Subscription postcards: Geologically based soda names, lenticular clouds, and alpine fronting
Subscription postcards: Rock formations, primary functions, and life questions
I am a bounty hunter. I am a bounty hunter. I am a bounty hunter.
Subscription postcards: Extraordinary giraffes, spherical ice, and the South Dakotan Buddha
Art by mail: Retrospective
Message on postcard:
Alissa, Michael, and family — Greetings from the end of my road trip! I drove all the way across Oregon, spending a couple weeks east of the Cascades, and then I drove across Nevada and Utah in one straight shot. Now I’m in Colorado, packing up some stuff I left here last winter … after this I’m returning to Portland, Oregon, where I’ll be living in a house with an architect, a journalist, a liquor store manager, and a former touring heavy metal vocalist turned serologist. Since you’re family, you get a list of mini-stories that never made it into other postcards. Remember these! They will be important for future generations of our clan.
- Cell phone reception is better in Utah than it is at Iowa’s Yellow River State Forest.
- There are places in Wisconsin where you can stand on a rock outcropping and look down at soaring birds.
- Indigenous mound-building cultures are greatly under appreciated.
- Nordhouse Dunes Wilderness has some of the prettiest shoreline along Lake Michigan.
- Bison will make monster noises at sunrise.
- I lack the expertise to distinguish between a tortoise fossil and shell-shaped rock.
- Before camping on a bridge that dead ends into a fence, make sure something hasn’t died beneath it.
- You can buy figs on your way to Muir Woods, but you can’t park there on a weekend.
- Most Vanagon owners are pretty friendly; some are too friendly.
- I found an antique bottle in the desert. It’s for a flimflam hair tonic that contained arsenic.
- I almost crashed my van trying not to hit a giant rattlesnake.
- While lying on my back falling asleep, I saw a meteor through the tiny little window on the roof of my van — on multiple occasions. It felt like being in space.
Reviewing this postcard, I see that this is more like a collection of facts and opinions than stories. I’ll round things out with some sage advice. If you spill transmission fluid on your shoe, it will smell funky forever. Don’t try to cook with anything you scrape off the ground at a salt flat. And be careful of the asphalt at Wisconsin’s Kettle Moraine State Forest Northern Unit. It can crack the glass in your phone.
Art by mail: The thing in the desert
Message on postcard:
- This is the story of the thing in the desert. It begins as the sun rises on the Alvord playa. It’s hot and dry. I’m saving water.
- I’m in the van, working on my sketchbook. The dogs are hanging out outside, full of energy after eating breakfast. Then there’s a series of yips, and Skillet runs in with a bone.
- “Great Scott!” I exclaim. Thanks to years of active participation in online paleoanthropology forums, I recognize the bone as soon as I see it. It’s a hominid femur, twenty to forty thousand years old.
- I step out of the van and the dogs eagerly lead me to the site of their find. There in the sun-baked surface of the ancient, dry lakebed is the rest of a nearly complete skeleton.
- But something is wrong. The skull has horns. My dogs have unearthed the unthinkable — a prehistoric race of demon people.
- What’s more, the skeleton belonged to a demon-person who clearly had been laid to rest in some kind of ceremonial burial. He was surrounded by ritual artifacts. In his hand was a bouquet of paleobotanical fossil flowers. And on his finger, a ring.
- I ignore my instincts. I remove the ring.
- The skeleton’s head swivels, and a dusty voice creaks out . “DOOOOOOOD,” he said, “NOOOOOOOOO.” Behind me, Steens Mountain split in two.
- At this point the dogs are seriously freaking out. Eagles are flying out of the mountain. Everything is rumbling. The skeleton is wiggling, big time.
- And that’s when the smooth jazz kicks out, announcing Noam Chomsky’s arrival. He strides forth from the mountain.
- “Noam,” I say, “This smooth jazz? I didn’t realize you were a David Sanborn fan. Also, I thought you lived in Boston, not an underground magma chamber.”
- “Mike,” he says, “that demon skeleton was the linchpin of America’s two-party political system. Thanks to your discovery we can welcome in a new era of tolerance, fairness, and plurality.”
- “Okay,” I said.
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