When “Airin’ the Lungs” is registered at the swear jar.
Michael Branch
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Rants from the Hill: The Bucket List
When making a to-do list is the most important thing on your to-do list.
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Rants from the Hill: Hunting for Scorpions
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of western Nevada’s Great Basin Desert. Our seven-year-old daughter, Caroline, is a tireless athlete, while her older sister, Hannah, is the family intellectual. This is why my wife, Eryn, and I were surprised when Caroline chose for her weeklong summer […]
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Rants from the Hill: “Lawn Guilt”
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of western Nevada’s Great Basin Desert. Henry David Thoreau’s neighbors generally thought of him as a lazy, confrontational, sanctimonious pain in the ass. They might be interested to know that he turned out to be right about nearly everything, from […]
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Rants from the Hill: The Moopets
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of western Nevada’s Great Basin Desert. Although I’ve written 45 of these Rants from the Hill since the essay series launched back in July, 2010, there’s one word I have studiously avoided using. It is a filthy word, one that […]
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Rants from the Hill: Road Captain
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of western Nevada’s Great Basin Desert. Last night I got a phone call with the bad news that I have received what my neighbors out here in the remote Silver Hills refer to as a “redneck promotion.” To be specific, […]
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Rants from the Hill: IH8 DMV
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of western Nevada’s Great Basin Desert. I’ve always been impressed by vanity license plates—at least when they’re genuinely clever or funny—and have long thought that a little back bumper wit on my part might help my fellow Silver Hillbillies endure […]
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Rants from the Hill: The Great Basin Sea Monster
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of western Nevada’s Great Basin Desert. Last Saturday around noon I was still feeling desperate for more alone time when my daughters Hannah (age 10) and Caroline (age 7) asked if I was finally ready to play with them. I […]
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Rants from the Hill: Out on Misfits Flat
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of western Nevada’s Great Basin Desert. The quintessential Nevada film is John Huston’s 1961 picture The Misfits, starring Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift. The movie had its origins in playwright Arthur Miller’s trip to Nevada in 1956. While […]
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Rants from the Hill: Speaking of Wild Horses
Why read the article when you can read the thread instead?
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Rants from the Hill: Towering Cell Phone Trees
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of western Nevada’s Great Basin Desert. For a couple of years back in the 1970s, when I was a little kid, my family had an artificial Christmas tree that I thought was incredibly cool. It was fun to put together, […]
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Rants from the Hill: Seashells on Desert Mountaintops
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of western Nevada’s Great Basin Desert. Our daughter Caroline is six years old, a fact that is less important to her than the much more exciting fact that she is about to turn seven. The other day Caroline and I […]
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Rants from the Hill: The Washoe Zephyr
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of western Nevada’s Great Basin Desert. Those of us who live out in the western Great Basin Desert, up in the foothills on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada Range, are all too familiar with a wind that is […]
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Rants from the Hill: Arid lands bibliopedestrianism
I’ll admit that those of us who live in remote desert places tend to be idiosyncratic, though it is unclear to me whether the weird are attracted to the wild, dry country or if we are instead sculpted by it. And when you live in relative isolation—and in a physical environment that conspires with that […]
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Rants from the Hill: Time for a Tree House
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of western Nevada’s Great Basin Desert. I should admit straightaway that my young daughters never actually asked me to build them a tree house. I came up with the idea myself, got them attached to it, and then pretended that […]
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Rants from the Hill: Most likely to secede
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of western Nevada’s Great Basin Desert. It is less than 90 miles, as the raven flies, from the Ranting Hill to Rough and Ready, California, a western Sierra foothills town that holds special meaning for a reclusive curmudgeon like me. […]
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Rants from the hill: Trapping the bees
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of western Nevada’s Great Basin Desert, published the first Monday of each month. Several years ago, at just this time of year, I had to go back East for a few months of work. When I returned home to the […]
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Rants from the Hill: Feral child
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of western Nevada’s Great Basin Desert, published the first Monday of each month. Almost ten years ago, after my wife Eryn’s difficult and dangerous 22-hour labor, our first daughter, Hannah Virginia, made her reluctant entrance and began an unbroken run […]
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Rants from the Hill: Upon the burning of our house
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of Nevada’s western Great Basin desert, published the first Monday of each month. When I say that American writers have ignited fires, I don’t mean only that they have fired our imaginations or that they have sparked changes in the […]