The Last Mammoth
Published by DanM December 24th, 2007 in Southern Utah Wildlife and Nature, Southern Utah Places.Introducing “Stories and Essays”
I’ve added a new category to the menu you see above: Stories and Essays.
So far, there are two members in the category.
- My introduction to the places of Color Country, Southern Utah
- The Last Mammoth, Hungry Man, and the Short Faced Bear.
The very last Columbia Mammoth may have died in Huntington Canyon. Even if it wasn’t the very last one, everything about it was special. I wrote this story about what might have happened.
The story is dedicated to my friend, Carlo Matekovic, who was also hungry all his life.
Hi Dan,
I didn’t notice that i could comment on this site. Sorry about that. “The Last Mammoth” is an excellent depiction of something I’ve heard called the “Spirit Walk” (aged natives, like Inuit, go off on their own to meet their ancestors) and the isolation of the aged in general. It really is an excellent story. I must admit, it’s cool to come accross another old-time (please forgive the expression) programmer, who also writes fiction(?). You obviously have excellent research skills as well. Tre cool. My website’s listed above, but here goes: www.geocities.com/alpha_jade. I must apologize for the ’static nature of the site, I’m currently learning more about CSS and other ways (like Java) to perhaps add animation and sound to the site. I want to make it more eye-catching so as to attract a publisher (I hope). If you have any thoughts, suggestions, etc. (regarding content or presentation) please, feel free, I will appreciate it. You know, I was just thinking that most of the programmers I know under the age of about 40 can’t contruct a grammatically correct sentence, let alone write a actual short story, a novel, a script, even an essay or journal article. In fact, none of the programmers I know (save you, I don’t really know you, but…) would even want to, they like abbreviations to much. A friend of mine, a programmer, keeps asking me why write anything, that isn’t code. Oh well, I’ve been writing since I was 8, published since I was 9, though it was poetry. I didn’t get involved in coding until I was 15. Enjoy.
Thanks for moving our conversation over here. Occasionally, HP gets a bit upset at my independent ways on their site. I wouldn’t want their rules to cramp our style.
(In case anyone else reads this, I met Jessica in a technical class I was instructing that was sponsored by HP. In my ‘other life’, I’m a programmer.)
I’ve always had a dual existance that included both an engineering side (BSEE, University of Utah) and a literary side. For many years, my writing consisted mainly of employee performance reviews and project status reports. Thankfully, those days are over now.
I checked out your page. Here are a couple of suggestions:
–> When quoting the web site link, don’t put it at the end of a line followed by a period. This makes the URL invalid (the period is included). Put the web site link on a line by itself. The whole goal is to encourage someone else to click it and if it fails even once, most people will just move on to something else.
This board allows some HTML to be embedded. So your web site could be quoted as:
Alpha Jade’s Page
–> Get rid of the hit counter at the bottom of the main page. Those were popular ten years ago but it doesn’t do anything for you today.
–> Brightly colored backgrounds don’t add to the appeal of your page either. If you choose to add something extra, do it in formatting instead.
I hope to see your comments for some of my other work here too!