Occupation of Independence

It might be useful to give some warnings to people who pull trailers on forest roads.  I used to think that all that was necessary was to look at Benchmark Atlas, and find roads marked by heavy dashed red lines.  This worked well on the Colorado Plateau or on BLM land in the desert Southwest. But in the inland Northwest, this method isn't working so well. I don't know whether it is because Benchmark's state atlases are inferior in this part of the country, or that the landscapes (non-mesa and thickly forested) are to blame. Whatever the explanation, I had to back my trailer down a road for 0.6 miles the other day.  I have never done more than a hundred yards in the past. The trick was to move at 1-2 miles per hour, get out of the driver's seat frequently, and pull forward occasionally to straighten things out. Even more important was learning how to anticipate corrections at the steering wheel.  Looking in the mirrors of the van I made small corrections to the tiniest

  A couple posts ago I fantasized about cutting all the burned trees on public lands, chopping them down to size, and sending the firewood to Europe this winter.  Be careful what you wish for! As it turned out, they are cutting a burned forest on some Idaho state land nearby.  Fortunately the workers commute to work at 530 in the morning -- it is no fun to share a narrow forest road with them.  Don't blame them -- blame the exterior wheel wells on my trailer. By sheer dumb luck I arrived in the area on the day they weren't working.  It would be just a little bit difficult to drive by this monster: I had a nice chat with the operator.  Most of the trees were too small for lumber, so they would get turned into firewood. (He didn't say anything about sending it to Europe, though!)  Where would the agricultural, forestry, mining, or military world be if the caterpillar tread had not been invented?  These machines make a wheeled vehicle look useless. Following the operator&#

Although photography is a pretty big part of camping and travel, have you ever actually had a conversation about photography with another traveler?  I have, but only once.  We were at Shiprock, the picturesque volcanic throat in northwestern New Mexico. He was a landscape photographer. What I really have in mind is a different type of photographer: one who sees photos as visual representations, metaphors, for important issues that might otherwise drown in excess verbiage and messy details. It is easy to see this as a good idea, but it is not so easy to put it into practice.  A habit needs to be formed.  One must break the habit of looking at something mindless and snapping a photo 'jes cuz it looks sorta perdy.' But on the other extreme, one must not get too hung up in thinking or analyzing at the moment of opportunity, lest it disappear.  It is enough for a visual situation to suggest -- to smell like -- a visual metaphor.  You can finish the thinking later. This is exactly w

How can the world not know whether Ukraine or Russia are shelling the nuclear power plant in Zaporozhye, Ukraine?  What is all the vaunted technology good for: AWACS planes, satellites, drones, radar?  What are the various international organizations good for?  Can't they just put some observers on the ground in Zaporozhye? If I had any sense, I would just bleat out the old cliche that 'in war, the first casualty is the Truth,' and ignore the media completely.  None of us goes out and looks for garbage or poison to eat, so why should we allow the media to put their lies and garbage into our minds?