Michelee Cabot
Author, Adventurer & Pilot
Sunday In Alamos
ALAMOS SUNDAY It’s early Sunday morning; the doves clamor annoyingly, insistently, cooing outside windows. The caged parrot yaks at us to take off his nighttime shroud, and the dogs moan for breakfast, pushing their cold noses into our warm bedtime faces. But...
The Pack Rat
THE PACK RAT A.K.A. WOOD RAT Peering down at odd bluish chunks in the graveled driveway, I say to the real estate agent, “That’s soap! Why is Irish Spring bar soap trash out here?” “Oh, that wards off packrats,” she replies. “They can be annoying – everyone has them...
Patio Guests
PATIO GUESTS Our patio fountain, home to a few flitty goldfish (not koi, no chin whiskers) is a big draw for the Cooper’s Hawk. This fly-in hunter regards it as his private buffet. The fish, on the other hand, do not - and are uncooperative. They flee into shadowy...
La Cucaracha
LA CUCARACHA THE COCKROACH - but who doesn’t know that? The American cockroach that lurks in our kitchens and forages through our trash bins is about an inch long; it’s just one of thirty varieties that plague us. There’s also the creepy large version that lumbers...
Javelina Haven
JAVELINA HAVEN Our Tucson house sits in a covert but busy wildlife haven, an area designated eco-friendly to the desert plant and animal. The street is even an uncivilized, unimproved dirt road. Coyotes yelp in groups in intense southwest sunshine, sounding just like...
The Wily Coyote
The Wily Coyote The city of Tucson, Arizona’s ever-growing interloper of the plains, stretches out across the curious Sonoran desert. Its reliable sunshine and warmth, so kind to aging joints, has called to seniors across the nation, its subsequent accommodating...
The Snake Event
My tensed body on the qui vive, I panicked, shaking my husband’s sleeping form. “Eeeeeek!” I hissed at him. “There’s a snake in the bathroom. He’s essing himself across the bathmat.” My groggy mate raised his head, in a “what now?” configuration. It was midnight, we...
Hot Air Balloons
BALLOONS, the Hot Air Kind “Up, up and away, in my beautiful balloon…” The Fifth Dimension musically wooed us to soar high and wide. Marilyn McCoo's crooning pulled our hearts into the sky, triggering a yearning to throw off gravity, that force pithily called “surly”...
Death In Alamos
Death in Alamos. Yes, like everywhere, some die in car crashes, and sadly some O.D. But some just choose to run out their days here, finding kindness and solace in gentle hands. And if you’re connected, a bartender will send a margarita to your bedside, something...
Terra Firma?
GOOD OLD TERRA FIRMA Oceans are bulging and swamping coastlines. Floods fill cities. Winds are whipping landscapes into flatness. Man is frail, and so are his works. Earthquakes crush what the winds don’t reach. Mankind struggles to help itself, wailing over its...
Bye Fool
It was my first time to drop a jumper from my plane. To chunky balding Andy, a man with many jumps “under his belt” as they say, I sang out a hopeful “Adios, amigo”’ as he traded a Perfectly Good Airplane for leg-flailing insecurity, hurtling earthward through...
Flight To Underground
As I look out on the distant high Sierra Mt. Alamos, foreground framed by masses of hot pink bougainvillea, bright blue swimming pool a trap for drifting blossoms, I wonder how a wintery thought could possibly bubble up in my head. It’s climbing to 100f degrees out...
Kiss Me Twice – Memorial Day Repost
A FAVORITE MEMORY 1946 - The war was over. We were going to see our own soldier again – far across the globe in a distant land. Behind a giant Vee-spray of water our MATS transport ship had muscled the Pacific Ocean out of its way, till three weeks out of San...
The Dalhart Incident
THE DALHART INCIDENT Flying the wide span of west Texas plains can shake your confidence. Not from the endless empty square miles of land (embellished only by the odd cattle tank and small shed – where are people?) but from the fast, frightening growth of towering...
Beauty Goes Up In Smoke
BEAUTY GOES UP IN SMOKE And a way of life is gone. Our home for ten years, a crazy white elephant purchase on a hill looking at Boston fifty miles in the distance, is gone. The flames reached into the overcast, illuminating the township for miles around. Mother Nature...
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