Herb Ringer discovered his love for the West in 1939. He had traveled from his home in Ringoes, New Jersey to Reno, Nevada to procure a quick divorce, and spent that winter working in a local market, occupying a cramped…
“Let the word go forth, from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans…”— JFK I was sleeping soundly, oblivious to the cares of the world, and…
When the swamp gas clears…and the weather balloons are safe in their weather-station beds …and all the super-secret spy planes have spun their alley-oops and jittered their non-ballistic shuffles through the clouds for the night…and you’re on some wide stretch…
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…
It was the trial of the year in Moab, Utah. The courtroom was packed full by Ten in the morning, November 18th of 1921. Tensions had been brewing a long time between the cattlemen of Southeast Utah and the encroaching…
“After twenty-six weeks of sunlight and stars, wind and sky and golden sand, I want to hear once more the crackle of clamshells on the floor of the bar in the Clam Broth House in Hoboken. I long for a…
A BRIEF NEW INTRODUCTION by Jim Stiles Edward Abbey once said, “The idea of wilderness needs no defense.” Nor should anyone have to defend Abbey, or whatever his personal flaws might have been, thirty years after he died —especially in…
This is what’s happened between blinks of the eye…. Shortly after The Zephyr’s first issue appeared on newsstands, in mid-March 1989, I was at the old Main Street Broiler, eating one of Debbie Rappe’s wonderful cheeseburgers and overheard a spirited…
When one speaks of hope in the middle of America, one tends to refer to it existing in “pockets.” The small population of family farms are pockets of hope. The few towns that have held onto their local hospitals, albeit…
What do we fear more—dying or being forgotten? My father, who was always a private man, died a little more than 7 years ago. I don’t know if he worried about being forgotten—that’s one of the many questions I never…