Occupation of Independence

Recently I was watching some old Charlie Chaplin movies that were edited and re-issued by him in a later era.   He added music and replaced the captions with his own voice-overs.  I thought it was an interesting -- and effective -- combination of old and new techniques.   Perhaps this suggests how a modern media consumer can be more than a passive consumer.  As an example, consider how numb and passive we have become to news of slaughter in Gaza.  It bothers me that I object to the sadistic murder of children in a purely intellectual or philosophical way, but don't really feel anything. It's not that I consider feelings more important than thought.  There are people who do consider feelings a more essential and authentic part of their soul.  Recall the classic movie, "Lawrence of Arabia:" the newspaper reporter asked the Arab king, 'Isn't mercy a passion with Lawrence?"  The king replied that yes it was with Lawrence, but with the king himself mercy was

One of the many things that the "Wizard of Oz" movie did right was to use the new invention of technicolor in a creative way: they essentially made a character out of technicolor by starting the movie in black and white, and then shifting to technicolor in the land of Oz. When an RV traveler is blown out of Utah by another "blue norther", and heads downriver along the Colorado River, they are doing the Wizard of Oz thing in reverse.  They are going from technicolor to brown and grey.  Does this mean disappointment? Not edited by software or AI Not necessarily. This is certainly good news and is worth explaining.  Years ago I started losing interest in landscape photography because it was too edited to believe.   I will not go ga-ga over a photo just because Photoshop Pro has reddened it too death.  It is understandable that newbies would go crazy over red rocks, but most of them will probably notice the effect wearing off pretty quickly. It is natural and healthy fo

There are people who genuinely appreciate paintings, poetry, and other arts.  I wish I did.  It seems like I only respond to music, occasionally writing, and even "architecture" once in a while. Be that as it may, this is time for our annual pilgrimage to a stony picnic table in southwestern Utah. This stone picnic table is almost a religious shrine to me. Who is responsible for it?  Surely not some BLM bureaucrats!   For one thing, the picnic table is not ADA (wheelchair) compliant.  Besides that, it is too imaginative for bureaucrats.  Perhaps the BLM offered a competition to the local schools, and one of them came up with this. There is a patio stone quarry a mile away.  In the backdrop, the photos show Gooseberry Mesa.  This picnic table should be offered in the dictionaries for the word, autochthonous.  It seems to grow right out of the rocky ground nearby, as if people didn't have to do anything to build it.  I literally fluttered my eyelashes at it. But wait -- thi

When a person follows the news, they must be careful.  They must accept good news, such as  Trump blocking certain well-known neocon warmongers from his cabinet.   But considering what a failed president Trump was in his first term, we should not be naive.  While everyone has been fooled into thinking that Trump is going to be anti-war this time around, the neocons could flap their leathery wings (I am plagiarizing Kunstler) and fly in under the radar with a lesser-known neocon who is even a viler piece of human filth than the better known ones.  That way, both sides would feel like Trump is their man.  And Mrs. Adelson would feel like she is getting a good return on her investment. It is how politics is played.  War really is the "health of the state."

Oldsters remember the troubles of 1968 and much of the world's disgust with the Vietnam War.  They remember their surprise when President Johnson announced he was not running for another term.  Nixon took advantage of the unpopularity of the war to stage a big political comeback.  In a couple years you could hear a song on the radio: "Tin soldiers and Nixon comin', 4 dead in Ohio." The Vietnam War had become the new president's war.  "Peace with honor" was the trap that Nixon fell into. The Duran laid out the Neocons agenda for the next couple months: how to turn the Ukraine debacle into Trump's debacle.  In his first term as president, he would have fallen for that trap.  Will he be smarter this time around? Ahh dear.  I must try to be hopeful without letting my expectations become naive. When the Biden administration started off by withdrawing American troops from the Afghan quagmire, he took a lot of criticism for how it was done.  But most Amer

  Whether you feel like the winner or the loser of the recent election, there is lots to think about and learn by asking the right questions.  As I get older I get lazier and am reluctant to step into tedious expository prose.  I prefer to look for vignettes or metaphors, each better than 'a thousand words.' Cold, high winds were interrupting my usual 'backcountry babushka' duties at camp.  So I deigned to carry some dirty clothes to a laundromat I used to use.  Prices were 50% higher than expected.  I am glad I started hand-washing clothes a couple years ago, lest I have to put up with these high prices all the time. Then I dug my heels in, picked up my basket of clothes, and simply walked out.  They didn't have many customers.  I had never done this before at a laundromat.  H igh prices can be fought to some extent by substitution.  Perhaps a lack of skills or imagination hold us down sometimes.  Perhaps we are slaves to habit. But many times our surrender to hig

Let's hope that this is the worst election the USA will ever have.  How could it come up with two shittier candidates?     Western media is saturated with election coverage.  But there are some people who don't care too much.  Regardless of who is elected, apartment buildings in Lebanon will keep getting bombed by American/Israeli planes.  The mass-slaughter in Gaza will continue. After all, America is just choosing their new Zionist-in-Chief.  I suspect Trump would be a little more reckless than Harris with Iran, but at least there is an explanation -- Rapture Christians in the American Bible Belt are a core constituency of his.  What would Harris's excuse be? I think Trump would wind down the Ukraine debacle faster than Harris.  Either candidate will continue deficit spending until the "bond vigilantes" come back strong or inflation becomes double-digit and the main political issue.   How many votes will be cast by people who don't even show an ID?  Perhaps

On an early morning walk to the canyon edge I heard a large animal moving around, and pretty close to us, too.  And it was getting closer. Soon I could see him.  A bighorn sheep ram -- let's call him El Borrego -- was actually walking towards us.  Hopefully my little dog would not see him and start barking.  I tried to freeze and get my camera ready at the same time. El Borrego saw me.  He kept making direct eye contact with me, the same way that coyotes sometimes will.  At first I wondered if El Borrego was crazy, rabid, or something.  Closer inspection of his collar might provide the explanation:  Gosh, is it possible that the Utah state wildlife people are over-managing the wildlife a little? But at the time I was so excited that I didn't see the GPS collar, and instead thought only of freezing, to see how close El Borrego would come.  He came up to the rim of the canyon, maybe 75 feet away from me, and coyly looked at me while hiding behind a bush: Later in the bike ride I

  What changes will occur with You Tube or with viewers' habits over time?  It is quite a guessing game.  As a viewer I am turning off channels that offer heavily accented English, tedious talking heads, interviewees that go into a 15 minutes speech, cacklers and frustrated comedians, and people who won't give a straight answer to a legitimate question.  Perhaps vaunted AI technology will someday do a better job of translating heavily accented jabbering into normal American speech. It is easy to be a critic of You Tube screw-ups, and I certainly do my share of criticizing.  But today let's praise a You Tube channel.  Anybody who has been to an animal shelter to adopt a dog knows how important it is for the dog to audition well.  Some dogs are terrible at auditioning.  They are fearful and hide at the back of their pen and do not even make eye contact or wag their tail when a prospective customer approaches.  What happens to dogs like that?  Don't ask! That is why I love

 What is your favorite landform in the Utah area?  The "monuments" (aka, buttes) of Monument Valley made a big impression on movie audiences in 1939 when John Ford's "Stagecoach" came along.  They have been icons ever since.  Or maybe you prefer steep canyon walls, mesa edges, hoodoos, arches, or just plain ol' mountains.  Some people go crazy over rock that is reddish. All well and all good.  But what happens when you aren't a newbie tourist anymore?  How do you maintain a long-term love affair with the landforms of Utah plateau and canyon country?  This is the time for my annual advertisement for a little book I bought years ago in the visitor center in the Escalante region.  (Kanab, UT)? Not sure where to get this book by William Lee Stokes. The trick is to stop thinking of these landforms as a static tourist postcard, and try to imagine how they formed.  For the most part, land was uplifted a long time ago because of collision between tectonic plate

 The gravel road seemed in pretty good shape.  And that made me suspicious.  I vaguely remembered some wet arroyo crossings on this road. Sure enough.  We soon came upon a wet crossing with tire ruts over a foot deep in the muck.  I stopped and walked the ruts.  They appeared to have good traction.  I got so much satisfaction at being patient with this crossing!  Why does it take so much effort for a driver to 'look before they leap?'  Of course there is a big off-road 4WD industry out there who pushes just the opposite approach: be in a hurry, be on a macho and noisy rampage, and solve your transportation problems by spending huge amounts of money. Further on, there were hopeless wet spots as suspected.  I didn't even challenge them.  Instead I used another road that resulted in one of the most satisfying bike rides in years.  It was satisfying because it was close enough to see some marvelous scenery, but not too close, where the road gets too steep and rocky. My mapping

People who are new to camping must think that coldness is the main issue with camping in winter.  But actually coldness is a secondary issue.  The real problem is short daylight hours.  Some people -- myself included -- start thinking of going to sleep when it gets dark in the evening.  Well, that is fine if you are capable of sleeping that many hours.  But most people aren't, especially older people. How do you break this habit of letting darkness lure you into going to sleep?   1.  Use lots of electrical lighting.  This is easier than it used to be, because of better batteries and LED lights. 2.  Make an effort to walk around more.  Don't just sit in a chair.  People who have larger RVs must have an easier time with this.  Van people must have a terrible time. 3.  Put on a headlamp and do chores at the tow vehicle or just outside your RV.  What about walking the dog at night?  Concern about night-time predators has kept me from this in the past.  But maybe a headlamp would fr

Central Utah.  How could any place on planet Earth be as lifeless and plant-free as this place?  Even somebody who has previously visited rocky and barren places in the Southwest can't help but ask this.  But it can make for some interesting photos if the sunlight is low in the sky or if clouds help by making shadows. No trees, no grass.  Just a few scrubby bushes with a sickly grey yellow color. But this isn't the hottest and dryest land in the Southwest.  The geology must have something to do with the lack of vegetation. But a person can learn to enjoy the "negative beauty of tragic tones", as Thomas Hardy would put it.  But in small doses!  You wouldn't want to see too many months of this. I usually descend to the lower elevations of this area, near the Green and Colorado Rivers, during the Thermal Collapse of late October.  Typically some rain happens.  And all this rock can make you appreciate that you are not stuck in mud.  I sometimes forget that winter is

 Despite the warm autumn weather I have made it down into central Utah.  It certainly is the kind of place that keeps photographers happy. But I found something more interesting than the scenery.  Once again, consider the hunters.  They are not really finding food in an economical way: for what they are spending on their sport they could buy an awful lot of food at the grocery store.   But they must have enough perspicuity to find satisfaction in connecting with something fundamental in life.  Our species didn't come into existence a couple hundred thousand years ago as scenery tourists.  They hunted and gathered for a living.  What about me, today?  Could I connect with something fundamental?  How would I find food here? I noticed a thick carpet of pinyon pine cones on the ground, and felt embarrassed that I knew nothing about the timing of pine nut production.  Then, a few steps from my camper, I found some cones still on the tree, and with the pine nuts still hanging on. Perhaps

Although I have not hunted since high school, the hunters driving by camp at 0530 are my soulmates, in a sense.  And it is a nice feeling.  Who else besides hunters gets going early in the morning?  The typical camper shows no sign of life until 10 a.m., an unconscionable sin. But hunters are good for something else: their example might correct me on what I said in the last post.  It isn't right to argue that 99.9999% of the pixels in your viewscape are motionless, therefore motion is unimportant.  In fact, the tiny minority of moving pixels is vitally important.  Just ask the hunters or predators! There was quite a bit of inbound traffic on evening.  Somebody explained to me that another hunting season was starting.  They didn't have to tell me. The tiniest flick of ear or tail is noticeable in a landscape of stationary pixels.  That works for prey as well as predators.  Deer act so alert and intelligent at the beginning of hunting season that they are almost funny.  T hey let

It really seems like the travel blog is dying these days.  I hope it survives.  All mediums have their pro-s and con-s.  The advantages of a text-and-photo blog are considerable.  The blog is of course being replaced by You Tube videos which really don't have great advantages.   So why are these videos so popular?  Isn't it because it reminds people of watching the boob tube?  There is remarkably little content in most travel videos.  They are really just "chewing gum for the eyes," as the old saying goes.   Inevitably they migrate towards the "adventurer" cooking in their van or just outside it.  Is there something fascinating about boiling water in a pan in a van that deserves 20,347 views and 357 comments?  This makes a bit of sense if the adventurer is a pretty and personable young woman, wearing skimpy clothing, while swishing her tail at the stove.  But really! Mountains don't move.  Neither do forests or lakes.  So what is the point of taking 

You don't camp on the edge of a mesa or near a cliff if you like calmness.  And yet it has been remarkably calm during the day.  The wind comes back for revenge in the middle of the night.   Strange. High winds make it difficult to sleep, not so much because of the rock-and-rolling, but for the noise.  Anti-noise headphones help a lot.  I have never used the headphones for that purpose before.  They work! It feels silly to have spent so much for the headphones and then hold them back "in reserve,"   rather than actually putting them to use.  But that is exactly what I have done.  Bicyclists can be familiar with this syndrome: they might struggle up a hill but resist using their lowest gear.

It is easy to see why a lost dog would affect a dog-owner so much: we have gone through the temporary loss of our own dog once or twice.  But I was really affected by two beautiful dogs that were loose on the edge of a high plateau in northern Utah.   They were fairly friendly, but wouldn't let me come up and read a phone number on their tag or collar.  They didn't really want water from my bottle, but that isn't too surprising considering all the ponds in the area.  They weren't in any immediate danger.   In fact they were full of youthful vitality.  They were enjoying their romp together.  Their adventure and freedom.  Despite expressing 'danger' in one sense of the word, these two dogs were advertisements for the idea that 'life isn't about Meaning, it is about Desire.'  I made a call to Animal Control but don't know what happened after that.  I suspect the dogs belonged to a hunter or camper in the area, and that they 'turned themselves i

It is strange how a person can skip visiting certain areas, year after after, despite being close to them and saying that they really want to get there "next time."  I have said that when camping in northern Utah on the edge of a plateau 3000 feet above town.  A couple miles from my usual campsite, a small copse of aspen seems to hang near the edge of the plateau.  Something about it is so alluring.  There is a small, fine rectangle around that copse in the top middle of this photo: The copse has always seemed so desirable, so noble and pure, and yet so unapproachable. I have yearned for it like a knight in the Middle Ages romanticizing getting to Jerusalem or meeting a beautiful damsel, unapproachable behind the high walls of her castle.   The scalloped walls of the intervening canyon can be seen as dragon's teeth that make the approach impossible.  But the copse was approachable on another road.  Somebody said the road was rough but in fact it was an easy road.  I was d

I praise Caitlin Johnstone for her persistent and vicious criticism of Israel.   But words are not sufficient.  Signing up at the link will bring her articles to your email.  Then you can either read them or click on the sound arrow if you prefer to hear her words. But there is another way to "hear" Johnstone.  By luck I was watching DVDs of "The Last Kingdom," the TV show made of Bernard Cornwell's "Saxon Tales".  It is the story of Alfred the Great and his offspring fighting off the Danes around year 900. The theme music is wild, barbaric, female wailing by Eivor, a woman from the Faroe Islands.  I just love her wailing.  It is impossible to hear her without immediately slipping into the mood of the show, much of which is vicious swordplay.   Live performances never sound quite as good as studio recordings, but the You Tube link is fun to hear. Bingo!  Something about the ferocity of her voice reminds me of Caitlin Johnstone's 'poison pen.

  It is the quiet season.  Hunting season.  That is a bit ironic, isn't it? I started my annual invasion of Utah a couple weeks early this year.  It was quite a surprise to see so many hunters.  A couple of them explained that a change in the legal hunting season this year has resulted in more elk hunters. I never hear any guns during hunting season.  Just think of all the equipment these guys own, the fees, and all the trouble they go to; and apparently, most of them never get a shot off. Maybe they see hunting season as just an excuse to drive around in their side-by-sides in cool refreshing weather, camp with the boys, and escape the women-folk for a few days. It can be enjoyable to be exposed to the culture and comradery of sports that you know nothing about it.  I have experienced this with mule-handlers and long-distance horse riders.  Even hang gliders, a couple times.  I wish it happened more often.  Fly fishing culture interests me; identifying  animal tracks; learning sur

I am not used to weather.  In the interior West there isn't much weather -- not like, say, the Gulf Coast.  Rainstorms have become a distant memory to me. That is why it was so shocking to get hit by a thunderous hailstorm at 5 a.m.  The aluminum skin of a cargo trailer makes the hail sound terrible, but a third-of-an-inch-diameter hail does not actually do damage.  It accumulated on the ground to a depth of one inch. Then the sky would crack open for awhile.  An hour later we would get blasted again.      I felt rather exposed to lightning, near the edge of a mesa 3000 feet above town level. I had been careful to camp on a gravelled road -- not a mere dirt road.  So escape was possible.   This experience only happens a couple times per year.  It is easy to walk around, dodging mud puddles, and feel a healthy-mindedness about the sun.  A lovely appreciation of the sun.

Why did it take so many years to learn how to warm up in the morning, after camping through a chilly night?  Shrugging the neck and shoulders works wonders.  I have already done that a few times this autumn. Consider this humble accomplishment as encouragement to find other ways to improve winter camping.  What else have I overlooked?  Every autumn I talk tough about camping in cooler locations in order to avoid the overcrowded camping locations in the Southwest that are known to everybody.  And then I surrender to the inevitable: the same old places, with a van every 50 feet slamming their door 50 times a day; or a giant 5th wheel trailer, with its Harbor Freight 6 Kilowatt generator roaring away.  Gawd, I hate neighbors when camping. Every winter, the superb weather of the lower Southwest grabs me.  It is still possible to find camping that is tolerable, if not exactly inspiring. At least I have surrendered on a reluctance to use propane heat.  A Mr. Buddy heater works well enough. A

It must be a real disappointment to most new RVers to see how suddenly the world snaps from hot to cold.  Most people probably fantasize about moving their wheeled house to make autumn last for a couple months.  They would like to think the perfect temperature can be dialed-in by moving their RV 100 miles at a time. But planet Earth doesn't work like that.  I was astonished by that fact during my first winter of RVing, and it still disappoints me, after all these years.  Currently I am surrendering on my planned slow-migration southeast to the Green River and then south along it.   In the West a slow migration south is undermined even more by the higher altitudes you find along the way. Can lemonade be made from these lemons?  Perhaps not -- if practical travel plans alone are considered.  But a general can lose a battle and still hope to win the war.  Tactical versus strategic.  Short term versus long term. Analogous to that, travel can be looked at on a philosophical level, rathe

  Caitlin Johnstone has been on fire lately, making fun of the seriousness the presidential election is regarded with.  She doesn't see the big deal about whether America becomes the enabler of genocide in Gaza with a MAGA hat on, or whether it goes on as the enabler of genocide with a rainbow flag.  She is right.  All this election will settle is who the next Zionist-in-Chief will be. What if there were a candidate who described Israel as 'Satan's chosen people?'  Would that be considered hate speech?  Indeed, it  is  -- against Satan. No matter who the new president is, America will drown in debt, suffer years of high inflation, and fight wars around the world in the name of 'freedom and democracy,' as it becomes less free and democratic every day. Is that too pessimistic?  When a country as prominent and large as the USA can only produce candidates like these two fools, how can anything be too pessimistic?

There is nothing like being up to my old tricks.    High altitude hills, covered by sagebrush and grass.  Close to forested mountains, but not too close.   My eyes always go to the copses of trees that grow island-like in the sagebrush and grass.    Many times the copses sit on the north side of a hill or in gullies.   The trees are stunted and not too healthy looking.  One of the reasons to look forward to September is that it is cool enough to camp on these sunny lands: I suppose the appeal of this land is the same appeal as shorelines and islands at sea.  It is the complex and surprising geometries that are fun to look at.  A uniform, straight-line coast is rather boring, as are completely treeless plains or thick, monotonous forests.

You hear people talk about Route 66 or US50.  Those highways are OK.  But it is US30 that I really love.  In southeastern ID and southwestern WY, US30 overlaps with the Oregon Trail.  There is something about the lay of the land that I love. There are lots of mountains nearby, but who cares?  Mountains are barriers to travel.  In this racket, we are not interested in obstructing travel and freedom.  This is especially true for somebody who pedals a mountain bike and pulls a trailer.  The magic of this land is that it   exudes passage and freedom -- that is, transportation and movement.  I want to pedal without losing traction or going over the handlebars.  I want to level my trailer in less than twenty minutes.  It is funny how practical issues can insinuate themselves into a person's notion of beauty. A railroad goes through this land, as you would expect.  I am camped about three miles from the railroad and enjoy its sound.   There are decomposed wooden farmsteads in this area.