Occupation of Independence

Things are starting to get a little tense on the I-15 corridor. Any day now we could get our first wave of Canadian snowbirds, probably from places that line up with the longitude, such as Calgary. Must I put a disclaimer in this post that says something like, "But I really like Canadians?" (Well, I do like them.) But after two winters of being cooped up in the Great White North, it is possible they will act crazy. Let's face it: even under the best of circumstances, they are a wild and lawless people. It is impossible to get them to follow any rules and act like civilized human beings. (facetiousness warning.) So this year we might get lucky and they will act like a horde of college students invading a beach town on spring break. Or maybe they will act like Vikings landing on the shores of England in 900 A.D.  Soon they will be displaying their maple leaf flags in the American desert and arranging the rocks in little circles around chollas. Desert paradise as Canadian s

  I should feel happy for people who visit red rock country and become wildly excited, but for me it isn't the color that matters so much. It is the camp-ability of the topography.  Mesas and plateaus are easy to camp on. Canyon bottoms are difficult to drive through, camp on, or get a wireless signal.  Crumpled mountains make for surprisingly few camping locations. And of course, mesas make for good dirt-road mountain biking.

It isn't a new idea in the world, but it might be the first time I ever put the idea into practice: visualizing a book rather than just reading it. What exactly is your brain doing when you read a book? It knows the meaning of each word, but that is only a partial step towards visualizing a sentence. You are still just mechanically rastering across the page. There is something dry and sterile and lifeless about it. It is eye-fatigue, but the mind stays bored. But what if you changed your job from a movie scriptwriter to the person responsible for "screenplay" or teleplay? They turn the sterile verbiage of the writer into tangible things that move and can be photographed in an interesting way. Perhaps somebody who has spent most of his life reading non-fiction doesn't really appreciate the importance of this verbiage-to-screenplay transition. Switching to fiction, things change. I happen to be reading Bernard Cornwell's "Saxon Tales" right now. Consider v

Recently I was gearing up to handle camping during long winter nights. Coldness isn't the challenge where I camp. Neither is sogginess. But darkness is. At first I was considering adjusting the specific activities that occupied time during the dark hours. Perhaps that approach is upside-down, and what is needed first is an attitude adjustment. Then specific activities will flow from that attitude as its consequences.  In the past I have put a low importance on domesticity. Like many bachelors perhaps, I think of oppressive female fussiness when thinking of domesticity. It might help to raise my estimate of domestic arrangements, comforts, and economies during the long hours of winter. Animals snuggle in, during winter. They don't consider themselves too high and mighty to busy themselves with domestic comforts. An animal-like humility might be the essence of the change in attitude that would help the most.

  Normally I like to find uncrowded areas with lots of dirt roads for riding the mountain bike. But occasionally a scenery orgy is fun.