I have been photographing trains, I think, forever. I remember taking a snapshot, with my dad’s old camera, of a big black train tearing by while I was still in high school. There is this adrenaline rush, a natural high as the train passes; horns screaming, crossing bells going off, the ground rumbling. Did you […]
A passion for the rails Read More »
An Archive of Lara Hartley’s Earlier Stories for DesertUSA Boron, A Photo Essay https://www.desertusa.com/mag08/jun08/boron-lara-hartley.html Goldstone Deep Space Communication Complex – Cassini Call Home https://www.desertusa.com/mag08/aug08/goldstone-deep-space.html Desert Wonder: Tufa towers near Ridgecrest make for a fun local day trip https://www.desertusa.com/mag08/dec08/tufa.html St. Andrews Abbey: A World of Wonder Art creation goes hand in hand with the appreciation of the
From Boron to Ludlow and back again Read More »
Inscription Canyon is a major anthropological attraction in the High Desert Stand in the quiet of Inscription Canyon and let your imagination take wing. Close your eyes and you can almost see the Indians who used to inhabit the area, waiting for visions fueled by fasting and sacred drugs — their prayers wafting skyward on
… except it wasn’t called the Super Bowl in those long ago days. Officially it was the AFL-NFL World Championship Game — played on Jan. 15, 1967 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Off camera, media pundits called it the Super Bowl. After that, the name stuck until here we are at Super Bowl No.
Super Bowl No. 1 and I was there. . . Read More »
I have been thinking too much again and it is keeping me awake — again. There are things in the universe I don’t understand, questions that can’t be answered on Google. Have you ever noticed that most everything can be answered on Google? I asked my friends what they would like to know. K.Y. says,
What do you want to ask the universe? Read More »
An actor portrays Wyatt Earp at a living history exhibition in Barstow. When the Earp boys, Wyatt, Virgil, and Morgan, cloaked in long black coats and accompanied by gambler “Doc” Holiday, made the famous walk to meet Ike Clanton and his gang in Tombstone, Ariz., Wyatt walked into an exalted place in the history of
Looking for Earp, Part One Read More »
It started as a simple search. What makes an excellent root beer and how does one become a connoisseur of root beer? Really, all I wanted to find out was who makes the best root beer. I remember my dad making root beer in the basement of our house in Peru, New York. Or maybe
Root beer and self-awareness Read More »
“Darlin’, you just made my day.” The cowboy tipped his hat and turned his horses to the setting sun. Gold glints silhouetted them briefly and made my eyes tear. “And you, sir, have made mine.” A bad spaghetti western? A Louis L’Amour novel? No, just a chance meeting near Baldwin Lake in the San Bernardino
Chance meeting with a cowboy Read More »
Are cemeteries haunted by the dead or the living? Do marble angels watch over the souls who search among silvery tombstones for names, dates and stone flowers? Call them grave hunters, genealogists or historians, gravers, tombstone tenders, stone strollers or death hags. Just don’t call them morbid. Or ghouls. Or heaven forbid, necrophiliacs. Technically they
Weep Not: Cemetery visitors celebrate life not death Read More »
It was the little engine that could — and did — for 66 years. And 38 years after it was rebuilt in Santa Fe Railway’s Cleburne, Texas, shop, BNSF 1460 officially retired in December 2008. Rail fans affectionately call the little locomotive the “Beep,” and it has found a new home at the Western America
