Short Story Samples

The Legend of Lawless Leadville

At 10,152 feet in the sky, there exists a great plain nestled in between immense, deep blue peaks. The splendor of this place is a rarity, reserved for only the truest wonders of the world. God’s Country, they call it. One undeniably feels the presence of God in this land as if He takes up residence in the middle of the sprawling prairie grasses. Here, fortunes were to be made and lawless glory to be discovered. Abundance of every form will always exist among the great plain. It was set in the destiny of this land to render its occupants fabulously rich and famous. However, the unspoken law in God’s Country presides over all human matters and is to be regarded with upmost importance. Only fools are unaware of the gravity of the law of the land; these people never last long around these parts. It is understood that one may not, under any circumstance, overindulge in the wealth of this land. The moment a man becomes drunk with his desire, and begins to neglect this single obligation, is when the law kicks in. Nature will always win; God will always preside. The great plain in the sky is a treasure trove reserved only for those who understand that this is God’s Country, and no one else’s.

Meeting the Miwok

I drove to the Point Reyes National Seashore one late morning, accompanied by two friends hardly willing to brave the 7-mile hike ahead of us. The beautiful drive to the national preserve lifted spirits a little bit. We found ourselves turning through tall coastal pines, dramatic hills and thick brush with views of the Pacific Ocean sometimes peeking through. The fall sunshine casted long rays of light in spaces between the trees as we sped through them. Although it couldn’t have been more than a 30-minute drive, we felt far away from the grasps of society in some kind of land before time. That was the point; I was there to learn something more about the Coast Miwoks, a Native American tribe that inhabited this very land thousands of years before the first white explorers sailed through the Golden Gate. With help from my high school ecology teacher, I came to know of a trail that was treaded upon by the tribe, having left behind relics and old encampments discovered by modern hikers millennia later. We parked at the trailhead in Muddy Hollow, an appropriate name for the miles to come, and faced a grove of Bishop pine trees looking dark and ominous in the morning light.