About

After half a dozen trips across the West, I decided these travels need their own site.

I do not hail from the West, but rather, the Midwest.  I fled to the coast as many do for work.  But as the West Coast explodes with housing and business development, I find myself driving away from the tower cranes, burgeoning condos, metastatic housing development. I live in a farming area, a river valley, surrounded by increasingly lush vegetation and rich wildlife.  But increasingly, it’s not far enough away.

So a couple times a year, I head east, letting the scenery fly by as I unwind behind the wheel on the interstate.  I end up in Montana or Wyoming, looking for wildlife, public access, open space, few people. I get to unwind, mull over my life, think about future adventures. Each trip, I travel a little farther, and disappear a little more.

These journeys need their own place to live, and they will live here.

But who is Larkey Skip?

Lark is my last horse standing, a ranch bred quarterhorse, grumpy but intensely loyal and a good animal to befriend.  His first name signifies his arrival on a lark in late August, likely because his mother threw an earlier foal and started over.  In the singular way that horsemen view reproductive biology, “Skip” is to signify lineage on the stallion’s side tracing to Skipper W.

Larkey’s grumpiness most likely stems from having to duke it out with mares for food when he got left behind as a latecomer his first winter in the frozen plains of Idaho.  Lark can be as grumpy as I about some issues, so this site is dedicated to him.