Hard to believe that the fall season is nearly upon us. Summer has been... odd. Rendezvous was cancelled. Bugs Boys seem to be everywhere, and nobody’s topknot is safe. Still...  beaver’s bound to rise. I have a couple of really good guest posts to share with you, starting with one in honor of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s birthday on September 1. Then … [Read more...] about Working The Trapline — September 2020

In 1834, Ewing Young led a party of 16 men from California into the Willamette Valley of Oregon. They would be the first Mountain Men to permanently settle in that rich and verdant country. Young was initially urged to push north from California into Oregon by a promoter named Hall Jackson Kelley, who was an agitator pushing for American … [Read more...] about The Long Shadow Of Ewing Young — Part II — Oregon Pioneer

Ewing Young cast a long shadow, though nowadays only Oregon historians and fur trade aficionados know his name. Young was one of the hard-driving entrepreneurs who built the 19th American fur trade in the Far West. His theater of operations was in the Southwest out of Taos and west to California. When he tired of trying to “ketch beaver” he … [Read more...] about The Long Shadow Of Ewing Young — Part I — Mountain Man

Some strange doin’s. I have no idea what to make of this film that I stumbled across. The trailer is ... weird... and intriguing... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8D3b94aooE4 Valley of the Gods contrasts abundance and poverty through three separate storylines, featuring a middle-class writer, an eccentric trillionaire, and a struggling Navajo … [Read more...] about ‘Valley Of The Gods’

The forthcoming Let Him Go is a modern Western, a country noir. The vibe from the trailer is damned close to horror. Looks intense. “Following the loss of their son, retired sheriff George Blackledge (Costner) and his wife Margaret (Lane) leave their Montana ranch to rescue their young grandson from the clutches of a dangerous family living … [Read more...] about ‘Don’t Start What You Can’t Finish’

If you have yet to see the New Zealand frontier masterpiece UTU, here’s your chance. Some excellent personage has provided a good-quality upload on Youtube:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7xFjT_nv-8 It would be hard to overstate the importance of this movie for me. I wrote about it back in 2017: When I was a mere stripling of … [Read more...] about UTU

Well the covey took wing Shotguns a-singing A pointing dog down in the old logging road And Danny got three and looked back a-grinning I fumbled a round and I tried to reload The country was cold with the sun westward sinking It's good to be back in this place With my hands around a Belgian made Browning My mind on the lines of her … [Read more...] about Turnpike Troubadours

Had a dream last night about Steve Earle’s 1995 album Train A-Comin’. No idea why. Hard to believe a quarter century has passed since the day in the now long-defunct Boomtown Records in Bend when I stumbled across a new Steve Earle record. This was a huge moment. I had been on board the Steve Earle train since before his 1986 breakout with … [Read more...] about There’s A Train A-Comin’

“Are you familiar with these parts of the frontier?”   This looks intriguing... Based on a 1980 tale by South African novelist, J.M. Coetzee — Waiting For The Barbarians: The Magistrate of an isolated frontier settlement on the border of an unnamed empire looks forward to an easy retirement until the arrival of Colonel Joll, whose … [Read more...] about Waiting For The Barbarians

The Frontiersman’s Paradox reared its head and roared at me last weekend. I came to Sisters Country in search of hundreds of square miles of untrammeled forest meadow, stream and desert to roam. Found it, too, and have done a fair share of roaming over it. The newspaper I edit promotes outdoor recreation and tourism, which means I earn my daily … [Read more...] about Blazin’ Trail — More From the Trapline — August 2020