Occupation of Independence

How could a full time traveler not get spoiled and fickle; how could he ever adjust to doing the same thing twice? Those were the doubts I had when getting off the road about three years ago. But I had a secret weapon: the Granny J Principle. That is, I would now look at "routine" things more carefully and closely, instead of relying on sheer visual novelty. A mind can be like a camera that takes a macro closeup of interesting details, instead of a pan-opticon of ever-changing landscapes.

During my siesta the other day I was listening to the opening of Verdi's La Traviata , a dance scene. Sometimes a music lover needs to be reminded of the connection between music and motion. It was a good time to let the mind drift off to possible connections between famous musical themes and motion. In fact, some of Verdi's dance scene music reminded me of Coffee Girl leaping and bounding through the field. Dogs aren't the only critter that is beautiful when in motion. When we made it up to Gabby's Ridge -- named after an Australian shepherd who led her owner there every day: (Gabby is on the left, above. Despite being disciplined and repressed more than any dog I've ever known, she can't hide her joy. That's dogs for you.) I looked down into the little valley and saw a horse prancing around its corral. It was stepping so high. So was its tail. It would have been grand if I had been down in the valley, looking up at the sprightly horse as it ran al

Cottonwood AZ, during a recent autumn. (This is an attempt to eliminate confusion, Rick.) The location and land-form of my new campsite are attractive. What's this? Other RVs boondocking nearby. In fact some are unappetizing Desert Rats. For some reason I pulled in anyway; normally I won't camp near others, for obvious reasons.   A couple of the Desert Rats had a campfire the first night. Seeing them huddled around it, it was easy to imagine them as the male, desert version of the "Weird Sisters" in the opening of "MacBeth." The next morning the dogs and I walked down to the Verde River. Our first pleasant surprise was limestone. Ahh, I had a fit of nostalgia for the limestone caprock of West Texas and the Hill Country, where I spent my first snowbird winter. Limestone might not be much to look at, but it is a marvelous layer for wheels, heels and dog pads. Soon we were along the Verde River, which was flowing with great force thanks to the re

Last summer, migrating north through New Mexico and Colorado, I began encountering arroyos with water running in them. At first this seemed unnatural and unwholesome, but I tried to keep an open mind. In fact, wet rivers can grow on a person. Nevertheless, now that it is autumn, it is a relief to be back where rivers beds are dry and walkable.  Besides, is there really all that much to see in a wet river? Perhaps, if the water is clear and shallow. Thoreau certainly did his best while paddling down " The Concord and Merrimack Rivers ," but even his fans probably don't consider this his best essay. What would he have thought about the dry washes and canyons of the Southwest? Imagine if he had not died prematurely and had somehow hooked up with John Wesley Powell on his exploration of the Colorado River. Starting from our campsite near Cottonwood AZ, the dogs and I drove upcountry. Further along this dirt road there was a big-name canyon that got a few tou

North of Prescott, AZ. We were camping in the headwaters of the Verde River, at the base of the Mogollon Rim, the southwestern edge of the Colorado Plateau. The dogs and I took off on a mountain bike ride to Hell Canyon, right from the travel trailer's door. How can you resist a place-name like that?  We were on a flat stretch of overgrazed ground. You don't really see much of that on western public lands anymore, thanks to the environmental lobby. There! For once, I've given them a well-earned compliment. The dogs loved running on the flat dirt roads on the way to Hell Canyon. We finally arrived at the canyon, at the point of a large railroad bridge and a highway bridge built back in the Depression. Both were picturesque.   Looking at these tracks over Hell Canyon brought an image to mind: the boys playing chicken with a train in Rob Reiner's wonderful movie, "Stand by Me." Since I had missed that experience as a lad, I felt a perverse desire t

When people see somebody head off to go full time RVing they probably think that the traveler will settle down in a couple years. (They can only be going through a phase, you know.)  In my case this phase has lasted ten years. But in a metaphorical sense, they were right. There is a place I feel at home at--not a zip code, but a topographic form, a physiographic region. We're roaming free-range again in plateau/mesa/canyon country. Specifically we're in the unpronounceable uncomparable Uncompahgre, west of Montrose, CO. Why should mesas and canyons be one's favorite topography? Perhaps it's the balance and contrast between flatness and sharp declivities, between grassy foregrounds and distant mountains, or the ease of accessibility to an RV and a mountain bike. From our current RV boondocking campsite on a small mesa we can see the San Juan mountains, the Uncompahgre Plateau, and the unmatchable Grand Mesa. After having forests block my foreground

Western Colorado. As much as I love afternoon clouds during the monsoons, autumn rains are completely different. So I fled the upper Gunnison River valley for the torrid lowlands of Montrose (6000 feet) and the Uncompaghre River Valley. But it was stormy down here, too. East of the river there are shale badlands which turn into a quagmire when it rains. I have written before of how much the right book or movie can combine with the right location. With the San Juan Mountains in the background, this seemed like the time to watch "True Grit."  Soon I found a low BLM mesa to camp on, about thirty miles from where much of the mountain scenery of True Grit was shot. At a couple times during the movie, I stepped out of my trailer to admire specific mountains and rocks that were prominent in scenes in the movie. A couple days later another autumn storm blasted the San Juans, as seen from my RV boondocking campsite: The next day they were snow capped. I must ad

Lighthouses in a landlocked state? Well yes, if you look at it right. I'm probably not the only one who sometimes dawdles or procrastinates when they arrive in a new town. Sometimes there are so many choices, and they seem like such big projects, that you do nothing. That's why it helps to work for a dog. They have more sense than we do sometimes. They just want to get out there, and without thinking about it too hard.    So we hike to the first cell tower or radio antenna site. These are more than the source of cellphone and wireless internet signals; they are navigational aids to the entire lifestyle of an RV boondocker. They are to me what an old-fashioned lighthouse was to a seamen. They don't look like each other, exactly, but they have other similarities. Both are tall edifices that stand out and emit powerful signals of electromagnetic radiation. The main difference between their respective "lights" is the wavelength, which is a million times longer

Clearly, the San Juans are Colorado's best eye candy, in the usual postcard sense. The San Juans are newer than the other ranges and are volcanic, rather than folded or fault block ranges. Here was our first route in the San Juans: Stratified sedimentary layers I'm used to--but a green layer? How could a wind-blown seed find purchase on a slope like this? A motorist stopped when he saw my little dog in the BOB trailer behind the mountain bike. He was a serious amateur photographer and was studied up on nature. He thought the seeds would have been dropped by birds into the cracks or holes that even a steep slope must have. Probably so, but how did these plants or bushes propagate up there? We finished our ride and returned to find a Silverton couple saddling up two llamas, for an overnight trek up to an alpine lake.    They are members of the camel family, but don't have humps. Their hooves are more like a hard pad, with two-toes and funny toe nails.

Today's ride was in a "gulch." That's an ignominious name for a beautiful U-shaped box canyon/valley, scooped out by glaciers. This little house on the prairie was cute, especially the broom. It was parked by a corral with horses. This little trailer was meant to be a repositionable cottage or boarding house, not an RV, but for whom? If only a Basque shepherd or vaquero would have stepped out of it. Soon we came to the high end of the "gulch", and saw large waterfalls. The dirt road devolved into foot trails that climbed over the top of the surrounding, U-shaped massif. On the return trip I stopped to chat with a fly fisherman, a likable guy, but I usually like fly fishermen. Close to the Continental Divide the streams are only a foot deep, and are fast. A fish must be desperate to make a living if it swims in this stream all day. Once again I toyed with the possibility of taking up fly fishing, but wasn't sure why. It ce

Leadville, CO. The Benchmark Atlas labeled nearby Mosquito Pass, elevation 13,186 feet, as the "highest auto (jeep) pass in the US." Which of my four bicycles would be best? I smiled thinking of the beginning of the Spaghetti Western, "For a Few Dollars More." The bounty hunter, Lee Van Cleef, has only a few seconds to shoot the bad guy who is getting away. The bounty hunter pulls a string on his saddle, and a leather rack of four guns rolls down the side of the horse: his tools of the trade, for every occasion. The road started smooth and steep, which is my favorite kind of road. It wasn't long before I saw something unusual: a large group of fully-loaded backpackers, who would coalesce and then disperse. It was a church group from Texas, on its way over the pass. We caught up with them at the last mining tower, near tree-line, where you can faintly see the two thousand feet of switchbacks that await these hikers from sea-level homes. Faith can m

It is strange that an experienced RV boondocker would enter a new area and feel trepidation about finding a camping site. After all, how many times have I done this, by now? But I have certain prejudices against Colorado, and expected the national forests to be camper-unfriendly. I went campsite-shopping with the usual DeLorme and Benchmark atlas. As feared, some of the forest access was blocked by McMansions and private roads. At other times, I did find access, but the wireless signal was blocked by the topography. It becomes a game to visualize the topography relative to the cell tower. Wait a minute--I didn't know where the cell tower is. So it was a game to infer the location of the cell tower based on the number of bars my cell phone displayed at different locations, and based on that, to deduce the strength of the signal over the next hill. This is great fun; the cell tower, not yet quite real and visible, becomes a fiducial point which you use to visualize

You just can't beat a ride up a spiral, candy-striped mountain. There aren't many of them. In part the fun is purely whimsical, like something from a Dr. Zeuss book.  You get a 360 degree view from a spiral road. Salida, CO, has a small mountain of this type that overlooks the town. It was only a short ride, but it reminded me of a grander ride, spiraling up to the top of Steptoe Butte, in the magnificient Palouse of eastern Washington. Having opted to stay south this year, for fuel and other reasons, I won't have a chance to do my annual ride up Steptoe. I found a few old wrecks to photograph. What a relief! Perhaps I have misjudged Colorado; I was afraid everything would be modern, affluent, and sterile. The second surprise occurred when a woman in a dress got on her woman's-frame bicycle and pedaled off on some errand. They still make such bikes, with a chain guard, fenders, and a little shopping basket. I never would have expected a unisex grin

Perhaps the reader has concluded that anyone who would go to the efforts described earlier to camp on the rim of a high mesa must be addicted to cool air and the internet. How harsh the reader is. Consider the effort that some people in rural New Mexico make to get internet: There are other benefits to camping on the rim of a mesa. Consider orographic lift (wedge lift, ridge lift). Air that moves horizontally in the torrid lowlands must climb when it hits the edge of the mesa. And the face of the mesa heats up preferentially, too. A strong breeze is a blessing more times than not--at least in the summer. Here is my little poodle demonstrating orographic lift, right at the rim of the mesa: Hang gliders might call this 'wedge lift' or ridge lift. I love stumbling onto hang gliding sites, by accident. That happened once in my freshman year as a full time RVer. ...It was along the shoreline of Lake Michigan, near Traverse City, MI. Exploring on the mountain bike