The trouble with using a four-foot-long word is you risk sounding ostentatious. (See what I mean?) I’ve tried to argue that we should learn more and bigger words, but I’ve been trounced by smarter people and I surrender. But I must make one final jab at the editors and readers who have not humored me.…
All posts by Pete Kauffman
Not All Who Wonder are Ignorant
Sketch: Saturday morning, 5:30, Kenai River flats, 32*F Sandhill cranes, long legged and musical, pitching into the mud with stilted legs outstretched. A flock of several hundred White-fronted geese, these with a watery cackle, circle once and come in. The sky is alive with birds: Lesser Canada Geese, Pintails and Mallards, a wigeon, some Northern…
Book Review: The Need to Be Whole by Wendell Berry
The Need to Be Whole is, by Wendell Berry’s own admission, a “pondering and ponderous book.” Approaching 500 pages, the ponderousness comes in part from Berry’s abhorrence of shadowy language that might allow some assumption to crawl under the back fence and set up shop. Any word with the suffix –ism calls for a page or two…
Sketch: Home
These were the men who raised me, brothers and coworkers, all of them better men than I. They taught me what they knew and many things they didn’t. They said, “Drive safe,” which was a banal thing to say. I checked the tire pressure on the car while they talked about their work for the…
The Distinctly Masculine Art of Journaling
Perhaps you are out there somewhere, but among my acquaintances, I can count on one hand the people who are simultaneously journal-keepers and male. Every now and then when The Wags stand around the barbecue pit on Father’s day, I like to imagine everybody sitting down with a tablet, pen, and cup of Earl Grey…
What a Wonderful World
According to the digital thermometer it is six below, Fahrenheit. The horizons are crystallized in a band of orange and contrasted with the deep blue of the sub-arctic sky. The sun is out of sight now, but while the land is in shadow, the clouds over the mountains refract the last rays of the sun…
Book Review: Backcast by Lou Ureneck
Without bothering to read the blurb or scan the book, I checked out from the public library Backcast: Fatherhood, Fly-fishing, and a River Journey Through the Heart of Alaska by Lou Ureneck. I expected something easy; some quasi-philosophical reflections on fly-fishing, perhaps a handful of insights about parenting. The Alaskan wilderness is always ripe for such comments.…
Delinquent Tax Bills Make Superb Bookmarks
I had a piece of toast in one hand and a book in the other when I realized that, as a bookmark, I was using a delinquent vehicle tax notice. Illuminating realization: So this is who I have become. In a former life I paid all bills early. What shifted so that I not only fail to pay…
To Build a Canoe Paddle
There is something to be said for form, and it would be out of form to paddle a Cedar canoe with a plastic paddle. Does not even nature teach you this? It would be like wearing rubber boots to a cathedral. I call my brother who has access to cabinet-grade lumber, and he sends me…
Of Rivers and Men
Here are two options to go about becoming native to your place, using my hometown as an example: You might read some objective traveler’s account, such as John Muir when he walked through on his way to the Gulf in 1867, commenting on the lack of industry and the beautiful scenery. Or William Least-Heat Moon,…