This is The Writer's Voice, new fiction from The New Yorker.

I'm Deborah Trisman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Thomas McGuane read his story, Not Here You Don't,

from the October 18th, 2021 issue of the magazine. McWain has published more than

a dozen books of fiction, including the story collections Gallatin Canyon, Pro Fair, and Cloudbursts

collected in new stories, which came out in 2018. Now here's Thomas McGuane.

Not here you don't.

Carrie was out of likely places to cross.

The five-strand ranch fence was on the county line,

ran south and would guide him to the canyon and the wild grasslands beyond.

He could go all the way to coal mine rim in a view dropping into the Boulder Valley.

Due south, he could see the national forests, the bare stones, and burned tree stubs from the last

big forest fire. After the fire, a priest who loved to hike had found

19th century wolf traps chained to trees. The flames and smoke had towered 40,000 feet into the

air, a firestorm containing its own weather, lightning aloft, smoke that could be seen on satellite

in Wisconsin. The foreground was grassland,

but it had been heavily grazed. In the middle of this expanse, a stockade where sheep were

gathered at night to protect them from bears and coyotes had collapsed. The homestead where

Carrie's dad had grown up and where Carrie himself had spent his earliest years was in a narrow canyon perpendicular to the prevailing winds, barely far enough below the snowline to be habitable.

Around his waist in a hastily purchased Walmart fanny pack, he carried his father's ashes in the plastic urn issued by the

funeral home, along with the cremation certificate that the airline required.

Once these prairies had been full of life and hope, the signs were everywhere, abandoned homes,

...