Hello and Happy August!

It’s been a cool and rainy summer in northern Wyoming.  We are enjoying each drop of rain. 

We remember well the terrible drought of the early 2000s where the ranch got only five inches of rain each year. It was immensely sad to watch the bison pawing for water in the areas where springs had dried up. They had water in their stock tanks, but they remembered where the springs used to run and, we suspect, could smell water running deep in the earth. Our hearts go out to all the ranchers and farmers struggling to make it through this year. We pray that Buffalo Above brings abundant snow this winter to help the grasses and crops next spring.

This has been an interesting summer for us. 

As we told you in our last Newsletter, at the first of June we were honored to receive the Frank Waters Award, then at the end of June, Kathleen’s short story, “No Quarter,” published in the REBEL HEARTS ANTHOLOGY, won the Spur Award for the Best Short Fiction of the Year. That story, which about two slaves in the Alamo, is also a finalist for the Will Rogers Medallion Award, which will be announced in Fort Worth in October. If you’d like to attend, tickets can be obtained at:https://www.willrogersmedallionaward.net/award-ceremony

The release of Michael's "Saga of the Mountain Sage" in Four volumes!

...But what does it all mean?

Greetings, all!  

June rolled down on top of us like a wave!  You'd think, after all, June usually follows May. But this year, somehow, June 1st smacked us out of the blue! One day, it was just sometime in May, and then, wham! When did that happen?

It's been a wonderous, fantastic, wet and rainy spring here in northwestern Wyoming. The greenest spring we can remember. Better even than 1979, 1987, and 1996! The country looks like Ireland. That kind of eye-popping green! The grass is thick and seeding out nicely. Lots of subsurface moisture, but we're wondering how the hay producers are coping. It's nice to grow lots of lush and magnificent grass and alfalfa, but you need warm dry conditions to cut it, dry it, and bale it. Since we're on the cusp of first cutting, we hope they get a break in the precipitation.

We are just back from the Tucson Festival of the Book. Wow! What a trip!

Three days of blowing snow, ice, treacherous highways, closed roads, and an edge-of-the seat crossing of South Pass in Wyoming. The morning we drove into Tucson, the city had three inches of snow! But we made it, partly because our truck, a Ram 3500 named “The Bullet” negotiated every challenge. The Bullet? Yes!  A special thank you to our good friend Craig Johnson and Sheriff Walt Longmire for the inspiration.

Our appearance in Tucson was at the request of Wolfpack Publishing, and specifically for the official launch of After The Eagle Has Fallen, book three of the Wyoming Chronicles. And, dang, did we ever send it off with a bang! Sold over a hundred copies of our books over the two days we spent in the Wolfpack booth. Met hundreds of great people in the process, and enjoyed some of the finest writers we’ve ever been privileged to work with. Afterward, we concluded that this was the finest book event we’ve done in thirty-five years!!

Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Yo Saturnalia, Joyous Soyal and many other traditions.

December is a sacred time around the world. In North America, many of the native peoples celebrate the winter solstice, the longest night of the year, and the return of the sun the next day, which is their New Year’s Day. More ceremonies occur on December 24th and 25th.

For example, the Salish say that long ago a great and good man came among their forefathers and performed miracles of all kinds. Upon leaving them, he said he would return in the form of a big white coyote. At Isleta Pueblo, they celebrate the Buffalo Dances on December 24th and early morning on Christmas Day, and at Nambe Pueblo the buffalo dancers come out in glorious horned headdresses to dance by a light of a great bonfire. The fragrance of piñon smoke drifts through the darkness as the dancers cast enormous shadows over the pueblo walls.

Happy October to All!

The mountains around us are a patchwork of gold and green, and our yard is filled with deep red Chokecherry trees and brilliant yellow aspens. In the sunlight, the leaves all seem to glow from an inner fire. It’s all just beautiful.

We just returned from celebrating our 40^th anniversary (sheesh, time to diet) and have been harvesting the last of the potatoes, which are delicious. Also been mourning the fact that the tomatoes we planted needed a much longer growing season than they received in this northern country. Of course, the raccoons sleeping on the plants probably didn’t help. But the fried green tomatoes we picked are excellent, especially as an accompaniment to buffalo burgers. By the way, the buffalo are looking shaggy, losing their summer coats, and preparing to grow a heavy, winter undercoat, which consists of some of the finest cashmere in the world. They always seem relieved that cold weather has returned.  When the biting flies vanish and the dust of summer fades, they run across the pastures kicking up their heels and bounding through the tan grasses.

HAPPY SEPTEMBER!

It's a quiet beautiful day in Wyoming. The aspens and cottonwoods have their first touches of yellow, heralding the arrival of autumn a bit early, but it's been a cool summer here.

We were just informed that we will be the recipients of the 2023 Frank Waters Award.

"The Frank Waters Award stands for exemplary literary achievement, as well as a canon of writing that communicates a deep understanding, celebration, and love of our human nature and peoples of all races." Previous recipients are: Barbara Kingsolver, Tony Hillerman, and John Nichols.

In college, we read several of Frank Waters’ books—MASKED GODS, BOOK OF THE HOPI, PUMPKIN SEED POINT—all classics, and each left an indelible impression on us. His dedication to conveying difficult Native American spiritual concepts, the haunting beauty of the western landscape, and the character of its people, was an inspiration. Each was described in some of the most beautiful prose we’ve ever read. It's a great privilege to receive an award that bears Frank Waters' name. We are deeply grateful to Friends of the Pike’s Peak Library District for this honor.