Occupation of Independence

There was a time, not so many years ago, when you could camp all by yourself on public lands. But it has gotten a lot harder to do this, thanks to several trends: more people, #vanlife, solar panels, better internet in rural areas, and -- my least favorite -- the blabbermouths on social media and internet blogs. So you must get more shrewd and ruthless in order to avoid the noisy, tourist masses. I seem to be succeeding at this, at the moment.  It helps to put yourself into the mindset of the big-city weekend warrior and mass tourist, and then deliberately develop proclivities quite the opposite of them. For instance, mass tourists from the East or the Northwest want land to be green. (What philistines!) They are easy for me to avoid. I like parched, brown/grey BLM land, rather than green forests. Mass tourists ooh and ahh over red rocks. Red is a nice color, but really!, is it necessary for outdoors fun? Mass tourists ooh and ahh over large and freakish verticalities. But a mo

A person could write forever about how wonderful autumn is. One of its understated virtues is its scratchy, dry texture. This is visually evident in tawny grass seedheads.  On today's ride I brought my real camera (an Olympus TG-5) to look for sunflowers. They were found. It took a lot of looking but I am pleased I found a camera that has an adjustable aperture just by turning a knob, instead of the usual stepping through a complex menu that is virtually invisible in bright sunlight. I love blurry backgrounds.

This is the time of year for "leaf peepers," that is, tourists who drive around and gawk at yellow aspen leaves, while rhapsodizing about fall colors, plural. I envy people back East at this time of year: old barns, real trees with leaves, a true variety of colors, apple cider, and crisper mornings. But guess what?!  My friend and I went prospecting for a new campsite today, and we found something unexpected. I made him stop in the shade, at a stream crossing. There were maple leaves on one side of the road, and oak leaves on the other.    And we found two streams that had a little water flowing. Three miracles of nature on one day is all the excitement that I can take!  

Since I was not mobile this summer, certain experiences are coming back to me as if they are new, but of course, they aren't really new. For instance, on a couple mountain bike rides I got to re-experience how fun it is to start off with minimal information, and then bumble and stumble my way through the route.  Relatively small surprises can become puffed up into "discoveries" when you don't start off knowing what the answer is. Does the road connect with anything? If it starts rough, will it get better? The flowers were past their prime on a nearby road, but they were peak on this road, for some reason. The scenery was excellent along this route, but that is not my point of emphasis. It consistently works better if I choose an area with mild expectations about the scenery, and then let Mother Nature surprise me on the upside. So it is time to just admit that I think more like my dog than like the prevailing mountain bike culture, where people love dang

For several good reasons I don't talk to women when I cross paths with them on a trail or on the street in town. But the other day I might have overdone this: a runner crossed paths with me on a narrow dirt road, and I didn't even exchange brief pleasantries with her, make eye contact, or otherwise acknowledge her existence. Soon I got back to my van and found her vehicle parked next to mine. I was appalled! A black truck! With the windshield facing south! It was perfectly clean -- how does she do that?, by spending money every three days at the car wash? Good heavens, she lives in a world of scalding sunlight and blowing dust. How could she be an outdoorswoman and be so detached from physical reality? Meanwhile, a higher order of female, my dog, became quite accomplished this summer at digging 'spoons' in the dirt. They probably felt cool. She shaped them to the contours of her body. She located most of them on the leeward side of a sagebrush, for protection