty in the desert hadn't done it any favours. But given the conditions, the old warrior still serves our patron well.)_

Battered but not beaten

Well-tempered fudo.

rustyring.blogspot.com/2025/08/ww-battered-but-...

#bodhisattva, #FudoMyōō, #GoldSide, #hermitpractice, #WordlessWednesday, #Zen

Rusty Ring

@rusty-ring.bsky.social

7 months ago

WW: My cowboy grandfather, Crooked River, 1918 Last of his breed.

My cowboy grandfather, Crooked River, 1918

Last of his breed.

rustyring.blogspot.com/2012/10/ww-c...

#artefact, #FirstNations, #GoldSide, #horse,

RustyRing

@rustyring.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy

7 months ago

WW: My cowboy grandfather, Crooked River, 1918 (Far left, holding his horse.)

My cowboy grandfather, Crooked River, 1918

Last of his breed.

rustyring.blogspot.com/2012/10/ww-cowboy-grandf...

#artefact, #FirstNations, #GoldSide, #horse,

Rusty Ring

@rustyring.universeodon.com.ap.brid.gy

7 months ago

WW: My cowboy grandfather, Crooked River, 1918 (Far left, holding his horse.)

My cowboy grandfather, Crooked River, 1918

Last of his breed.

rustyring.blogspot.com/2012/10/ww-cowboy-grandf...

#artefact, #FirstNations, #GoldSide, #horse,

Rusty Ring

@rusty-ring.bsky.social

7 months ago

WW: Novel architecture Uplifting surprise in the desert.

Novel architecture

Surprise in the desert.

rustyring.blogspot.com/2025/08/ww-n...

#Africa, #GoldSide, #Spokane, #WordlessWednesday

RustyRing

@rustyring.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy

7 months ago

WW: Novel architecture _(The Spokane Regional Health District is an arresting sight, inspired as it apparently was by the architecture of West and Central Africa. I can't remember seeing such a structure anywhere before. And I certainly wouldn't have expected to find one serving as a government building on the Gold Side of Washington – arid though it is. Hats off to an inspired county facilities committee.)_ Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Novel architecture

Surprise in the desert.

rustyring.blogspot.com/2025/08/ww-novel-archite...

#Africa, #GoldSide, #Spokane, #WordlessWednesday

Rusty Ring

@rustyring.universeodon.com.ap.brid.gy

7 months ago

WW: Novel architecture _(The Spokane Regional Health District is an arresting sight, inspired as it apparently was by the architecture of West and Central Africa. I can't remember seeing such a structure anywhere before. And I certainly wouldn't have expected to find one serving as a government building on the Gold Side of Washington – arid though it is. Hats off to an inspired county facilities committee.)_ Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Novel architecture

Surprise in the desert.

rustyring.blogspot.com/2025/08/ww-novel-archite...

#Africa, #GoldSide, #Spokane, #Wordless Wednesday

Rusty Ring

@rusty-ring.bsky.social

8 months ago

WW: Okanogan farmhouse Mind that American "o".

Okanogan farmhouse

Mind that American "o".

rustyring.blogspot.com/2012/08/ww-o...

#GoldSide, #summer

RustyRing

@rustyring.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy

8 months ago

WW: Okanogan farmhouse

Okanogan farmhouse

Mind that American "o".

rustyring.blogspot.com/2012/08/ww-okanogan-farm...

#GoldSide, #summer

Rusty Ring

@rusty-ring.bsky.social

8 months ago

Sweetgrass Butte The Swan Dive of Retribution.

Rough Around the Edges: Sweetgrass Butte

The Swan Dive of Retribution.

rustyring.blogspot.com/2012/08/swee...

#book, #GoldSide, #mountain, #summer, #Zen

RustyRing

@rustyring.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy

8 months ago

Sweetgrass Butte I started the engine and continued the climb to Banker Pass. In the far distance the rugged peaks rounded, and a suspicion of sage on the east wind heralded the gates of the Okanogan. As I swung around a blind bend the scene suddenly turned to Dante: an entire mountainside razed black and smouldering, heat waves dancing over its charred crust. I cranked the window against its acrid fumes and proceeded with caution. Yellow cards staked along the verge assured me this was a fire-management burn, under the theoretical control of a man behind a desk in a town twenty miles away. The Forest Service was getting a jump on wildfire season, burning the scrub and slash from this clearcut slope while the still-forested ones were fresh enough to discourage disaster. As the road caterpillared around the next ridge, Hell vanished behind me and I was cutting diagonally across vertical green pastures, one after another, bands of deer and cattle, and the occasional integrated society of both, browsing amid the wildflowers. The grandeur and freedom so mesmerised me that I forgot my resolve to stay alert and deferred to the hood ornament again. By the time I came to my senses it was too late: I'd sleepwalked onto another summit feeder, trapped on a sharp, thin track jutting cloudward at something like the Ram's maximum grade. To the left, nothing but empty space; the mountain cut away so steeply from my outboard tires that it disappeared beneath them. But with no hope of turning around, and nothing lying between me and the Swan Dive of Retribution, I had no choice but to push this steep and squirrelly road to its bitter end. I flattened the accelerator and the truck leapt gamely forward while I clung to the steering wheel and struggled to maintain maximum thrust on a sinuous ribbon of dirt. At that moment, momentum was survival; stop for any reason, and I wouldn't have the traction on that pitched surface to continue forward. And the thought of having to back all the way down that winding scaffold froze me in terror. So heart in mouth, eyes riveted on the empty stratosphere, I Buck-Rogered that screaming Dodge into the cosmos. The g's pressed my spine into the bench while I fervently prayed I didn't cross another Forest Service truck bent on validating Einstein on the way down. Time dwindles to a drip at such moments; for an instant, truth stands in bold relief. Hanging somewhere between an unremembered beginning and an unknowable end, possessed of a theoretical but functionally inoperative ability to stop, I could only rocket, as if a Saturn V were strapped to my backside, up and out. Welcome to existence. At last the road crested, with nothing visible beyond but open sky. The Ram shot into it like a truck in a TV commercial, seeming to lift off the earth, and then lit soft as a cat on a freshly-graded plateau. I trod the brake and we sprayed to a stop. As the dust blew past the cab, I discovered the wherefore of this goat path to the stars: two huge, battleship-grey communication towers, their microwave drums implacably fixing the horizon, utterly indifferent to the panting insect at their feet. Red masthead lights winked in the linty clouds, warning jetliners not to ding their paint jobs on the bristling antennae. I rested my forehead on the steering wheel and drew a long, shaky breath. The trouble you get into with your mind in neutral. According to the atlas, I had arrived at Sweetgrass Butte, official edge of the twentieth century, and at 1860 meters, the highest point in the region. I lifted my hat, passed a hand through my hair. The truck purred underneath, as unperturbed as if we'd stopped at a traffic light. Apart from sky and cloud, and icy gusts bouncing the truck on its shocks like a basketball, we were alone; if not for those antennae, we might have touched down on some distant planet. I reseated my hat, shifted mind and motor back into drive, and etched a tight doughnut in the gravel. By standing on the brake, I was able to shinny the truck back down that rope to the mainline. This time I could see the cliff dropping directly from the right front wheel, down and down, to a knife-edged Road Runner gully miles below. Where, the crease being forested, I wouldn't raise so much as a dust ring, should that tire wander a few inches west. When at last I reached the bottom, I found that the intersection well-signed. I had no excuse for the detour, except possibly lack of sleep. _(Adapted from_Rough Around the Edges _, copyright RK Henderson. Photo courtesy of WikiMedia and a generous photographer.)_

Rough Around the Edges: Sweetgrass Butte

The Swan Dive of Retribution.

rustyring.blogspot.com/2012/08/sweetgrass-butte...

#book, #GoldSide, #mountain, #summer, #Zen

RustyRing

@rustyring.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy

9 months ago

WW: Moonrise over sage hills

Moonrise over sage hills

Perfection is all around.

rustyring.blogspot.com/2012/08/ww-moonrise-over...

#Gold Side, #moon, #night, #summer

Rusty Ring

@rusty-ring.bsky.social

9 months ago

WW: Paradise in the desert Everything in the midst of nothing.

Paradise in the desert

Everything in the midst of nothing.

rustyring.blogspot.com/2012/08/ww-p...

#ColumbiaRiver, #GoldSide, #river, #summer

RustyRing

@rustyring.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy

9 months ago

WW: Paradise in the desert _(Lush green islands in the midst of hundreds of miles of baking sagelands. As the irrigated ground in the distance attests, water is the difference between everything and nothing in this country.)_

Paradise in the desert

Everything in the midst of nothing.

rustyring.blogspot.com/2012/08/ww-paradise-in-d...

#ColumbiaRiver, #GoldSide, #river, #summer

Rusty Ring

@rusty-ring.bsky.social

9 months ago

WW: Western Skink Dipping their tails in a can of sky-blue paint is a rite of adult initiation for these guys.

Western Skink.

Dipping their tails in a can of sky-blue paint is a rite of adult initiation for these guys.

rustyring.blogspot.com/2012/08/ww-w...

#GoldSide, #herpetology, #lizard, #wildlife

RustyRing

@rustyring.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy

9 months ago

WW: Western Skink . _(_ Plestiodon skiltonianus _. Dipping their tails in a can of sky-blue paint is a rite of adult initiation for these guys._)

Western Skink.

Dipping their tails in a can of sky-blue paint is a rite of adult initiation for these guys.

rustyring.blogspot.com/2012/08/ww-western-skink...

#GoldSide, #herpetology, #lizard, #wildlife

Rusty Ring

@rusty-ring.bsky.social

9 months ago

WW: Jumping Cactus Talkin'-bout-dang-ol' "boing", man.

Jumping cactus

Talkin'-bout-dang-ol' "boing", man.

rustyring.blogspot.com/2012/08/ww-j...

#cactus, #GoldSide