CITY OF DUST

Despite having many more tales from the Cumberland Plateau I have clearly not been posting much lately. Sometimes life can get in the way o...

It is the end of May when somehow, miraculously, we finish surveying Aetna Mountain. For the last week we have had a four-person crew, bu...

Carl and I come to the edge of a thicket of raspberry brambles. It’s been rough going for the last couple hundred meters and we are covered...

It’s Jason’s second day on the job. We’re working lower on Aetna Mountain, skirting a neighborhood known as the “Devil’s Poket” (sic) in Wh...

We’ve added another member to the crew, Jason, and his first day is a tough one. The haul up the first mountain is long and steep. Then ...

“We’re drillin’”, the man says, and a jet of muddy tobacco juice spews from his crooked mouth and lands at his feet. The statement is wro...

“We can’t go forward! We can’t go down! We can’t go up! We can only go back!” My radio call to Carl captures our predicament fairly su...

We’ve misjudged our distances. Badly. Now it’s 7:30 PM and we’ve been out so long the high-tech rechargeable batteries in our GPS machine...

Untold tangles of catbriar, forests of poison ivy, and dozens of wood ticks conspire to convince Allison to wear long pants and boots. Bu...

In May the work commences in earnest and we have added a third member, Allison, to our crew. We follow I-75 south toward Chattanooga and on...

As we come up the ridge the fog thickens. Our headlights burn dimly through the milky-white morning and visibility is down to something l...

As we drive west from Highway 27 I look up at the ridge high above and immediately begin to wonder what I’ve gotten myself into. We cross...

Someone wrote me recently asking if I could do a few posts on some of the mountain towns of the South. Since I’m currently living at the ...

Well, it's been awhile. I felt like getting some new shots up, so here ya go. I'm now in Knoxville and things are pretty insane....

Well, this week I'm moving to Knoxville, Tennessee, so City of Dust is going to go on a little hiatus. I'll try to post again once...

( CONTINUED ) Thirty-Three We drove around Tucson for awhile because there was nothing else to do. Again we discussed going to the police, ...

( CONTINUED ) Thirty-One The restaurant was called Rosarita’s and it was very dark inside. There were strings of tiny bulbs—probably Christ...