Occupation of Independence

Some time ago I joked about RVers who have been diagnosed with the Early Bedtime Syndrome . But actually, sleep is too serious a matter to joke about. If the problem were merely one of rising too early in the morning, that wouldn't be so bad.  But the real issue is that going to bed too early also detracts from the depth and quality of sleep.  Snuggling in early on a winter evening, in front of the catalytic heater. This problem becomes even worse if you need to camp in some noisy campground or city; there  you need to stay up as late as possible, so that the din has a chance to die down some.   Currently I'm basking in a week of success at overcoming this dreadful scourge, so perhaps it's time for an update. The long days of June are certainly the time of year to get serious about beating this sucker.  My earlier theory was that the Early Bedtime Syndrome was brought on by not running enough lights at night. The good news is that the LED lighting revolution has

(Trying to see the Big Picture, while camping at the edge of a cliff, halfway up Mt. Taylor near Grants NM.)  With all the progress in our Information Age, it might seem ungrateful and spoiled to merely shrug it off as being over-rated. But I can't help it. Most of this "progress" comes down to building a bigger mountain of useless crap. What we really need is qualitative improvement, not mere quantitative enlargement. And how much of that have you ever run into, in this techno-narcissistic society? Having eBook gadgets might offer some conveniences; and in principle they should lower the price of books. But it doesn't add much to the effectiveness or impact of reading books. Gadgets don't help you find books that are worth reading. The other day I reread "Gone with the Wind", for whatever reason. I never cared that much for the movie or the book; they were too easy to shrug off as being "for women."   The main character, Scarlett O&

My work was cut out for me. In order to enjoy all the goodies of the Mogollon Rim and the White Mountains of east-central Arizona, it is necessary to overcome a natural revulsion of burned forests. If you haven't seen a burnt forest... ...you might underestimate the strength of your reaction. Human nature recoils from fire damage, be it a house or a forest, unless you're like Civil War general, William T. Sherman. It's a primal and fundamental reaction. How, then, do you get any pleasure from a mountain bike ride through all this ghastly destruction? In the summer, heat and aridity are always a challenge. I rode up an old ATV trail, climbing, and climbing some more. The air got cooler sooner than it should have, which is another way of saying that there was more breeze than is normal, no doubt due to the denuded state of the burned forest. Refreshing air was no small advantage of an open (albeit devastated) canopy. It was possible to look between the ugly spars to

A traveler who prefers open country and big skies is wise to extend his stay in high grasslands into late April and early May.  Silver City, NM, is an excellent place to play that game because it is at the boundary of grassland and ponderosa forests. Typically, in the second half of May, the oven door opens up, and it's time to flee to the forest. This year it was the wind that drove me into the ponderosa forests. But it took a certain amount of fist-making and teeth-clenching. I admit that forests do have certain advantages, such as shade and cooler temperatures, and that they make good wind-breaks. But they will never be my favorite places. Still, I've been getting better at it. Something quite wonderful happened during the first sunset, back in the forest. A patch of yellow sunlight appeared opposite a window, and ABOVE it. It was a stolen sunlight, seemingly from below the horizon.  It's just the opposite of what you expect in a forest  -- normally the trees would

WARNING! Animals were harmed in the making of this post. At my late dispersed campsite, there were so few bugs that I could have almost left the screen door open. It almost seemed too good to be true. And you know what they say about... Moving over to Alpine, AZ, I went out searching for a dispersed campsite and good places to mountain bike, helped by Jim & Gayle's advice.  Much to my surprise I stumbled upon a place where the Mogollon Rim fell precipitously into a canyon. I say 'stumbled' because I was NOT out there looking for scenery -- I was looking for a side road to camp on. The long-suffering reader knows that I'm going to argue that 90% of this pleasure wasn't really from the scenery per se , but rather, from the surprise. How strange that some folks want to be told -- exactly -- where to camp, as if finding it isn't half the fun. Despite the lucky break with the scenery, there was no place to camp. So I went back into the travel trailer for

Luna, NM. If you ever spend time reading product reviews or discussion forums on digital cameras, well, I hope you get more out of them than I do. It's far easier to just say that the "best" camera is the one that gets taken -- every time . Recently I was chewing myself out for forgetting my camera on the short dog-walk when Coffee Girl treed the coatimundi, the first I've ever seen. It's so easy to do so because short walks don't seem to "count."  A few days after the coatimundi sighting: "Come on down, whoever you are, and I'll go easy on ya!" Chastened by self-nagging, I went for a late afternoon dog-walk, this time with my camera. Out the RV door we went, walking up the short distance to the cliff's edge. Although I could camp -- and in fact have camped -- right at the cliff-line for a dramatic view, experience has shown it best to camp a short distance away. This is a statement that many optical sybarites would never

Here we go again: Dry Heat, enervating sunshine, and relentless blue skies. As a veteran of the Southwest I assure you that the trick is to glory in noble suffering. [*] In five weeks, the monsoons start. And besides, there aren't even any wildfires raging right now.  Until then, we must use a little horse sense with the southwestern sun... Many animal species use horse sense about the sun. Dogs are crepusculent at sunrise and sunset, and somnolent in mid-day. Don't think for a moment that I had to train the Little Poodle to do this. A parking garage for a miniature poodle. Mexicans and other cultures of hot climates have a lot of sense. But homo sapiens (var. gringo ) isn't so good at the game sometimes, especially when vanity about a suntan is involved. Now don't take this as a personal insult. Mal-adaptation to the sun is simply part of our Northern European and Protestant DNA. But we're not completely foolish either... Gringos knowing

I don't talk about specific dispersed campsite locations and resent it when other people do. Why this should be so might be the subject of a later post. Today I want to tell you about a large area of dispersed camping that is now attractive, thanks to it finally getting Verizon cell coverage. How many times does a huge block of high quality public land open up? Actually it isn't all that often that Verizon adds a whole new tower in a rural area. This is news, folks. For years it has been a pleasant drive through southwestern New Mexico, going from Silver City to Springerville AZ on US-180. There were many dirt roads heading off into interesting public lands, but I seldom stopped for long, because there was no Verizon cellphone/internet coverage. What a pity. From the Catwalk, near Glenwood, NM.   This year I was delighted to pick up a strong signal near Glenwood, NM. I pulled over to scan the horizon for a new tower. The only one visible was on a tall mountain three m

...positive inches, when you're lucky. I've done a lot of back-and-forth about whether my next travel trailer should be a converted cargo trailer 6 foot or 7 foot wide. When we discussed trailer size a few months back, didn't an experienced RV camper say that width doesn't matter much? He wasn't necessarily wrong, of course. It all depends on your camping style. If you spend a lot of time camping in ponderosa forests, where trees are far enough apart to suck you in, width does matter. Note the driver's side mirror and the nearest tree. To heck with 7 foot wide trailers. Six feet is the width of the tow vehicle. But in this case, I was using a flank attack (where width mattered) rather than a direct frontal assault, where ground clearance was even trickier. It's an example of how logically-distinct design criteria blur together in the real world. At any rate, the campsite (near Luna, NM) was worth it. The forest fire last year near Glenwood NM. 

Silver City, NM. People who don't walk or mountain bike with dogs might not realize that they can be an asset in finding wildlife. They might think the dog would just chase off the wildlife or scare them away. But it's easy to forget the power of a canine's olfactory. They know something is up, when the human is oblivious. Coffee Girl disports with a Pronghorn Antelope, on sagebrush hills near Gunnison, CO Yesterday Coffee Girl, my kelpie, took off like a maniac. Soon I heard her barking in an uncharacteristic style. Actually that's a misnomer. Dogs bark in different styles for different prey. I was alarmed by this particular bark, so I ran over to her.  She had treed something. She had her front paws on a tall pinyon pine. (This area is full of the tallest pinyons I've ever seen.) She looked rather triumphant about it. I had to look carefully, but there it finally was: a coatimundi, the first I've ever seen. Interesting creatures. ______________

When the mountain bike frame cracked a couple days ago, I was resigned to the worst: a new frame or maybe even a new bike. It is too bad that the industry has gone to 5-year frame warranties. Annie, of Twin Sisters bicycle shop in Silver City NM, surprised me when she mentioned a local guy who has done TIG (tung sten inert gas) welding of aluminum bicycle frames. Here is the happy outcome : A TIG-welded aluminum bicycle frame repair job. His price was ridiculously low. Since the bicycle shop deprived itself of selling a new frame (or even a new bicycle) by providing this information, I went back and gave her a generous "finder's fee," which surprised and pleased her. A commenter, Brian, recommended welding a triangular gusset at the broken joint. I agree with him. In this case the welder chose not to do that because he thought he'd get too close to the carbon-fiber suspension parts (the little black swing arm, in the photo). Instead, he chose to build up