By Sandra Dal Poggetto Center for Humans and Nature In the bottom of a high plains coulee, it’s wild. No plow reaches this place. Sound is quieted yet strangely amplified. Depending on the coulee’s depth, I am a bit frightened. But often there are deer beds in the soft grasses, perhaps sharp-tailed grouse, and I…

By Sandra Dal PoggettoBasalt Literary Journal Northern California’s coastal hills and valleys where I grew up are smaller in scale and gentler than the Rocky Mountains where I now live. As a girl, there was much to explore, imagine and discover in the chaparral and mixed oak forests that surrounded my home. The native peoples…

By Sandra Dal PoggettoNorthern Lights The smell of sage was strong as I drew the warm entrails out of the bird and onto the ground. Food for scavengers, I thought. “To hunt the all American bird one should have the all American gun,” he said to provoke me as I rose to my feet. I…

By Sandra Dal PoggettoGray’s Sporting Journal For millennia, painting and hunting have been among the most fundamental expressions of human culture, yet today their relevance is seriously being questioned in this time of radical technological change. In our modern world, one might ask why I, or anyone, would choose to be a painter of landscape—…