Dispatch from the Edge

Since the cranes appear in late February and are gone by the time the vultures arrive in early April, since the aspens will leaf out a few weeks later and the warblers will find shelter there, since the wind will blow till most of the snow is gone from the high peaks and the meadowlarks offer their lilting serenade from valley cottonwoods, since the creeks will rise as the sun tracks north toward its solstice, since the swallows and nighthawks will swoop through the end-of-day sky chasing the smaller winged ones, since a river of bats will emerge every...

by Peter Anderson.As you head into the good cheer of the holidays, you run into an oldfriend on the corner downtown between the bank and the post office whohappens to be hauling a hydraulic wood splitter. And you have severalpinyons, decimated by an influx of beetles, which have been downed andbucked up into some gnarly rounds that would take most of a winter tosplit by hand. And she says, sure, I can drop the splitter by and leaveit for a while. And then you spend a weekend with a few buddies andthat wondrous piece of machinery and end up...

by Peter Anderson. “How long are you going to be around?” my 13-year-old daughter asked Hester who was ringing up our groceries at the Mercantile. Some years ago, Hester left town for a while after her husband died. More recently she returned and now has her old job back. Though I don’t know for sure—we are really only acquaintances—I think she went back to Montana to get a little family support, while her son, who had been pals with my older daughter, was making his way through high school. He’s doing well now, I learned, as I ran my credit...