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Nature Before Rousseau

It's probably time to explain why I am so resentful about being clumped in with the itinerant nature-monks and desert ascetics who are not so rare in the RV blogosphere. At times it seems that they belong in the Canterbury Tales. Most of them were young adults who were influenced by Earth Day 1970, and are now retirement age. The irruption of nature-romanticism circa 1970 is one of those recurring fantasies that our civilization is susceptible to. Before Earth Day 1970, nature-romanticism had been in abeyance since the publication of Thoreau's Walden . Naturally young hippies, with little interest in old folks' history, thought they were on to something novel and exciting with their recycled sentiments of the Romantic age. They painted up the VW bus and headed back to the Garden of Eden with just a plastic sheet and some bean and squash seeds, back to an age of innocence and peace when man lived in Harmony with Nature, and shared everything equally. In its 1970 reincarna

Aesop's Flickers

So now I learn that a commenter thinks I watch too many movies. Hmmpf. Anyone who subscribes to Netflix watches a lot of movies of course. Some people watch their Netflix movies instead of watching boob toob sitcoms, soaps, "news", etc. Actually the case could be made that I watch few movies if "watching" refers to paying attention to a story. The stories are usually pretty uninteresting. If you've seen one adulterous love triangle, with its psycho-sexual obsessions, you've seen them all. Then there's rags to riches, revenge, who dunnit, poor boy meets rich girl, honest poor guy versus evil pol/priest/businessman, etc. I'll bet that a discriminating movie junkie could count on his fingers the movies that had good scripts, such as Network, All About Eve, Twelve Angry Men, Bridge over the River Kwai, Ikiru, The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Shakespeare in Love, The Mission, and Traitor . In addition to good soundtracks and cinematography, the real rea

"Wagon Train" for Retirees

The other day I finally looked systematically into the links followed by readers who follow this blog, in order to find new websites to read. It's always been easy to be lazy about this sort of thing, in part because the number of websites soon mushrooms into an unmanageable number. The results were surprising: I was led to websites run by Rousseau or Thoreau wannabees. What commonality does the reader see between such blogs and mine? For one thing I do not see Mobility as a journey to the promised land. Some of these 'Freedom of the Open Road' blogs have the same attitude towards travel that religious pilgrims had, in the Middle Ages. The difference is that the latter had a more optimistic belief: they could actually make it to the sacred shrine. They could finish. In Rob Reiner's wonderful coming-of-age movie, Stand by Me , the boys were having a philosophical conversation around the campfire, at least by the standards of 12 year olds. One boy mused: Wagon Train is
I took a chance on a new trail yesterday. It worked out well, and was a perfect autumn day, as well. The sun penetrated the forest in a few places; sometimes it would incandesce a small oak tree that lived under their suzerains, the ponderosas. Looking for these spots was a pleasant game that honored the occasion. At one spot along the rough forest road there was a homemade sign for a trail. I walked up the short trail toward what seemed like the top of a small mountain. Just before reaching the top, an Australian shepherd came down to greet me. This was quite a surprise. What a beautiful dog, smiling from ear to ear. The dog's owners were resting at the overlook at the top. They had walked the two or three miles up from the Littler Pueblo, which looked like a Swiss mountain village from this vantage.

Layers of Existence

What is it about grassy fields at sunrise or sunset that I love so much? Part of it is my tacto-centric view of nature, that is, feeling the world through the skin and feet and lungs rather than through over-rated eyes. The best moment is when the seed heads are dense, as well as incandescently yellow; they seem to float a foot above the ground, as a separate layer. At such times, ambling through a dry, tawny field reminds me of kayaking in shallow clear water, as strange as that sounds. In the middle of a lake a kayaker can be quite bored with the featureless reflective surface of the water. He might be surprised to paddle in, almost to shore, and in foot deep water find more of interest than the rest of a large lake. The reflective surface of the water reflects reeds and marsh plants, nearby; but the surface is also transparent to rocks, sand, shells, and small plants on the bottom. It can be quite exciting to "exist" on two separate planes, at the same time. It's no

Armchair Travelers

There's probably somebody out there who knows how many armchair travelers lurk on internet travel blogs. For purposes of discussion let's assume it's 90% of the readers of travel blogs. Having fallen into the ignoble category myself, I have often wondered why I keep coming back for more. After all most bicycle touring blogs don't make for great reading unless you are really interested in whether they had oatmeal or pancakes for breakfast, or whether they found a laundromat that was open, etc. Most of these people are remarkable endurance athletes, but poor visitors. They simply crunch miles all day long, and end the day over-accomplished in one activity (burning calories) and impoverished in all others, leaving them with little to say despite all their effort. So why read their silly blogs? For awhile the explanation seemed to be that theirs is a true adventure, in contrast to motor-vehicle-based vacationers or RV bloggers. But that wasn't totally satisfactory. L

When GOP Euphoria Wears Off

If I were a Republican I'd be careful about post-election euphoria. None of the fundamental weaknesses of the GOP have been addressed. It is still seen on the coasts as the party of low IQ Bahbl-bangers in the hinterlands. When an independent voter thinks of the GOP, unpopular perma-wars in the Mideast are the first thoughts to come to mind. If the "God and Country" coalition that dominates the GOP had its way we would find new wars, starting with Iran. The coalition is made of Rapture Christians, neo-cons, and defense industries. The label, conservative, is still misapplied to the GOP. The party was taken over by neo-cons during the G.W. Bush's administration. Neo-cons pay some lip service to the idea of limited government, but their real loyalty is to post-WWII hegemony by the USA. When they talk of "patriotism," they really mean defending the American global empire, starting with Israel of course. Rapture Christians naturally feel the same way. It won&

Mohawk Hairdo

  If I had known that I would someday be interested in a bird named phainopepla , I never would have gotten into this birding racket. (The usual disclaimer: unlike my opinions on sex, politics, and religion, my bird IDs are prone to occasional error.) Still, you gotta love that crest and red eyes. Finally we are getting some migratory birds, but it hasn't been a blockbuster season like last autumn.

The Internet and Elections

Every now and then the Internet is given credit for having an effect on the elections by way of fundraising and organization. But what about the quality of public discourse? Remember how narrow opinions were just a few years ago before the internet. What a disgrace it was that a country like ours was satisfied to sit before the newspaper, radio, or boob toob, and passively consume the drivel of a small number of corporate opinion providers. The opportunity is indeed huge compared to what has happened in the past. How was public discourse improved by the Hearst newspaper chain when it became nationwide? All we got was a disgusting little war, the Spanish-American War, and the "Teddy" cult. We turned our back on our proud tradition of non-interference in other countries and embraced imperialism, all because it made good copy for Hearst. A couple decades later, the high-tech miracle of the day was radio, which had a huge effect on the politics of the 1930's: it amplified

Morning Torches

Boys and their Toys

In over a decade of full-time RVing I've seldom had the chance to hike or bicycle with another RVer, their proclivities and demographics being what they are. And I've never had the chance to hike with another camper, my dog and his dog, the hiker personality-type being what it is. I've tried to accept things as they are, without too much complaining. So I want to honor the occasion by bragging it up. My dog, Coffee Girl, and I went for a hike with a fellow camper and his Aussie shepherd, here shown getting suited up with water and snacks.   Coffee Girl hasn't gone for a car ride in two years so she was delighted even before the hike began. It was better than a car ride: it was in the other camper's new Jeep Wrangler! She and the other dog disported on and off the trail all the way to the top. They're both herding group dogs, and are of the same size and age. All good things come to he who waits, apparently. But 12 or 13 years seems a bit excessive to

Field Feathers

The Unvanquished

Fourteen days after being attacked by a coyote , my little poodle got his stitches removed. Believe it or not he insisted on returning to the field where the attack took place. He was walking tall again, casting a long shadow over the golden West. He really wanted to kick some coyote butt.

Back in the Saddle Again

The local chamber of commerce likes to brag up the highlands of southern New Mexico as having "four gentle seasons." Who are they kidding? Our climate is a continental one, at 6000 feet above sea level; it has two semi-gentle and real seasons interleaved with two mathematical concepts known as spring and fall. If you're really serious about a four season climate, full-time RVing is the best thing to do. But I'm a townie now. Neighborhood gossip revealed that some of my neighbors were already using heat. In mid-October! How could they do such a thing after trying to sleep in the summer with noise and heat? The cooler the air the better you sleep, but only to a point . I merrily switched sleeping bags, put pants and socks on, and finally covered my head, but when I actually had to turn on the heat I felt profoundly defeated. Why take it so seriously? It wasn't just the seasons that transitioned quickly; so too was the switch from road cycling to mountain biking.

Photo Cliche

How many prrty pichers of sunsets are there on the internet? How many million, I should have asked. That's why I only burden readers with sunrises , which of course are completely different, and therefore fresh and original. OK seriously, how much of an aesthetic snob should you allow yourself to be, when you are a blogger? I am prone to rolling my eyes at travel blogs by newbie RVers from the East, who show photos of, say, Monument Valley. Maybe this is churlish and unfair. After all if I were to adopt a new kitten, should I fail to get pleasure from its play with a ball of twine because that's a cyootsie-wootsie photo cliche on calendars and Hallmark cards? Recall the chapter, "Zest," in Bertrand Russell's classic The Conquest of Happiness:  "... the fastidious person who condemns half the pleasures of life as unaesthetic. Oddly enough, all these types feel contempt for the man of healthy appetite and consider themselves his superior. From the heigh

The Raven Wrangler

Every morning these days the ravens gather and wait for Coffee Girl to enter the field. Neither they nor the dog disappoint each other. This photo shows only one raven flying low to taunt "poor" Coffee Girl, but in fact there's usually a dozen of the naughty scoundrels. She gets noisy about it. Although she is in the cattle dog family, she has a lot more fun promoting biological diversity.

The Lens of Politics

If it's hard to believe the political situation that the Obama administration has fallen to, perhaps the explanation lies in the initial expectations. The mainstream Media treated him like the messiah. His adoration in Europe was even more unrealistic. Back then I started to notice how consistently the Media photographed him: his eyes were always inclined at about 25 degrees above the horizontal. I wouldn't have expected his eyes to be looking at the floor of course, but his eyes never looked horizontally at the camera either, like a normal mortal's would. It was easy to recall the famous painting of Christ in profile, looking upward towards heaven, which used to hang in an honored spot in many Americans' houses. When that image popped to mind, it seemed like fair game to poke fun at the Media's adoration of Obama. (A political cartoonist could have achieved immortality if, during those salad days of post-inaugural euphoria, he had drawn Obama in a humble white

October Gothic

Movies Enhancing Music

When geezerhood brings a man one step from the glue factory, it's natural for him to fantasize about being young again. If he were to step into that time-machine and return to youth, what would his greatest pleasure be? No, not that one. For my part it would be sleeping -- deeply and uninterruptedly -- all night long. Bereft of that sweet pleasure, geezerhood has at least granted me the post-lunch nap. I'll never tire of saying that half of the reason for being retired is the freedom to lie down for a few minutes after lunch. Although this blog occasionally throws mud pies at the Idol of Progress, the modern mp3 player represents true progress. Sometimes lying down for a nap after lunch with music of your own choosing is the best time of the day. What makes it especially sweet is the half-consciousness and dreaminess of it all. Earlier a friend had introduced me to the Portuguese musical group, Madredeus. They were featured in the movie, The Lisbon Story , by Wim Wender

Weathered

Late afternoon in the autumn

Dancing with Wolves, part 2

My little poodle has recovered wonderfully from his wounds after the coyote attack of 12 days ago. He even insisted on returning to the evil field today, with the leash on, of course. In the aftermath of that attack I was amazed by the generous care of a woman in my RV park who used to be a veterinary technician. Then it got better: another woman who used to live here heard the news of the attack. She is only five feet tall and weighs about a hundred pounds; but if I had blocked the door, I think she would have knocked me out of the way on her way to cooing over the little poodle. When she lived here, we barely acknowledged each other's existence. This recalled the opening of Arthur Schopenhauer's dreadful essay On Women , which nonetheless started well with a quote from Jouy: " Without women, the beginning of our life would be helpless; the middle, devoid of pleasure; and the end, of consolation." Nature was certainly erupting that day, if you are willing to see ho

Moth

I didn't notice the fine structure on the edge of the wing or the "mustache" until the photo was blown up.

Art Imitating Life and Vice Versa

On a human level we're all happy that the Chilean miners got out safely. But let's look at it as a media/entertainment product. Isn't it amazing that ye olde 'men trapped in a mine' drama still works in the internet age?! By dumb luck Ace in the Hole arrived on the same day. The movie was made in 1951 by the wonderful Billy Wilder (Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Stalag 17, The Apartment, Sabrina, etc.) In it, Kirk Douglas is a reporter who is trying for a comeback. He accidentally comes upon a situation that might turn into a big-time story: a man is trapped underground at some Indian ruins in New Mexico. Kirk Douglas takes over the situation and cynically twists it into a headline grabber. Although the Media couldn't admit it out loud, the Chilean miner story turned out to be an anti-climax. As Kirk Douglas said in the movie, Bad News is news; Good News is no news at all. The Chilean miner rescue was so orchestrated with safety precautions, high budgets

Milkweed Season

October is the season for milkweed. Wikipedia has an interesting article on it.

A Real Brownie for the Boonie?

A camping neighbor enjoys walking his Australian shepherd with Coffee Girl. He asked if I was interested in photography. That was a simple yes/no question, but I had trouble with it. When I started living in this RV park two years ago I was delighted to have a large field to run my dogs in. But as a former full-time traveler, it seemed boring and unnatural to do anything twice. To put my mind at rest I decided to bring the digital Brownie along and put more effort into looking at the small things that the change of seasons brings along. It has been a successful project. The neighbor offered to let me borrow his digital SLR Canon camera. He showed me a whole bag of lenses and equipment and a tripod. What if I dropped this camera! As impressive as this was on one level, it was repulsive too. When he tugged on the zippers of the side-pouches, I cringed. Using impedimenta like this would completely change the outdoor experience for me. It would be great for setting up near a bird nest or

Front

A front went through recently and produced this. I've never quite seen a cloud development like this.

Too Close to Ignore

Yes, I promised no more curved bill thrashers, but this bird landed three steps away and held the pose. Love those eyes.

Green Goes Splat

Let's make a guess how Media consumers are reacting to the SplatterGate video or to lesser known videos of that genre, put out by Green organizations. NPR and the BBC watchers don't know what I'm talking about. Mainstream Media watchers have heard of Splattergate, but it was dismissed as unimportant. Internet addicts are screaming bloody murder about it: the biggest news since ClimateGate. I had a strong reaction to the video but for a different reason: I like classic books as a context for many topics, and by chance I was rereading a mid-20th-century classic, "the god that failed," ed. Richard Crossman. That book contained the testimonials of some well known ex-Communists about their psychology during their Communist years. Thus my sensitivity to Authoritarianism was at a peak when I watched the video. The Green belief system only partially overlaps with other Authoritarian belief systems of the 20th century. The latter were studiously unsentimental. In con

The Defiant Ones

Dixxe wondered about letting a miniature poodle wander off leash. Well in hindsight, I wouldn't of course. But there's always a trade-off between quantity and quality of life with pets, and the best we can do is hit some reasonable balance and hope it works out. At age 15.5 years, he is slowing down and sleeps most of the time of course. If an older pet spends 10 minutes a day doing something other than sleeping -- exciting stuff like eating, pooping, and peeing -- that adds up to 61 hours of "life" per year. But out in the field he prances and explores like the little poodle that I remember. Maybe seeing him get old is harder on me than him. So it seemed worthwhile to tolerate higher risk in order to enjoy some life while he still could. It was after all private property inside the city limits, and my larger dog, Coffee Girl, swept the field free of critters before the little poodle went across it. We only saw coyotes three times in 1800 walks in that field, over

Dancing with Wolves, part 1

The coolness during our morning walks is really enjoyable. If only there were some place that had ten months of autumn, and two months of suffering, just to remind you how lucky you are most of the time. The autumn patterns with flowers, seedheads, and migrational birds seem a little different from last year. One yellow flower has taken over the field, so I stopped to photograph it: But I never really finished the photo-op. There was a "hurt animal" sound nearby that sounded like my little poodle. I charged off in that direction, while yelling as loud as possible. I saw what looked like the back end of a coyote run off toward the main arroyo. I didn't see his head, but assumed that he was carrying off my little poodle to kill and eat in a minute.   The worst thing was knowing that my actions in the first few seconds might have life-or-death consequences, but I could only guess what to do. If only the little poodle wasn't such a non-barker! I looked for him in the di

Field-burst

Didn't I promise recently to renounce grassy texture photos on this blog? Well, I lied.

Nice Little Family

Every couple days we see this horseman, followed by a free-ranging adult horse and a sprightly colt, who gets visibly bigger every week. I wonder if they are all the same family? When a horse runs, it really is a beautiful animal.

Quinn on the Consumers

If only I had a nickel for every hour I've wasted on the internet, reading junk. Now and then an article seems really worthwhile, and it's fun to advertise it. James Quinn might be the last of the Puritans; his attitude about the American debt culture is more moralistic and scolding than mine, if such a thing is possible.  But what if a person's values or political views are different? The article might still be worth reading since it is an antidote to thinking that 1980-2005 is the "normal" we are destined to return to.  "In the good old days, before the advent of the credit card in 1969, Americans saved up to buy a house, a car, or an appliance. Consumer expenditures as a percentage of GDP stayed in a range of 61% to 64% from 1960 until 1980. This range was reflective of a balanced economy that provided good paying wages to blue collar workers who produced products that were sold in the US and in foreign countries. What a concept. America ran a trad

Liliputian World

When you walk in a forest it is fun to imagine yourself as being taller than the trees and able to see over all the silvi-clutter and able to take in the topography, just as you would flying or ballooning. Of course you could shrink instead of elongate. What a jungle the grassland would be to a Liliputian.

Gadget Paradise Postponed

Or, Requiem for a Lightweight A few weeks ago the requiem was written for smartbooks. These were meant to be similar to netbooks (with a keyboard and a clamshell design) based on ARM's microprocessors instead of Intel's, and on Google's Android operating system instead of obsolete Microsoft Windows. The lower power would have meant that you could leave them on all the time, like your cellphone, which is also based on an ARM microprocessor. You can see why this would have been appealing. I was hoping to use one instead of a WINTEL notebook to do the usual things, such as surfing the web, editing photos, and printing. Was that really asking so much from the computer world? Apparently it was. Why would the computer industry want to cannibalize the sale of $800 notebooks with $250 smartbooks? The losers would have been WINTEL, Apple, HP, Dell, Toshiba, etc. Fortunately for the computer industry, Apple found a solution to this conundrum: it assassinated the smartbook with th

A Day in the Life of...

Oh no, here comes that damned fool of a dog. Get ready for a lot of noise: Just look at her down there, carrying on so! I'm embarrassed for her. Nobody will ever convince me that dogs are real predators. I guess she thinks if she barks some more, I'll come down and let her eat me: I can't take any more of this. Besides I'm just encouraging her. Enough:

Crossing Swords

Overlapping yucca.

Grasshopper Season

  There are some very colorful grasshoppers in the field these days. This one wasn't too colorful but I thought it was right handsome, especially that pharaonic neck collar.

Real Football

It almost seems unfair that a season like autumn, which already has so many good things about it, should also have the football season. I sighed with pleasure about the football season to a non-football fan, the other day. I had her/him stereotyped as the kind of person who would turn up their nose and say, "There's already a perfectly good game that the rest of the world calls football. What's good about stupid American football?" They were referring of course to the deadly dull "world-sport" of soccer. Was there any point in trying to explain one of the finer things of life to a big, overgrown, NPR-listening, college sophomore? Probably not, but she did ask the question. With my best effort at being understandable and non-condescending, I started with the premise that Sports are mock-War. She agreed to play along with that, and suddenly my cause appeared hopeful. The rectangular field of football fits the TV screen well, but the same is true for socce

Breaking the Internet Slump

As expected I broke my internet slump by going to the library and walking down an aisle at random. Years ago I had a prejudice against rereading books, but now it seems like the option most likely to succeed. So I grabbed "The Education of Henry Adams." Yes, the famous Adams of Boston and Quincy. The young fellow at the circulation desk astounded me by actually knowing of this classic book. Young Henry served as his father's assistant when the latter was the Yankee minister to Britain during the War of Southern Independence. After the war Henry started thinking about his own career and thought of being an editor at a newspaper or magazine. He said that, "Any man who was fit for nothing else could write an editorial or a criticism." Hey wait a minute...

The World Passes Us By

The other day a friend and I were discussing how hard it is to understand the lingo of youngsters who have grown up in MTV culture. He said it is indeed strange how the world passes us by. That was one of those statements that really sticks with you; it only happens once in a great while. Recently I rewatched Billy Wilder's classic movie "Sunset Boulevard." Gloria Swanson and her butler had turned away from the "real," outside world while living in an aging hulk of a Hollywood mansion. Bill Holden's narration said that they didn't want to look outside and be reminded of what has-beens they were. It's quite an issue for an old fogey to wrestle with. Recently I have found myself telling stories to young people; stories that didn't fit in all that well with the rest of the discussion. Oh no! Am I going to become one of those old men who hears some buzzword in a conversation and then launches into an interminable story about something that happene

Dew Chandelier

  We can all agree that the last thing this blog needs is another photograph of curved bill thrashers, red tailed hawks, or grassland texture. But I can't help it; I'm obsessed with the perfect photograph of certain things, and dew-chandeliers are one of them. Besides, sweet obsessions are one of the under-rated pleasures of life.

Internet Slump

When an internet junkie is having a slump, nothing rubs salt into the wound more than a rainy day. When a stick-and-brick house dweller asks me how I could live in a small RV, I just roll my eyes at them, because it is quite easy. But in rainy weather the difficulty goes up a factor of 5-10. If he is a dog owner, it goes up another factor of 5-10.  How do you handle an internet slump? The book reader who is slumping can walk into a new bookstore, or down a different aisle in the library. And it works (!) more times than not. But when that computer screen stares back at you, it can intimidate you how much information is on the other side of that screen. You become frozen with inaction. You are tired of wading through all the crap, the linkbait. In theory you should be able to branch out by going to the links listed in the websites that you have read in the past. Either that doesn't work as well as it should or I haven't tried it with enough persistence.

Quiz

For extra credit, identify the movie where the guy said, "Oh, and Stockel, let's see some real flying." In case you can't get that one, at least help me with this bird. I was sure it was a turkey vulture from its magnificent, playful, flying style, but there was no red, featherless head. When the sun catches the underwing at the right angle, you can get deceptive iridescence, but still, white underwings?

The House-sitter, Home Alone

Full time RVers occasionally house-sit for friends or relatives who live in the normal world, the world of sticks and bricks, lawns and driveways. It's been so many years since I've spent a few days in such a structure that the experience seemed exotic and adventurous. This isn't as whimsical as it might at first seem. For one thing the typical suburban house is dangerous. I've never had a close call when hiking near 1000-foot-high cliffs, but I've come quite close to slipping in those bath tubs found in most houses. That never happens in my travel trailer's shower stall, where heat, pressure, and vibration have solidified desert dust into gritty, metamorphic layers. We have fewer pieces of seldom-used junk than the house-bound, but we can actually find the useful stuff. I was looking for a simple spoon the other night during my house-sitting gig. My arm actually wearied opening drawer after drawer in the kitchen, while I stared at every kitchen gadge

The Slavery of Elections

The world is so full of praise for Beauty that it drowns itself out. The Uses of Ugliness is a theme that seems under-rated to me. And speaking of Ugliness, we have another election season coming. There should be an alternative to the usual choices of watching Media coverage with sour disdain or with numb toleration. There is a point when Ugliness attacks an irreducible center of human dignity. We simply must defend ourselves in order to live. Here is something that works for me: there have been a few books written over the centuries that say something worthwhile about politics. We have all heard these classics praised, and we say that we probably should read that book someday... That is the beauty and use of Ugliness. Ugliness can be a sharp sensation felt right now, not just someday . It impels us to action; quite an accomplishment for a "negative" thing. So instead of following the electoral horse-race on the boob toob I will be rereading Alexis de Tocqueville's &