december ducks

one day
i went duck hunting
down at the ditches
my dad and tucker did the hunting
i watched and watched
then i scared some ducks away
two of 'em
my dad shot five ducks
we also saw a fox we did
it was interested in eating ducks
then we walked back
we walked somewhere else
no ducks
my dad walked across one of the ditches
and he looked on the other side
and he cracked the ice on the end of the ditch
then we saw three probably a mile away from us
three big deer one big buck four all together
the buck was sitting down
then we saw a hawk or an osprey or an eagle
i don't know for sure which
and then a wood duck
tucker was running around scaring everything in sight

when i came home
i was really excited because
on the way
i got to carry the ducks to the car

they were pretty stinky

and that's the end of my story

by luke hanson

my nephew was interested in blogging
i said i would be his
amanuensis
this is one of his hunting stories

geologist for a day

(where does all the inimitable well honed prose go when
it decides to go when it just disappears)

i set out to find a fault
i a fool and my mad brother went
no tools only a car and an idea
of a map in my head after looking
on the web
i translate that sattelite view into
a groundlevel orientation
this grove of trees this far on the road
this far off the road will i walk

i located a drainage area where there
was obvious distinction between both sides
of the banks of the ditch
one side had a lot of shale
the other was basically desert dirt
i kicked at it for awhile just to make sure
and sure enough there was no shale on this side
so what does that mean
is there a little rift here on the surface of the desert

a week before adeline settle took leave of her ranch

i attribute the earthquake in the area to her spirit
leaving the land
that's my working hypohthesis here

what i aimed to understand was whether or not
the evidence was visible on the land

the wind was howling

i pulled on some boots to walk in the brush
and weaved then through sage

my brother and i walked up the runoff bed for awhile
to see if anything stood out as visibly aberrant
at one place we could see a small cliff that extended
about 8 ft higher than the opposite side with
shale dirt clay and pebblebeds obvious in the wall

hmnh i said

so i walked the other way while my brother
went back to the car

i happened upon a strange phenomenon
a sink hole
i looked close
it was as perfectly round as anything round in nature
about 5 ft in diameter
and sunk about 2ft
the rim of the geoindentation was new dirt
so it looked to me like it had happened
very recently

hnmh i said

well i walked around and happened upon
a ridge of shale
the only ridge of shale anywhere near
it lay as a spine might if someone were flexing their back
or like a buffalo hump
or like something slowly emerging out of the soil
i walked along this shale mound which extended in
an easterlywesterly way for about 400 yds

i surmise from my observing the map once again
after i returned that i was standing very very near
the spot indicated by the arrow which presumes to pinpoint the epicenter
realizing of course that the quake happened
about 15 miles below
and man did i feel tiny when i thought about that

did i find the fault
i suppose i can say i got near the area
where the fault faults its faults
tectonically speaking

and that was enough for me
i enjoyed the whole excursion
and while i cannot assume the status
of a professional earth mucker
and what might be called
a geovoyeur
trenchdweller dust sweeper
still i can look at the earth and know some things
i am a geovoyeur i guess
titillated by the beauty and power
inherent there

in the wake of the quake we have
a collapsed mineshaft

one person died on the ski hill
first one ever
his name was cloud

N46.79 - W112.18

i stood out there in the cold thinking
i know someone who could help me
understand this better
and i knew someone who knew this land
like few people ever get to know land
and it all seemed immediately evident
that nothing had passed
life is altered ever so subtly
i was cold thinking about these things
it was just about time to call it good

one day we're playing chopin and
african spirituals on the piano
there's a little rattle of the pictures on the wall
some cattle moan in the distance
and the wind blows
and the next day dawns

and that's it
that's all there is