A strong turnout was on hand at the Teixeira Ranch sale barn in Terrebonne, April 9, for the second meeting of the freshly reanimated Deschutes County Livestock Association (DCLA). Dave... — Updated 4/16/2024 Full story

Shipworms, if you didn’t know, were the bane of mariners for many centuries. Shipworms are mollusks that make a living by burrowing into wood immersed in saltwater. These “termites of the... — Updated 11/14/2023 Full story

For the second time in the last few months I found myself, unwillingly, digging a grave in the woods behind our house. I picked a spot in a clearing between the trees and began to dig, which... — Updated 10/10/2023 Full story

Each fall I throw together my saddle, bedroll, and bridles, and make a pilgrimage down to Lake County for the fall works - gathering, sorting, and shipping cattle - in the herculean effort... — Updated 9/26/2023 Full story

The Godby Farm in Sisters hosted officials from the KWPN (Royal Warmblood Studbook of the Netherlands) for a keuring event on Thursday, September 7. A "keuring" is an official inspection by a... — Updated 9/12/2023 Full story

I have been interested in the White House cocaine imbroglio, mostly because it marks the closing of an interesting historical loop. To be sure, this probably isn’t the first time a bag of y... — Updated 8/8/2023 Full story

It’s getting weird out there. The Vice President of the United States was in California recently claiming that the average American is only $400 dollars from declaring bankruptcy, while on t... — Updated 8/1/2023 Full story

It seems fitting that I would learn about the death of novelist Cormac McCarthy dozens of miles up the Chewaucan River, in an old cow camp, if only because the location was an antipode of... — Updated 6/20/2023 Full story

Given the extraordinary speed of modern information exchange, it can be difficult to properly triage the many hundreds of crisis declarations demanding our immediate and undivided attention.... — Updated 6/6/2023 Full story

Reading the Durham Report, one can be forgiven for wondering whether to reach for a bottle of Advil or a tinfoil hat. I recommend both. What the report details — I’ll spare you the 300 pag... — Updated 5/23/2023 Full story

What are we, mere monkeys chattering in front of the cobra’s basket, to think about the recent unveiling of a meatball made from the DNA of a woolly mammoth? If you didn’t know, an Aus... — Updated 4/11/2023 Full story

Here’s hoping you enjoyed the sudden appearance of the Steampunk Party Balloon over the United States as much as I did. There’s something delightfully throwback, something Jules Verney, or... — Updated 2/7/2023 Full story

Americans nurture a long-running obsession with criminals, from Jesse James to John Dillinger to Bernie Madoff, so it’s no surprise that FTX charlatan Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) was able to e... — Updated 12/20/2022 Full story

And finally the madness ends. Election madness, I mean. Most of the candidates, early or late, zeroed in on homelessness as a problem. One candidate was even bold enough to suggest that he... — Updated 11/8/2022 Full story

I read, with some amusement, that the chairman of Russia’s Lukoil, Ravil Maganov, had died after falling out of a hospital window in Moscow. It’s more likely that he died of a severe cas... — Updated 9/14/2022 Full story

“Praise ignorance, for what man has not encountered he has not destroyed.” — Wendell Berry Turns out we can add monarch butterflies to the list of species threatened during the six... — Updated 8/9/2022 Full story

Within hours of the mass murder of school children and teachers at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas, public scrutiny of the law enforcement response turned accusatory, with a pile of... — Updated 6/7/2022 Full story

The best thing about documentary filmmaking, it turns out, is the friends you make along the trail. For nearly two years, Sisters native and cinematographer Sam Pyke and I have been... — Updated 11/3/2021 Full story

While filming the Len Babb Movie Project — we are eight months into this endeavor and making tremendous progress — cinematographer Sam Pyke and I have covered thousands of miles,... — Updated 1/19/2021 Full story

It was late June, but there was frost on my bedroll when I woke up in the dark at the Murphy Ranch cow camp on South Flat, about 25 miles up the Chewaucan River from Paisley, Oregon. I was... — Updated 8/4/2020 Full story

A few summers ago, while lounging around the Munich Airport waiting for a flight to Reykjavik, I bought a book: “The Silk Roads: A New History of the World,” by Peter Frankopan. Fra... — Updated 3/18/2020 Full story

Hobbs Margarét, 32, of Sisters Cattle Company, might be a radical. Maybe that’s a result of his deep West Texas ranching roots, his degree from the University of Oregon, or because h... — Updated 10/9/2019 Full story

If you are one of those rarified Americans who still believe that natural rights are bequeathed to us by our creator, rather than granted to us by government masters, you will perhaps... — Updated 9/24/2019 Full story

With all due respect to Sgt. Bailey and the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office, whose service and dedication to professionalism are both real and deeply appreciated by this space, the a... — Updated 8/20/2019 Full story

The new American penchant for tribalism isn’t doing us any favors. That was on full display at the most recent Democrat presidential debates, where candidates pandered vigorously to their var... — Updated 7/9/2019 Full story