Occupation of Independence

How many place in the world are clean, and why are they so? I'd like to ask an experienced world traveler about that. My guess is that Japan and northern/Germanic Europe (and her colonies) are clean, while most of the world stomps around in its own litter and excrement. Consider this attempt at philosophizing to be an exercise in "anger management". I am camped outside a (fee-ed and over-managed) recreational area run by the forest service. Essentially it is a "metro park" for the ghastly conurbation of Tucson. Since my boondocking area is outside the "high rent" district, it is free 14-day camping, although the campsites are numbered. There is no campground host and no facilities. I've been here almost a week and haven't seen a ranger yet. It almost seemed too good to be true. And you know what they say about that... After about a week of complete solitude some yahoos came in to camp on the weekend. You should see how the slobs leave

Some types of outdoor enjoyments are easier than others. Getting a kick out of desert poppies takes little effort. But experiences of that type don't stick with you very long either. Appreciating geology is far more difficult. Geology is huge and fundamental. Despite being able to see it raw and exposed in arid lands, such as the American West, it is difficult to actually enjoy it in the normal sense of the word. For one thing it doesn't move, except in the case of active volcanoes. It is also hard to pronounce all the scientific terminology. The whole thing can be off-putting because it seems cold and technical. Go for a hike or a mountain bike ride through the mountains and you will occasionally see some impressive folds . Sometimes they're just little guys at road cuts. And yet something keeps you from doing backflips about them. How could hard, strong, brittle rocks be permanently deformed? Bent into arcs. When possible, I try to anthropomorphize "uni

Every internet junkie gets in a rut now and then. At that point some friendly help is needed. I got some recently from fellow blogger, Ed Frey , who brought Fred Reed's website to my attention. I was familiar with Fred Reed as a writer, but the website is a new discovery. Fred has the proper attitude toward contemporary American culture and politics: sheer disdain and curmudgeonly wit. I put his link in the link section of my blog. There are too many juicy quotes to begin listing them all, but just to give you a brief slice of the flavor of Fred's blog: "Things change, usually for the worse, and always against the innocent. (This truth is a principle of curmudgeonry.)"

One day a huge, expensive police SUV (not border patrol) dropped in at my campsite near the Santa Rita mountains, south of Tucson.  Out jumped two large cops, dressed head-to-toe in black. They had belts loaded up with so much armament it's a wonder then can sit down in their patrol car and buckle their seat belts. They were friendly enough and even enjoyed the antics of my Australian kelpie, Coffee Girl. But it bothered me the way one officer kept his hand on his gun the entire time he talked to me, while the other one snooped around my trailer. They said they were just doing a routine patrol, and wondered if I had seen any suspicious activities. I hadn't, so off they went. The next day I was stretching my legs by walking up to the top of a small volcanic knoll. I saw a dense cluster of bright red blinking lights nearby. What could they be?  Safety lights on a piece of construction equipment? Binoculars didn't help because they wiggled too much in the wind. Of cou

It was a record morning for camping this winter: 34 F inside the trailer. (Oh sure, I have a catalytic propane heater, but it would have been unsporting to use it.) As I learned long ago you simply cannot get warm by putting on more clothes; you must move your body some, even if it means flapping your arms. But I had to keep reminding myself how glorious this discomfort was, or would be, once the sun starting cooking the opened trailer. What interested me was that it actually took effort to "suffer" a few minutes of chill in order to glory in the warm sun that I knew was coming momentarily. Was it just my weakness or was it the old idolatry of Comfort sneaking into the mind of an experienced camper who should know better? Long-suffering readers are familiar with my standard stump speech against bourgeois idols such as Comfort , so let's not repeat all that. But since this was the best experience of this type in some time, let's honor the occasion by loo