Home, at last. The front door clicked behind me, and I paused, listening to the faint hum of a quiet house—so different from the endless whisper of the Black Rock Desert, where dust sneaks into every crevice, every thought. Some folks stop for a beer at Bruno’s on the way back. Me? I headed east…

Two years ago, the playa threw one of its infamous tantrums. Sheets of rain fell so hard it looked like the sky was trying to wash us clean, and the mud, well, that mud wasn’t just thick—it was the kind that laughs at your feet and sticks to your soul like it had a personal…

Oh, silly Burner, you think you’re clever, thinking you can ride onto the playa at night with nothing but a half-packed camelbak, a hat already caked with dust, and a sparkly cape you found at the thrift store. I’ve seen it a hundred times–the same grin, the same overconfidence, the same “rules are for everyone…

I said, “I’m retiring,” and I figured life would slow down into something like a long weekend that never ends. I imagined coffee in the morning, naps in the afternoon, maybe writing a few stories, and watching the sunset in the evenings. Sounded downright civilized. Then—bam!—before I knew it, I was sitting on my front…

Earlier this year, I came across a 100-year-old short story by Somerset Maugham—“Mr. Know-All.” Now, I’ve read a few of his works, but it hit me differently. Not because it was clever, and it is, or tightly written, but because I saw someone in it that looked suspiciously like me. You see, I’ve spent a…

Virginia City is used to excitement. After all, it’s a town that once had Mark Twain, miners, and more saloon brawls than church picnics, but Monday, the good Lord must’ve spilled His whole weather bucket on the place at once. First came the Zephyr. And not your regular ol’ breezy-day kind, either. No, this was…

I was sitting on the porch this morning, sipping my coffee, when I came across a little article sent to me in the mail that made me blow coffee through my nose. Not from the caffeine, mind you, but from the kind of laughter that sneaks up on you like a sneeze in church. A…

Arizona has many things that’ll take your breath away–the Grand Canyon at sunrise, a saguaro blooming in the moonlight, and a July afternoon when your car thermometer stops at 118 degrees because, frankly, that’s as high as it knows how to count. Now, I don’t live there, but I can and do follow the news…

I was sittin’ out on the front porch the other evening, sippin’ some whiskey and listenin’ to the crickets tune up for their nightly concert, when Mary poked her head out the screen door and said, “Honey, we need to talk.” Now, after almost forty years of marriage, I know that tone. It ain’t usually…

There’s a stretch of fence out behind the Johnson place that doesn’t rightly go anywhere. Ain’t no cows on either side, and the only thing it keeps out are the tumbleweeds when it feels like cooperatin’. I reckon that fence has been there longer than most folks ’round here can remember. Some say it was…