Articles written by Sandy Compton
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A Few Thoughts
It seems to be spring. Winter wasn’t so great, as winters go; after too many days of skiing last season, I’ve not had enough this year. But I’m grateful my knees still work after 34 seasons of sliding downhill; not perfectly, but still. Also, I only...
A Few Thoughts
In Missoula is a house on North Street referred to by its occupants as the Food Shack. It’s home to college students, recent graduates and miscellaneous other young singles, a successful experiment in rotational communal living that I’m pri...
A Few Thoughts on Taylor, Travis and world domination
Questions: Why does halftime at the Super Bowl last 100 years and feature stuff football fans have no interest in? Is it just me, or do others have no idea what or who Usher is? Does the NFL book halftime entertainment to fool people not remotely...
A Few Thoughts ... on being worried and enraged in 2024
It’s time to write something clever about the new year. Or at least something. We get an extra day in 2024, and we get to go through an election season. Oh, boy! Mudslinging, prevaricating, science-denying, character-assassinating, and f...
A Few Thoughts ... On Holy Holidays
“It’s the most wonderful time of the year,” asserts the song. The reference of lyricists Edward Pola and George Wyle and performer Andy Williams was, of course, to the Christmas holiday. The song was written in 1963 and recorded for the Andy Williams...
A Few Thoughts on miracles
We’ve been arguing forever about how we became a species. Some don’t argue, true. They just believe one way or another, or accept that they will never know. These relatively rare subjects are happy to be at peace with the question. Maybe they kno...
A Few Thoughts caused by a dead bear
As I grow older, it becomes more difficult to accept the uncaring nature of what seems to be a majority of humans when it comes to other species on the planet. From mosquitoes to redwoods, we seem bent on destroying the other biota on Earth. They get...
A Few Thoughts ... on 58 visits to Nespelem
Life is full right now. Time seems compressed, but on Saturday, I will take a day to travel to the Colville Reservation to visit a dried-up cemetery. I have written about this place and those buried here often, including this piece — slightly m...
A Few Thoughts ... On Pythagora's 'music of the spheres'
Once upon a time, long, long ago — at least a decade, maybe more — I was enlisted by a couple of teachers from a local school to help lead a group of seventh graders into the wilderness. Their idea was to bring them back as well, not just leave the...
A Few Thoughts ... About the real west
They’re making hay in southwestern Montana, cutting record harvests in the Big Hole, Horse Prairie and the Beaverhead and Madison valleys. These water-rich bottoms are sandwiched between spectacular Montana ranges: the Pioneers, Anaconda-Pintler a...
A Few Thoughts ... On time and water
It’s the summer solstice and I’m walking through my lower briar patch. If you know me, you may know what I mean. If you don’t, you won’t. My stroll is through a place that only about .0000000012% of humans know about, roughly 100 people. I’m one...
A Few Thoughts ... on Memorial Day weekend
Memorial Day weekend has passed. Soggy campers weathered the weather, and cemeteries sprouted flags and flowers in remembrance of loved ones. Twenty-eight years ago last Sunday, I traveled to Nespelem in the sagebrush hills of the Colville...
A Few Thoughts ... on a plane to Hawaii
Just so you know, even if there’s nobody on the ocean to experience the waves, the waves are there. From 30,000 feet, whitecaps are still visible. And there are some big ones. As we make our way at 600 miles per hour toward the Hawaiian a...
A few thoughts on perspective
My brothers and I and our significant others once stood in Grandpa Earl’s east field on a summer night, watching sunset fade away. Hanging in the sky ten degrees above the horizon was a brilliant, silver-white dot. My sister-in-law asked, ...
A few thoughts about opinion
I’ve cleaned this old joke up for “family viewing:” Opinions are like ears. Everyone has a couple. The New Oxford American Dictionary defines opinion as: “a view or judgment formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowled...
A Few Thoughts ... on achieving perma-grin
Long ago, my girlfriend and her sister took me skiing at Schweitzer Basin. Sort of. They got me into a pair of leather boots that connected — temporarily — to a pair of Head 210s. They took me to the top of the “learning” slope and said, “See ya...
A Few Thoughts .. On the future of the planet
Welcome to 2023. Here in the U.S. of A., it so far looks a lot like 2022. Or 2019, for that matter. We’re still stuck in neutral, suffering a lot of noisy engine revving and exhaust fumes from Congress, and getting absolutely nowhere. We‘re held cap...
A Few Thoughts
Several days before Thanksgiving, a collection of tracks appear in my driveway, those of a domestic cat. My neighbors have cats, but they don’t visit. These tracks are everywhere, very visible in the fresh snow. I then realize there are two cats, a...
A Few Thoughts ... on the dictionary
I am keeping my promise not to write about politics for a while; and it may be forever. It seems moot. We are stuck in a political and ideological quagmire, and it appears we will remain so for a while. It might be better to explore something we can...
A Few Thoughts
When we were children, we played aA few thoughts on shedding an old skin. I’m two miles from the pickup and 500 feet above where I left it parked when I find a snakeskin on a rock midstream in the East Fork. It is frail and silky, and I set it afloat...
A few thoughts on crickets and real life
When we were children, we played an odd summertime game. We sat in the front yard of my grandparents’ trailer house/cabin within view of the highway, picked a color and kept track of how many cars and trucks of our color drove by. It was purely a t...
A Few Thoughts
Each year, a backpacking trip into a nearby wilderness is undertaken by certain artistic types (ATs), most often plein air painters. ATs follow “guide” Bearly-Seen Svensson (not his real name, for legal reasons) into the wild, stopping often to art...
A Few Thoughts
You may have heard someone say, “That person is a real character,” generally in reference to a guy or gal who is somewhat, or very — ummm — unique. Some folks achieve status as a real character without even thinking about it, but should you yoursel...
A Few Thoughts
In John Prine’s song “Way Back Then,” he sings, “I am out undoing all the good I’ve done.” That could be a theme for the past few years in the United States. Environmental laws passed “way back then” are weakened, international agreements are...
A Few Thoughts
My neighbor Aaron Harris showed up with his portable sawmill this week, and we proceeded to make rectangular pieces out round logs harvested from my place by Ma Nature herself: windthrown Douglas fir, cedar and hemlock courtesy of big wind events...