Occupation of Independence

  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?...

 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 betwe...

 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...

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 pred...

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 somet...

 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...

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 seas...

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 ...

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.