Occupation of Independence

There is something a little bit funny about the Yuma desert outside my door.  It has a desert pavement, but it is soft and thin.  (My little dog loves running on it, though.)  Nah, it is something else. Where are the arroyos?  There are only gentle swales a couple feet deep.  And yet bushes and dwarf trees line up along these swales.  Although there is nothing visually entertaining about this, it is fun to consider that this part of the Colorado River system has run out of 'gravity.'  There is only a few feet of altitude between my campsite and the Colorado River.  After that, it loses only a couple feet per mile before it oozes into the Gulf of California.  A person can camp over so much of the West and spend all of their time in the high-altitude drainages of the Colorado or the Columbia/Snake.  You could say that Yuma is the sister city of Astoria OR or even New Orleans.  Over most of the West, there is plenty of 'gravity.'  But not in Yuma.

I was driving south the other day.  Not a good direction.  With all that sun blasting through the windshield, it was necessary to turn on the air conditioning -- in January for gawd's sake.  My Yuma nausea kicked on in seconds. But wait.  Since it is January, the warm hours only total up to about four.  That means 20 hours of mild coolness, instead of the more usual chilliness that one experiences in Arizona at night.  Being at an altitude of 250 feet has some advantages! In fact mild coolness at night is a rare pleasure for me.  It is worth thinking about it. 

The burros are loud around here, especially an hour before sunrise.  They have built a nice network of single-track trails.  It makes sense that they need to make a trip to the Colorado River for water.  I've never seen 8 of them before in one group. (A day later we saw 12 in one group.) It isn't completely vegetation-free in the wide arroyos.  Can they pull leaves off sticker-y trees and make a living off of that?  Burros are one of the few signs of life here; there aren't even any jackrabbits in this gawd-forsaken wasteland. The Little Cute One (my cockapoo) finally saw the burros and started squealing frantically.  She has a strong prey drive.  I didn't unsnap her from the bike.  She was acting like she would chase these burros for miles!  It seems surprising that a little cutie could have the same desires as a real animal. This was a reminder of how determined Life is, in the most unlikely places.  That is the thing worth thinking about here.  Not pretty sunsets.

 The most optimistic attitude towards camping in 2023 is that I will manage to find a place to get away from neighbors in Arizona.  It is something to work for.  It would truly be "Living the Dream." It is ironic that I am grousing about RV snowbirds when camping near Arizona's largest collection of geese snowbirds.  The geese seem to like parking next to thousands of other geese.  (I thought there was some reason why I disliked geese besides their hissing and shit.) I used to think that young Van Life nomads were an improvement over the stereotypical snowbirds of the older generation.  After all, the Van Lifer has no room for a 6 kilowatt construction site generator.  Then again, it seems like Van Lifers are slamming the door every 10 minutes.  (At least generator noise is steady.)  Why the slamming?  Their You Tube channels extol the glamor of Van Life.  But apparently they need to escape claustrophobia in that van every 10 minutes. Oh dear me!  I am starting a new year