The Moose Jaw

Aw, crap.  I had to downgrade this enjoyable nightstand read by Mike Delany from four stars to three stars to protest its hackneyed, supernatural ending.  The occult explanation of events that had been vaguely foretold and lightly foreshadowed was never relinquished, only rationalized.  The characters didn't so much solve the mystery as have the spooky solution revealed unto them. 

Pity, because I'd been engrossed in the adventure.  The novel's first half included several well-written chapters depicting Alaskan outdoorsmanship and backwoods cabin life, among the best I've read.  The third quarter placed the protagonist in more and more danger, but events still lay within the bounds of plausibility.  I was sure that within the denouement we would learn some natural explanation of weird happenings: something in the spring water; some hallucinogenic plant inadvertently consumed; some mental health issue spurring the protagonist's prodigious consumption of alcohol and increasing paranoia.  Some prankster in a bear suit.  Something.

But this magic-laced ending, as ripe as a hunting party after a two-week Alaskan fishing trip?  Aw, crap.

Side note: there's a touch of arrested development in the author's Hefneresque depiction of a relationship with a damsel in distress, a-heh, a-heh.  (Spoiler: goose grease.)

The Dog Stars

Globetrotting author Peter Heller writes adventure, travel, and other non-fiction, often involving dangerous situations.  His first novel, The Dog Stars, is a post-apocalyptic Western set in Colorado, with wonderful, lyrical writing about private piloting, mountain stream fishing, and a beloved canine companion.  Replace the commas with slashes and you have an epic survivalist tale in free verse.

The book includes rich explorations on meanings and purposes in a new, harsh reality (i.e., shoot high-caliber weapons first, explore meanings and purposes later).  Heller's protagonist Hig, a Cessna pilot and outdoorsman turned aerial scout and turf-defender by necessity, has a sliver more heart and hope than his physically and emotionally bunkered neighbor, but you wouldn't know it by his lethal actions against both hostile and non-hostile intruders.  Even so, while his partner tends their airfield arsenal, Hig entertains the notion of a life beyond, fueled by a chance radio reception which leads him to a journey of peril and discovery.

(I've got Olivia Wilde as the doctor; that's probably just me.)

My fellow Dartmouth alumni will appreciate Heller's drop-in references -- he also spent four years in Hanover -- including an impassioned, fitting sidebar on Eastern Establishment condescension toward the West.

I look forward with anticipation to reading more of Peter Heller's adventurous works.  While I'm more of a National Geographic than a Field and Stream fan, anyone who can turn the end of civilization into a nature appreciation treatise while his hero dodges bullets is worth a gander.

Coyotes Silenced, For the Moment

The New York Times has picked up on the ongoing controversy over coyote-culling in the adjacent Denver suburb of Greenwood Village, Colorado:

After Coyote Attacks, a Denver Suburb Turns to a Gun-Wielding Trapper

For what it's worth, we haven't heard coyotes howling at night in a couple of weeks, even though the designated hunter has supposedly destroyed only one animal in the area.

Update: March 20, 2009 - The State of Colorado's Department of Wildlife has now posted Coyote Warning signs on the walking trail around the Greenwood Village park. How to act if confronted with one; don't let your dog interact with it; etc.

Pass the Goose, Bruce

In our favorite walking park south of Denver, the village authorities have commenced hunting coyotes, purportedly nuisance coyotes who have threatened people and taken pets. At the same time, most of the large geese that frequent the park's two ponds are now absent, at least temporarily, and their droppings have been swept from the park's sidewalks and trails. Clearly, somebody has made a decision that the park is for people first.

When the geese were much more plentiful -- i.e., until a few days ago -- I often wondered whether they might look tasty upon someone's dinner table. Impoverished people in the city might benefit from a free poultry meal, and others might find an occasional game bird appetizing. But Canada geese are protected under the Federal Migratory Bird Act of 1918. Poaching them remains a crime.

We think of other cultures as exotic for the animals that are and are not consumed. In India, cattle are untouched; in Middle Eastern cultures, it's swine. As a non-hunter, I still wonder how strange it must look to hungry people of the planet that we have geese aplenty in our midst and choose to leave them to the coyotes.

Suburban Cowboy

Few retail clothing establishments are more fully realized in concept, and match my sartorial style less, than Shepler's, the Western-wear outfitter. I stopped in their Denver Tech Center location today to investigate.

First observation: the store is in the Denver Tech Center, nestled among the gleaming, high-tech office buildings filled with computers and surrounded by parking lots. The RTD light rail trains serving the congested I-25 commuter corridor travel north and south, only eight or ten lanes of freeway traffic away from the store. I've heard Denver called a cow town before, but there isn't a dogie to punch for miles around.

Fully 20% of the floor space holds boots, in five basic form-factors: work boots, steel-toed work books, low-cut cowboy boots, high-cut cowboy boots, and absurdly high-cut cowboy boots. Any higher, and they'd touch the rim of your cowboy hat; which naturally they can also sell you, in sizes ranging from Huge to Even More Xtra Huge. The Texas insult "All hat, no cattle" could have originated at Shepler's.

Then we have the jeans: boot cut, cowboy cut, slim fit, classic fit, relaxed fit, pre-shrunk, unshrunk, pre-faded, unfaded, black, blue, dark brown, tan, Levi's, Wranglers, etc. Surely these are the same, authentic selections that were available to Centennial State homesteaders in 1876.

Racks of polyester plaid shirts with faux-pearl snap-fasteners in lieu of buttons were on "Clearance", marked all the way down to $24.95. By the way, what's the deal with those snaps on the front of Western-style shirts? It seems to me they'd be awfully cold against your belly tattoos, especially in winter, while you're out riding fences, corralling your herd, or oiling your six-gun in preparation for the climactic shootout.

Speaking of firearms, I saw an advertisement for local shooting lessons posted on the community bulletin board, next to the private-party notices of Winnebagos and quarterhorses for sale. The logo on the shooting lessons ad depicted a human skull with two crossed rifles. Yee-haw!

I walked out of Shepler's empty-handed, steered out of the parking lot past the steakhouse that looks like a funeral home, and motored back onto the interstate. You might take this cowboy out of the Northeast, but you'll have to pry the L.L. Bean catalog from his cold, dead fingers.