From the category archives:

Horse Fly

Horse Fly Column, 1/05: “Brown Sheets”

by JHF on July 27, 2009 · 0 comments

in Horse Fly

After mailing bills in Ranchos, I let the Ford decide to go to Wal-Mart. As I climbed up to the double-lane, a 25-year-old pale blue truck with a teetering load of piñon came crazy-fast from Talpa, ran right through the stop sign, and careened out onto U.S. 68, the inboard front wheel clawing air. I didn’t have to honk or brake and let it go, amazingly.

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Horse Fly Column, 4/08: “Nine-Year Itch”

by JHF on July 1, 2009 · 2 comments

in Horse Fly

The shock of rolling through Questa after living in a place where farmers mowed the thick green grass right up to the cornstalks almost disemboweled me. Still can, too. Not long ago a friend described throwing open his old kitchen door in Missouri in the morning, in the fall, and breathing in the smell of wet red leaves. I nearly walked right out the door and stole a car.

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Horse Fly Column, 10/04: “Windshield”

by JHF on June 25, 2009 · 0 comments

in Horse Fly

Birds I didn’t recognize went pecking in the creek, and a red-tailed hawk wheeled overhead. It was mostly cloudy, with a little bit of sun, and every now and then a shaft of light would hit the slopes and detonate a yellow aspen. The air was clean and pure. I felt an otherworldly sense of peace up there and didn’t want to leave.

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Horse Fly Column, 1/04: “Island”

by JHF on May 21, 2009 · 1 comment

in Horse Fly

Another free offering from the vault! I wrote this Horse Fly column in January, 2004, after a Christmas visit from my wife, who had moved from Taos to Dubuque, Iowa six months before. Were we “separated”? Well, yes, but not for any simple reason of relationship breakdown.

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Horse Fly Column: “Child of God”

by JHF on May 3, 2009 · 2 comments

in Featured Posts, Horse Fly

I may never have been so alive. We ate good food: rice, eggs, apples, wild persimmons, turnips, and squash, and virtually no meat. There were chickens running loose in the woods and a couple of milk goats – I used to call one over to give my coffee a squirt, right into the cup. We all sat naked in the creek together and lathered up to bathe. I spent day after day exploring in the woods and mountains. Eventually the others (except one) all straggled back to civilization, but I stayed in my 8 x 16 foot shack all alone well into the winter.

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Horse Fly Column, 7/07: “Message for the Fourth”

by JHF on April 22, 2009 · 4 comments

in Featured Posts, Horse Fly

It was like camping in a church that had neither a building nor a name. In the isolation of my experience, I felt myself expand and fill the canyon with my spirit. From wall to wall and end to end, there was only me, the rocks, the trees, the birds, a turtle and a garter snake I’d seen down by the river, and flies that buzzed around my lemonade in the sun. As I drifted in and out of sleep, I felt calm and safe as warm clean sand.

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Horse Fly Column, 4/05: “Jesus Water-Skis in Waco”

by JHF on April 18, 2009 · 0 comments

in Horse Fly

More free stuff!
I’m in a Digital Potlatch mood tonight, so here’s another Horse Fly column. This one revisits a familiar theme and is based on actual events, with a little literary embellishment. Please click on through to read the whole thing, it’s even funny. Funnier still if you have any acquaintance with Taos, and I [...]

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Horse Fly Column, 11/07: “Home Canyon Security”

by JHF on April 12, 2009 · 0 comments

in Horse Fly

Time for another piece of the Digital Potlatch (please read for explanation), this time with another column written for Horse Fly in the dark days of the Bush administration. It’s fairly self-explanatory, and the sentiments still stand. The piece starts off with a satisfying rant, the tone of which will be familiar to anyone [...]

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Horse Fly Column, 5/05: “Yells-At-Nothing”

by JHF on March 26, 2009 · 1 comment

in Horse Fly

More of the best in the vault! The Digital Potlatch continues with another column written for Horse Fly, this one from four years ago. Written during my bachelor days in the old adobe, the dark little ditty with a soupçon of self-loathing shows at least two ways to get yourself shot. For better or worse, [...]

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Horse Fly Column, 5/03

by JHF on March 16, 2009 · 4 comments

in Horse Fly

Another new Digital Potlatch category! And this one begs an explanation:
Shortly after we arrived in Taos in the fall of ‘99, I somehow connected with one of the orneriest, full-bore piece o’ work men to ever walk the earth, Bill Whaley, publisher of Horse Fly, a local alternative monthly news and culture publication of [...]

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Home Canyon Security

by JHF on November 18, 2007 · 0 comments

in Horse Fly

[What follows is my latest column for Horse Fly, published locally on Nov. 15th. It's adapted and expanded from an earlier FarrFeed post and much improved!]
Well, that was a short fall, I told myself.
Fourteen degrees all of sudden was quite a shock, and I’d been burning wood all day. Most of the trees still had [...]

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