Occupation of Independence

Normally, when a person embarks on a big project, they shouldn't expect an instant pay-off. Surprisingly I am getting one on this "camping without the internet" project I am embarked on. For years I have driven by some land on the west side of Colorado's San Luis valley that I fluttered my eyelashes at. But I never camped there because there was no internet signal. This year I stopped. Since my camera broke recently, I can't show a photograph of the land. Perhaps it wouldn't be that impressive in a postcard. But who cares? It starts off as high rolling (BLM) pastures. Wave after wave of ascending green curves. Mountain biking up through it reminded me of some of Wagner's orchestral overtures, back in the day when I was first exposed to them. It was a big deal when I reached the first tree. The boundary between forest and sagebrush/grasslands was irregular and indented, like an interesting shoreline with many bays and islands. The topology changed. My heart

An old man in a van is camped a few hundred yards from me. He hasn't come over to visit. I haven't tried to visit him. That seems a little defeatist, considering that I might have visited with him when we overlapped on a road a couple days ago, and he appeared lucid and non-senile. (Which is better than average, let me tell you...) This is just one example of a more general trend I seem to be settling into: a withdrawal from "fellow" RVers. I'm not really sure I am doing the right thing. It's not a hard-co re, cynical attitude. It's more a matter of being tired of disappointment and frustration. The path of least resistance seems to be minding my own business. Thinking back over the years of ineffective ness at this issue, it seems that most encounters had something in common: we only had something in common, superficially. In fact they were pursuing a completely different paradigm than me. There is nothing wrong with their paradigms, if it works fo