By Rick Schwertfeger Captain, Frontier Partisans Southern Command, Austin, Texas Lowlands get settled first. Later arrivals head for the hills. The mountainous backcountry becomes the outback, the frontier. It takes hard, hardy people to make it there. In Australia by the1880s cattle and sheep stockmen had moved their herds into the Snowy … [Read more...] about Late To the Gather, But Oh What Fun!

I am fascinated by the drug trade. Not a user, myself. My preferred intoxicant was alcohol, which I used to swill in unseemly quantities, but that was years ago — and, anyway, it’s not about the high. My interest in El Narco is an offshoot of my explorations of the Latin American frontier(s), U.S. interventions from the Mexican war to the … [Read more...] about Snowing On Mena

My amigo Craig Rullman has sunk his spurs into a very exciting new project — a documentary film on buckaroo and Western artist Len Babb. I put together a story on the project for The Nugget Newspaper, and thought I’d post it up here. I figure many of you will find it of interest... * Film will capture life and legacy of buckaroo artist “I … [Read more...] about The Buckaroo Life

Spring is upon us in the Central Oregon Cascades, bringing us our first 80-degree day last Wednesday. Ceili and I took advantage to revisit an old favorite spot near the foot of Black Crater — my sacred mountain. It’s been a couple of years since I’ve climbed it; it took a pounding in the Milli Fire of 2017. Ceili and I will trek to its summit this … [Read more...] about Working The Trapline — June 2020

Katheryn Winnick (of Vikings fame) has been tapped for a lead role in an ABC crime drama titled The Big Sky, based on C.J. Box’s The Highway. C.J. Box is one of a crop of Rocky Mountain writers who have made the modern West the locus of some really first rate crime fiction. Boss of the genre for me is Craig Johnson with his Longmire series, but … [Read more...] about The Beauty Of The Big Sky

Memorial Day is fixin’ to be a feast of frontier drama. Barkskins premiers on Monday, May 25 on the National Geographic Channel. The more I see of this, the more excited I am for it. TV Insider has a good interview with the showrunner, Elwood Reid: Based on Annie Proulx’s best-selling novel, the series from Elwood Reid takes a close look at the … [Read more...] about A Feast Of Frontier Drama

There’s a potential fight brewing between the state of South Dakota and the Lakota nations over COVID-19 checkpoints. From Rapid City Journal: Gov. Kristi Noem sent letters Friday to both the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and Oglala Sioux Tribe demanding that their checkpoints for COVID-19 related travel be removed from state and U.S. highways. If … [Read more...] about More From The Trapline — May 2020 — Of War Clubs, Checkpoints And Buffalo

Been following this batshit crazy mercenary misadventure in Venezuela a few days back. A U.S. contractor called Silvercorp was apparently behind a small and woefully ill-equipped and ill-prepared amphibious incursion led by some ex-Special Forces soldiers which was apparently designed to whack Nicolas Maduro and launch an uprising. Laudable enough … [Read more...] about Send Lawyers, Guns And Money…

If I could roll back the years Back when I was young and limber Loose as ashes in the wind I had no irons in the fire... — Ian Tyson, 50 Years Ago The Great Quarantine has not altered my activities much, with the exception of shutting down music gigs, which I miss acutely. I’ve been playing pretty regularly, but only on the couch. … [Read more...] about Working The Trapline — May 2020 — ’Throat-Slitting, Lies And Land-Grabs’