Occupation of Independence

A multi-fingered canyon system is just as interesting to explore at the top as at the bottom. You can walk out on the peninsulas to the point where two canyon fingers join. But you can get a bit nervous with these mudstone (?) walls: Don't walk too close to the cliffs when they are made of mudstone or whatever this crap is! Incipient "colapso" on a canyon wall. I keep a safe distance between myself and the cliff. But how can I know what that distance is? One day I looked across the canyon and saw a crumbling isthmus on the adjacent peninsula. (The peninsula widened out again as you passed over the isthmus.) I became obsessed with knowing whether the isthmus was continuous and walkable. But I am always developing th ese little obsessions. Coffee Girl checks out the tenuous isthmus in mesa caprock. I have to be doing something right to become obsessed about things like this. I t turned out to be not quite continuous, but still walkable. You are

(Must I add that the tit le is meant tongue in cheek ? )   As I read an interesting book on geo-politics, I am struck by a couple things: 1. How incompetent politicians and diplomats are at avoiding war. (Perhaps because they don't want to avoid it.) 2. How naive and easily deceived the masses are. They will believe anything. Immediately the war drums are being beaten. Preachers are talking about their War God from their pulpits. And how useful the Media is in starting a war. 3. How powerful hindsight is. 4. How poor I am at looking at international crises today, determining who is really behind it, what they hope to gain, and what is likely to happen. In fact, #4 is so strong that I sometimes think that reading history is a waste of time. For instance I was surprised by Russia's military involvement in the current Syrian crisis. Then I was surprised by the recklessness of the War Party in Wa shington DC in wanting to send American planes and troops to Syria, despite

Last episode I talked about camping near a pseudo-cliff-dwelling. Imagine finding a perfect one! The opening would face southeast, I guess. In the winter the low angle of the sun would warm up your mornings. In the summer you would stay cool. And you would be sheltered from the northwest wind in the winter. But wait -- don't I already have a cliff dwelling? One that can be repositioned as required ? One could argue that that is the ultimate cliff dwelling. Not sure that mudstone is the ideal building material for a comfortable cliff dwelling. Here is my improved version: The low and bright winter sun toasts the inside of my portable cliff dwelling.The magnetic closure makes the screen dog-friendly. The low and bright winter sun toasts the inside of my portable cliff dwelling Granted , the cargo trailer was not sacred to the Native Americans. But it has everything else going for it. Laying down on the bed, my body is being warmed by the sun, but my face is

What a nice morning it had been: moderately cool, calm, and sunny. Coffee Girl and I had just finished a mountain bike ride up an arroyo where, at the beginning of my travel career, I had stumbled onto a "cliff dwelling." Not an official one, of course. But it was possible to imagine turning it into a cliff dwelling or emergency shelter. Back then I took a chance in dragging my trailer upstream in the gravel arroyo, with only my rear wheel drive van. And I camped there that night, and made a fire in the little cliff dwelling, and amused myself with making shadows on the ceiling. (Plato would have been impressed.) Alas, the cliff dwelling seemed less romantic today than it did way-back-when. This stung. Did it mean that my travel lifestyle had become too predictable and tame? We laid down for the usual post-ride siesta, relaxing to a movie with a good musical score. But it became difficult to hear the movie because of the howling wind. What the hell was going on, out there

For the umpteenth time I have started some Dostoevsky novels and short stories, only to surrender 50 pages in. Yes I know, it seems like common sense to be a good sport about this, to shrug it off, and to move on to a different writer. But it is worth giving the benefit of the doubt to a writer who has a high reputation. On the other hand, I should dismiss the opinion of the "experts" if it doesn't agree with my own experience. Perhaps the best reason for not giving up on Dostoevsky too soon is that something might be gained by trying to explain why reading him just doesn't work for me. I used to think that his books had too much religious guilt and physical suffering in them for my tastes. Russians are pretty good at suffering, but I am not. The more I thought about it, this time around, the more the blame went to his unsympathetic characters. I simply don't care what happens to his characters, and therefore, have no interest in the story. Don't think th