Getting Buzzed

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I won't be doing any new posts on the possible move of Rat Town to the mesa top until a couple of important exploratory phone call messages are returned. A curious superstition that I picked up from the boss at a bike shop was to never talk about a deal more than necessary. He'd rip by on a roll saying something like "Hey, we might have the Munch Mammoth sold to Leno" and be gone. Somewhere in there, I was supposed to start the computer and paper trail rolling. When I grabbed him by the scruff once and sat him down to explain his abrupt and cryptic messages, he confessed his obsessive superstition; "If you talk too much too soon about an exciting deal, you will jinx it. You-will-queer-the-deal!" That curious superstition stuck with me even after I moved on. So, right now, you know as much as we do about the possibility of a move. Mum's the word then, loose lips sink ships!
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Fine then, I will talk about the various man-birds flying over and say no further about the subject most on our minds this week.
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Above is an assortment of low-flying military birds (two B1s and a pair of F-18s - thanks, Buck and FHB) which flew over the Rat in the last couple of weeks. The photos might not be great but the boys don't exactly warn you ahead of time or allow for digital cameras to set themselves up for a shot. It is the sound which I wish I could share with you; for a couple of old farts out in the middle of nowhere, there is nothing more exciting than having the hair on the back of your necks stand straight up as you rush to catch a second-long glimpse of war birds on a mission.
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Above is a more low-key buzzing run. We had heard of the flying pipeline inspectors but had not seen any fly up our little canyon until this year. There is more than one gas field operator who has cursed these planes after slamming their heads into the steering wheels of their trucks when they thought the low flyer would rip the roof right off their cabs.

In this shot, the pilot is climbing up a little before sweeping into a wide curve and dropping down again to inspect another long straight run of pipe. You can clearly hear the throttling up and down as they approach and then disappear into the distance. Given the outspoken geology of the canyonlands, aerial pipeline inspection is a challenging and dangerous profession. I have been working on a blog friend to return to the southwest and do this job for a living, to no avail. It would appear that all ladies 'of a certain age' will eventually succumb to practicality and common sense (taunt, taunt, taunt!).

Meanwhile, I'm thinking it sure would be nice to know the pilots, maybe even have them land on the road out front and taxi in for lunch once in a while. We welcome friendly visitors in all conceivable forms of conveyance. The future Rat Town will have hitching posts and wheel chocks.

Hopefully, I will be back by Thursday with some good news and an update on the moving possibilities.
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Eroding the High Road

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While the photo above does not portray the erosion of the road which threatens to lock us into a very poor and sporadic alternative route, it does show the same severity of creek erosion at the very heart of this latest concern. You can see the wide and biting swing of the creek into the road bank above it. The creek has condemned as much as a half mile of road at a time with its ravenous appetite. Such stretches of road on our private lands were never restored for grazing by their principal users when they no longer served their immediate purposes. In other words, we were losing ground on both sides; to the wild and unpredictable creek and to those who sought to avoid it at the cost of our good and solid lands.
. I cautiously stepped a few feet closer to the edge to show you what happens when the creek takes another bite and the clay walls submit to the logical consequences. Sometimes you are warned of imminent collapse when you see a long stress crack three foot in from the bank's top, sometimes not. It might support a mega-ton rig as it did this morning or it might let loose under something as light as our pick-up truck.

In these latter days, lawyers are driving to limit their corporate liabilities and their bean-counters are pressing for foolish nickel and dime cost savings. They are trashing previous policies of helping landowners in other non-cash ways and I am wondering if we should close access to roads on our private land which they build but refuse to maintain to reasonable safety standards. To me, liabilities exist on both sides of the fence but I see mostly us on the giving side lately. Any advice and suggestions on this one?
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In the meantime, we made our trip up top to explore new home site options. In a future post, I will show the site which Mark, Slim and I selected during Thursday's drive around. It is still highly tentative and largely rests in the hands of the newest and very rude gas player out here as to its feasibility at all. This new outfit has even appalled and ruffled the usually unflappable Slim with its 'because we can' attitude of insufferable arrogance and its shameful under-handedness so far. The bad apple has arrived and the rest of the barrel will suffer from their greed and callousness.

Photos above and below show part of the new access road if we choose to relocate. It is uniformly wider than the road we have endured for two years now and has the advantage that it does not traverse the creeks and wide washes that our current road does. It winds down from the mesa top to the canyon bottom and crosses the killer wash with the help of a very respectable bridge which is open 24/7. This is the same bridge which we hope to reach after enduring the goat path.
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If the Rat can make it out on our own crumbling canyon roads, then these roads will be a snap to navigate with minimal damage. The question is, will it make it that far without serious damage or complete disaster?
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As the Road Turns

.We took a drive 'up top' last Sunday through our connecting canyon which is Mark's confessed favorite pure leisure drive. In this photo (if you click and enlarge it), you can almost see where we would previously drive straight ahead instead of taking a new curve off to the right. If you attempted that now, you would plunge over a cut a dozen feet deep, probably taking out a high pressure gas pipeline in the process. Ill-advised.

In case you missed the heads up, I am about to get metaphorically obnoxious here so return your tray to the upright position and extinguish all smoking guns.

Just like that road, we have found that what seemed like the clear and obvious path of our plans out here can change in a matter of months or even from hour to hour. The Rock of Damocles was a minor concern but what a gas field rep said yesterday was not. What he learned yesterday was that the five mile road to our Rat Town was not classified as a road used by several gas field operators. What that meant, ominously, was that if the creek gnawed further into the hard rock of the mesa walls in a few places and washed out this elevated road, it could be officially abandoned ... and not replaced. As you might imagine, this was not joyous news to these two people living at the very end of it. The alternative routes are just as seasonally affected (or more so) and would add at least an hour to our established and already prolonged access to civilization.

Now I am wondering if the delay in receiving our pre-fab new buildings was not but more benevolent works of ethereal allies. Having pragmatically ignored such synchronicity in the past to my detriment, I am inclined to have the new buildings delivered 'up top', far removed from these crumbling roads and the The Rock of Damocles . This is where the oddball and the engineer often clash with a brilliant display of sparks, where the unseen and intuitive collide with calculable hard data modeling.

Tomorrow, I would like for the two of us to journey up top once more, to revisit that area which we had both considered a good future home site last August and then compare it with the other possibilities Mark has come across since then. It may well help decide if we should change our time-line abruptly now or remain in the Rat under the Rock until further notice.

I will return in a few days with the results of our exploratory trip. Rat Town might well arise three hundred feet above my lofty dreams of just last month, then again, it might not. So many logistical, natural and human factors to weigh in so little time.
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Saturday's Walk

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Yes, I'm back so soon with another post. Consider it my penance for missing so many days last week.

We both lolled around pleasantly absorbed in reading far too long on Saturday morning to consider a full day 'up top' looking for elk antler sheds seriously. Instead, we chose to wander up the road and across the creek for one last look over a piece of 'our' land before the gas field commandeers it into perpetuity (sort of a modern feudal arrangement and we be da serfs).

Since Brou and particularly Daisy are not inclined to ride in the truck but will chase it down the road to the end of the known world, it was to our great advantage that they both ran up the mesa after ... well, who really knows what. Mark and I ran to the truck and were soon high-tailing it down the road while I watched for frantic descending hounds to follow. Woo-wee! We did it!

After kicking up dust for just short of a mile down into our nearest creek crossing and climbing back up to the far side, we rolled over the newly graded well site and piled out at the far side. I had barely pulled my hiking boots (those beloved rubber boots) out of the truck bed when I saw a brief flash of black down the hill behind us. "Daisy?!!" Sigh ... and Brou. Both panting furiously but neither to be denied an adventure.

Mark headed off to the West and I headed East. The dogs shared themselves back and forth between us until they realized that Mark would return to the cab to finish reading his Wall Street Journal in just a couple of hours. I had paced through the sage to reach and follow the abandoned road along the base of the mesa and both dogs eventually became committed escorts for my hike.
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I dropped away towards the creek, somewhat south from the old road and, as we rounded a bend, I saw this huge boulder between the road and myself. Something didn't look right about this big rock which could have buried the back quarter of the Rat without a trace. It was sitting on a fresh bed of piled earth which had not yet flattened and smoothed out in the rains. I moved in closer and saw fresh white battle scars on its face and immediately thought of Quig and the D8R but there were no vehicle tracks of any sort on the road this far in, let alone grouser tracks.

Then I noticed orangish colored tree debris to the right. As I walked back closer to the road, I realized that these were the sparse remnants of two full-sized cedar trees and the story began to tell itself. This boulder had recently broken loose and thunderously bashed its way down a couple hundred feet to finally rest just beyond the old road bed. It most likely let loose from the light-colored area half-way up the mesa face where what looks like two dark triangular eyes and a nose stare down on us.
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You can click on all photos to enlarge

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I clambered barely up the foot of the talus field to take the above photo looking back down over the boulder's path. I passed another flattened cedar, massive divots and piles of freshly shattered sandstone to get there. If you placed a floret of broccoli on a block and smashed down upon it with your fist full force, you could not have flattened it out as completely as these cedars were now. This is also when I noticed a deeply trenched gouge across the road just behind the boulder. The monster had finally stopped bouncing and slid the last 15 feet across the road bed before running out of momentum. (These photos do not capture the scale at all; everything in this landscape is immense beyond what any of us are used to).

I then recalled hearing what I thought was a demolition explosion in the distance recently. I also thought about 'The Rock of Damocles' still perched over the Rat. These canyons are still changing at the prod of nature's rough and relentless hands.
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Humor of the Day (from the Katlady)

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We finally figured out why Mushy doesn't like cats ...
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Chillin' and Freezing Your Assets

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I'm going for the largely technical/pictorial today. All this heavy socializing (a once a week complete joy for two weeks in a row now!) has left me severely adrenalin-depleted. Yeah, pretty darned sad when you think of it. So I am slipping off into the technical end of off-the-grid living, something that I can do without the emotion I need to address the intrinsic rewards of this lifestyle. Also, I have to admit, I am very saddened by Fat Hairy's loss of his dad yesterday. I don't accept sad events happening to good people very well at all.
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Above is our first big dollar purchase early on. This is an 18 cubic foot propane-fired refrigerator made by Crystal Cold. Compared to the usual electric refrigerator, it was pricey at $2500 (without shipping) but going for the extra capacity was money WELL spent for a situation where you might not be able to access civilization for a few weeks at a time. The unit has preformed very well and dependably in these past two years (touch wood as always). Other than having to vacuum the collected debris from the rear cooling coils once to get it restarted, it has performed very well. Mind you, defrosting is a necessary function every couple of months. I know, NOBODY has had to defrost a refrigerator in the last 20 years but, still, you take what you can get in this limited field of offerings. I took this photo during a defrost and you can see the Coleman cooler to the right which is keeping the vacated contents somewhat cool during the process.

Over the very top shelf within the cabinet, you can see the radiation coils which provide the cooling. These will form a thick frost which needs to be removed occasionally. You can slow down the defrosting ritual considerably by taking care not to store items which readily release moisture. Our dry desert climate also helps as far as minimizing introduced outside moisture collecting on the coils. Fuel consumption will go up and adjustment of the cooling controls will need to be continually tweaked if you ignore the defrosting task. Still, this is not an utterly daunting task.

I normally drape a heavy blanket over the door to keep the door shelf contents cool in place rather than find more cooler space for them but I removed the blanket for this photo. This unit is very reasonable on gas consumption when properly serviced. It is also available pre-jetted for natural gas use but switching the jets from one to the other fuel is easy enough later on.
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The new freezer arrives! Plenty of supervisors! Above, Slim, Sammy, Chase and Big Dog all supervise Mark approaching the unloading task in the skid-steer.

The gift of that elk carcass forced this issue on the postponed desire to have a full freezer here. It's yet another pricey addition at $2375 without shipping but we are looking beyond the one year cost of storing a processed elk to the new prospect of being able to stock up on truly exceptional sales of meat and dairy products and having these food items available should we become stranded longer than normal. Given how many millions of dollars worth of food has spoiled during severe ice storms and subsequent power outages in the last decade, this is an option that even on-the-grid dwellers should consider.
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. Temporary home of the new freezer. It spent the first few days out on the hydraulic lift gate of the 45' moving trailer but it became apparent that being under the scrutiny of the returning Spring sun, the gas consumption would increase dramatically so we moved it into the trailer. The shelter within will provide temporary shading but we hope to juggle a space for it inside the more insulated main buildings as soon as possible. The other incentive for moving it inside (although the manufacturer said that many people keep these units outside) was that the strong winds of late continually blew out the pilot light. .
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While it poses a bit of an obstacle in this new setting within the moving trailer, we are willing to sacrifice trailer content access for shading until the situation changes. I would say that patience has become our number one necessary lesson in moving off-the-grid. Anyone driven to immediate gratification will not psychologically survive for very long out here unless they have an unlimited budget - and that rules out 98% of us right up front. Note that the cooling coils are situated on each side of the unit as opposed to the rear (you will read more about that curious feature below).
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.What is so very different about this freezer when compared to our gas refrigerator (or even the standard electric models) is that the cooling coils are not located at the rear. From the photo above, you can see that the designers obviously retrofitted a standard electrically cooled cabinet - there is a large open area below the inner cabinet which originally housed the electric compressor unit. This space is wasted and empty since the gas tank powers TWO separate cooling systems, one on each SIDE of the cabinet.

The glory in having two independent cooling systems (one on each side) is that you can run just one side if the freezer is operating in an fairly sheltered and cool environment. We will be running on one side only and saving considerable fuel until the summer weather hits.

Immediate drawbacks? These appliances are a truck-freight item and it is required that you inspect the item at the shipping dock before loading it and noting any damage if you want to make a damage claim. Given the very rough 2 hour ride from the dock to the Rat, we didn't want to clip the steel banding and disturb the protective shipping wrap. In both the case of the refrigerator and the freezer, we later found hidden freight damages not apparent at the dock. You can see some of the damage in the middle photo of the freezer; a deep ding in the coil cover about ten inches down from the top of the side cooling system cover. It was just a chance we took and lost - had we uncrated the unit for inspection at the dock, it might have sustained worse damage on the trip in.
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Our Big Night Out - Part 2

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Here is today's view of the sun setting. It appeared as though the sun had nested like a platinum egg inside the lower clouds and was lighting them from within. Just an hour before, the clouds had been unleashing small opaque hail upon us. Just the night before, the clouds had left us a half inch of snow before morning which the new sun soon dappled into a vibrant pinto print of white on the brown soil. We are not done with winter's last little pouts.
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So back to our big night out:
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With the goat path now a super-highway, we were soon crossing the bridge to civilization in record time. The setting sun began to break through the overcast skies as we rumbled over the cattle guard and through the gate to motor up the long drive to the host ranch. No less than eight dogs surged forward to bark, inspect and greet us as we pulled in behind a cattle trailer. One dog shouted guttural warnings from inside the house; a less than friendly and predictable hound that the hosts considerately decided to shut inside. That was good since I have had my fill of Kujo critters and stitches.

Slim met us on the flagstone patio and escorted us up the exterior stairs of a separate two story building. I made a mental note that the stairs were not always at constant and predictable heights, a situation which could be disastrous for those with abilities impaired as the evening wore on.
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We found ourselves in a delightfully dedicated bar room and soon at home with 'da boys' which included our hosts Clay (behind the bar) and his young ranch hand Tyrell (who was prepping food and readying the grill down at ground level when I took these photos).

The rustic bar in the left corner was a recent addition and very nicely done; a combo of new and weathered wood and branches, rope and old horse shoes. Its front panels were decorated with burn-ins from area ranch brands and two well-executed word-burned sketches.

It took all of about 5 minutes before we were comfortable and settled in like this was a second home with nonstop laughter and teasing being the order of the night. I can't imagine a more pleasant way to spend an evening anywhere.

Slim slipped away long enough to prep and grill his famous canyon potatoes after a boisterous competition over who could better peel a potato with his pocket knife. Mark and I restrained giggles at some of the very small surviving spuds. But this is a ritual, you see, part of the entertainment and it doesn't matter if you start with five pounds and end up with two, that's simply not the point at all. The point seemed to be that we were going to hang out like kids without a care in the world, far away from feed and fuel prices and just have fun for the evening. Count us in!

Pure devil as always, Slim took advantage of my concern that he had thrown the steaks on with the potatoes that half hour earlier. He knows we are staunch 'medium rare' fans. "Yep, I threw them on, heck, had to be an hour ago! What ya don't eat, I plan on making some fine bridles with so no big deal."

With a clockless instinct that defies logic some time well into our bar reverie, Slim stood up and announced "Well, it's time to eat!" and led the grateful stampede down the ill-proportioned steps to the main house. We milled around the kitchen until each of us was outfitted with a full plate and found a seat at the big table. Tyrell had cooked up bacon to a crisp and diced it into a big pot of French-cut green beans and let it all simmer long and hard, DEE-licious! Then he fried up mushrooms in butter to top over the steaks. Slim brought in his famous grilled canyon potatoes - ultra thin slices done up with bacon, jalapeno dices, spices and butter, wrapped in double aluminum and set to grill away until soft and browned - heavenly tasty. He returned with a big platter of his own rib-eye steaks and pointed out which Mark and I would like for doneness. Spot on - juicy, tender and so tasty. The only background noise was old Kujo who had been sequestered to a back bedroom before we came down to eat. The banter and laughter continued on through dinner and saw us back up in the bar in due time.
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Slim spinning a classic cowboy yarn
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Mark and Clay interspersed the evening's philosophizing with a game of pool, mostly drawn out by Clay forgetting that it was his turn to shoot between his bartending duties and subjects of conversation that especially sparked his interest. Yep, we solved a lot of the world's problems that night.

I wish I had taken photos of this ranch for you (Mark is ordering a larger memory card for the new camera as I type). The main house is a 100 year old adobe structure with immense, dark hewed beams running here and there atop thick interior support walls. It is even on the grid and has the semblance of genuine limitless running water! I was enjoying every moment of this and even felt compelled to use the porcelain throne ... if only 'just because'. It is simply a gorgeous and comfortable place to call home.

We so regretted how soon time had passed and finally got grown-up enough to head home and let these cowboys get their beauty rest. I stopped by the kitchen to retrieve my left-overs and dishes. I had forgotten about ol' Kujo. He hadn't. What a charming pup, a short-haired muscular and fawn-spotted biting machine; reminding me of some odd and accursed mating of a dingo, a ridgeback and a hyena. And he was now giving me (who was too far in to run) 'the look' and the talk. I thought back briefly to the hound who had ripped up my face twenty years ago. No, that wasn't something I wanted to deal with again. The cowboys were up in the bar, Mark was pulling the truck around. Well, it's just you and me, Kujo, huh? Lovely.

As he closed in on me with menace and malice in mind, I decided to do my best Miss Romper Room personae. "WELL! Aren't you SUCH a GOOD boy?!" He paused, as such dogs often do, to mentally crunch this strange and unexpected input. I wasted no time and turned, my only concern being that he might be a butt-biter as I stooped to grab the leftovers from the fridge. So far, so good - buttocks still intact as I straightened up and spun around towards the door. "Well, yes, oh, you ARE such SUCH a GOOD boy!" I tried to ignore the ample salivation from curled lips revealing serious fangs and took heart in the twitching of his eyebrows from right to left as he crunched this strange input once more. I managed to slip out the latching screen door before he decided that he had been duped. And, honestly, that's all I cared about at that point. I nipped out to Mark's waiting truck to a background of maddened barking and lunging at the screen door. Ya-hoooo! Kind of put a satisfying closing edge on the evening!

As always after our rare social outings, we nattered enthusiastically, playing back all the highlights of the evening as we drove along in the dark. The canyons were now black velvet dark except for what a toe-nail moon offered through the occasional break in the mesa walls. Even the goat path turns and miles were now ticking by without effort. At this late hour, we had the roads to ourselves. Well, not quite. From what seemed like 50 feet away and emerging out of solid rock, headlights suddenly split the darkness just ahead of us on this largely one lane road!

The beacon lights of this new intruder stopped in their advance and we decided to creep around the corner of this rock-curtained hairpin to investigate. The alternative was backing down the narrow road behind us to a wide part which may not have even existed within the last quarter mile. Tall lights staring through the dust blinded us as we made the turn. Oh great, it was a water tanker, one of the bigger gas field vehicles! Wisely, he had stopped at one of the only spots big enough to allow both of us to squeeze by, but barely. Both trucks had to carefully inch into the wider space abdicated by the other.

But it worked out as it most normally does out here and soon we were back on our last miles to home with only a coyote pursuing a cottontail charging out just 15' in front of us. We got home to the frantic fawning of Brou and Daisy and simply had to sit and chat for another hour before the joy of the evening would let us sleep.
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Our Big Night Out!

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We've received an invitation to dinner this week, by way of Slim, down to meet the new crew at the more or less third closest neighbor's place. Who is the closest neighbor really depends on what washes are running and uncrossable on a given day. On Wednesday, these folks were our third closest neighbors.

Given that I hadn't found a practical occasion to leave our immediate canyon since last August, this was truly an event for me - a pleasant adventure to see at least the next ten miles that lay beyond that confine. As Phlegm Fatale recently suggested, it might be a helpful blog post to address the matter of transitioning from formerly complete 'civilization' to nearly complete primitive solitude. It does appear to involve several things on a number of different levels. I will start ruminating on that one.
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While far from perfect, the roads have dried up considerably in the last week or so. The big question was if our creek crossing was navigable. Amazingly, the road conditions seem to be addressed fairly well when a drilling rig is in the area. We got to the crossing and found that someone had arranged to dump several loads of larger rock into it to form a firm crossing base (above). While this side was a little soft, there were no surprises waiting half-way across or on the other side. This is the same crossing which previously inspired, in part, the "Chaos, Rains Supreme" series.
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Other than for the lightly overcast skies as we set out, this trip felt like a good one to my instincts so I was looking forward to it immensely by now and to meeting some new faces in the canyon lands. We were on our way!
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The main wash (shown above) was still channeling off snow melt and remained a complete mire of treacherous mud bog so we took the infamous 'goat path' on our side of it. I was overwhelmed that it had transformed into a near super-highway since our last joint encounter with it. Not to be snarky again, of course, but it would appear that road conditions greatly improve when priority gas development and profit are involved.
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It was largely a lovely and smooth ride, in fact. It still might not accommodate two way traffic well but it was splendid in relative terms. In this photo, you can how the path dips down and disappears to the right into a cut, re-emerges at a climb, drops out of sight to the left and sharply snaps up to the right again. This is pretty much its typical course over the three mile stretch to the bridge.
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Here (above) is the main wash which escorts the goat path but at some 30 to 50 feet below and shown here in a benign and promising state but still completely uncrossable. Its broad sandy bed hints at the full expanse of its realm when the waters run full and wild. It looks as innocuous here as a motionless boa constrictor but therein lies its secret to bringing sudden death upon the gormless ever since man first roamed these lands.
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I will stop here since I have burned up a considerable amount of daylight generator time already and it is now sensibly time to shut down until night falls again. I prefer to compose our stories while it is fully day time and I still have a goodly share of energy about me but wear on the generator and fuel use are a necessary factor in the balance, always.
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That Sinking Feeling

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Mark got a call from Slim last week. He was in the canyon and ready to do some fence checking and repair down this way before bringing more cattle down. "If you care to come along, I'll help you unload that fancy new freezer when we're done." What a deal! I certainly wasn't looking forward to the prospect of moving the freezer now perched in the back of Mark's truck. So, pretty soon, Slim arrives in his 'scooter' (don't ask me why a cowboy would call an ATV a scooter but cowboys have a strange way of looking at things sometimes). Three dogs, fence posts, wire and tools and ready to roll. Mark hopped in and they disappeared eastwards in no time flat. They were going to check the fencing which spans creek and washes out on a regular basis. Given the sandy nature of the creek bed, there is no fence designed to survive its running, eroding waters so you just have to keep up with the repairs.
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Above: Slim shuts down the ATV and they tackle the freezer move in short order. That story will be covered when I do a post on how we keep things cold off-the-grid.

As soon as they were done and Slim was settled into his customary roost on the chesterfield, he announces loudly "Well, we almost lost Mark today." You know that's a teaser for a new cowboy story. "Awww ... you didn't lurch him out of that infernal 'scooter', did ya?" "Hell no! I'm talking serious here!" I wasn't sure if I wanted to hear exactly what serious was but I knew I was going to anyway. There was a slight hint of a cat's grin on his face and this tale was going to be too good to hold in any longer.

They had found a well-worn cattle and game trail down to the creek bed and headed to the fence line straddling the creek. Sure enough, the fence had been flattened, probably by a big cottonwood limb, so they stopped at one end of the fence and walked out to the flattened spot.

Mark was slightly ahead of Slim on the quest as they made their way across the damp sand bed. All was going well and then, according to Slim, Mark stepped in a spot that looked as firm as any other and sank "... darn near to to his thigh!". Then he stopped to admonish me "Those fancy rubber boots you like so much? Well, if he'd been wearing those, he's STILL be there - I ain't kidding ya!" At that point I glanced over at Mark now slouched comfortably into his wing chair. Without a word of protest or self-defense, Mark sighed ever so lightly and pointed down to the mud and sand still clinging to his shoes and well up past his knees.

Quicksand! Who would have thought? The only time we had encountered quicksand was in old Westerns. Seemed like every other episode involved someone falling into quicksand and fighting for their lives, so much so that you'd think it was everywhere. Eventually you thought "Yeah, another non-existent legend." Well, what a way to find out that quicksand does exist.

So Slim, not done with his story-telling, related the story of going down to another neighbor's ranch that week to round up strays. He said "So we rode the horses down across the big wash and darned if Ruby didn't sink in up to her shoulders in quicksand! I kicked out of the stirrups and dropped to one side of her and she sort of rested on me - which kind of kept her from sinking any deeper." Mark, now consumed by the excitement of the tale, exclaimed "Wow, so you being nearly under her is what saved her?!" Slim, being quite pleased that someone bit at his story bait, then said "Nah, but don't it make for a great cowboy tale?" That's our boy. And thankfully, Ruby did make it out on her own.

But he continued on the serious side, noting that being caught in the stirrups or having a horse get caught up in the reins is a sure way to get yourself killed while they are panicking and struggling to get out of the quicksand. This particular cowboy is not helping any desire on our part to pick up horses for ourselves in the future - and that's a fact.
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And now to address a flurry of birthday wishes:

To Mark, who you can see in the ATV photos above. He's still looking good as ever and STILL getting carded! I suspect that he is really Dorian Gray and I am his portrait - that's all I can figure.
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To my sister (above). Enjoying retirement now but was a securities desk trader for years and eventually one of the first woman stock traders on the exchange floor. I even kept her magazine interview on the subject - my, how times have changed.
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To my nephew (above): the BIG Dallas fan. Just an all-round decent kid and my former carousing buddy when I went home to visit, often to the chagrin of his mother (already shown above).
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To my buddy Sinclair (above): SUPREME gearhead. Retired CEO of Saab NA, has owned just about anything really cool with two or four-wheels and a motor. Even ran the Baja with Malcolm Forbes. Here is a guy with tales to keep you around the campfire all night. Shown here with his Kawa-based Harris from England. He's having some health issues right now that I hope he can kick in the butt. He's been a loyal friend through much adversity and I have a long memory.
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Whimsical Dreams and Schemes

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Wow! The image below has been circulating like a wild fire in So. California. I saw it over at Goddess's place (she's in my links!) and also received two higher resolution versions from the Katlady and my brother all within hours. I am truly smitten with this image and not in the least offended that I was a 'must copy' on it. It doesn't look like a photo-shop wonder either but a genuine 3D project since it incorporates our beloved shipping containers (I'll do a post just on that some day, too). There was an eccentric structural genius at work here. Better still, the designer has displayed a certain defiance and disdain of decorum acceptable to even middle class society. In other words, I am absolutely in LOVE with it. Given the chance to tour a Guggenheim exhibit or this place, you know what my choice would be. Can't you just see this arrangement creeping up the back wall of our mesa behind the Rat? Don't kid yourself, the Anasazi would have done the same thing at Mesa Verde if they had access to cheap rat trailers, shipping containers, scrap iron, cranes and welding equipment.
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This got me to thinking about our delayed Rat Town project again. The thaw and the muddy state of the roads have postponed the delivery of our two 14'x36' buildings indefinitely and I won't say that the delay has not discouraged me somewhat. My antidote is to dream on, as it always has been. I have forever created complex micro worlds in the process of waiting on promises and prospects, most of which never materialized. It eventually became the creative thought process which mattered most; a realized, completed project became almost anticlimactic after a few decades of dreams lost.
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And so I dredged up a front-on view of the Rat (above) to impose my imagination upon, the two new buildings already in place in my visions. Not two overgrown and glorified potting sheds but two edifices to meld into my eccentric and whimsical 'big picture'. Yes, a very curious outpost in the middle of no man's land, something that will make the rare lost traveler grin and wonder.
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It took considerable time to browse the Net for inspiration but I finally found some images which I could electronically beat into submission to form my otherwise very loose master plan (above). Since Slim and cowboy company liked the idea of an Old West Saloon, this was the grit around which my outrageous pearl would form.

The new buildings will stack up at a right angle to the Rat's front facade to form one continuous road face. We did not resurface the front face of the Rat and will not until we see where this wild hair of a plan is going. Ideally, the road-facing side of each new building will sport two or more distinct pseudo store fronts . What you see above is strictly a concept, much the way concept cars never meet the road in production numbers but it gives you a very rough idea at least.

It was an idea fermenting well before our arrival and, unfortunately, the many wonderful antique architectural details that I had been scrounging up in the Midwest were left behind thanks to the nature of those people to take advantage of our time and logistics predicament (oh no, no residual animosity, of course, but may they drown and then rot in Hell, the whole bloody lot of them). You just don't mess with my dreams.

What items we were able to salvage will not produce the vignette above but it is a start at least. It will be many, many years before we can find more architectural touches to complete a whimsical Old Western facade to our liking but the quest will keep me invigorated and inclined to venture into civilization more than once a year. The thrill, the lust of the hunt has not been officially abandoned yet.
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Home Cummins, Part 4

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Pre-Ramble, Current News : Touch wood ... I am free of that antlered albatross as of yesterday!!! Now that we have gone through our first drill on processing an elk, next year's plans will include jerky (for Bruno) and a run at smoked sausage, too. This year's very cautious attempt yielded steaks, BBQ slabs, fajita strips, stew cuts and ground meat. We spent some good bucks on a Bass Pro #8 (.35hp, by LEM) meat grinder and have no regrets whatsoever. When was the last time you opened up an appliance package and kept saying "Wow, this thing is WELL made!" as you pulled out each part? Lotsa stainless steel, genuine steel gears and even the castings are works of art. Pure machine lust ... goose bumps and shivers!
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Retrospect: Mid-September 2006

Apologies for the quick entry yesterday, ma cher La Phlegm, the words just piled up quicker than I thought might be tolerable for on-line reading if I had finished it up. So here is the finale:

The thought of being discovered in such an embarrassing state drove me to hop and waddle all gimpy-kneed to a small boulder for cover where I ducked down and waited. One more motor rev and then ... nothing but the breezy silence of the canyon again. By now, my knee was screeching but I thought "You're just waiting me out, aren't you? You dirty rotters ... eh-heh-heh, I can wait, too!" That lasted for all of two minutes as my knee ramped up the wailing again and I thought of the hordes of snakes and tarantulas who were probably taking advantage of the situation and sneaking up on me now. I minced my way back out to the road and continued on. Rounding the bend an eighth mile up the road, I realized that truck had taken a steep path up the mesa - all that squatus interruptus for nothing! Now I walked on with the priority of getting back into my pants and shoes. The road was still muddy so I guided each step to the driest section in hopes that the mud on my feet would eventually dry and fall away. I learned a lot about interpreting the appearances of a road surface that morning which would help with driving later but I wandered on for another mile before I would attempt donning my clothes again. I knew that any course grit in my socks and shoes would lame me long before I reached home.
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"The Roller Coaster"

My walk home started at the base of the far, bluish mesa. I would end up walking well beyond the lower left corner of this photo. That swath of road leading off the main road and up to the left is where the mystery truck disappeared. The roller coaster allows for some very enjoyable senior 'Bullitt' moments providing that you stop at the top of the first one to make sure that someone isn't doing the same thing coming the other way and that a road grader has covered over the foot deep run-off keyways at the bottom of each hill.

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As I began the 'roller coaster' (a tight series of five or six small alluvial hills between the mesa and the creek, see photo), a set of fresh coyote tracks joined me, running in the same direction towards home. My thoughts of Brou's safety loomed heavily as I recalled the communal coyote calls to a fresh kill. I would sigh with relief when the tracks vanished into the sage but worry again when two or more sets would rejoin me a quarter of a mile later. All were heading home towards the lone pup Brou as I was now.
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Finally, oh finally, I reached a spot where I could stand like a flamingo and slough the mud off my feet against the back of my calves and put the jeans back on without falling over. Another scrub-off against the jeans and I had my socks and shoes back on. Glorious! No more sharp little stones to snap me out of the thoughts I had occasion to get lost in and I could pick up the pace now.
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As I wondered about the mountain lion sightings of the year before, small game birds rose up and flew ahead of me, always some twenty yards ahead. I was taken by their quick flash of orange wing bottoms as they methodically leap-frogged ahead of me and I was grateful for their distracting company. I now longed for that initial glimpse of the Rat which lay a quarter mile beyond the Roller Coaster. My trek would end only a mile beyond that point.
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The last mile would begin well before the right side of the photo above. From there, it would be a fairly constant descent into our home piece of canyon, requiring much less huffing and puffing. You can see the wildly meandering broad band of our creek below it.

The coyote tracks now picked up in numbers as I descended into the chico flats at the left of that photo and all were still headed in the direction of home ... and a defenseless Brou. My heart sickened a little further and my pace picked up noticeably. I now hurried towards my last obstacle, the infamous 'Virgil Catcher', a deep bog of run-off which retains its moisture greedily long after the other run-off paths have calmed and dried. I gaged my path and skipped gingerly across the first half. Then my next few steps sunk into the ooze until my right shoe was sucked right off my foot, well behind my inertia. I had made it to the other side but was now pivoting clownishly and precariously on one remaining shoe. I gave in to defeat and returned for the hostage shoe. With both shoes now shrouded in as much mud as my spirit, I removed the muck-laden shoes and proceeded in my stocking feet. I was on a mission to find Brou so who cared if I wore out a pair of cotton socks.
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At the remaining quarter mile mark, I could see the barn and Rat and began calling out for Brou. With every response of silence, I quickened my steps and began calling louder. Only the silence of the canyon, save for a few shallow echoes, answered my calls. I tried to ignore my growing cringes of gloom.

I was nearly to the barn when a small and cowed auburn form appeared at the barn door and cautiously made its way towards me. "Oh, my Brooouuuu! You made it!"

My surging sheets of adrenaline left me as we trotted the last few yards to the Rat's porch. I collapsed on it's rough 2x4 planks and was smothered by Brou's joyful reunion kisses. Four miles of plodding suddenly became worth every foot, every worry and pang of misery within it.
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As I lay there immobilized in deep pools of relief and joy, I swore I heard another truck. Sure enough and so goes the story of my life again. Virgil swung into the driveway and endured my "So just where the H--- were you when I was four miles down the road from here anyway?" He grinned that big cat grin and laughed when I told him of my trek back in. Then he left to test the waters for Mark. Knowing he had a captive towing buddy on the other side, he charged across the running creek to Mark's side and said "Okay, I'll turn around and hit it again. Wait 'til I'm on the other side so that I can tow you out if necessary and then you hit it, too." A flawless run by both ensued and Mark was soon greeted by Brou's exuberant slurpy kisses as well, the brand new truck now parked proudly in front of the Rat.

Having a friend like Virgil in these far reaches of the gas field was a blessing beyond all blessings. I should never have expressed that sentiment to the anti-neighbor; it wouldn't be long before she would aid in his removal with her venomous hate-driven hissings. Sometimes you have to eventually learn the hard way to over-ride a long prevailing and abused trait of magnanimity.

It wasn't long before I decided that staying right here at the Rat rather than attempting outside trips was just fine with me. To read about previous adventures out of the canyon, click on the 'seldom leave' label and remember to read from the bottom up. Does make one wonder.

As I type, a new flurry of snow is obliterating our view of the far mesa. We're not done with winter just yet!
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Home Cummins, Part 3.

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You know the drill by now - scroll down and read Part 1 and then Part 2 if you haven't already or you will be completely lost.

Retrospect: Mid-September 2006
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We ignored the first hint of a cold dawn as it back-lit the condensate on the truck windows by burying our heads deeper into our light jackets. Trying to move sent a xylophone riff of pain down our cramped spines and out into our stiff limbs. Aside from letting in a blast of chilling air, a quick roll-down of the window made it clear that the creek was STILL running hard. It would be hours more before the sun warmed the canyon air around us or slowed the creek.

We stirred and felt obliged to be social when we heard two trucks draw near around 9AM. The two drivers stopped well short of us, trudged through the brush to inspect the creek and promptly left, purposefully avoiding any eye contact or acknowledgment. Unlike the well-end workers, we've found the pipeline company workers to be consistently aloof and occasionally a detriment (as noted in an earlier story of getting the Ram stuck in the creek). We suspect that there is no 'good neighbor policy' in place in these pipeline corporations.
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There was no way we could force a return to napping at this late stage of the morning so we had to make decisions. The kitty boys were safe inside the Rat but my concern for Brou was building furiously. When Mark volunteered to walk across the creek and head home, I declined. Nursing an old phobia about driving other people's vehicles, I declared that it would be me who walked home and that he would ferry the new truck across when the waters subsided.
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I scraped a good amount of muck off my shoes with a stout sage branch and placed them in a plastic shopping bag along with my socks. Since my straight-cut jeans would not roll up very far, they were placed in the bag on top of newspaper serving as a mud barrier. I marched resolutely down the slope to the creek, bag in hand, turning only once to announce "Okay, now if I fall down in the creek and you laugh ... well, you know ..." By the time I was on the far side and realizing that I was facing this walk alone, he had already returned to the truck and was deeply engrossed in his newspapers. Hmpphhh. Fine! I then looked down at the mud which had oozed up in quantity from between my toes - it would obviously be awhile before I could put my jeans and shoes back on. A great spectacle to behold; me, the great cross country adventurer, pushing on in my bare feet and underwear. "Did Lewis and Clark ever do this?" I wondered to myself.
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It was about a quarter of a mile into this trek that two things happened. The first was a nature call of the most pressing kind. Oh, surely NOT now - I'm barefooted with this gimpy knee and there is no sign of any suitable seating arrangement to aid in this suddenly urgent mission. Not wanting to tread into the brush in such a vulnerable state of dress, I trudged on for another hundred yards but succumbed to sheer desperation. I planted myself for business in an area barely off the road after surveying for snakes and tarantulas ... and so grateful for that section of newspaper in the plastic bag. The second thing to happen (of course - as you probably could have guessed) was the sudden roar of an approaching truck from up the road ahead. Great; I am unshod, in my underwear and in the middle of addressing a dump. Such would appear to be the story of my life at times.
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To be continued

This is consuming more words than I had planned so I'm cutting it short here to go back to the elk processing now. I am beginning to truly resent that beast, I really am. I'll be back and visiting as soon as I finish pounding that vile and taunting creature into submission, promise!!!

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