Occupation of Independence

Perhaps the reader has known a walking-encyclopedia of flower or bird names.  I have.  Such people really are quite impressive, in a slightly obnoxious sort of way.  And yet, I have never made much of an effort to emulate them. My mind is already too full of trivia -- that is, useless and arcane knowledge  -- usually of the historical kind.  I just don't have the heart for more memorization of that kind. Still, it gives me pleasure to know that this flower is probably called a trillium: These were rather small.  I walked by them for a week, a few feet from camp, before I saw them! You hear so much about "AI" (artificial intelligence) these days.  Perhaps somebody will put AI to good use by making it easier to identify birds, flowers, and trees while you are out walking around.

 I am trying to keep an open mind about videos in this blog.  Is there really a need for moving pictures when hardly anything in a landscape moves?  Still, it is fun to play around with new software. The first time I saw footage from a helmet-mounted camera on a mountain biker, I was dazzled.  But after the novelty wore off, it seemed that the trail could wiggle left, wiggle right, go up, or go down.  Nowadays I never watch such videos.  But it is impossible to shoot videos from a moving bicycle with one hand on the smartphone and one on the handlebar!  As I found out.  No wonder the GoPro camera was invented There are few outdoor experiences more wonderful than a good breeze in the forest on a warm summer day.  But does a moving picture really add something better than words or a still photograph?    Despite being the end of their season, a few wild roses are still opening up: Mountains and plants aren't great subjects for a moving...

 A camper is doing everybody a favor to check out potential campsites before a national holiday.  It takes quite a bit of skill, experience, and luck to avoid weekend/holiday crowds.  I have put a lot of work into it on previous holidays and then seen it blow up in my face.  'No good deed goes unpunished.' There are specific criteria for making this work, but the most important idea is to put yourself into the mindset of the mass-tourist, and then multiply everything by negative one.  Avoid: 1.  Lakes. 2.  Loop roads. 3.  Iconic viewscapes of red arches, national parks, tourist name brands of any kind.  Anything with name recognition. 4.  Colorado. 5.  Proximity to huge urban hellholes such as Phoenix, Denver, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas/St.George, and Boise. But I have always done that, and still been burned.  I hope I am not jinxing myself to declare victory in eastern Oregon this year.  (And that doesn't mean Bend.) Livin...

I was reading a book the other day that used the word, wraith.  I had to look it up.  It seems that single-syllable words interest me more than they used to.  Many times they go back to Old English of Anglo-Saxon days or maybe early Middle English. The next morning I saw this: In the background is one of the rare east-west mountain ranges of North America.  "Wraith" certainly describes the clouds hanging onto gaps and wrinkles in the mountains. Some people would say that the burned trees in the foreground detract from the beauty of the mountains, but you could see the starkness of burned forests as a counterweight to the tendency of spoiled moderns to see Nature as being all about purty, purty, purty. Life outside the rat race -- the busy-ness machine -- is largely about getting up in the morning and finding something to be interested in.  And by the way, 'busy' is an Anglo-Saxon word.