I’m writing this while drinking coffee. It’s in a big, old fashioned mug – brown glazed with a tiny chip on the handle – from the Hull Company. I found it second-hand in old Greenwich Village at a place that…
In the months after Herb Ringer’s 1941 move to Reno from New Jersey, he set out to explore the barren deserts nearby. Even before the war, much of the American West was relatively empty, and towns in the Great Basin…
The following excerpt is from the book: CANYON COUNTRY EXPLORATIONS & RIVER LORE: The Remarkable Resilient Life of Kenny Ross, by Gene M. Stevenson. The book was written about Kenny Ross, one of the forgotten personalities on the Colorado Plateau…
“The world has gone mad today And good’s bad today, And black’s white today, And day’s night today, And that gent today You gave a cent today Once had several chateaux.” I sometimes think of happier times. What is “happy,”…
Over the past three decades, The Canyon Country Zephyr has published some of the best writing, photography and history of the American West … And politics, from time to time. Now we’re taking a break from politics, as we all…
I’m going to bribe myself to finish this now, so that I can stop beating myself up for NOT finishing it. I don’t know if most people have to work that way, but sometimes that’s what it takes. If I…
This past Fall, Jim and I took a trip out to Herb Ringer country. We wanted to return to a few of the spots in Nevada and California that held particular importance for Herb, and see how those places had…
For those of you who have been regular Zephyr readers for years, I don’t need to introduce Herb Ringer to you. Herb’s brilliant, historic photographs of the American West have been a regular feature in The Zephyr for almost as…
Those who know me, along with those who read my pieces in the Zephyr, are familiar with my hatred of what my neighborhood has become. It is not the same place it was when I moved here as a young…
Paul Vlachos is a New Yorker who understands The West. And he is a New Yorker who understands New York. Wherever Paul goes, he finds signs of life… When we last convened on this page, I was making insane promises…