Occupation of Independence

I've never seen one this bright before.

San Luis Valley, Colorado, a couple summers ago, on a mountain bike ride with my two dogs. I couldn't see it, but there was no mistaking the sound. Finally I saw the rattlesnake just two steps off the mountain bike trail. He was moving a little. His rattles were up in the air. This rattler was huge. And he was pissed. My first concern was to get both of my dogs on the leash.  It's odd to have finally heard and seen a rattle after all these years in rattlesnake country. I was beginning to think that they were just a chimera. Prior to this week I had seen two rattlesnakes in eleven years of hiking and biking in rattlesnake country. Fortunately they are dormant in the winter, or as the Bard would put it, they lie there in "the borrowed likeness of shrunk death." In the summer, our early starts in the morning keep the rattler issue manageable. But today's rattlesnake was the third one this week. Apparently the west side of the San Luis Valley of Colo

Grooming each other must be one more manifestation of the Raven's sociability, along with their sportful flying, talkativeness, and dog-teasing.

I was pleased and flattered the other day when a friend and fellow blogger used one of my posts as a point of departure for his essay . It will probably surprise him to see the same thing happen to him. He mentioned the word 'simplicity' three times. Growl. Why have I always reacted so angrily to a "nice" word like that? Perhaps this essay will only find sympathetic ears amongst folks who have a mean streak of anti-romanticism. Simplicity sounds escapist and sentimental. Even worse, it sounds sanctimonious. When a modern disciple of holy Simplicity praises it, he starts fluttering his eyelashes; he imagines Gandhi or Thoreau looking down from heaven and smiling upon-eth him. Simplicity is connected with Minimalism, another of the holy mantras. I have no interest in making life empty. Perhaps Simplicity is associated with cultural fads and trends that are pseudo-Buddhist, New Age, etc. In the early nineties, an authoress turned Simplicity into quite the little indus

A raptor just doesn't rate too high in my book without a good, blood-curdling screech. The neighborhood hawks were silent. But lately the neighborhood is ruled by a new (?) red-tailed hawk who is noisy; he is always fighting with small birds. For once he got close enough to our morning dog walk for this photo, right before he flew off with an indignant screech.  

More than once a friend has astonished me by appreciating only the most dreadful music or none at all. I pitied them. And yet it has always been that way for me regarding any kind of Art, besides music. No doubt other people see that as a deficiency in my central nervous system. Or maybe the deficiency is not physiological, but instead lies in narrow opinions. "Art" has always seemed like a useless and expensive decoration that a bourgeois woman sticks in her living room, in order to evoke praise from dinner guests. Whatever the cause, I was floored the other day when I was reading a book on the ascent of our species, thousands of years ago.  “The constructive character of the potter's craft reacted on human thought. Building up a pot was a supreme instance of creation by man. The lump of clay was perfectly plastic; man could mold it as he would. In making a tool of stone or bone he was always limited by the shape and size of the original material; he could only take b

South of Tucson, a couple springs ago. Full time RVers are often asked whether they have found 'that perfect place' where they will settle down. It might be meant as a yes or no question, but it usually evokes a long-winded answer. Why must there be only one ? In fact on the mountain bike ride today we got a glimpse of land that brought a lump to my throat. It's not many people's idea of the perfect postcard, but I like it so much that I visit every year. Elephant Head, in the background, is one of my fiducial points--an important reference point that measures the year. It's the grasslands that attract me the most, I suppose. Spring is certainly noticable in Arizona, but it's a mild experience compared to what people go through north and east of here. There is a real drama to the agonies and ecstasies they experience when the first crocuses poke up through muddy snow, and then the worst snowstorm of the winter hits. Thinking back on all tha

Casa Grande AZ, a couple springs ago. The last day of my urban boondocking I rebuilt the trailer's battery box. It was enjoyable to learn more about how the travel trailer was built, and to think how it should have been built. During this work in town the dogs were a real nuisance to me. They only got one real run at sunset in an open field--on one of those deeply furrowed, irrigated fields that central Arizona is famous for. Or used to be. Sometimes my youngish dog, Coffee Girl, would gambol across the field, jumping the furrows like it was a steeple chase. At other times she adjusted her angle across the furrows so that she ran horizontally--her stride's wavelength commensurate with the bottoms of the furrow. She had reinvented the principle of the interference filter, which a thin layer of oil on water can also do. The little poodle looked completely different running across the furrows. He looked like a small skiff sinking into the trough of an ocean wave,

Boondocking east of Gila Bend AZ, a couple (early) springs ago. These volcanic knolls aren't exactly Irish hills but that doesn't stop them from trying to be, this spring. They are surrounded by sloping lawns of grass. At the base of the knolls are guard-rings of vicious cholla. The cholla seem to like good drainage. From the top of the volcanic knoll Coffee Girl surveys her empire. I seem to be encountering strange optical effects lately. This sloped valley of hers had plants on it that seemed to be arranged in parallel rows. On any given day all of central Arizona is covered with "climate change," Phoenix style: smog during the day and light pollution at night. I'm not sure which of these ever-expanding, glowering blobs is more hideous. You must tolerate this if you are going to enjoy the BLM land that is now called the Sonora national monument. The pollution does create some interesting optical effects, like colorful sunsets and this:

In our day many people feel revulsion towards the Valley of the Sun, metropolitan Phoenix. And yet people are still moving here. If ever there was a proof that 'Reputation is a Lagging Indicator..." I've avoided this smoggy monstrosity for most of my career as a full time RVer. It has been a pleasant surprise this winter to find some areas on the western fringe that are still nice. This was probably the largest, irrigable, agricultural valley in the Colorado River system. Only the Grand Valley near Grand Junction, CO, or the Dome Valley east of Yuma come close. And yet the specialness of this never made much of an impression on me before. Just after sunrise one morning I noticed pendulous bulbs of dew hanging on the side of the van. But just barely. Tap the van, and they collapsed like a monsoon downpour. They were accentuated by the rays of the sun striking them at a glancing angle. Suddenly I was a schoolboy doodling at the blackboard, and why no

Not surprisingly, blog host providers don't make it particularly easy to switch to a new service. Perhaps the problem was on the blogger-blogspot end. In any case, one of my readers, Barney, the Old Fat Man, notified me that photos were showing up as rectangles or X's on the older revised posts which I had cut and pasted to my new blogspot site, which you are now reading. I have found the solution, albeit a labor intensive one. So there shouldn't be any of those funny little placeholders indicating photos, soon. I've already corrected the blog back into late May. Whew, it took a few hours, but I've fixed the photos in the entire blog. Once again, thanks Barney.