Occupation of Independence

Certain dogs have charmed my socks off.  But 'charm' is not the word that first comes to mind when contemplating homo sapiens .  There must be exceptions.   In fact it is easy to run into exceptional and charming people in early summer.  That is the morel mushroom season .  Every year I run into mushroom-mongers in the inland Northwest , and every year they amuse me.  There is something wonderful about middle-aged and older adults acting as enthusiastic as puppies chasing a ball. And they love to talk about their obsession.  This year, an older couple drove by in a pickup and proudly showed their collection:  She held those mushrooms like they were nuggets of gold.  They gave lots of advice on the right way to cook them up. Early summer is so wonderful around here.  Yes, I know an Arizona-like furnace will be here in a month.  But let's enjoy paradise while we can.   The Little Salmon River was full of life:  ...

Are Americans changing what they eat, as a reaction to the shocking prices in the grocery stores?  It would be a significant silver lining to the foreign policy disasters of the current regime .  The whole idea of fast food has fallen out of my head.  Does it seem like McDonalds is less busy than the past?  Wouldn't it be nice to see thousands of Starbucks close?  Eating "out" has become unimaginable.  I am even shocked by the coffee prices at the gas station .  Even the junk food at the Dollar Stores has become unaffordable.   Obesity might become a shrinking industry in America.  Older men remember that you couldn't walk through a grocery store in the good old days, without turning the corner at an aisle and being surprised -- or momentarily stunned -- by some nice-looking young lady.  Imagine if that were to happen again! The worse the news becomes, the easier it is to become hopeful, almost to the point of escapism....

 Western Idaho.  Every year I look forward to riding the service road along an irrigation ditch that drags water over to an agricultural area a few miles away.  There is great shade; the slope of the road is 1%; and the water in the creek is so utterly soothing and drinkable for my little sweetie dog. Not this year!  The irrigation creek was dry, dead.  It might as well be in Arizona, rather than Idaho.  I was so disappointed. The good news is that I looked for tributaries coming into my irrigation creek, and observed where the water went.  It disappeared into a vertical pipe and then, presumably, turned 90 degrees into a horizontal pipe underneath the service road that I was riding on.  That way, a trench for the pipe did not have to be dug. Water a few feet under ground wouldn't freeze.  So the irrigation ditch just serves as overflow? Meanwhile, a pretty sky over an unusual flat spot in hill country:  Here is a video panning the hills...

Does anybody really like overly thick forests?  So it was good news when the Forest Service was doing some prescribed burns in early May in Idaho .  Conditions turned out to be too wet, according to what one guy told me.   It is quite something how versatile and powerful drones have gotten, and not just in war!  I stumbled onto the parking area for a drone-operating crew.  The drone was colored like a World War II battle tank, and was about 3 feet in diameter.  If you have only seen toy-like quadrocopters before, this thing would make you stop in your tracks.  I thought about what drones are doing in current wars.   Of course I wanted to pepper the operators with questions, but guys with a job to do can only spend so much time answering questions.  It was a quadro-copter , and ran on batteries.  But how did it help out with prescribed burns?   I imagined it shooting out a flame-thrower based on some kind of fuel....