So for the month of September I’ve driven over 4,000 miles, traveling to Montana and Wyoming for the first three weeks, then finishing off the month with readings from The Bird Saviors in Durango & Boulder, Colorado. I have to give a shout-out to the great people at the University of Colorado at Boulder, particularly the phenomenal writer Stephen Graham Jones, who invited me up there. We had a good crowd and the students asked many questions, which is always nice. I feel dizzy from all this moving around. And it’s not over yet: For anyone interested in hearing some good fiction, I’m reading and signing books at Collected Works in Santa Fe, this Thursday, October 4th, 6-7 pm.
Our Montana trip began with 8 days in Glacier National Park, which was lovely, then a few days in the Missoula area, and ended with a week of backpacking in Yellowstone. One of the Weird Weather highlights: When we drove south from Glacier to Missoula, it was an entire day of driving through wildfire smoke like pea-soup fog. Wildfires in the West this summer have been much worse than usual, really wicked. At Yellowstone we were in the Imperial Geyser Basin area, and were surrounded by bison most of the time, while Canada geese and Sandhill Cranes flew overhead. In both parks we heard Great Horned Owls (twice right over our heads), and in Yellowstone, I heard the distinct call of the majestic Great Gray Owl. Here’s one of our bison friends nearby. The gray sky behind it is caused by the wildfire smoke.
