Occupation of Independence

It must be mere impressionism because it really doesn't make sense that a mountain biker would see more wildlife than a hiker, but such has been my experience. On today's ride I saw a bobcat stop in the middle of the forest road, a hundred yards ahead of Coffee Girl and me, and then do a double-take. Connected by a leash tied to my hip, we must have looked like a pretty strange animal to that bobcat. After a couple seconds it scampered off. There's no mistaking that short tail. Speaking of impressionism is it really true that the middle of a forest is as depopulated of wildlife as it seems, or do too-many-trees simply get in the way of seeing what animals are there? Wildlife biologists must know the answer to that. My version of common sense -- which could be mistaken -- is that there just isn't as much to eat in the middle of a pine tree monoculture as there is at the edge of a forest, or for that matter, in somebody's backyard on the edge of town. You'd t

Long-suffering readers know that I'm not naive about utopian, pie-in-the-sky dreams about some vaunted community, especially one tainted with Age of Aquarius culture. But that's not the point. A better RV lifestyle needs to be constructed, and the term "community" expresses that goal as well as any other single word. Before theorizing and polemicizing about this project, let's keep our feet on the ground by observing some very tribal animals: our dogs. My fellow camper has two Corgis, a grandmother and her grand-daughter. Notice the moral support Grannie gives to the Pupster as she engages in community recreational activities with my dog, Coffee Girl (the larger, black dog at the bottom of the pile): Initially Coffee Girl was afraid of the Pupster. But soon she learned how to play with her with just the right amount of roughness. Clearly it has become fun for both of them. Normally their play begins with the Pupster trying to bring it on. The caption he

It's funny how you begin to hear something when somebody else mentions it. My fellow camper pointed out a funny clicking sound in a mostly ponderosa forest. It was pretty subtle. I spent the next half hour trying to figure out its cause, coming up with some pretty absurd explanations. But the sound was concentrated near one bushlike tree that was close to eye level. Here was the culprit (transferred to the animals album of my Picasa album): It's an adult cicada, about an inch long. You gotta love those transparent, veined wings. You expect to hear a loud screech from cicadas, rather than subtle clicking. Wikipedia has an interesting article on them.  Did you know that cicadas are "timpanists" rather than "violinists" such as grasshoppers or crickets? They have thin membranes on their abdomens that buckle to produce their normal screeching sound. So what's wrong with our local timpanists; why don't they make the usual screech? Cicadas are

This is a followup to a post a couple days back about getting a group of RVers to design the perfect rig.  Like baseball, real RV-camping (boondocking) is a 'game of inches.'   Too bad I didn't photograph the inch or two of clearance yesterday when I almost pinned my travel trailer between two ponderosa pines.  It could have been worse: I could have bought my travel trailer a few years later, after the RV industry had "progressed" from the old 7-foot-wide standard (mine) to 8 foot. (For comparison, a Ford Econoline van is 6.5 feet wide.) Once again I have benefited from traveling with a group and getting a chance to weigh the pro-s and con-s of a group of rigs. One of our party has the standard 8 foot width in his travel trailer. Bad news! The greater width will make life more comfortable when winter-camping in the desert, or on a casino or Walmart parking lot, but 8-foot is terrible in canyons, mountains, or forests. 'Nothing exceeds like excess,