Occupation of Independence

Between the noise and the rain and the sticky goo, I was getting cabin fever. Not just a hackneyed expression, this is a real state of desperation. Oddly enough, whenever I have personally experienced this mood, I rebelled against it with the most determined optimism. This can seem odd or even a little magical to the person experiencing it, but, if we are to believe William James in The Will to Believe , it is common behavior: It is, indeed, a remarkable fact that sufferings and hardships do not, as a rule, abate the love of life; they seem, on the contrary, usually to give it a keener zest. The sovereign source of melancholy is repletion. Need and struggle are what excite and inspire us; our hour of triumph is what brings the void. Not the Jews of the captivity, but those of the days of Solomon's glory are those from whom the pessimistic utterances in our Bible come. Germany, when she lay trampled beneath the hoofs of Bonaparte's troopers, produced perhaps the most optimist

Camping in popular places and times is something to avoid. Places like Moab UT. There is very little dispersed camping still left there thanks to its overuse and misuse and mass popularity. But I had a couple reasons to be here. So I rolled into a dispersed camping area close to sunset, in order to assess the neighborhood before committing. Gee, it was rather uncrowded and quiet at the end of the road, where I found a nice flat spot. Maybe people were scared off by the oncoming rain and windstorm? How foolish I was to think that everybody was already there by sunset: I was projecting the travel habits of a full-time RVer onto time-constrained mass tourists. An hour after sunset I heard some vehicles outside. One glance out the window at the height of the running lights identified them as toy haulers, and I knew that my paradise of one hour was lost. They didn't even wait until morning light to start the madness. Suffice it to say that camping neighbors like this are the reason