Made It Out of the Canyonlands!

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This is a short update just to let you know that we finally made it out of the canyonlands on Monday. I am on a borrowed sticky keyboard which has knocked my typing words per minute back down to my old high school levels of a negative rating after subtracting for mistakes.

It was a long day for Steve, Vicky, myself and all the fur critters, a VERY long day. They had set off at 4AM from Albuquerque for our last day of moving and were ready to kick butt for one last mission and it was a full-out, non-stop mission. And I was dreading that last long look around so badly; my supply of stress adrenaline depleting rapidly now after three months nonstop. The fur family was the last to be loaded up, followed by Terry's cowboy hats on the headrest and his shoes on the passenger side of my Dakota although barfing Ms. Daisy would ride shotgun with me, too. True to form and despite a dose of Dramamine, she performed one very colorful flash of stomach contents before setting down which I have still not addressed. I would like to vegetate for a full week or so after yesterday's emotional exodus.

They led with Terry's big Ram diesel pulling the red 16 footer across the washes and down the choppy and often deeply sandy roads at a snail's pace since we had packed the last of the Rat's contents hurriedly and much less professionally than Wayne had done. Two hours later, we reached the highway and I had managed to stop long enough along the way to each back and wrestle a number of aspirin from the box beside the yowling cats' crates and the disturbing ailments subsided reasonably by the time we reached pavement. Then the pace picked up considerably. Even so, we were all exhausted by the time we arrived at the new place. Once essential critter comforts were addressed, it was time to quietly sit in a stunned and breathless manner for the rest of the evening with good and jovial company.

Hopefully, I will be back within a week; right now, I just need to sleep a little and then adjust to a reality long postponed.
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Giving Up the Blog Ghost

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Yes, I am thinking about hanging up the blog rake in the barn, at least for the summer. But first an update on the news at Rat Town.
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Slim's orphan calf, Bully Boy, is starting to look like a healthy calf of his age. Above is a photo taken a week ago. Not quite spunky but his eyes were starting to fill out again as he slowly rehydrated and recovered from malnutrition.

Just last night, Slim asked if he was going to have a heck of a time getting that calf away from me. I said "Well, Slim, I've got him halter broke, saddle broke and even starting dressage but, you know what?" "I can't imagine ... what?" "Well, it's obvious now that Bully Boy just isn't going to make it as my champion saddle bull. Sigh." "Now why you saying that?" "Slim, he's just not sprouting handlebars, know what I mean?" "I sure am sorry to hear that, yeah, it happens. I'll come take him home him then." "I knew you'd understand."
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Here is Bully Boy this morning after his morning bottle feeding which has become a ritual for the entire population of Rat Town. The cats now recognize this as their big outing of the day as soon as they see me fill the milk bottle and put on my long-sleeved shirt and rubber boots. They are already waiting impatiently at the rear door. The dogs are waiting just outside the door, knowing that there is a slight chance for a slurp from this super-sized baby bottle plus a chance to cavort legally with the calf. Somewhere in the middle of all this celebration, someone WILL step on one of my in-grown toenails and this seems to be an expected part of the troupe's merriment. And this was the first morning that the calf kicked up his heels and responded to the dog play. It told me that we had succeeded in bringing him back fully, such an incredibly warm feeling of accomplishment.
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Other news in brief: Mark is looking a bit better after that round of 'whatever that was' although still dreadfully fatigued. Slim is leaving the canyon this weekend with the last of his cattle and won't be back until early winter (serious bummer). The gas company which will be instrumental in our moving Rat Town up top was all 'hurry up and wait' which means that the monsoons may hit before their construction time schedule and the move may have to wait until next year. Which means that I will not have my creative life back until then (this aspect of treading water is getting REAL old). Sooo, all things considered, I am feeling a little uninspired at the moment. Which brings about my decision to stop making new blog entries for a while. Here are the other reasons:

With the exception of a very few family members and some kindly and encouraging souls I have met along the way, it doesn't appear that anyone has that much interest in reading about this particular subject, at least as I am capable of presenting it. That is despite an article in WSJ which talked about the looming energy crisis spawning a trend to go rural and self-sufficient. In other words, shit ... I couldn't make lemonade even after a tornado hit a lemon grove. Maybe I sound a little discouraged? You bet, especially after hearing friends talk about their million hits a month. According to my mother, I still wasn't talking much by age four. The kindly doctor told her that I was fine but just didn't have anything I felt was worth saying. I think I am going to head back to that philosophy for a while rather than talk largely to myself. I have a lot of planning and design work that I have been putting off in shameless and delinquent ways so it will feel great to get some of it done now.

With the doubling of fuel costs, the practical side of me says that I don't need to be burning daytime generator in order to keep up with both the blog AND my e-mails. It's starting to cost some serious money and wear on the generator to keep that pleasure up so it's time to reconsider the brutal economics of it.

Since a lot of my favorite blog friends have decided to put their own blogs on hold for the summer, it is as good a time as any for me to give it a try, too. I'm not saying that this is going to work any better than trying to ignore those big, gorgeous chocolate bars in the pantry but I am going to try any way. In the meantime, you are invited to read through the archives. Just start at the beginning since this IS a journal of our challenges and joys to date. If you have any questions, just ask. It was always my primary intent to encourage others (at least genuinely NICE others) to follow their dreams of settling into the countryside. It's a great life if you don't bring any city rudeness with you.
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The Parting Shot (humorous images sent in by Ken)
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Don't ever give up on pursuing the greener grass on the other side of the fence even though it can present some unexpected technical problems.
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Yep, this is what we experienced as we finally escaped a 15 year exile in Northern Ill-annoys to our new greener pasture. I like to think of this as God's way of saying "Never look back on that place and such people with any regret" and it has surely worked. If you are not one of the "What have you done for ME, ME, ME in the last five minutes" sort of folks, I hope you find your own greener pasture soon.
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Raiders and the Talkative Arc

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Thursday was a great adventure day out here at the ranch. And I almost opted not to go because of the early wake-up involved - this can comfortably become part of your new defiant zen when you quasi-retire. It's a marvelous feeling to say "No!" just because you can. It's worth cutting back on your current lifestyle now to do this a bit earlier than normally expected, trust me on that!

But the prospect of roaming around our lands with someone who could answer my questions about its ancient history was too much for me to pass up. It haunted me throughout my night's sleep and I awoke at dawn, even before Mark and the pups, excited and determined to find answers. An hour or so later after a cup or two of Mark's always excellent stove perked coffee, we piled into his Ram to make the 35 minute trip to 'up top'. Although the sky was unusually overcast and denied us any customary morning solar warmth, we headed off without our jackets, confident that the day would warm up quickly. A bad assumption in the high desert.
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We made the rendezvous right on time with our gas field rep and the archaeologists, just outside the gates of the old gas field camp and headquarters. The mission of the archaeologists today would be to determine the suitability of new well sites and access road locations. The gas developer also very generously allowed them to research our personal choice for a new home site. I have had a love of archeology since elementary school and wasn't about to disturb any significant site for our own purposes so I was very grateful for this opportunity. There was a good chance that my personal choice of a future home site had already been taken by ancient peoples but I was willing to acquiesce to the importance of history. Mind you, my fingers would remain painfully crossed until that arc survey was complete.
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Here is the first meeting of minds. From the left, Mark is hidden behind my most informative arc mentor, Steve. Then our reasonable and pleasant gas field rep. Then another arc who I excitedly greeted with a handshake and a playful but irreverent "Wow, it's Indiana Jones!". Hidden behind him is the head land surveyor, a very tall Navajo who I decided may not like his image being captured any more than I do. To the far right is the head archaeologist and company owner, Doug.

The first order of business for both groups was the gas field matters. In the end, this was a wash for us. We lost more ground than we gained in comparison to their first well site choices but at least they weren't destroying significant archaeological sites in the process.
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Nearly everyone was unprepared for the cold winds that persisted in the sun's ongoing absence. A few shivers, a few sneezes, all hands buried deeply in available pockets when not being used.

Mark, myself and Mike (our gas field rep) eventually snagged Steve the archaeologist away to survey the south end of that mesa. Talking with Steve was a complete joy for me. This was like taking a college field trip for free but in the convenience of my own back yard. And he was one of those broadly knowledgeable people who can keep you fascinated all day long. He was even able to answer a question that a nuclear physicist had recently asked me about the existence of opals in New Mexico. I LOVE answer people!

I had read an article recently on what the established archaeological community thought of the Indiana Jones portrayal of the field. As expected, each person held a conflicting mix of emotions running between disapproval of the relic-snatching raider image and an appreciation for the new generation of students who had been snagged by the Indie romance. So you know that I just had to ask Steve what drew him into the field as we tramped through the sage, me barely able to keep up with his pace. The answer was amusingly surprising.

Steve had gone from a wide range of telephone field work through to FCC radio tech licensing; the guys who are qualified to mess with radio station signals, etc. He smiled broadly when he thought about the defining moment. "Well, I ended up at this keg party ..." At that point, Indy observed "Yeah, they threw some great ones!" and Steve continued, a thumb sideways pointing towards Doug "Anyway, someone introduced me to Doug here and that was that." A chance introduction at a kegger and a life long passion had been ignited. Doug also had the good luck of inviting Steve on his first volunteer survey and they happened to find an old pit house cut through by a meandering arroyo with a fully intact pot resting in the arroyo bed below. Hooked! Doug had been listening in and smiled at that memory. Then he added slyly "Yeah, that rarely happens but it sure got Steve hooked for good."
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How to make an archaeologist smile

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Here is Steve with his first find on the east end of our proposed home site. In his hand are two translucent fragments which most of us would likely walk past. They are small chips left by a man chipping away at an arrow or spear head, meat scrapper or other implement. He painted a fine mental image of a man finding a comfortable spot with a good view from our hillock and patiently creating a tool chip by chip over the course of half an hour. He not only knew the original home of each variety of rock used but pointed out which pieces were the outside cortex (or rough outer shell of the rock chunk) and was able to show me the exact impact point which flicked this piece away from the work, even mimicking the motion and tools needed to so do. At this point, I was starting to resent the occasional intrusion by the rest of the world pointing at watch faces. Notice Steve's ample supply of colored marker flags ready at his waist. He would color-code flag the artifacts in situ according to a specific category as he found them.

Before we were done walking the new site, he had found what only now strikes me as a very obvious site where rocks formed three sides of a rectangle and was used for the stone grinding of grains and then, but a few yards away, the remains of an old Navajo hogan several hundred years old. I was stunned by his abilities to discern such things at a quick pace but he explained that daily familiarity is everything, much the way an experienced bank clerk can tell a counterfeit bill by simply holding it. Doesn't matter, I am still in complete awe of their abilities.

The good news for me was that his exciting finds were so workably to the north and east of my preferred building site. History right outside the back door without destroying it - is that cool or what? The bad news? I quickly caught the flu from someone in that group, probably the guy with the small icicle forming on the end of his nose throughout that entire chilly morning. Hopefully I will kick this new bug and be back by Tuesday with the next update.
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Coming up next ...

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I've been trying to put together an update for you but I am utterly dragging after a very fun and interesting week. We just got back from a highly productive trip 'up top' which has brought us that much closer to moving up there. This meeting involved surveyors, archaeologists, electric company and gas field reps. Somehow the many, many objectives were completed by early afternoon; a good thing considering that there are weighty and bleak clouds rolling in as I am typing this.
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I am hoping to be recharged and back before the weekend. At that point, you will be hopping in the truck with us and then hiking a mile or two through the sage brush behind a very informative archaeologist just for starters.

But, for now, I am going to find a willing bedcat and take a much needed nap before our favorite cowboy shows up for supper in a couple of hours. I will try my absolute darnedest to be back before Saturday so don't wander too far away!
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Yesterday's visitor
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Movin' On Up!

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Update: I am now on my second day of having to perform the miserable duty of accessing and pulling the spark plug and squirting gas directly into the cylinder to start the generator myself. So far so good.

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I think we can finally announce a certain candidate! But it was a brutal, tiring process of getting there. I finally had to call in Slim, Virgil and Earl to help sway my number one super delegate and CFO.

We had gone through the neverendum meetings with certain gas field companies and that had left Mr. Pragmatic with serious concerns, and they are very real concerns, no doubt about it. The part of our ranch which we hope to relocate to and which I will show you below, has been recently acquired by a new player; a gas company known for ruthlessness and a penchant for picking up under-performing leases. And they will generally tell you anything to get their way i.e. 'lie like a rug'. Our big concern was building on one of the few sites that they haven't already disfigured, only to have them come in a year from now and plant a well right in our faces ... complete with a VERY noisy compressor AND jack pump. Our survey of the field and the feds say that these guys will likely do it, good neighbor policies be damned. In the end, we did meet with one of their people who seemed willing to give us a vague idea of where they may likely drill next and where they might not. Of course, if he is a straight-shooter, he might not last long with this outfit anyway. Verbal and gentlemen hand shake agreements are a thing of the past unless you are a complete fool looking for a guaranteed let-down.

As clarification here; as a land owner with no mineral rights, you basically have no rights if an energy developer wants to take over parts of your land. When we first heard the term 'split estate', we thought "50/50 ... guess we can deal with that". But split estate, in this case, is more like a split between Lord and serf. If they want your virgin daughters or your best treed elk habitat, they can pretty much take it at their whim. The only thing stopping them is some new NM lip-service legislation on surface owners rights and their own 'good neighbor policy', which some clearly do not possess. I normally don't like to mention names but ConocoPhillips has been very good so far despite a few shameful logistics screw-ups but is ever striving to improve and does try to make amends when at fault. This new three-letter player out here, however, remains seriously in doubt by all accounts.

In the meantime, we have decided to take our chances, given the improved overall year-round accessibility of the new location. Yes, it is a daunting move for us with so many things to arrange for and the last disastrous move still clearly too recent to not effect our enthusiasm. That move left us very drained emotionally and didn't help our opinion of mankind when given a chance to take advantage of or not. But we have some time on our side now and some trustworthy allies to help us out.
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What is this thin and curious strip of an image?! Well, this time you are going to have to click on the image to find out. It's under 250K though and you won't regret the view.

It is a roughly 160 degree panorama from the proposed site of Rat Town. I am not kidding when I say that the views are BIG out here. I had to splice together 5 different photos to show you what you would see if you pivoted around on your heels from not even quite North to South. At the very extreme right of this photo, you can almost see the new Rat site. If you could see over that dark ridge of trees for a couple of miles beyond, you would see the Rat's current home in our canyon.

Virgil and his wife came out for a visit a few weekends ago and we headed up there to check out the new site possibilities. They liked! Then Slim weighed in later, noting that it would be a lot easier to find his way home from there after one of our supper evenings. And then Earl cast his vote, noting that grid power for running shop tools was less than a quarter mile away from the new site.
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.Here is the view looking directly north from the second potential site. The first site was sitting a little low to take in the mountains to the north shown here.

Now don't be thinking that my next blog entry will be from 'up top' - just ain't going to happen. In fact, this move may take a few seasons to complete and, since unattended things are ripe for pillaging and scavenging even way out here, we might be trying to inhabit two sites at once for some time to come. Not my idea of a good time but I am not the Rat's grand fuhrer of our resources either. A decision one way or the other is still good news to me even though my original enthusiasm has waned considerably in the process. Guess I'm just one of those 'do it or get off the pot' types.

If you've been following along with us for a while, you are familiar with our current cozy canyon along with its blessings and drawbacks. What is your gut feel?
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