Occupation of Independence

An outdoorsman should not insist on his route being a loop.  But, still, a loop is fun if you can make one.  There was a possible loop from camp on my ridge.   Nothing sets you up for success like choosing a route with just the right amount of uncertainty.  It is possible that  the road will turn into pure rubble or become so overgrown that it is unpassable.   Don't overstudy it!  Don't lust for postcard scenery; try to get interested in ordinary things that you are likely to find.  By "ordinary things" I mean fundamental processes that make life on planet Earth possible.    That is how I felt when the little dog and I came up on the widest and lushest swale of the whole summer.  And I didn't expect it at all. I need to spend an entire post rhapsodizing about swales.  For the moment, suffice it to say that this was that magical moment when skepticism evaporated and I realized that the route was a success. Finally we turne...

It was easy to get started early that morning.  I was motivated.  I had some errands in town, about 2000' lower than the stony ridge I was camped on.  In town it was expected to be triple digits in the afternoon, again.   (Hardly any towns in the Inland Northwest are high altitude and comfortable.) When I drove by a large lake I was surprised that nobody was there.  But really, who goes out to play in the water at 7 a.m.?  By 11 a.m. some people would surely be out there, enjoying it. Thinking about that brought on a powerful wave of nostalgia, despite "going to the lake to cool off" not being a big part of my childhood.  But most people at least remember running through lawn sprinklers as a child.  There are other pleasant memories, such as the anticipation of grandmother or mother making ice-cold lemonade.  Or getting a little bit of relief from a porch swing or riding a bicycle. This is time for my annual advertisement for the chapter, "Q...

I was looking at the movies available on tubitv.com,   and found "Elmer Gantry", made around 1960, and featuring a powerful performance by Burt Lancaster.  (I watched it with the Brave browser and Adblock, which worked great.)  The movie is more worthwhile if you take it allegorically.  The story is about Christian revivalists in the Bible Belt, but many of its points apply just as well to other popular delusions, such as democratic politics. Elmer Gantry seems a lot like Donald Trump.  I wonder if the legacy of the Trump era will be that presidential candidates will always arise through the entertainment industry, and that their on-camera personality is the only thing that will matter.

 Ponderosa forests have a large fan club in the camping community, and I am a member.  But in mid-summer, the shade in these forests is not quite good enough.  This makes a guy appreciate the thicker shade of spruce forests.  I can't believe I said that. Many campers prefer the panoramic views of more open land to the locked-down viewscape of a thick spruce forest.  Then, when they do come out into the open, it is really fun: All in all, it is a good thing that one month is different from the others, and that one forest isn't just like all the others. It was also fun to come back into Idaho.  I begged for mercy at the local grocery store: could they spare a couple extra grocery bags?  I had used up all my bags in Oregon and I use grocery bags as trash bags!  Why is it environmentally-correct to have to buy larger trash bags to dispose of kitchen waste?  It is also nice to be rid of the 10 cent deposit on bottles and cans.  I want to sup...

  Yesterday,   for the first time in a long time, I was in a real visitor's center.  There were so many glossy brochures bragging up one place or another.  It was almost funny how little any of that mattered to me.  I was trying to learn how a visitor might get a UPS package delivered in this town.  It used to be easy, but the drug store abandoned their partnership with UPS and Amazon, and the UPS customer service center is now closed.  That is happening everywhere it seems. Isn't it strange that towns acknowledge the importance of visitors to their economy but they don't understand that visitors shop online when they are traveling?  Hell, there is nothing to buy in stores anymore, except grocery stores and gas stations. On the bright side, thrift stores seem to be coming up in the world.  Maybe they will take the place of Dollar Stores now that Dollar Stores are charging convenience-store prices.  Considering what a landfill economy we ...

  What an iconic image for the history books! The Democratic Party knows what this photo alone portends, as if they couldn't already predict November's election results. But not everybody is miserable.  The Permanent Regime (aka, Deep State) also knew what was coming.  Since they had run out of options on the Democrat side, they had to operate on the Republican side. They needed a good way to snatch at least a partial victory from certain defeat, although Trump's first term should have eased their fears that he was any serious threat to their power and perks.  But perhaps he would have been more confident and assertive in his second term -- it was a serious concern for them. Do you really think that somebody in the Permanent Regime is going to lose their government job or cushy pension just because they allowed a visible shooter on a rooftop with line of sight to Trump?  Oh sure, there will be an investigation that moves at a glacial pace and is so convoluted th...

Whenever America starts a new war, or when some perfectly explainable tragedy happens, politicians mention "God" in every other sentence.  Does anyone really believe that those politicians believe in God?   Apparently the politicians have to offer references to "God" as pabulum to the masses. I was surfing You Tube channels after the event in Pennsylvania where "Trump fell to floor after some loud noises were heard."  (CNN's headline.)  Whenever the You Tube channel started talking about offering our prayers or god God GOD, I just turned it off.

  Nobody in the media has talked about the presence or absence of drones to keep an eye on rooftop shooting locations around the edges of areas where a political rally is happening.  It sounds like a practical and effective "force extender" for Secret Service agents.  Why hasn't this even been mentioned?

I think a commenter was right about my dud flower-identification.  Now let's move onto a likely dud butterfly-identification.     I had just relocated camp and got interested in this guy: OK I claim it is a Western Tiger Swallowtail.  While knocking around on the internet, I was delighted to learn about the Oregon Swallowtail: Wouldn't it be great to spot this species!

  In the winter I love taking the time to praise chilly mornings, with their glorious warming sun and with absolutely no wind.  It is impressive how perfectly opposite summer can be. A breeze is such a relief in summer.  Typically you only get it in mid-day, but that is when you really need it.  I still have to pinch myself to break out of the "wind is bad" mode of thinking.  Granted, forests tend to suppress the breeze.  At the moment I am camping at 6000' on a bald stony ridge with just a few trees.  It is necessary to keep the trailer hooked up to the van, in order to dance with the shade from those trees.  After two hours of sun on my solar panels, I chase the shade the rest of the day, with about four relocations. Maybe a summer camper should think of sailboats: they are completely dependent on a breeze.  A sailor is miserable on a calm day. The breeze held strong the entire night, last night. A "breeze" in the Southwest.

Perhaps the reader has known a walking-encyclopedia of flower or bird names.  I have.  Such people really are quite impressive, in a slightly obnoxious sort of way.  And yet, I have never made much of an effort to emulate them. My mind is already too full of trivia -- that is, useless and arcane knowledge  -- usually of the historical kind.  I just don't have the heart for more memorization of that kind. Still, it gives me pleasure to know that this flower is probably called a trillium: These were rather small.  I walked by them for a week, a few feet from camp, before I saw them! You hear so much about "AI" (artificial intelligence) these days.  Perhaps somebody will put AI to good use by making it easier to identify birds, flowers, and trees while you are out walking around.

 I am trying to keep an open mind about videos in this blog.  Is there really a need for moving pictures when hardly anything in a landscape moves?  Still, it is fun to play around with new software. The first time I saw footage from a helmet-mounted camera on a mountain biker, I was dazzled.  But after the novelty wore off, it seemed that the trail could wiggle left, wiggle right, go up, or go down.  Nowadays I never watch such videos.  But it is impossible to shoot videos from a moving bicycle with one hand on the smartphone and one on the handlebar!  As I found out.  No wonder the GoPro camera was invented There are few outdoor experiences more wonderful than a good breeze in the forest on a warm summer day.  But does a moving picture really add something better than words or a still photograph?    Despite being the end of their season, a few wild roses are still opening up: Mountains and plants aren't great subjects for a moving...

 A camper is doing everybody a favor to check out potential campsites before a national holiday.  It takes quite a bit of skill, experience, and luck to avoid weekend/holiday crowds.  I have put a lot of work into it on previous holidays and then seen it blow up in my face.  'No good deed goes unpunished.' There are specific criteria for making this work, but the most important idea is to put yourself into the mindset of the mass-tourist, and then multiply everything by negative one.  Avoid: 1.  Lakes. 2.  Loop roads. 3.  Iconic viewscapes of red arches, national parks, tourist name brands of any kind.  Anything with name recognition. 4.  Colorado. 5.  Proximity to huge urban hellholes such as Phoenix, Denver, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas/St.George, and Boise. But I have always done that, and still been burned.  I hope I am not jinxing myself to declare victory in eastern Oregon this year.  (And that doesn't mean Bend.) Livin...

I was reading a book the other day that used the word, wraith.  I had to look it up.  It seems that single-syllable words interest me more than they used to.  Many times they go back to Old English of Anglo-Saxon days or maybe early Middle English. The next morning I saw this: In the background is one of the rare east-west mountain ranges of North America.  "Wraith" certainly describes the clouds hanging onto gaps and wrinkles in the mountains. Some people would say that the burned trees in the foreground detract from the beauty of the mountains, but you could see the starkness of burned forests as a counterweight to the tendency of spoiled moderns to see Nature as being all about purty, purty, purty. Life outside the rat race -- the busy-ness machine -- is largely about getting up in the morning and finding something to be interested in.  And by the way, 'busy' is an Anglo-Saxon word.