Occupation of Independence

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:

 I found the experience of finding the spring (in the last post) so satisfying that I should try to explain it.  Long-suffering readers know that I like to bring in a historical perspective when camping and traveling.  But is that completely correct? A proper historian uses documents and occasional inscriptions in stone as their inputs.  They can also team up with an archeologist .  These are severe limitations obviously.  Even if there are lots of documents about a certain topic, most documents are official and therefore biased, legal, or commercial, so they are full of people's names, dates, facts, and figures.  That is fine, as far as it goes. But what was it like to experience the historical event for people directly involved?  What were they thinking and feeling?  For some reason, I made a real effort to imagine what it was like to find a spring or find water when digging a well for early settlers in the 1800s . What visual clues were ...

The Salmon River is certainly one of the best in Idaho .  It made me almost wish my miniature poodle was a Labrador retriever so that she would have jumped in the river and swam her heart out.  But she wouldn't even get her feet wet. We ran into a good ol' boy in a pickup truck who told us about a spring, up the road 'a piece.'  The road was fairly smooth, just as he said.  The first clue were the marshy and tall plants that stood out from the surrounding sagebrush . I got off the bike and walked towards the possible spring.  Sure enough, I could finally hear it.  What a marvelous sound!  Could there be any more authentic western experience than jumping on my horse (aka, mountain bike ) and looking for and finding a spring?  Nothing is more precious than water in this gawd-forsaken, barren wasteland . My little dog wanted to celebrate the occasion, a ways downstream: I can't think of anything better to do with my time than looking for a spring....

They certainly have made quite a media circus out of the Putin-Trump summit in Alaska.  Russians are worried about Ukraine pulling off a false flag that makes it look like Russia killed a bunch of civilians in Ukraine.   The Russians seem to be preparing their own attention-getter: they are on the verge of conquering Pokrovsk, one of the last important fortified cities run by Ukraine in the Donetsk oblast.   It would be great to see Trump's nose rubbed in humiliating defeat just when he thinks he is going to be the star of the show in Alaska.  Ditto for the NATO Elites in Europe. How will the complacent sheep in the USA and Europe react to a major defeat?  Will their Elites get run out of office?

 I have wondered whether photo-editing and AI would kill off most of the interest in photography.  The answer is Yes, if 'interest' means trivial prettiness, that is, extreme colors, sheer size, and freakish verticalities.  AI can fake all that, so what does that leave for photography? The good news is that photos are still a great way to express visual metaphors about significant things in life.  Visual metaphors should have been what photographers were aiming at, all along. Does a photographer realize at the time the photo is taken that it will be a good metaphor, or does that realization occur only with hindsight?  For my part, I usually see a photo's value as a metaphor when looking back at photos long ago.  But there are exceptions.  Consider: No rain had been prophesied for the day, and yet here it was.  Look at this photo from the point of view of a camper in a western state where you expect horrible wildfires at this time in the summer. F...

 Micro-climate or micro-calendar?  What do you call it when a mountain blocks sunrise or sunset?  Think of it as a mercifully early September, the fantasy of a mid-summer sufferer.   The late sunrise from one of these mountains fooled me one morning.  I should have started my bike ride even earlier because we had some climbing to do before making it to "[redacted] Summit."  It is funny how specialized an outdoorsman can be.  I was hoping for lots of climbing in middle gears, and I got it.  The irrigated fields had tall green hay.  Grasslands are rare and precious in the western mountain states. Have you ever seen a hatch of "Mormon crickets?"  They are a type of grasshopper, I suppose.  Fat and black.  They cannibalized the smooshed ones.  I tried to avoid smooshing them with my bicycle tires, but it was impossible to avoid them all.  Looking at them more carefully, there also seemed to be a lot of copulation goi...

Once again I have benefitted from developing the right attitude towards discomfort in the Outdoors.  There is nothing you could do on the "positive" end to enhance your appreciation of this little creek in my backyard in central Idaho.  By "positive" I mean such things as a bigger, steeper, or more famous creek. It was fun to wallow in an intense appreciation of this creek.  Doing so almost completely depends on developing a long-suffering attitude to the opposite of this creek.  This of course is a standard stump speech on this blog.   It was really the sound that made everything click for me.

 It is probably shocking to many people how ancient superstitions still affect big events in today's modern world.  I would like to add modern superstitions to the last sentence. The notion of Progress has almost become a Deity the last couple centuries.  I mockingly call that point-of-view the "Whig Interpretation of History."  You'd think that World Wars I and II would have weakened the blind faith in Progress. Onto the World Wars, let's add the current genocide in Gaza.  I wish I knew Israelis a bit better.  But it seems as though they don't really worship Yahweh so much as they worship being Jewish.  But what does it mean to be Jewish?  To wear a cloth disk on your head's bald spot?  To grow curly ringlets on the side of your head?  Certain petty rules about food, unique national holidays, or speaking Hebrew? Such things are interesting and help to put more variety into the world, but they seem too trivial to worship as a pseudo-d...

People like me who aren't 'water people' should envy those who are.    I am not planning on changing, but it is satisfying to appreciate their point of view more and more, over the years. The older a person gets, the less excuse they have for being a blockhead.  For instance, every summer I fight summer instead of just surrendering to it and then adapting to it.  I had a friend once in a bicycle club who got tired of hearing people gripe about the heat.  He told them, "It's summer.  It's supposed to be hot."  He was right, and I knew it at the time. The biggest source of worry in summer is my little dog getting hot in the van, in a parking lot.  I already owned this 'Breeze' fan from Fantastic but didn't use it much.  So I moved it into the van and found a way to mount it.  Then it plugs into the cigarette light.  It helps. Of course if you didn't already own the Breeze fan, you could just buy one of those USB-rechargeable mini-fan...

There really are junkies out there who watch too many dog rescue videos.   You know the routine: weepy, sentimental tear-jerkers, with soft solo piano music playing in the background.  So I can be forgiven for eagerly responding to a brown hound dog who was walking up a 2000' hill that I had just driven down. My first instinct, as a lifelong bicyclist, was to keep him out of traffic.  He didn't have a collar.  I was surprised by how tight his eye contact with me was.  (He was a hunting dog, not a border collie.)  Then he looked right at me and did the lip-smacking trick that my own dog does at home when she thinks it's time for dinner. My instinct was to get a bowl of water down, first.  But he wasn't interested.  Using an extra dog leash I fashioned a loop to go over his head.  I brought him to the back of the van and opened a can of pinto beans -- fortunately they had pop-tops.  He was very thin, but otherwise healthy-acting.  He...

I doubt that anything good can come from expressing my disgust with the foreign policy of my own country, especially in Gaza.  Caitlin Johnstone does a better job than I could. And yet there are hopeful signs that many in the Western world are becoming more critical of Israel.  Hope?  That is what interests me today.  Hope, naivete, delusion, wishful thinking, and escapism overlap and become so confusing.   A person can be well-educated and well-read, but does it really help them understand the overlap between these terms, when applied to a specific slaughter like Gaza?  Perhaps the only thing that seems certain is the notion that it is important for people in a 'free' society to actively and courageously confront mass-slaughter.   We also need to be realistic about our ability and stamina to consider such grim and horrible events without giving up.  We all have our limits.  If we overshoot and then surrender our attention to easy a...

Recently I watched an episode of an old TV western.  I didn't care for the episode, nor did some of the reviewers, who called it a knock-off of (1952) "High Noon", starring Gary Cooper.  I didn't even care for "High Noon" all that much, despite it being considered a classic movie. Of course there is more than one level or angle for appreciating a classic anything, and maybe "High Noon" is worth rewatching.  Think of a classic as a general template, a Platonic Form, that can be reincarnated in different eras and locations.  We shouldn't dismiss the reincarnation as an unoriginal knock-off.  Novelty isn't what matters. It is "mind-expanding" to be concerned with a tangible person or situation today, and then suddenly realize that it fits a timeless template.  You walk out of the small pond of Today, Here, and Now and paddle off to a large and long river nearby, one that represents the general flow of the human condition. "High ...