Today I stopped beside a Prairie rattlesnake on a country road near Satanta, Kansas. Many people purposefully run over any snake several times with their vehicle. I stopped, looked, took several pictures, and drove away. The snake was alarmed, but unharmed. My reasoning for allowing the snake to live is that I view rattlesnakes as valuable. Not only are they great predators--eating mice--but they are also natives of the prairie that fill an important niche. I know a poisonous snake bite could ma… Continue

My neighbor is dying.

He’s 93 years old. He is fading away in the house in which his grandmother lived her life, a house that has been in his family since the nineteenth century – a family that traces its roots back on this land for four hundred years. Santa Fe is an old town, by American standards.

I thin… Continue