Occupation of Independence

Central Utah .  Most scenery tourists go ga-ga over redrock cliffs , canyons , and arches .  After all these years, I still enjoy seeing such things and look forward to my October migration through Utah.   But once a 10,000 foot, sheer vertical, fire engine red cliff becomes a standard postcard, it loses its aura of mystique.  The human mind yearns for a sense of wonder, and that can only come from being  surprised.  Such as vertical arroyo walls in mud :  Yes, I laugh at myself for preferring this kind of scenery.  But I can't help it.  We will return to this "slot" canyon soon, unsnap the doggie, and enjoy a genuine exploration.  Free of the tourist industry .

 Most people probably know someone who has has gone off the deep end when it comes to religion.  They can't make it through the day without popping another religion-pill. Before feeling superior to that person, a non-religious person should admit that human beings need a certain amount of emotional comfort  -- perhaps coming from a violent catharsis --  and if there aren't constructive approaches to that issue, people will be find a bad approach. Let's back up a step and try to summarize the history of Christianity over the last 500 years, in just a few sentences.  The Protestant Reformation brought on a century of religious wars that discredited the whole idea of taking religion seriously.  At the same time, the Scientific Revolution happened. So, in the 1700s, European intellectuals outgrew their Christian traditions .  They had enough common sense not to throw out the 'baby with the bathwater.'  They just wanted to deemphasize sadistic not...

Last post I was up to my old tricks of denigrating intellectuals, theologians, and philosophers, while praising the cyn ical point of view, in the original sense of the word, meaning 'dog-like.'  So it is quite a contradiction to praise purpose in walking.  But how can I resist praising purpose when walking in the desert southwest ?  In the north, hiking trails wind their way to mountain tops.  The path seems random and pointless.  Actually, what good is a mountain peak?  It is just barren rock.  You can't eat it. If you walk in a rocky and jumbled desert landscape, without official trails, you feel lost initially.  But then you forget about yourself and start to melt into the land.  The natural highways are arroyos , dry washes.  Your walk latches onto the arroyo.  You soon become part of a larger purpose: winding and flowing down to the great southwestern Father of Waters, the Colorado River . Every autumn I look forward to these...

  It is remarkable how you can spot a little dog even when it is almost completely camouflaged by the surrounding rocks.  Of course, she has to move.  The human eye and brain notice motion so easily. She runs around like a maniac, investigating every crack between the rocks.  Jumping left, right, up, down, cornering, braking.  She runs off-leash in a geometrical puzzle world and is interested in every bit of it.  Strangely there is no wildlife around here, except lizards .  I am in awe of her earnest playfulness.  She is as engrossed in it as young children get sometimes, in their play. A camouflaged cutie If she would just come back to me better, she would get more off-leash freedom.  But in reef country , there is so little vegetation that I can see her if she runs off, and there is no need to have a great fear of coyotes -- I doubt they can even make a living here. A couple times per year I like to give advertisements for a scene in Cha...

 It was getting on to mid-day, but it was still calm like early morning.  The air was a bit chilly.  I was underdressed.  A strange idea popped into my head: maybe I should move to the south side of the trailer and find a nice warm rock to sit on.  I did so.  And just basked in the sun , comfortably, with no desire for anything more than for it to stay just the way it was. This strangeness excited me into a sort of reckless euphoria .  Maybe I should take the little dog for a 30 minute loop.  In the middle of the day!  We did so, and had a great time. In a long career as a camper and outdoorsman , I had never basked in the sun before.  I had never gone for a walk in the ' heat of the day .'

 People who don't live in the western states just don't appreciate how boring and monotonous dry skies can be.  So it is worth jumping up and down over real clouds and rain, and we had some recently in central Utah . If I lavish superlatives over this kind of weather, what is actually accomplished?  Talk is cheap.  What I really need to do is put my money where my mouth is. Seriously, what better way is there to celebrate the occasion, for a professional cheapskate , than to loosen up a little and buy the first real raingear I have owned for years?  But that's not so easy.  Have you ever noticed how mens' rain jackets are waist-length jokes?  Womens', on the other hand, are knee-length.   Mens' jackets are short in order to jump in and out of a car, easily.  But do no men walk in the rain, not even dog owners?  Women think it is unattractive to have a skirt or dress sticking out below a short jacket, therefore they have knee-lengt...

Northern Utah .  How long has it been since experiencing a violent thunderstorm ?  I was unwilling to go to bed until the wind relaxed a bit.  The lightning seemed to attack me.   My goodness, no wonder a book on comparative religions would mention several storm gods .  The next morning I saw the mud, debris, and rocks strewn over the paved entry road to this area.    But it was worth it to put up with Thor's temper tantrum .  All of nature had gone through a catharsis , Aristotle's "violent expurgation of the soul."  The Utah desert smelled good, the air was clean, and the ground was damp.  The temperatures are no longer summer-like. Before the storm It is easy to have mixed feelings, after returning to red rocks, mesas, and canyons .  The good news is that it only takes small rocky features to please me. Good home for a mountain lion ? I get easier to please every year.  Just think of the practical advantages of being ...

 Many people must be surprised how quickly American opinion has turned against Israel.  Personally I have started to overlook political differences with 'the usual suspects' as long as they speak up against Israel.  For instance I watch " The Young Turks " on You Tube.  Maybe that type of "difference-burying" solidarity is necessary when a people coalesce into a real nation.   Many Americans are starting to see that 'their' government is not really theirs.  How can Americans even see America as a sovereign country when its leaders have been completely suborned by a tiny little shit country in the Mideast? But isn't American nationhood already strong, because of  World War II ?  I am not sure that war really counts because the country's existence was not in doubt.  My mother was a teenage girl during WWII and she once told me that she couldn't even tell a war was going on.    I will always be grateful to the Four Score Gray...

The world is in better shape than I thought.  Yesterday was the second anniversary of "October 7".  Notice how it is referred to in shorthand, as if it were 9/11 or the Fourth (of July).   In contrast to what I expected, President Trump did not sign an executive order making October 7 a new American national holiday. Then, anybody not celebrating it could be censored or deported.  Or their QR code could be tattooed on their forehead so that cameras could automatically scan those codes at airports or government offices.  At the very least, they would be accused of being anti-Semitic .

 Here I am again at the edge of a plateau-like mountain , at the end of summer, and at the border between the inland northwest and southwest in northern Utah .  As usual, hunting season is about to begin.  Surprisingly, I rather like hunters as camping neighbors, probably because they don't make gunfire sounds very often and they drive so slowly! Still, I try to escape camping neighbors.  Physical obstacles can be used as screening devices, but in this case I almost screened myself out.  Sometimes, it's a game of inches. I had to back out of this mess.  It was pure dumb luck that I made it. Oh sure, there are lots of golden aspen at 8200 feet of altitude at this time of year: But this sort of thing is best left to weekender-leaf-peepers and RV newbies .  My main interest is the last copse , on the left side of the photo: For years I fluttered my eyelashes at this last lonely and forlorn copse of aspen, on the edge of the plateau before it descended...

The last few years I have watched myself become indifferent to "spectacular" red rock tourist scenery and desert scenery of the type that northern snowbirds coo over.  In contrast I have become intensely appreciative of clouds, rain, soil, grasslands , and trees with leaves.    This is reassuring.  We could think of our ageing-selves as large and old trees, with only a thin layer on the outer diameter made of living cells.  The vast interior is just "dead wood."  But we still have the living cells! All of this is a preamble to today's post.  Driving south and east in Idaho I revisited a favorite canyon -- favorite because it is a Vermont wannabee . People who don't live in the intermountain West probably don't realize how appreciative you can become of real trees, rather than the monotonous bark-and-needle type. Elk season starts in a couple days.  The deer can still afford to be brave: We are on the northern edge of red rock Utah .  A...

 I rewatched the movie, " Gandhi ," recently.  It certainly was an uplifting movie, even if a bit too hagiographic for my tastes.  After watching the movie and perhaps reading Tolstoy  or Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience," you might be tempted to wonder why such ideas have not been tried more often in human history. But we should not forget that Gandhi's methods were partly successful because they were employed against the British Empire , and Britain had a culture of late Victorian idealists and moralists.  What if his methods had been used against Hitler ?  Hitler has been quoted as wondering why the Brits simply didn't kill Gandhi.  Or imagine Gandhi's methods being used against the Roman Empire, etc. Gandhi's Salt March How successful would a Palestinian Gandhi be against the murderous Zionist regime of Netanyahu?  That gets to the point of today's post: what is going to happen to the Gaza Aid Flotilla , currently near Tunisia , I believe?...

  Southeastern Idaho .  Once again I want to write about other outdoorsmen being charming.  They deserve the compliment.  My little dog and I were biking towards another celltower mountain.  We were surrounded by grand ridges of sagebrush, volcanic rocks, and isolated copses of yellowing aspens.   I noticed a familiar pickup truck parked along the side of a dirt road that was becoming so steep that I needed to rest, anyway.  So we looked around for a man.  There he was, on the sagebrush ridge, with a beautiful young German Short-haired Pointer .  He had her half-trained for hunting birds: Hungarian partridges in their case.  Her name was "Spud", appropriately enough for an Idaho dog with an agronomist owner. We must have chatted for 20 minutes.  He looked like he walked off a Cabela's catalog .  I told him how much I admired the " GSP " and had even considered getting one before I got my current miniature poodle mix....

 An avalanche of seasonal pleasure poured down on my head today.  Yesterday it rained a little, which is no small miracle.  It was chilly enough that night to switch over to the winter sleeping bag , for the first time since June.  Then, in the morning, my little dog climbed up into bed and snuggled with me, for warmth presumably, for the first time in months. A bit of dampness to the soil is great for mountain biking .  My little dog and I had a rematch with the ridge we are camping on.  Last time, I pedaled up 60% of it and pushed 40%.  Today I pedaled 100%, with no standing up.  I needed a windbreaker the whole way. Here is a panning video of a gently descending,  neighboring ridge , even grander and more noble than the one we biked up.  Long-suffering readers know that I was fluttering my eyelashes over this ridge: Coming back to camp I had occasion to bask in southern Idaho sunlight outside my trailer door -- normally I dread fa...

 Were people even surprised by how Trump 2.0 reacted to the murder of Charlie Kirk?  Think back to the aftermath of 9/11.  It has become a predictable formula. Political maneuvers after a crisis or emergency show what government is all about.  It is an opportunity to live through an educational episode.  And it shows you how unnecessary complex theories of government are. Think of that quote from H.L. Mencken about "the whole aim of practical politics..."   Never is the wisdom of that quote better illustrated than after some tragic incident brings on a flood of Fear and thirst for Revenge.  Shrewd political operators know how to not let a crisis go to waste.

I'll bet lots of people have noticed their tastes change over the years -- tastes about food, music, and even scenery.  For instance, a newbie RVer is expected to rhapsodize about 'breathtakingly beautiful' fall colors, and then looks for places to photograph entire mountainsides of one (yellow aspen) color.     These days I prefer the fall colors of ground vegetation.  My eyes are drawn to subtle shades of color. What a marvelous season late September is!  Everything is good about it except wind, which is transitioning to a negative for the next six months:  Repetition is supposed to dull your appreciation, but that never seems to happen to this season, perhaps because you only get to enjoy it for three weeks and then wait another 49 weeks for it. My little dog enjoys high altitude in Idaho sagebrush country, without having to worry about snakes:

 I have one less leftist to follow on You Tube.  I wondered if he would use his dislike of Charlie Kirk's political views -- such as gun owner rights -- to imply that Kirk 'deserved it.'  He held back -- but just barely -- from saying that.  But I am unsubscribing from his channel. On another channel I heard another leftist give a gracious and eloquent sermon against political violence.  I agreed with every word he said.   But why didn't he follow the logic of his very correct thoughts?  American foreign policy is about nothing other than violence.  We have a hypocritical president who is normalizing assassinating diplomats while pretending to negotiate with them.  He murders people in international waters, without due process.  He decapitates the leadership of other countries. How many innocent people have died since 9/11 because of American foreign policy? It is certainly a couple million.  What about the dead during the Vie...

 There is a stubbornness in a traveler that can sometimes get in the way; in the way of grabbing experiences with both hands and of being in awe of them.   The last heat wave of summer had almost melted away.  On a rather exposed mountainside a breeze suddenly whipped up and killed the heat wave instantly.  How magnificent!   The wind makes so much noise going through the trees that it makes you feel energized.  You are in the presence of some vast and powerful thing, outside yourself.  A pagan would see that thing as one of his gods.  Sailors and sea-kayakers experience this occasionally.  A comfortable tourist never sees this angry, powerful god.  But didn't I write about a similar experience earlier in the summer?  So is it OK to write about a glorious experience that happens two or three times per summer?  Novelty is a false god for travelers.   Once again the autumn migration has started.  Ever...

So, the last hurrah of summer is over.  The last holiday, that is.  There weren't many weekenders and vacationers in my area (central Idaho) so I am not as relieved as usual, at the end of summer.  It is an ironic time to consider that campers can be charming in their own way.  Give a (non-RV) camper a knife, some kind of digging tool, a length of paracord, rubber hose, and bucket; and then come back in six months.  You might be surprised what they have come up with.  Humans are delightful when they play backyard inventor.  Think of children fashioning toys out of things lying around in their environment. This blog seldom discusses the practical issues of camping because it robs camping of its charm to spoon-feed how-to tips to other campers.  But I will discuss one practical issue just because it has lasted so long for me, and there is some humor to it. For years I have gone through a series of unsatisfactory shower pans.  (I don't have room...

 I am losing interest in geopolitics , probably because the daily news consists of nothing more than commentary on whatever stupid flip-flop Trump committed with his motor-mouth, today.  The daily fighting in Ukraine is still too incremental to be interesting.  And the daily slaughter in Gaza is too depressing to think about. In a sense, Trump can't be blamed for deserting his own voters and making his pitch to the 'other side.'  Most politicians do the same thing once the election is over because they think their own voters are safely 'in their pocket.'  As a result, Biden 's unnecessary war and Defeat in Ukraine has become Trump's Defeat in Ukraine. The other day I was praising historical novelists for allowing the readers to share the thoughts and feelings of historical periods better than the dull facts of professional historians.  But sometimes real events in the world help you put yourselves into the shoes of others.  In thinking of Trump getti...

 For a western camper, the ultimate experience in the outdoors only happens a handful of times per year.  So writing about it makes more sense than writing about anything else. It rained a couple times during the night.  In the morning I awoke to a different planet.  Since I was on the top of the mountain near an inland town, the clouds seemed like dense ground fog on the Pacific Coast .  Walking around in 100% relative humidity is not something that happens often.  It isn't just the imagination that sees the air as a thick vaporous, analgesic unguent.  So tangible, gentle, and kind! There were even puddles on the road, if you can believe a 'whopper' like that. She can't believe it! And yet there were brighter spots in the sky.  The amperage in the solar controller confirmed it.  Soon it became sunnier and I was walking around in a state of calm euphoria . If that isn't great enough, maybe the rain had wrung the smoke out of the sky. ...

  This is an interesting time of year, depending on your altitude .  You might have seen your last 90 F day .  You have killed off another summer.  You want to 'dance in the end zone.'  But in fact, it is a bit too early to celebrate.  One or two surprisingly stubborn heat spells are to be expected.  That is what makes it so bittersweet. It was a good summer for me.  I saw no forest fire smoke until the middle of August.  There were even a couple rains in July.  Even better were the big skies of eastern Oregon and Idaho : Central Idaho Early summer in eastern Oregon A summer chiaroscuro for the little one. While cleaning up my cache of summer photos I found a neglected video, showing how nimble bears can be when climbing: