grace tends to fart a lot

outside magazine is one of my favorite dentist's office reads. i don't subscribe b/c, well, i have this little cognitive dissonance issue, and way too many magazines arrive in the box @ 1509a johnson every month (no thanks to the band of collegiate yahoos (pronounced yay-hoos in dixie) who saw fit, in a burst of senseless and unbridled felonious destruction of property to whale on my mail box w/ a bat as they sped past under cover of darkness a month or so back ). but i do like to read outside when i can, especially if contributing ed. jon krakauer has a byline (i'll probably never read under the banner of heaven again b/c i've got a little girl now -- good book, but if you read it, you'll know why young fathers might choose to steer clear of a second reading -- but i've pored over krakauer's own mountaineering memoir, into thin air, and young alexander supertramp's ill-fated adventure, into the wild, multiple times).

my all-time favorite outside article, however, is by tim cahill. it's in the sept. 98 issue, and it's called "shed his grace on me: a bit of praise of life's wonders. like forgiveness, redemption and canine flatulence." it begins:

grace attends me on my jaunts into the steep mountainside wilderness above my cabin. sometimes i believe i can actually see flashes of grace in the slanting light that falls through the tall pines in this cathedral of forest. i am led, by grace, up the steep hillsides, through areas of deadfall, and over mossy logs that cross the constant roaring whitewater of falls creek. grace leads me through the bear and moose scat, over the forest floor, under a canopy alive with scolding squirrels, through accumulations of alpine wildflowers — mountain bluebells and clematis and pink twinflower — and in the evening, grace accompanies me to bed, where she tends to fart a lot.

if you're a lover of spaniels, grace or good feature writing, i suggest you read it all. (don't you hate it when bloggers blurt out a snippet of someone else's writing and then say, in a heavy-handed, deeply ominous series of keystrokes, "read it aaaalllllll"? i know i do, but this one really is worth the time it takes to read it)