Occupation of Independence

 My heart sank a little as I saw the spiffy new "Welcome to Arizona" sign along the road. I have never crossed the border this early before. It seemed like a defeat. It is a bit like climbing a steep hill on your mountain bike and then realizing that you are already in your lowest gear. It is quite important for an RVer not to wear Arizona out. The camping places are so hackneyed and over-used. Your guess is as good as mine whether the extra influx of COVID refugees from California will out-weigh the lack of Canadian snowbirds this year. It is always impressive to drive through the Virgin River Gorge, either direction. When you leave Utah and pop out of the canyon into the nothingness of Nevada, it reminds you of the beginning of the Wizard of Oz movie when the black-and-white photography in Kansas is suddenly replaced by the Technicolor of the Land of Oz -- except that my example is the reverse of that! There was one last impression from Utah this morning. I was driving down

In central Utah recently, I detected some motion in the red rocks on a red cliff. Some animal, roughly the size of a coyote, scampered away from my bike and dog, who took off after that animal, whatever it was.  The silly dog, now 14 years old, chased the animal half way up the cliff. I only got to see the animal for three seconds. What was most noticeable was the white tip on its tail. With the help of Wikipedia, the best I can do is identify it as a red fox. They are supposed to be found in Utah. But it is not the habitat that one would first think of, for foxes. And yet, it was good habitat: there were 20 den-like structures under the red rocks in that area. It got me interested in watching Finnegan the Fox videos on You Tube. The more experience somebody gets in the outdoors, the more their interests must migrate to experiences like this: the fish almost caught, the rare bird almost photographed, and the perfect campsite just missed. And yet blogs and vlogs sell predictability and

Although the percentage is small, some visitors to southwestern Utah must get a kick out of the shapes, lines, and geometry of this part of North America. As I do. In fact my eyeballs and brain positively feed on the geometry.  My favorite picnic table at a trailhead.  It should be offered by Merriam-Webster as a visual definition of 'autochthonous.'  I hope whatever ranger is responsible for this makes District Ranger someday.   For instance, your eye can extend the line of a sedimentary layer from one mesa to a nearby mesa, and visualize the land in between the two mesas as eroding away over the eons. But when you do this, it doesn't quite seem as though the tops of the two mesas have the same altitude. But why should they? Sedimentary layers are uplifted -- tilted -- out of their original horizontal condition at the bottom of a sea. It becomes a game to visualize the formation of this topography as being formed from differential erosion of rock layers that might appear t

Last episode I wrote about revisiting a place that used to be a good place. Although disappointment and anger are to be expected in situations like this, a person has to be careful about complaining to newbies. Otherwise a guy will sound like a grumpy old man. And besides, it is depressing to newbies to be told how crappy things are today. So -- without any facetiousness -- I am going to shock the reader. We had a nice mountain bike descent down an ATV trail, into a hard-bottomed and wide canyon. The surface was packed by the machine traffic -- in olden times the surface was so loose I could barely ride it. We had the canyon to ourselves -- there was nobody else there. The geology was as interesting as ever. When it dawned on me that I was actually benefiting from the heavy traffic -- and of the worst kind -- I felt so relieved that I wanted to sigh out loud. It is so nice not to be on the losing end of societal changes. Sometimes I remind myself not to let changes get me down. But t