Occupation of Independence

I hope the reader hasn't wasted a great deal of time reading certain cliché topics, such as 'Should a camper have a gun?' On and on this sort of discussion goes. What's the point? It is obvious that owning a gun is "negative safety" for a camper. It is too likely to put you into the state penitentiary as your final campsite.  Just consider what it is like to camp on public lands over the Fourth of July weekend. I chose a new area for me. The road didn't look busy. The campsite looked non-flat and not terribly desirable to other campers. So I pulled in. An hour later a giant fifth-wheel pulled right in to my site -- without being invited. Then they ran their generator until 10 pm. My first reaction was anger. But wait a minute...am I not always preaching that being a full-time RVer is a profession -- not a vacation? Do you know of any job that doesn't give you assholes to deal with? So why not act more professional? At least that is what I preache

Britain impressed the hell out of me a couple years ago when Parliament refused to go along with the Nobel-peace-prize-winning president in sending troops to Syria, to add it to the post-9/ 1 1 casualty list of destroyed countries. But this recent move of theirs to withdraw from the European Union! It certainly made me appreciate Britain as the Exceptional Nation. As luck would have it, I had been reading books by Madame de Staël [*], written during the Napoleonic era. She too praised Britain as the exceptional nation, not that she used that exact phrase.  The pre-Brexit polls showing the opposite result look a little fishy, to say the least. Oh, but we don't want to give into conspiracy theories ! How many Americans are feeling the irony and significance of these two recent moves by the Exceptional Nation of Britain? We were all by brainwashed by the government's schools that Americans were 10 feet tall, and that: we had courageously broken away from the evil empire of

If a town like Coyote NM lacks up-scale glamor to a tourist, then this forest just made it worse: Believe it or not, I sort of liked it. The altitude was over 8000 feet, so it was cool. It was flat enough to use more than one gear on my mountain bike. And there wasn't one Jeep Wrangler after another, as there soon will be in Colorado. Getting all the damned trees out of the way just helps you admire the sky. It is the time of year when the sky gets more interesting every day, thanks to the swelling humidity. Although the onset of the summer monsoons is routine in some sense, nature is never totally predictable. So a peasant living close to nature always feels a certain amount of nervousness. The drama of the sky becomes interesting, once again.  Besides, the trees' loss is the understory's gain. Think of it as as a French Revolution for the forest. But what were the humble verdancies that were bustin' out all over? Good eatin' for somebody? It did

It was hard to believe this forest road: it was an official road on the official map. But why weren't there any tire ruts in it? The grass and other vegetation had filled the road space in. But there was a noticeable road space: flat and smooth.  Where were all the rocks? Credit the geology for that.  It was strange to think that I had all this to myself, while just a few miles away in Abiquiu, the tourists were burning up in the heat to see the standard things. Perhaps a place like Coyote NM lacks the cachet they are looking for. The topography was perfect for mountain biking, albeit backwards. When you camp at 9200 feet, you will usually have to start a ride going downhill -- not what is desirable. But in a heat wave, what else can you do? So smooth was this "road." It felt funny to have the grass tickling my bare leg. I really hoped this road didn't crap off on me, because it would be a long push/walk back up the hill. It is the buggy season, June, if you