Saturday, November 8, 2008


Is there such a thing as resources? I studied in Resource Conservation in Montana and the resources we talked about were timber, water, energy and things of that sort. The comment someone made the other day here at Sterling College that made me question this more was "You should really talk to him, He's a great resource."

He's a resource? I didn't think so. Why not say that he's a great person?

I think that labeling something as a resource is inviting its consumption by people. The fish, and the trees, and the knowledge in someone's head.

A couple of Fish and Wildlife people came to talk to my wildlife management class yesterday. We went out electroshock fishing. Judd, wore his waders, baseball cap, rain coat with the USFW patch on the arm and polarized shades.

Thursday, November 6, 2008

North woods

A meteorite leveled the land.
leaving a great moose track where now the mountains lie flat.
Covered with poor sandy outwash from ice rivers,
the crater, like the colloseum sits telling stories just with its hands.

But the moose with their heads low, walk like icebergs
down old logging roads in the North woods, long abandoned.
With their racks all draped in velvet and their eyes half peeled,
they gather in the crater's low point. Drops of mercury forming a collective.
Droplets of the collective moose joining to prove wildness lives.

Some mineral trick or deep down magnetic quirk of the stardust
has aligned with the galaxy to be its equal in shape and beauty
Each chip of crystaline bedrock is tilted under the soil,
asking the moose herd to gather, and once gathered to sing.
And the call rises best when rebounded off moose bone
which in its metaphysical reaction to the sound,
draws up the flecks of light from under ground and projects them into the sky.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008


Seasons turn, but don't wait for nobody.
's long and dark, them hard ol' winters.
but long's you got fire, and a couple of hairs left on your bow,
you last.

Dave Brown makes bowls 'round here.
Don't earn much, but happy, makes everything.
Banjo, chair, house, meat, bread, makes it all.
Banjo's got a piece of birds eye maple right there,
down where his wrist sits on the drum part.
's prettier'n he is, sure, but without Dave, just sits around

That's why you got to get up and DO.
Get up and make somethin' and stop eatin' up
what's made for you.
Stop waitin' to play, 'cause if y'ain't got no banjo,
you could make one yet, and follow its strings like a

Goin' somewhere, maybe.
Stoppin' the world from fallin' apart and
forgetting how to drop seasons down,

Jenny makes sugar with her family.
Jenny saw me lickin' the maple gunk off my plate after flapjacks,
and asked me if I wanted a gallon.
I don't know if my face lit up, but hers did just watchin' me smile.
I told her "I'd work." Told her "I'd help." Told her "I'd
drive yer horses all through the woods so you could leave that
gassy old 4-wheeler in the shed where it belongs and leave me
behind a team, where I belong." Laughin' in the snow.

But then again, she got more excited thinkin' about
my fiddle music than my work.
Just my tunes bumpin' around with the steam in the sugarhouse.
Just tappin' my toe on the one inch o' floor board
not already stepped on by somebody in the crowded shack,
all the diffused lamplight through the steam leavin' shadows
on my corner spot, on my fiddle, on my bow.

That's all? Doin' nothin'? Fiddlin' around and settin' there
smellin' the good steam comin' up and borrowing a few whiffs
just to remember the old times by? That ain't work where
I come from. That's a musician's dream. Dreams can be fun for a while,
but sometimes you start to feel like you're cheatin' somebody-
yourself maybe, gettin' fat in the sugarhouse.

But not Ol' Brown. He works hard. He picks a claw hammer tune
with his beard a-pricklin' out and his one eye squinted down like.
Prettier'n he is, but like I say that's why you got to

Haven't written back to Montana.
People miss me, people hate me.
Gone. Never see my friend no more.

I got a dog, did anyway.
I swear I love her, took good care of her, too.
Never trained her good, but walked her so long
she limped on her bad leg and went to sleep.
Ain't my dog no more. No place for her with me.

Left my rosin home again.
Ol' Brown pickin' away, and dark, raspy
gasps comin' off my bow like a kid whinin'.
Not like Kitchen Girls, or Julia Delaney, or Soldier's Joy,
a kid whinin'.
oh well.

Ain't a kid no more. World's duller, now.
Full o' stuff I already know, don't know yet,
hain't gonna know and don't WANNA.
Lookin' more for reasons, than answers.
Sometimes shocked that this is it.

DRUNK and waiting for my girl. She ain't.
She works, not me. Well, not true, the government
pays me to vaccuum and mop. Why?
Likes clean floors I guess.
oh well.

I know somewhere in that mirror sits
the whole life I've got behind me.
I try so hard to see myself sometimes but I can't.
Beard, tired eyes, hurt back, dirty.
Smile? Still works, every time.

Across the hall's my Mando.
Outta tune, A-string buzzes a bit.
Every time I play, sounds a little better.
Every time I seem to listen less and feel more.
Don't think I need my ears no more
cause the bones in my palm resonate,
each of my fingers feels a different string's noise.
My pinky hums all the stuff I sound on the E up there,
my pointer is the G-string singin' bass.
Even deaf I'd play, just to feel it.
And even out like a dog and buzzing-like,
I play it very fast. And every time I say,

Okay, I'm back

I finally made it back to the old Campground. I thought I was done with it, but my dad told me someone asked him about it recently and that made me check up on it. It had just started to become the forum discussion I wanted it to be when I quit! And I think some of my best writing exists on this web page. If through my squinting tearing eyes looking at this Library computer screen and aching (not really) fingertips on the keyboard I can do some good in this world then I'll keep working on it.

I think I'll freshen things up with a new look for the page to let everyone know that I'm back at least for now. Perhaps a seasonal theme, winter's on its way i suppose.

This blog is my art, such as it is. It isn't a medium I've ever before admired, but in this age, the keyboard is as good as a quill. Most of my writing sits bound in a homemade notebook of recycled cardboard, paper, and chord. But lit from the burning tons of age-old sunlight, my words escape their books, and jump into people's minds-miles and miles away.

And what is ART? What good is it? I've often thought that I wanted nothing to do with it. I've always brushed it aside as extra, or luxurious and something to be done only by people with nothing better to do. Sometimes there really is nothing better. I find that about half the time I'm asked for a favor its to do work: to teach ax skill, to carry, to fell trees. And the other half of the time I'm asked to do art. To pull out my instrument and make music, to keep writing.

And I think I'm finally coming to a point when I'll admit the good in art. So, to kick things off extra artistically, I'll try another poetic endeavor before lunch here and see how she turns out. See the above post if you're interested!

Sunday, May 4, 2008

Response to Comments

Friends, Family, Countrymen,

I thank you all for your readership. And I'm excited about how active the comments have been for the past few posts. I notice no one commented on my poetry... figures.

Anyway I don't get many comments on this blog, but the ones I do get are usually considerate and well thought out, and it is a signal to me that the Campground is blossoming into what I hoped, a discussion place or free speech zone. So thanks again.

Uncle Tom,
I've often wrestled with this economic issue. Deprive sweat shops and you deprive sweat shop workers. I cannot truly suggest that I know what will happen when you boycott sweat shops. Perhaps I can find a case study to enlighten myself. Anyway, my argument in this post will not hinge on how we deal with sweatshops, but rather, my point is a message of hope regarding sustainable living. You expressed doubt about the capability of a local economy to provide for the people. To try and address this doubt I want to take the question out of the ethereal realm of this human invention called money, and bring it back to a basis in land.

For your consideration:
If you want to fight poverty, you must also fight wealth.

I'm certain this isn't an original thought and It might even be a direct quote from someone far smarter than myself, but the way I'm figuring things, it makes perfect sense. The way these people became impoverished and forced to work in sweat shops was that a colonial power took proprietary control of their land. All that we own comes from the land. Aldo Leopold said, "Heat doesn't come from the furnace and Pork doesn't come from the supermarket."

Microsoft computers don't come from the mailman, they come from the land. The problem isn't that the people who lose sweat shop jobs will be unable to buy their commodities, it is that they have no land from which to produce these commodities. Why? Free trade took their land away. All the humanitarian laws, the environmental regulations, the equal opportunity laws, work against free trade. They assert social values onto a system that profits the obliteration of those values. This is what approaches europe's system of a social democracy or a social capitalism. Free trade must become wise trade. Subsistence economy.

Liberte se trouve, en effet, completement dans l'imagination de la gouvernement, et les gens qui ne lisent jamais un journal quotidien.

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Poems, anthems, odes

It'll be night time when the apocalypse hits.
The TV will be cranking away and its flickering light will be
what we see the end of the world by.

The stone possesses symmetrical indifference,
Equally unstirred by direction as by sound, impact or ice.
To be stone is to practice indifference toward all forces,
thereby a force become.

The virus, in a race to destroy its host,
A race to kill its home
will die deadly.
The common cold lives on,
A nuisance eternal.

Evolution was no eternal tree,
Slow-growing, expandable, seed-started, fat,
But a bolt of branched lightning!
Life struck in an unprecedented Virginia tempest.
Cracked contra crust then vanished eternal.
Life left a calm moist smell haunting the surface
of sun-soaked rocks, which rolled backwards,
away from the light.

Worship and Fear. My touch burns unrivaled.
Wherever I ride it is midsummer's noon.
My Chariot the throne and the center, of day's kingdom
its border a circle, half dawn and half moon.
I am Apollo.
The seasons: my wake, my wingtips, my robe.
Fringe frosted, dragging, wrapping the poles.

By my diligence alone is life itself lifted out of fantasy.

When I drop my reins, on the ultimate day,
sunset on all things.
What is earthly eternal finds limits, crumbles when I rest.
I will snore smiling as your tears freeze,
weeping for sun.
All that is eternal ends with Apollo.

And Another thing!

Obama supports clean coal. Get with it man! I wonder if he's just another politician. I'm also amazed at how bombarded I am by his advertising, i mean campaigning. When he said clean coal at the rally in missoula the life just got absolutely sucked out of the gym. "what did he just say?" people gasped. He changed the subject real quick. I'll write him a letter if he gets elected. I'll write letters to whoever gets elected.

Be strong in the environmental realm, people. Stronger than any president.