Occupation of Independence

A summer in one place gets a guy out of shape when it comes to driving. Still, I like driving better now than when I was young. Perhaps it was the impatience back then? Nothing is better than driving early in the day, with the sun at your back. (Especially true for un-air-conditioned vehicles like mine.) Why, this is more important than having a tailwind for a cyclist or sailor.  From istec.ag My goodness, I drove over 100 miles today! When I got into Price, UT, I was hot and cranky. I even yelled at my dog. But then I went uphill onto the land that I love. It only took 15 minutes of exploration on some BLM land before I was feeling happy. There was real drama to it, considering how vile I felt down in the hot parking lot. It is easy to stand somewhat outside yourself and watch the magic take over in just a few minutes, despite it happening many times in the past.  Now I am cooler, and have an almost 180 degree view of Book Cliffs. My (current) dog's life started wi

The last post showed a rig that had some nostalgic appeal, as in Ward Bond and Robert Horton.  But progress was slow. So I upgraded to this RV:  

It's hard to believe I was a host for three and a half months! The gig is finally up, and the timing is perfect. It's "Wagons, Ho-o-o-o-o-o!", this morning. Towards Utah.  

For the first time I encountered (ten) art students drawing something or other on a road that my dog and I were biking on this morning. I tried to be quiet and non-intrusive. I wonder what objects they were drawing. The area has an austere attractiveness, rather than the "postcard prettiness" that you'd expect to attract an art class. That's why it started me thinking. Were they there for the variety? What if somebody had walked up to the teacher and asked, "Have any of your students chosen to draw the sheer terror of a ground squirrel, scurrying for his life, with a hawk circling in the background?" She might have liked the idea. Or do they draw only pretty things? And what if they did draw something more out of Darwin or Jack London than out of the tourism industry -- would they automatically get a poor grade in this art class, regardless of how effective their drawing was at transferring emotion to the viewer? I don't really know.

Talk about 'a watched pot never boils...' Dogs understand, even if gringoes don't. A couple weeks ago I started obsessing over the length of the noon shadow, as created by my camper. In early summer I got so little shade that I spent the entire mid-day inside. Then in mid-August, improvement was noticeable: I could actually sit outside in my chair if it was backed up against the camper. from MrReid.org Then I forgot about it, for a week. Today I was astonished to see the luxuriousness of that shade. A September day might be nearly as warm as mid-summer. But you can find shade in September, which is what really counts in the American Southwest. This might seem a self-inflicted problem, since I have no awning on my camper. But in the Southwest, mid-day winds are over 30 mph. Thus the long disease of summer is over, regardless of the temperature, although it is cooling as well. For the next six months I can stop fantasizing about moving to Spitzbergen or J