Nature-Appreciation Away From the Desert

 The ATV'er slowed down and then stopped to talk.  Was he a javelina hunter?  It turned out that he was a ranch hand at a nearby ranch.  He was taking out big brown blocks of food for the cattle.  I love asking questions about How Things Work and how people make a living.  And how animals make a living.

He was quite scientific about the nutrition of these big blocks, but struggled a bit with the verbiage.  Finally I helped by saying, "So you mean that even the ranchers near [redacted] are hippie-dippies?"  He nodded yes and laughed.

Our talk helped me slip into my annual infatuation phase with grasslands and trees in southeastern Arizona.  That might sound strange to some people, but spend a couple months in mid-winter along the lower Colorado River and you will feel a lust for anything that isn't rubble or cholla.

Arizona Sycamore

Tawny grass and live oaks

Planet Earth certainly has some goodies, but the desert isn't one of them.

This time of year, a town of vegans and hippies, and the chat with the cow hand made me appreciate what a revolution it was, a few thousand years ago, when man domesticated animals that could live off of grass.  Think of the huge areas on this planet that are too dry for row-crop agriculture.  Nor do such places provide wood for fuel and shelter.  But grazing animals can provide secondary products, food, and milk all year long.  

Fortunately for the hippies and vegans of this town, man also invented diesel-burning, refrigerated trucks that can drag fresh veggies to them, all winter long, from a thousand miles away.