Mark Harvey is a rancher, writer, and photographer. He grew up in western Colorado and graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in International Studies. After college he spent several years leading month-long mountaineering expeditions for the National Outdoor leadership School in Wyoming, Mexico, and Chile. He is the author of the National Outdoor Leadership School’s Wilderness Guide. Mark is board president of Aspen Journalism and EcoFlight. He lives in Colorado’s Roaring Fork Valley. Email: markharv [at] mac.com
by Mark Harvey Slaughterers of ideals with the violence of fate Have cast man in the darkness of labyrinths intricate To be the prey and carnage of hounds of war and hate. –Ruben Dario, Nicaraguan Poet Between my junior and senior years of college, I spent part of a summer in Costa Rica studying Spanish…
by Mark Harvey “It is not often that you see life and fiction take each other by the hand and dance.” ―Lawrence Thornton, Imagining Argentina Watching the recent elections in Argentina makes an arm-chair economist like me face-palm myself. The country that was once one the richest in the world, the country that has an…
by Mark Harvey A week before he died, I drove my good friend and ranch foreman, Rey Rodriguez, to Denver to catch a bus to Chihuahua, Mexico. He was taking a two-week vacation to visit his family there. On the three-hour drive to Denver, we practiced answering questions for the test given to immigrants applying…
by Mark Harvey One of the artifacts of modern American culture is the digital clutter that crowds our minds and crowds our days. I’m old enough to have grown up in the era before even answering machines and the glorification of fast information. It’s an era that’s hard to remember because like most Americans, I’ve…
by Mark Harvey Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made. —Immanuel Kant I have a couple of friends in my county who might be considered high-powered on the local level. One is a district judge and the other is a county commissioner. I’ve invited the judge to a few local…
by Mark Harvey I would go home to eat, but I could not make myself eat much; and my father and mother thought that I was sick yet; but I was not. I was only homesick for the place where I had been. –Black Elk According to Lakota Indians, in early June of 1876, the…
by Mark Harvey I’ve mostly escaped the selfie photo culture, not out of some virtuous modesty, but because I generally look like a confused mouth-breathing moron in photos. So selfies are more of an indictment for me than something I want to post on Instagram. If I photographed like a Benicio del Toro or George…
by Mark Harvey About five years I bought a quarter horse at an auction in Billings, Montana. The horse was a tall gray four-year-old and showed tremendous speed in the roping events prior to the auction. Kind of a hyped-up, ears-back creature but obviously athletic. Horse auctions are exciting because there’s a lot of money…
by Mark Harvey Censorship is the strongest drive in human nature; sex is a weak second. –Phil Kerby Here’s a book that could really harm your child: A Big Mooncake for Little Star. The title itself promises dark political theories of socialism, sexual deviance, and a character-corroding leitmotif. Thank goodness some astute parents saw the…
by Mark Harvey After we get back to our country, black clouds will rise and there will be plenty of rain. Corn will grow in abundance and everything [will] look happy. –Barboncito, Navajo Leader, 1868 My idea of a fun evening is listening to the oral arguments of a contentious dispute that has reached the…
by Mark Harvey Opinion has caused more trouble on this little earth than plagues or earthquakes. —Voltaire (1694 – 1778) About the only good thing that comes out of huge natural disasters is that it brings otherwise feuding and even warring countries together in humanitarian rescue efforts. Immediately after the recent earthquake in Turkey and…
by Mark Harvey If you submitted yourself to the idiotic torture over last week’s battle to elect the speaker of the house for the 118th Congress, then you deserve a break from that idiocy and the chance to think about something else. American politics at the national level make toxic uranium dumps seem like tea…
by Mark Harvey In the afternoon I went to where my Ella was strangled to death, and saw the limb of the tree over which the rope was thrown. The bark is abraided and plainly shows the mark of their fiendish work.—Thomas Watson, 1889 In western newspapers from the late 19th century and early 20th…
by Mark Harvey “It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.” —James Baldwin The election a couple of weeks ago came as a relief to many of us. It was not a feeling of happily getting back on track again but rather a sense…
by Mark Harvey There are a number of videos circulating on the web that show angry white people screaming at Mexicans and Mexican-Americans to “Go back to where you came from!” It takes a special brand of stupid for, say, a Texan living in a town with a name like Llano located in Llano County to…
by Mark Harvey The trouble with theocracies is that they generally lead to crusades. And the trouble with crusades is that if you’re not of the right sect or denomination, you’ll end up crucified. Theocracies lead nowhere, bring great suffering on peoples, stifle creative thought, and have women covered or in the kitchen. They do…
by Mark Harvey I’m not sure what Americans were like in the 18th and 19th century, but they have to have been a lot tougher, less whining, less self-important and paradoxically more exceptional without thinking they were exceptional than Americans of today. Even Americans born well into the 20th century had a stoic quality and…
by Mark Harvey On the morning of July 22, 2016, an illegal campfire in Garrapata State Park near Carmel, California got out of control. Within a day, the fire grew to 2,000 acres. Within two days the fire grew to 10,000 acres. A month later the fire was at 90,000 acres and still largely uncontained.…
by Mark Harvey I’m not a schoolteacher so I don’t know the exact routine that teachers have every morning before they leave their house, but I’m certain it shouldn’t involve checking the magazine of a 9mm Glock and perhaps even chambering a round before their commute to school. I have known several teachers and in…
by Mark Harvey Out of the blue, between the sea and the sky, Landward blown on bright, untiring wings; Out of the South I fly –Maurice Thompson One of my sisters who is a wildlife biologist often leaves the cinema with an entirely different take on the virtues of any particular movie if it’s set on…