“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. American folk musician and hillbilly existentialist Greg Brown offers some mid-song patter referring to Pablo Neruda’s wonderful poem “On Weariness” (“Cierto Cansancio”), in which Neruda memorably wrote […]
Michael Branch
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Rants from the Hill: A prospect from the singing mountain
“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. Damned ancient Mayans. In anticipation of the end of the world on December 21, I put off my Christmas shopping, blew off my deadline for this Rant, […]
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Rants from the Hill: Trial by jury
“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. Whenever I receive a summons to jury duty I respond to it truthfully — which is to say, I respond to it in ways that would appear […]
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Rants from the Hill: My home lake
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of Nevada’s western Great Basin desert. Edward Abbey began Desert Solitaire with the following words: “This is the most beautiful place on earth. There are many such places.” Well, my home lake here in Silver Hills is the most gorgeous […]
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Rants from the Hill: Harvesting the Desert Shoe Tree
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of Nevada’s western Great Basin desert. Rants from the Hill is now a FREE podcast! Listen to an audio performance of this essay, here. You can also subscribe to the podcast in iTunes or through Feedburner for use in another podcast reader. On the […]
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Rants from the Hill: Pleistocene rewilding
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of Nevada’s western Great Basin desert. In a 2006 article [PDF] in The American Naturalist, a small herd of perfectly respectable conservation biologists advocates a bold ecological restoration project they call “Pleistocene Rewilding.” The concept itself is outrageously wild. First […]
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Rants from the Hill: Beauregard puppy
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of Nevada’s western Great Basin desert. Rants from the Hill is now a FREE podcast! Listen to an audio performance of this essay, here. You can also subscribe to the podcast in iTunes or through Feedburner for use in another podcast reader. […]
Posted inAugust 6, 2012: Of Birds and Men
Of balloons, littering and birthday parties
Here in the western Great Basin, the high desert is rough and remote. This topography tends to keep out the common detritus of the dominant endemic species, Hillbillicus Nevadensis (var. Redneckii). So while the dusty BLM roads in the sage-filled valley bottoms are beribboned with spent shell casings, Coors Light bottles and empty cans of […]
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Rants from the Hill: I brake for Rants
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of Nevada’s western Great Basin desert. Rants from the Hill is now a podcast! Listen to an audio performance of this essay, here. You can also subscribe to the podcast in iTunes or through Feedburner for use in another podcast reader. I’ve […]
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Rants from the Hill: Sorry, Utah
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of Nevada’s western Great Basin desert. Rants from the Hill is now a podcast! Listen to an audio performance of this essay, here. You can also subscribe to the podcast in iTunes or through Feedburner for use in another podcast reader. […]
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Rants from the Hill: The silence of desert greetings
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of Nevada’s western Great Basin desert.Rants from the Hill is now a podcast too! Listen to an audio performance of this essay, here. You can also subscribe to the podcast in iTunes or through Feedburner for use in another podcast reader. […]
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Rants from the Hill: The leprechaun trap
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of Nevada’s western Great Basin desert. Rants from the Hill is now a podcast too! Check out our first episode, an audio performance of this essay, here. Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes or through Feedburner for use in another podcast […]
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Rants from the Hill: Anecdote of the Jeep
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of Nevada’s western Great Basin desert. 1919 was a pretty decent year, all in all. The Grand Canyon received protection as a national park, the 19th Amendment finally gave women the vote, the world witnessed the end of the war […]
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Rants from the Hill: Words and Clouds
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of Nevada’s western Great Basin desert. Our corner of the western Great Basin is tucked into the rain shadow of the Sierra crest, which knocks the bottom out of those big, wet storms that rise in the Pacific and cross […]
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Rants from the Hill: Chickenfeathers strikes water
For well over 500 years people have engaged in “dowsing,” an activity that is also known by a variety of vernacular terms including “witching,” “divining,” and, my young daughters’ favorite, “doodlebugging.” Dowsing is the activity of attempting to locate — without the use of scientific equipment — something valuable that lies beneath the ground. While […]
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Rants from the Hill: After 10,000 years
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of Nevada’s western Great Basin desert. Wanting to climb one last mountain before winter shuts down the high country until June, on Veteran’s Day I headed with my buddy Steve to Mount Augusta, a 10,000-foot peak in the remote Clan […]
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Rants from the Hill: How many bars in your cell?
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of Nevada’s western Great Basin desert. The rural pocket of Silver Hills where we live is so remote as to be virtually uninhabited, though I am delighted to be among the virtual uninhabitants here. This status comes with some logistical […]
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Rants from the Hill: On the construction of a hillbilly cyborg
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of Nevada’s western Great Basin desert. I’ve never liked cows one bit. I know they come off looking pretty good in Hollywood glamorizations of life on the trail, and they’re supposed to be cute when they appear in the form […]
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Rants from the Hill: Ground truthing the “Peaceable Kingdom”
Last night I lay awake in bed listening to the sound of little claws scrabbling inside the walls of our house. Because the sheetrock acts as a drumhead, amplifying sounds within the wall, the scratching is disturbingly loud. It sounds as if there is an angry ferret in the wall, which is how I know […]
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Rants from the Hill: The Hills are Alive
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of Nevada’s western Great Basin desert. From a very early age I’ve held the deep and unwavering conviction that musicals–especially movie musicals–represent the most intolerable and misguided aesthetic form in the checkered history of human civilization. In addition to being […]