Occupation of Independence

  Ahh dear.  It was my own fault.  I didn't use the restraining cord, so the Little Cute One's water bottle popped onto the ground somewhere, on a mountain bike ride.  Well, I could replace it with the most common and inexpensive bicycle water bottle.  I dropped into Walmart.  Nope.  I can't believe how often the modern Walmart disappoints me. I tried several other stores.  Nope.  All the water bottles have gotten so fancy.  And they usually have Yeti written on them. Then I panicked and went to food stores and a Dollar Store, and looked for a disposable water bottle, filled with colored sugar water that could be poured on the ground.  None of them had the groove around the equator that helps hold the bottle in place on a bike.  And the screw-on lids will be lost in a week.  (Actually, you'd be surprised how quickly the thin plastic cracks on this type of bottle.) I was desperate by now.  So I waited half the morning until a bicycle shop opened at 10 a.m., according to

 Go back in time a few years, and you would never have believed what the Democratic Party was about to become.  Who would have predicted the Democrats becoming the War Party or embracing censorship, be it direct or indirect?  Not only are the principles of the US Constitution being overthrown, but it is as if Western Civilization is out to reverse the era of Enlightenment. Maybe we shouldn't be so shocked by this.  After all, is the mindset of Enlightenment inheritable and cumulative in the same way as scientific knowledge and technical expertise? The era of Enlightenment was a process -- a struggle --  that took a century.  There was nothing easy, obvious, or inevitable about it.  How can a modern person "inherit" the experience they had then?  They were reacting against the era of religious wars, the Inquisition, a parasitic clerical establishment, and the crude superstitions of earlier times. All it takes is some new new form of certainty, secular religion, promised ut

It starting getting colder as we neared the top of our ride through the reef.  I had to stop and fumble around with re-attaching the sleeves on my windbreaker jacket.  Of course, the Little Cute One was comfortable and untired.  She really is quite athletic.  This junction at the high end seemed like a good place to turn around and coast back down through the reef and down to river level. We made it!  It's snack and water time.   Nine miles and 1730 feet uphill.  Not bad for 20 pounds of fluff.  I probably wouldn't have taken the ride this far if she weren't so tireless.  Visually, the most dramatic section was when the road penetrated the reef, proper, nearer the beginning of the ride.  The cold dark canyon walls made it seem like dawn.  At times I really felt trapped in the belly of the Beast.  How much crazier is it going to get? It was almost a relief to get back to camp.  She got a snack on the ride, but I didn't: She never complains about being cold.  She is not o

  I have always like walking or biking on ground that is half-mouldering leaves.  I don't know why.  Perhaps it is because so many years in western states has turned leaves into exotic, hard-to-find miracles of nature. But what about the opposite: when dirt becomes leaves?  You could almost think of crypto-biotic soil as an example of that.  But I was thinking of the paper-thin lamellas of sedimentary rock that are found where I am currently camping in central Utah. Here is one that is living dangerously: Let's look at one without the dog: At times you see thin layers somewhat earlier in their natural history. (Not really.  But it is fun to think so.) Look for the diving board in the right-center of the photo. Maybe this sort of things seems interesting because it stimulates a human being to imagine the inorganic as organic, the  static as the moving,  the lifeless as the living.  After all, how much looking at stuff does a human being need?  At some point they must "see&q