The Deadly Nature of the Creek Rising

Perhaps it is time to explain the significance of our blog name "If The Creek Don't Rise". As you can see from the photograph, it is a very significant matter and a situation that people living almost anywhere else cannot comprehend.

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The photo shows a semi-truck sized vehicle which tried to cross a running wash. This was one of the water haulers vital to the oil field and these contractors are under heavy pressure to perform their promised committments. It can be a lose/lose decision to press on if fate is not on your side that day. Then it is the rock and a hard place world. Maybe the driver didn't flip the coin just so that day and decided to cross waters which were probably running well less than a foot deep.

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Again, it is hard to comprehend the dynamics at work here. As one neighbor described it, the infrequently running waters out here in the desert become flowing 'liquid sand'. If you have ever spent any time at an ocean shoreline, try recalling standing in the near skirts of the ocean's waters and having the waves roll over your feet. You waited for their retreat and felt a vertigo as the retreating wave undermined your footing in the sand. Now picture a never-ending flow of sand and water. A vehicle caught in the run will find itself undermined by the fickle sands beneath as they join the stream of thick waters rushing by. I have seen many photos of nothing more than the very tops of four tires jutting out of what looks like a benign and shallow highway of sand remaining after a run. But there was always an entire truck or car inverted and lying in state beneath them. The insurance outcome is usually a complete write-off. So ... when the creek rises here, we pay attention.

The Rock of Damocles

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I will expand on one of my comment replies of a few days ago. The question was whether the mesa directly behind us offered any protection. I considered the matter and realized that it offers little protection. According to the top dwellers, the canyon bottom does offer some break from the incessant winds which often bring a biting dust with them. Unfortunately, our settlement of two lies against a north mesa face and in the direct path of the common westerly winds. The season of the winds is just coming upon us again after a fairly calm spring, summer and fall. The vanguard of this new wind time, of course, fell upon us just as we started our rat trailer skin project. The arrival of the first cold nights snapped us out of our pleasantly lolling summer stupor and then ensnared us between its chill and these rising winds. We will do what we can to finish the remantling of the entire trailer but realize that we might have to concede defeat and retreat to the interior for the winter. If that happens, we might rekindle these efforts with the first returning warm days of spring. But then again, we might not, still enjoying our newfound sense of irresponsibility. The insulation and tight new siding will definitely help deter the summer sun's long, hot fingers from reaching too far into the Rat's soul.

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The windows which I had to uncaulk and remove today to release the last of the aluminum siding are now whistling with the night's furious winds. I must remember to climb the ladder tomorrow and salve their gaping seams. If the overcast skies aid the winds in their marrow-frosting mission again tomorrow, we will have to have a pot of continually warm herbal tea on hand. We even dipped into my apothecary of sliced ginger root marinating in vodka. A small shot glass of this will drive away the deepest felt chills. It may also put the most saloon-hardened of cowboys to flight and one whiff sends the cats and dog into retreat but it works as intended! Try it!
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After writing off any meaningful protection from the mesa, I thought about the possible detriments. Geologically, these mesas are the children of unending erosion and, given enough time, will join the canyons below in a homogeneous plain. According to stories we've heard and from what we have seen, there are times when the process involves a more violent action than mere grains of sand sloughing away. Although rare, sometimes a large mass will crack and fall or sometimes an entire face will simply slump into the valley below. In our case, there is one rock directly above the trailer which looks like it could consider a gravity-driven career move. It wasn't something that we noticed when we had to do a hurried survey of suitable places for the Rat. On the other hand, now that we have noticed it, it's not like we stay up all night waiting for the other big rock shoe to drop either. Let's face it, if we were safety-obsessed, we would be holed up in some flat corn field subdivision, well away from haz-mat zones, high tension lines, fault lines, driving ranges or whatever else folks enjoy agonizing over. One of my favorite stories was by Brautigan wherein he describes their family moving to a house with natural gas. It was a new and sublime source of dread for his mother and he describes the effects of her infectious misery as they all sat around in anguish, waiting for the house to blow up at any minute. For me, it nailed life with our mother right on the head. None of us are immortal so why devote too much time to such things. We both feel more fully alive each day now than we have for years and, for us, that quality is everything.

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Next post: ... if the big rock don't fall ....

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Our second Thanksgiving in the boonies

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What a difference between this Thanksgiving and the last one. Last year's found me staring at a pack of mystery meat from the cooler and wondering if I could shape it into a drumstick, maybe singe it over the camp stove for better appeal.

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Today I am typing this entry while a ham burbles away in the propane oven. Stuffing, sweet potatoes, peas and roast potatoes will join it on the table - a REAL table, not the table saw! Tonight we are thankful for so many blessings. Next year will be even more of an occasion as more rudimentary comforts become reality. We may even find a turkey at a reasonable price then, too.

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Since we don't have TV and only have radio at night when the generator is on, we tackled the rat trailer siding project once the sun pushed the temps to 50 degrees. The aluminum siding had been removed and Mark had already cut Styrofoam panels to fit into each now exposed stud center. So, today would see the application of Tyvek (or 'house wrap' as some call it). It essentially envelopes the exterior of the walls to cut down drafts and moisture infiltration. The roll of material is 9' high and 150' long but we were only going to unroll enough to cover over our experimental area (about 8' high and 40' long). We installed the bottom flashing and were ready to grab the big roll. The wind had been non-existent for the last month but, you guessed it, whipped up just before we were ready to unfurl the material. The sheeting and its roll became potentially lethal at times and we each sprung two extra hands to keep ahead of the game. There were a couple of times when this ungainly sail threatened to hang glide us out across the valley but we managed to stay grounded. We were definitely beat by the time the last of the loose folds were secured and dinner seemed like a remote possibility. After an hour of recharge time, we decided to go for it.

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The photo at the top is of our little homestead in the canyon - the old barn, the rat trailer and the moving trailer as they appear from our mesa top on the far side of the creek. The mesa wall right behind the buildings is the one that we all scaled a couple of weeks ago.

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Albeit it a little late in the day, we extend our best wishes to all our friends and family for an equally peaceful Thanksgiving.

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Next post: a few days hence

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Pot of Gold in the back yard

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Since I am severely distracted with the new prospect of progress, the photo above is my main blog contribution for today. This view is one of the many reasons we have chosen to hang on even when things seem to get discouraging. Something like this always comes along to remind of us of why we are here. How often can you see both ends of a rainbow within your backyard? I haven't looked for the pot of gold at the ends yet but rumors abound about Spanish gold being lost in these parts. The legends have their loyal and determined following.

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Current news:

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Today was a great day for progress. The skies were clear and the sun brought the temperatures up to comfortable working conditions. We did an experimental foray into stripping off about fifteen feet of the rat trailer's original aluminum siding. It was encouraging! Mark was able to cut panels of Styrofoam to fit snugly in between the stud centers and the pre-formed flashing he brought home yesterday will accommodate the new siding panels that mimic weathered barnboard. Looks like a go for tomorrow to finish off the experiment. What the success of this project will mean is that we can start planning for an enclosed porch built out from it which will house the water tank and shelter the well. And that means that indoor plumbing is that much closer!

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Two celebrations today!

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Today is just cause for two celebrations.

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The first and foremost is the success of the brain tumor surgery on Mark's sister. It went as flawlessly as anyone could have expected or hoped for. Up for grand kudos is his other sister who has efficiently anticipated every possible detail at home for a comfortable convalescence. Also up for commendation is their brother who took time off of his busy schedule to be in attendance through the entire procedure and assistance where help and moral support was needed. You folks are one awesome, caring family.

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The second celebration marks our first full year out here in the boonies. It's hard to believe that one year is the interval; sometimes it seems that we have been here for only a few months, at other times it seems like a decade of comfortable familiarity. Either way, it is a noteworthy notch on our belts to be highlighted by at least a variation in menu. From the small freezer, I pulled out two filet mignons from a batch which I had cut out of a whole tenderloin and then seasoned and wrapped in bacon. Such meat cuts here are twice the price that we had been used to paying and our income has plummeted so the occasions in which we bring them out are now considerably less frequent. That's okay, those rare warranted occasions now bring extra appreciation with them as a result.

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I was going to post a synopsis of what we have and have not accomplished in our first year here but a wild hair project of installing the first of our 'safe' wall mounted gas heaters emerged late this afternoon and ran into 'the generator zone'. The first hours of generator time are normally when I compose the next blog entry but we are both left a little lagging after that fairly successful installation. The only glitch is that the pilot light goes out after a while and the manual does not address that particular situation. Accordingly, we turned the supply valve off and, for at least the immediate future, will only activate the unit as it is needed.

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Now that we have gained some familiarity with working with black iron and heater installation, we have a better idea of what materials we need to install at least one more of these heaters before the depth of winter sets in. Mark diagrammed out the next installation and will pick up the required materials tomorrow. I may start to cut Styrofoam to infill the stud centers that we exposed today on a small part of the trailer. This is an experimental run at additional insulative efforts and is subject to change on the fly. If this phase of the project goes well, we will do the whole trailer and sheath it over with a fairly reasonably priced new composite siding that mimics deeply weathered barn siding. So far, the days have still been bearable for working outdoors, as long as you are working where direct sunlight hits. There is already ice building up along the north face of the mesa where the lower sun no longer casts its daily smile. The height of the sun's influence is still bringing temperatures in the 50s but night has seen temperatures as low as 10 degrees so far. We need to kick the pace up a notch before the real cold sets in.

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Next post: Hmmm - might depend on how much outdoor progress we can make in the next few days, assuming the forecast holds.

The Handyman Showdown

Retrospect: December 2005

Finally came the powwow between Mark and I - that moment of reckoning that we had both dreaded - what to do about the half likeable leech on our fiscal well being. We never said anything when he would repeatedly disappear for a half hour at a time in search of some tool in his little trailer abode or the day John 'searched' for 3 hours one morning for a $3 part before mentioning this quest to us. Mark could have driven into town for a replacement and back again in that amount of time with John actually doing something productive in the interim. But three weeks into this 'one week' extravaganza, he would now not commit to any fixed estimate on cost or completion date because we were apparently changing the scope of work on him. It never occurred to us that eliminating whole tasks such as covering in the trailer bottom or eliminating one entire bathroom would extend this farce. If he was referring to my proposed room lay-out as opposed to the existing, he was correct except that he listened intently and then went ahead and plumbed according to the existing lay-out anyway. When we questioned him on his lack of attention to the sewer, he said that this was not considered part of the 'plumbing' system?!?! Were we supposed to drill outlet holes low in the walls for all the water and waste building up in the trailer? Beyond that bombshell, he now refused to guarantee that we would ever have a functioning system in the end - he was after all just a pipefitter. The thrill was gone and we were fast losing that loving feeling.

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Two things happened to bring this festering carbuncle to a head: We decided to now only pay John when he had completed the promised work, in hopes that this incentive would quicken up his pace. Secondly, I forced myself to drop a hint to Willy the well man about the rate of progress versus John's rate of compensation. Now, you can't really tell if Willy is listening since he mutters and goes off topic a lot but apparently my comments seeded into very fertile ground ... and would hit the proverbial fan in a big way as we would soon see.

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John did not show up from town as scheduled for the next milking. When he did show up with his chauffeur/assistant a couple of days later, it was apparent that he was here for an unpleasant confrontation. Their eyes were spider-webbed in red and it was obvious that they had been drinking heavily both before and during the long ride into the canyon. How lovely.

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From what I could piece together later from his snippets of drunken blather, Willy had indeed passed the word on. Willy's son who had been generously providing lodging for John plus a company cell phone had rescinded those courtesies in disgust. The terms which must have flown about became clear when John muttered "Hmpphh, a crook ... I'll show him ... I'm taking his generator back ... a crook indeed, hmphh!!!"

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Like me, Mark is not a normally aggressive person but he was in rare form that day in not backing down to John's drunken verbal bluster. I tried to interject some valid points into the debate and John told me "YOU ... stay out of this!" I obliged but began to feel

that ever dreaded anger of protectiveness building up. It was that same buried and personally loathed rage of PTSD that gave me abnormal physical strength when that literally blinding fury had been reached. This same incited wrath once had me counter attack four classic (but rare) Harley buttholes who had physically attacked me for no justifiable reason. On that occasion, I flung them off like rag dolls and attacked the head provocateur of the assault. They scattered and retreated with mouths agape. It was necessary for self-preservation but I was not proud of my accomplishment and now, with this drunken John, I was trying to keep that powerful anger under control. I hoped that he or his helper would not attempt any physical aggression with Mark for I knew that I would lose it with no holds barred.

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To his credit, John did not succumb to drunken bravado and escalate the confrontation beyond words. Instead, he gathered his borrowed tools with a concluding "Well then, you can kiss-my-butt" and they departed foot-to-the-floor, covering us in a rooster tail of dirt. I had still been hoping for some rational resolution of the matter up until they stopped just up the road and hopped out to unload some of the copious booze which they had been imbibing. Again, I will credit John for being reasonably discreet in this operation but his assistant turned to face the trailer and vigorously wagged his miserable member at us. From that point on, I lost any residual empathy for either of them.

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To this day, we are not comfortable completing his plumbing job due to the PEX system of piping that he insisted upon. We did go out and buy the outrageously priced set of tools to replace his borrowed ones (over $200 for 2 unimpressive pieces) but have not had the heart to rework this inherited disaster and still remain without indoor plumbing to date.

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The most unfortunate peripheral damage of this encounter was Willy's obvious embarrassment - I am sure he felt responsible for the whole affair even though he really wasn't. As much as we still adore him, he did not stop by again with the exception of replacing the faulty well pump and retrieving his tow-behind trailer. That, to us, was the biggest insult which John had laid upon us. Willy was a fine and rare soul, the type you may be lucky enough to encounter once or twice during an entire lifetime.

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Humor of the day: (from Jim, my buddy in upstate New York)

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ATTENTION!!

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ALIENS ARE COMING TO ABDUCT ALL THE GOOD LOOKING AND SEXY PEOPLE.

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YOU WILL BE SAFE, I'M JUST E-MAILING TO SAY GOODBYE.

The Handyman from Hell Arrives

Retrospect: December 2005

Since John the assistant would be helping us with skirting and plumbing, Willy had lent him his personal hunting/trapping trailer to live in. Willy was just that way and it was obvious that he was willing to help out a guy a little down on his luck in any way he could. Like Willy and his drilling rig, this trailer was another character study in itself; one of those tiny vintage jobbies that looks like a flat-bottomed watermelon after you flat cut its two flanks off. The duct tape over the holes in the windows had dried out and flown away on the journey in and Willy enjoyed telling us the story about how a bear had crashed its paw through that forward window. We reconnoitered a private and fairly level spot on the other side of the barn and they skirted and insulated it with whatever they had found on the road in and whatever else was lying uncommitted around the barn. If I wanted to achieve a certain desert funk, I was certainly on the fast track now.

The next day would see the beginning of our priority projects! Mark and I had stocked the 16 foot trailer with treated 4x4s, T-111 siding and Styrofoam in anticipation. Soon, the trailer would be skirted, depriving the bitter winds of their ability to chill the floor to sub-zero temperatures.

John showed up some time after 9AM and started in. Was this exciting or what?! By the end of that first 7 or 8 hour day, he had framed in one short end of the trailer and maybe a fifth up one side - not exactly the lightning pace for which we had hesitantly justified his hourly rate. I had known many speed of light carpenters over the years and the amount of quality work which they could hammer out in a day always left me breathless. I have always been slow and methodical in everything and, realizing it, never demanded so much as half the pay of the jack rabbit boys. So ... here we had John working at my pace (although without the finesse and drive for perfection) but consuming the pay of a fast and masterly tradesman. Our quiet concerns and angst would begin to mount from that first day forth.

When the second day did not see any acceleration in the reaching of his touted stride, Mark and I quietly conspired to set him to work on the plumbing of the water and gas. He was, after all, an old oil field roustabout so running pipe would be his true forte. Mark took over the skirting project and I thanked John for letting him do so, that Mark needed a productive task. Not apparent to us at the time, John took this as an infringement on his long term gravy train. I started to keep track of his actual on-the-job time but we paid according to his own records - even though it was somehow always ran about 15% higher than my 'benefit of the doubt' entries. As petty sheisters often do, he was mistaking quiet, compliant generosity for complete stupidity. We watched his further behaviors more carefully now.

When John did not show up one morning as planned, I gave it 2 hours and finally went over to the little trailer. No response from a knock on the door. I was uncomfortable about doing so but I finally peeked into an uncovered window, hoping that I wouldn't catch him in some embarrassing state of dress. What I saw was a totally inanimate body in the back bunk. I eventually tapped on the glass and waited. Tapped a little louder and waited. I finally convinced Mark to give it a try while I wondered about the protocol of dealing with a corpse in the middle of nowhere. While he didn't get a response form John, Mark did return with the observation that 'corpses don't snore'.

When John did show up towards late afternoon, he noted that he had contracted that pneumonia-threatening bug from Willy and his son. I dutifully made him a warm meal later and took it over. I stayed and listened to his 'larger than life' tales for a while. What I got in return was that miserable illness. In my case, as always, it would persist for many, many months to come, ever teetering on the verge of pneumonia in our frigid living quarters. As we both succumbed to this vile plague, our own progress ground to a standstill. When not sleeping, I spent most of that time hunched over the propane blast furnace to soothe the deep chills and trying to drive the excruciating concrete feel of my lungs out with chest contracting exercises, hoping to drive fluids out of the pleura. It must have worked - I'm still here.

To be continued

Next post: 2 or 3 days

The Junk Pile Surprise

Recent Retrospect: September 26, 2006

I got part way through writing about the handyman from Hell and realized that it remains an upsetting subject so I will write about a different kind of snake today.

There certainly wasn't much here when we arrived and what little there was had been picked over well in the last few decades by outsiders. One of my favorite treks early on was to poke around in the junk across the road. It was obvious that one of the previous owners did not believe in recycling and scrapping old metal. Bailing and barbed wire by the cubic yard, squashed oil drums, rustic fence posts and a curious mix of debris from old vehicles and a burnt trailer. I used the charred bathtub as a perch when I had to make calls since the cell phone would only pick up a signal if I walked out closer to the middle of the canyon. I nearly froze my butt off out there in the open last winter and it probably contributed to my current complete disdain of talking on the phone. But I digress slightly.

It was a little over a month ago when I revisited the junk pile in search of some rustic planking. The pup came with me and dashed and poked around frantically since 'across the road' is normally verboten territory. I wasn't having much success scrounging in the closer piles so I wandered a little deeper into the sage. Yes, here was a promising stash! Just before I reached for the uppermost boards, I happened to notice an unusual, undulated shape otherwise blending in with the weathered grays of the wood. I'll be darned - it had to be a rattlesnake. Just then, I heard Brou crashing his way back towards me. Not good timing so I enticed him into a game of tag and we ran back to the trailer. Once he was safely inside, I grabbed the camera and left instructions with Mark to not let the pup out again until I had returned.

The rattler, it seems, was as chilled as I and trying to soak up a little early morning sun. It seemed to be engrossed in this process and ignoring me so I got to within maybe four feet of it and took a couple of photos. I don't find the zoom quality on this camera to be particularly dependable but I wasn't about to get nose to nose with the sleeping dragon so the photo clarity is not the best. The head of the rattler is shown in the lower right hand corner, peeking out of a crack in a plank. Unfortunately, his rattle was hidden under another plank on the left side of the photo.

With my photo evidence now taken care of and me still not convinced that it really was a rattler, I had to be the bad kid and go get a LONG stick, not quite the proverbial ten foot pole but sensibly long for the occasion. Nudge. No response. Poke. A mildly discernible response. Poke, nudge, poke, poke, poke. It opened its eyes e-v-e-r so slowly, their slit black pupils giving me a very cold and inscrutable stare. After a moment more of staring, it slowly straightened itself out as it stretched away to the shelter of another board and vanished completely. The last I saw of this snake was its rattles, all stacked neatly one atop the other like increasingly smaller beads on a dowel. They rattled only lightly from the snake's exiting motion. With no more mischief to be had, yours truly returned home safely with a new tale to tell.

Next post: a couple or three days from now

Most recent visitor

Current news update:

While I have been busily, anxiously watching the skies of late for the two golden eagles which wouldn't hesitate to grab a quick kitty dinner on the fly, only Brou the pup kept a constant vigil on the entire spectrum from ground to the heavens.

On several occasions yesterday, he erupted into rounds of uncharacteristic growls and serious business barks. And on several occasions yesterday, we ignored him, thinking that he was crying wolf to get our attention. When clearly no abatement was in sight, we each took a turn in coaxing him to elaborate, each of us walking towards the direction in which he was aiming his guttural threats. As we suspected ... nothing.

After another half dozen similar noisy displays, I stomped back out the door again, determined to find the cause; these were simply not the usual puppy-foolish barks at errant newspapers playing with the wind. He gladly followed behind me again. Notice that I said 'behind me'. He's not a foolish pup in that one respect and is quite willing to point me into battle - from a safe distance. Once more, we trudged out to the base of the mesa, this time to the avocado green steel tub which had abdicated earlier from the rat trailer. (I briefly entertained an idea of having an 'al fresco' bathing/soaking spot with a better view of the taller eastern mesas but the technicalities have yet to be resolved.) Brou kept up his intensity this time and I was able to narrow down his target area to an area below a large boulder. It was not my failing eyesight but my hearing that finally pinpointed the culprit. There, within the small cavern beneath the boulder, was one very annoyed creature. With no desire to get too much closer, I leaned slightly over the tub and strained my eyes to define the intruder. The creature was familiar to my memory banks but not from personal experience. By George, this was a badger!

Now, with my presence and confirmation, Brou's bravado was ratcheting upwards and I had to sternly warn him to not pursue his instincts. He settled down remarkably well but the badger was clearly agitated by now. The badger emitted long-winded hisses like a leak in a bicycle tire while his whole body rocked in a slow rhythm. I ran to get the digi camera but, by the time I returned, he had already hidden his impressively long claws. While he seemed to be a fairly young creature, those sharp curling claws matched the length of my fingers. I wanted neither the pup or the cats to engage this fellow and hoped that he would remember this unpleasant encounter and move on in the night. Thankfully, he was indeed gone without a trace this morning, according to both Brou's and my own careful inspection.

Next post: 2 or 3 days

The First Week - No water yet but soon ... soon!!!

Retrospect: November 2005

What a disheartening non-event and what a grim sight; three grown men standing there, staring down into a hole in the ground like they had just interred the nicest boa constrictor they had ever known. After that respectful moment or ten of silence, the theories and debates began, this and that tried - mostly involving larger and larger hammers. Although the pump supply house said that our 3000-watt Honda should drive the pump without a problem, I could see the little red and black unit attracting furtive glances. In a couple more days, Willy showed up with his son's massive generator, the kind you can light a small casino with. Still no cigar.

Next theory; ice! Ya gotta thaw out them lines, you know. The assistant aimed a kerosene heater at the pipe works, melting part of the Styrofoam he had commandeered in making the butt ugliest doghouse cube for this whole contraption. He went to great lengths to wrap all the components with a pricey woven stainless sheathed heat tape. Considering that we only ran the generator from sunset to bedtime, I wasn't convinced that it would be all that effective. They piled old insulation, blankets and rugs around the pipes and tank like the stuff was running a fever and left. Okay, so no water today. Apparently tomorrow wouldn't look good either.

Mark called the pump supply house and they very generously offered to lend us their fancy line tester. He picked it up on the next week's trip into town. A couple of weeks later, Willy showed up and it became apparent that he didn't know how to use this schmancy meter either. So ... the pump supply house very generously offered to send another new pump out for a try. Well, you know how it goes, what with Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, trapping season, pneumonia, Groundhog Day, new moon, old moon, etc., it would be a while before we saw Willy again. There would be more than one party to suggest that we were being a little too laid back about the situation but he really was the sweetest man on earth. We could no more press the matter than mug someone's little British 'mum', just no way.

The following months without well water were fairly miserable. A kind neighbor let us fill up our two empty cat litter jugs when I was working there two or three times a week (yes, another story for another time). That came to between eight to twelve gallons a week to run a household on - roughly equivalent to one or two average toilet flushes. I remembered a comment from a water department employee that they planned for EACH household member using 100 gallons of water PER DAY. We were experiencing a crash course on severe water conservation. I found that cutting paper towels into many tiny squares and wetting each one with generic Listerine gave some solace. We also learned to stand downwind when socializing. Lighting the burn barrel just as company arrived also worked fairly well.

Next entry: 2–3 days (I really am a shameless creature of habit and ritual.)

The Sunday Family Hike

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Today is Sunday. The frost burned off quickly but maybe that was an illusion brought only by the time change. At noon, the skies were still sunny with only a light mackerel scaling brushed across the horizon. What would we accomplish today? Pwah! After all these years of working, it is hard to consider ourselves as semi-retired and have to force the issue.

The cats were annoyed and restless since I had kept them in most of the day. With an impressively sized raptor and its mate circling the canyon all day, I wasn't about to let them out unchaperoned. I had been getting the resentful look from Beautiful Dave the Cat which we know so well to mean "You suck!!! You suck!!!" You have to say this in a voice slightly lower than a cartoon chipmunk since he is still a fairly young fellow. So perhaps a family hike was in order and not just a hike over to the barn but a genuine up-the-side-of-the-mesa adventure. The party would include Mark and I, Brou the pup, Ming the Merciless and Beautiful Dave. The photo above (above because I don't know how to stick it anywhere else in the blog) shows one adult male, one dog taking a pant break and two cats at the summit. Can you find both cats?

The nice thing about our isolation is that no one can see a strange procession resembling a trailer from some Disney animal adventure movie. Believe it or not, the cats are excellent hiking partners, never wandering more than 50 feet away and, in fact, become quite perturbed and vocal when they think they are being left behind. Brou, as usual, made his 30 steps for every one of ours. At the top, we stopped to take a panorama set of photos of the view and then followed a random set of muledeer tracks for a while as a vague excuse for adventure. "The boys" would side track only occasionally to pose as mountain lions atop exceptionally good and stately rock formations. You could feel the Walter Mitty thoughts radiating from their smug and sublime countenances - they were in feline ecstasy.

After a few trial and error route attempts, we found our original path and, surprisingly, the boys led the way down enthusiastically once I identified the beginning of the tricky path. Mark had to lower Brou down to the path. Other than that one instance, Brou flew back and forth between all of us with the élan of a mountain goat. Thanks to gravity, the descent was far more treacherous but we all made it down without any rodeo rides on the loose shale. Curiously, it was our four-leggers who made the immediate beeline to their favorite crash spots as soon as we got back to the rat trailer. Mark and I just sat quietly, awake and vaguely aware of mild aches setting in. It was a glorious day and trek indeed.

Next entry: In 2 or 3 days

The First Week - Well Drilling

Retrospect: November 2005

The next big step in civilizing our new life here would be a source of potable water and Willy the well driller showed up as promised that first week. He was one of those distinct characters not soon forgotten, a wiry fellow in his 70s with a face that hinted of a very hard living and working past and a million adventures. The sparkle in his eyes not only warned of a dry and mischievous sense of humor but a heart as big across as this canyon. He occasionally flashed two rows of castellated gums which proclaimed that there were priorities beyond selfish vanity ... or else an extreme phobia to dentists but I like to consider the former possibility first. The age of his drilling rig equally mirrored a hard life in the desert sun, sporting a DIY crackle paint job that would make Ralph Lauren envious. The crackle effect was unintentional but added another 20 years of patina to the beast, reminding me of the '50s vintage Mad Max-looking rig of a handyman we had met a decade before. To our amazement, Willy's rig was more than 20 years newer.

Willy enjoyed talking to himself and we tried to follow his comments and nimble movements as he trotted through the bush to find some particularly special sort of wood. "Aha - he must be dowsing ... cool!" we thought. After a number of attempts at twiggery, he mumbled some more, tossed the branch aside and just set the rig as close as he could comfortably get to the rat trailer, about 7 feet out. He slipped coveralls over his dapper western attire and set to work immediately, his assistant keeping up with his pace for the most part. As the afternoon temperatures dropped, Willy stopped to unload an old 55 gallon steel drum and freehand cut an almost perfectly symmetrical ring of 2" holes a few inches up from the barrel's bottom with his cutting torch. The assistant was right on top of that operation and they soon had a warming fire to retreat to when gloves and clothing became saturated with the cold and damp. I soon realized that guarding my sparse supply of loose vintage barn board would now become a priority occupation. The drilling head slammed away into the sand and clay for a few more hours until even the barrel could no longer fend off the deep evening chills and they headed out of the canyon well after sunset.

They resumed drilling the next day around lunchtime. We would eventually figure out that Willy had little interest in getting to a work location early in the day. Age-wise, he should have been able to retire long ago but was at least exercising some benefits of it by starting the day when he was darn well ready. The late afternoon burn barrel socializing became the highlight of our following days, especially when his grown son and friends came out to see dad's latest project. The son had come home from a round the clock gas drilling job in Utah. He was making the big bucks but the long hours had taken their toll on him. He coughed and shivered over the burn barrel continuously and ended up hospitalized with pneumonia a week later. We didn't catch the bug from him but Willy's assistant would later add it to the many other 'blessings' he would leave us with.

After 3 or 4 days of steady pounding, the rig hit water at 42 feet and worked its way down another 20 feet before Willy was content. He continually examined samples expunged from the long bailing tube which took turns in the well hole with the drilling head. He was very pleased with the quality and quantity of water which he found there. The next day, when there was actually light to see by again, would see the installation of the pump.

Somewhere in all this, the assistant had been nonstop regaling us with his "10 years experience" in reworking mobile homes. It sounded as though he could skirt the trailer in for the winter, reconnect all the gas AND water plumbing in about one week - had done it a zillion times and he could do the same for us. Given the encroaching winter weather, we gave him the go ahead although his quoted per hour wage made us a little weak in the knees. What the heck, that times one week was still worth it. I will devote another whole page to that affair later however.

When Willy showed up in daylight for the pump installation, we were excited. He wired up the new pump, dropped it down the hole, fired up our new generator and ... sigh ... nothing happened.

Next entry: 2 or 3 days - seems to be a pattern developing here, doesn't it?

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Fun link of the day: (courtesty of Eric, the mad dragon-boat Viking)

http://www.hurtwood.demon.co.uk/Fun/copter.swf

Can you fly a helicopter? This will drive you nuts!

The First Week - Let there be light!

Retrospect: November 2005

The next big advance of the week so far was securing a generator. We had already contracted an electrician to convert the trailer's main electric panel feed from standard line feed to a plug-in. With the help of our ABQ friend, we chose a Honda EU3000 generator. This generator uses inverter technology which produces a pure sine wave ideally suited for powering sensitive electronics such as our computers and features a variable speed throttle that allows it to run for up to twenty hours on a single tank of gas. Not cheap at about $2000 but being able to flick a wall switch and have real light at night was beyond thrilling after life with that single Coleman butane lantern. We bought a good supply of compact fluorescent bulbs and ran through the trailer replacing the old incandescents with them. Every watt would count from now on and these bulbs used about 25% of the power demanded by the standard style bulbs. Now that we are familiar with them, we would continue to use them even if we ever found ourselves back on the grid.

The generator ran extremely well for a couple of weeks and then left me suddenly without light one night. Of course, it had to be that one rare night when Mark retired early so I found myself groping around and cursing at furniture which jumped out and bit me repeatedly before finding my flashlight in the front room. Given the bitter cold outside, I had no intentions of troubleshooting that night and simply resigned earlier than usual.

What we discovered the next day was a sooty and fouled plug with a bridge of carbon in the spark gap. A good cleaning would possibly get us through until the next town trip but a rich plug is nothing to live with long term or the excess, unburnt gas will wash the lubing oil off the cylinder . Sure enough, it fired back up again but we now knew that the unit was jetted for a much lower altitude, a matter which the dealer had not thought to question us about. It's not something that jumps out at you but we are about three hundred feet higher than our nearest neighbor and probably one thousand feet higher than the town where we bought the unit.

Mark soon brought home a spare spark plug and a smaller main jet from the dealer and both were reasonably easy to replace. Now we were ready for anything, including the ability to pump well water when that day came. You know the deal by now ... "Or so we thought".

Next post: 2 or 3 days (but they are predicting MORE rain!)

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Humor of the Day: (courtesy of the Tomato Man)

Last night, my wife and I were sitting in the living room talking about many things. The idea of a living will came up and I said to her, "I never want to live in a vegetative state, dependent on some machine and fluids from a bottle. If I ever come to that just pull the plug."

She got up, unplugged the TV and then threw out my beer.

Most beautiful vehicle in the world

Current news:

Now you might be inclined to debate the aesthetics of the machine shown above but you probably wouldn't if you had been shut-in for a couple or three weeks, desperately needing to make a toilet paper run. Especially if your morning started off like ours did.

It was Thursday morning and simply time to make a supply run. We had heard reports that the roads were tricky but mostly passable. Mark loaded up the truck with empty gas cans and propane tanks and we hoped that everything needed was down on the list. He warmed up the new truck a little and disappeared down the road.

About 45 minutes later, he showed up again. No truck, just him with muddy feet. ??? It would appear that the first real road mire from here, about a mile away, had grabbed hold of the truck and refused to let go. Why dogs are better than mud is because you can usually convince a dog to let go of something without resorting to the big stick. But you can talk all you want to some mud and it isn't going to listen to reason until you get out the stick. With my smaller Dakota's transmission doing strange things lately, we didn't have that bigger stick on hand. What to do now? With the ongoing rains ripping up the roads, there had been less than two vehicles go by in the last week. So while we weren't going to be holding up a lot of traffic, potential truck rescuers were also going to be scarce. We called our gas field friend (he hasn't entered into the retrospect journal yet but, without him, this story probably wouldn't be possible). He would inspect his wells up this way and tug the truck out on the way by. As usual, I paced restlessly in the interim, working up a great palpitating case of anxiety. When the rendezvous call came in, we piled into my truck and headed back to the truck-eating bog.

We shoveled furiously in the few minutes before Virgil arrived since parts of the truck body were no longer visible. It became apparent that the truck had panned itself on the harder packed material like a turtle on a matchbox. The pull-out work went very well with the truck liberated on the second tug. The problem was that the truck could only be pulled out from the far side. Now he would have to cross back through it to come home again. While they disappeared up the road to a turn around, I shoveled madly again, this time trying to cut down the mud pack between the ruts where the truck had bottomed out initially. When I heard the trucks returning, I grabbed Brou and cleared out of the way. They passed through the muddy run throwing plumes of chocolaty gumbo high into the air. People sometimes pay good money to watch such displays but Brou and I were watching for free today. With his very good deed of the day accomplished, Virgil went to finish his well checks and we returned home to rethink the supply run strategy.

Within an hour, we could hear heavy equipment moving around in the canyon. The noise grew incrementally louder over the next hour before I saw a manned yellow box pop up from the low spot on the road. It slowly morphed into a big yellow cat, that road grader of our prayers answered. The sloughs and ruts that held us captive for so long were healed over as he rolled by. We couldn't help but smile and wave vigorously as he passed by on his return run. The possibility of life outside the canyon existed once more in his wake. Friday could now guarantee a town run for supplies and mail. The challenge and resolution often involved in these ordinarily mundane events have been a satisfying part of life for us here. Perhaps eradication of such simple daily challenges in our Western culture will not prove such a blessing in the long run.

Next entry: 2 or 3 days from now (if the creek don't rise again)

Rain, mud and a dead cow

Current news: (written Sunday night)

Warning: Long, descriptive narrative to follow. If you don't have the time to read it all, go directly to synopsis at bottom of this journal entry.

When I finally poked my head out the door this morning, I was pleasantly surprised to see less rain damage than expected. The rain gauge registered 1.1 inches, a destructive quantity for this barren landscape to handle at one sitting.

The sun had regained its hold and it was a very nice 48 degrees by 9AM. Perhaps the rains would finally relent their tenure here. I would celebrate by taking the puppy for a walk down to the creek to check its running status. This was not a light undertaking since the half mile trek was spiked with deep cut ravines and slick mud pockets. I put on my rubber boots, the first serious pair I have ever owned, and headed gingerly across the road. Brou was now geared far higher than his normal overdrive and took twenty leaps in a joyous and widely rebounding zigzag pattern for every step I managed. After this outing, perhaps he would rest quietly upon the floor when we returned - at least I could hope so.

Brou knew the mission and offered to show me the way to the creek bank, first this way and then that way and then four or more additional options. They all involved mud, always a treacherous mix of potter's clay and something akin to hypoid gear oil. I deemed him the anti-guide as usual and carefully planned my own path through the sage brush to the next more forgiving patch of light-colored sand. My old kick-starting right hip complained bitterly as did my back and neck but this was better than sitting in a chair, surrounded by the chant of the hurty harpies. You could become deeply lost in your other thoughts out here with the challenge of every careful step drowning out those usual voices of pain. And so I walked on, my eyes busily analyzing every next step, the unavoidable mud flats suckling at my big black rubber boots, still vaguely aware of the ever criss-crossing Brou. The sun's heat and the marching movements were adding ease to every new step now. If I were to walk another ten miles in this fashion, could I perhaps then take flight effortlessly and soar far above these ever-nagging carnal miseries? Get real. But the brief fantasy was a beautiful respite.

My pleasant reveries were interrupted by a set of deep cloven tracks crossing my path. My mission to survey the state of the creek was now usurped by a new mission; to find this unknown cow eating up our range which was supposed to be in a state of seasonal rest. I turned west and followed the trail. Despite my stopping to point out the prints to Brou, he would stop to sniff and then dash off in a random direction. The path of the tracks was laborious to follow and I found myself finally at the high edge of the creek bank, some 30 feet above the creek itself. Like the phantom owner of the tracks, I turned back and then followed its many half-loop checks for a way down into the creek bed below. I did stop to notice that the creek had pulled in its skirts and was now content within an eight to ten foot channel. Still not safely crossable but an encouraging sign.

Finally the terrain sloped down hill at a more reasonable angle and I followed the tracks downward, noting their occasional long skid marks as a caution to my own next steps. I had no intention of mudboarding in my boots down the entire slope. There was no clear shot and the path was continually punctuated by jagged plants. This thought brought a grin to my face as I remembered my first walk with Mark down to the creek. He lost his footing and rode down the mud on his buttocks until he came to an abrupt stop by straddling a yucca plant like a bull rider. All I can say is that the yucca is not a pleasant plant for a gentlemen to be doing the hoochy coochy with. After a lot of knee jerk expletives, he made the rest of the descent in a slower and much more dignified manner, albeit now in a slightly bow-legged stride.

Brou and I scoured the flood plain but never caught site of any cow in the distance. Now, you need to realize here that I am no blood hound, no hunter-gatherer type either. My absent-minded revelations and steps were interrupted by a pile of what looked curiously like semi-ripe black olives. The "Doh" light came on when I connected the dots between that pile and the others I had already stepped around. This was no bovine ghost at all but a VERY large elk. He must have slipped across the canyon to evade the mesa full of soggy hunters. Looks like the old boy will survive the harvest one more year.

With that mission coming to a sudden end, Brou and I followed the bull elk tracks up another shallow embankment and headed for home. The mile between us and home went by fast with Brou continually flushing birds out of the taller brush and me still watching my every step. A starkly white spot popped into view and turned into a very large and sun-bleached mammal hip of some sort. It wasn't long before we found a nearly complete cow carcass on the other side of a rain water puddle. It was no longer pungent enough to command a roll in it from Brou or he would have spent the night howling outside of the rat villa. I was deeply thankful. Cattle sometimes die from predation, other times from mundane to utterly mysterious causes out here on the range. The unexpected death of this animal undoubtedly represented a troubling thinner margin to some cattleman somewhere.

As I was writing down today's events, the clouds knotted together in another dark charcoal ensemble and began wailing again. The lightning and thunder were even closer and more vocal than last night's show and the creek's vigor has just been renewed. These desert banshees have finally played themselves out and the deep quiet we love has returned ... but for how long? I do not know.

Synopsis: It rained. I went for a walk. I came home. It rained.

Next likely post: in a couple of days

The Creek is running high and wide!

Current news: written Saturday night

If Saturday wasn't the day of the heaviest rains since we arrived, it will certainly win the red ribbon. It will be interesting to see what the rain gauge declares tomorrow. Neither of us cares to risk falling on our faces in the mud tonight. Inches of rain received or not received is a mainstay of conversation out here so you better know what fell on you recently. We began this rain log back in July when the rainy season, called 'the monsoons', started. When I think of monsoons, I think of natives ducking for shelter in swaying thatch-roofed huts. Wrong image, at least for the last decade from what we've been told. But this year has been different and in just four months we have logged in more rainfall than is usually expected for the entire year.

I prefer the light, gentle rains which slowly soak into the ground. That's not it today, kitty. Dumping, splatting rains combined with a little hail and plenty of lightning and thunder. When these real bad boys hit, the dry ground shuns the water and it rolls downwards to join the other spurned waters. They bring sand, pebbles, pinecones and the odd cow pie along for a hairy ride down the mesa steps until they cascade in the color of chocolate milk into the canyons below. In our case, they sweep past our encampment at the mesa foot, either digging away at anything standing in the way or piling fresh debris around it. I don't doubt that our shovel-wide diversion ditch behind the trailer was overwhelmed tonight and that the morning will bring retrenching and numerous repairs. When you have a trailer sitting up on little more than cement blocks, you really don't want Mother Nature washing them away like shoreline flotsam.

We can hear the normally dry creek roaring now in rapids and ripping away tall banks as it heads to the main canyon. The roads had barely healed themselves of mud sloughs from last weekend's lighter rains and we may regret that we had cancelled our last two weekly supply runs. This latest offering may have us sequestered for another two weeks. The good news is that Mark built a small mouse-proof walk-in pantry very early on in the game and it is reasonably well stocked with edibles. But one item allowed to dwindle to nothing was toilet paper. Paper towels are also getting scarce and newspaper is NO substitute, just trust me on that one. Aside from a few dripping windows however, we are warm and dry compared to the hunters who are encamped in the neighboring areas. They began arriving on Friday and one truck dusted by barely before dusk with two adults and several young children aboard. They had no trailer in tow or camper so I imagine that this has been a glum dad and lad tenting experience for them. Hopefully they took Friday night's rains as a warning and left today. If not, they will encounter deeply muddy roads, which are partially washed out, and likely a few impassable washes. Reporting in to work on Monday morning may not be an option for them. This is a hostile and brutal land if you are caught unprepared by the unexpected. Yep, you know that there plenty of those stories coming up in the weeks ahead.

First week - Real Heat! (sort of)

Retrospect
November 17th, 2005

No trip to town necessary for another week now. We had made it home with the supplies the day before but in a way which could become a tauntingly repetitive theme for every trip to come thereafter - we didn't beat the setting sun. Luckily, the pitch black didn't fall on us until we were closer to the more recognizable last 10 miles. We now also remembered that the sun took any hint of comfortable heat with it and we unpacked the truck with record efficiency. The first objective was to unpack the small propane blast furnace which we found at the big box DIY store. It cautionned "Not for residential use" but we were desperate. We had a choice of freezing to death or breathing a bit of CO. We chose the latter since living in the rat trailer was roughly equivalent to standing in a wind tunnel. The air exchange rate must have been impressive. We would not leave it on during the night but use it to pump up the temperature just before bedtime and just have to hope that the heat would keep us above freezing level until morning. Maybe not ideal but a great improvement over the night before.

We had dragged home three of their 10 pound tanks to fuel it, too - the small barbeque kind that they lock up in cages outside the store. The unit fired up and radiated a joyous heat. I slumped down into a hard chair and gazed into the center of the heater housing, beyond the roaring flame, to the other side. The embossed warning there sent the comforting dyslectic message "!toH" Yes! toH, toH, toH and those Hot waves were beginning to reach my shivering torso. The cats were soon rolling around and grinning like laughing Buddhas. This might have been their first real indulgent pleasure since we curtailed their old roaming 'at large' habits over a month ago. They had become grim and joyless in the interim. We had been amply warned that coyotes would snatch up an errant cat in short order so we were now constantly guarding the door lest they slip out. I knew that I could not handle another loss of a beloved pet friend during this trying adaptation period. As much as the loss of a small friend, it was dealing with Mark's quiet but grinding, sigh-filled suffering and knowing that I could do nothing to ease his sorrow.

The reverie in this new heat was interrupted abruptly. I noticed Mark making my same bunny nose twitches just as I said "Gee, do you smell something? Kinda like a burning smell or something?" I forget which one of us was first to dive towards the heater's off switch but I remember shoving the heater back with my foot. Beneath the heater lay a still sizzling patch of kitchen floor tile that used to imitate marble. Nowhere in the instructions did we notice a warning that this unit would sear the snot out of anything less stalwart than the deck of the Queen Mary. Oh joy. After a few moments of brain storming, we dragged in 4 solid core concrete blocks and stacked them pedestal style over the newly brindled faux marble. This quick fix would see us through the winter without further melt downs. The incident also molded our direction in terms of how to eventually update the rat trailer flooring in practical and much safer ways. More on that to follow as the rat rehab begins.

First week - To Town and Back

Retrospect
November 16^th, 2005

There would be so many firsts in the coming months. This would be our first drive out of the canyon from our permanent home. That idea was almost impossible to absorb after all the trials of getting here. But here we were, finally, the morning bright and electric, the air clear and brisk as the truck scuffed along the gritty tan roads. "Wow! Look over here, look over there! I don't remember seeing that before now!." That comment would continue to emerge on every drive to follow and, according to our nearest neighbor, this is how it has been for her over the last 50 years - always seeing something new in the million year old faces of tall rock. The roads wound through the canyon bottoms, sometimes climbing up and tightly arching around the knees of the mesas to escape the normally dry riverbed's deep serpentine path. No idiot-friendly guard rails to obstruct the views below, no gaudy parade of warning signs to clutter the views of immensely raw beauty ahead.

Occasionally a sand-colored rising plume of dust miles away would herald the oncoming of a vehicle. They were almost always gas field trucks, some small, some huge. It didn't take long to notice a curious pattern; the closer to our place in the boonies, the more likely that the drivers would return a jovial wave but the closer to town, the more likely they were to stare intently ahead without acknowledgement. We haven't quite figured out an explanation for that. Perhaps heading deeper into the canyon fosters camaraderie, i.e. "If I break down out here in the middle of nowhere, maybe you will remember my friendly wave and stop to help."

After an hour of rumbling through the dust, we hit pavement and the town came into view shortly thereafter. We stopped in for breakfast at a non-chain diner on the outskirts. At that hour, a little past the breakfast rush, the diner was populated by a variety of ranchers, retired folks, the odd trucker and Navajos, usually with small round-faced children in tow. The pervasive aroma of coffee, clattering dishes and friendly chatter surrounded our booth with a comforting din as we dragged out the list of stops to be made. We would have to make the rounds as efficiently as possible lest we take the unfamiliar route back home in darkness. The other joy of stopping here was to use their real porcelain thrones. You just can't appreciate such things until you find yourself without and likely so for a long time to come. I will address that matter further down the line. If you plan on going boonie, you need to consider this seemingly minor detail very carefully.

There was mail waiting for us but nothing at the shipping terminal yet. The composting toilet didn't seem like a priority then but I was disappointed that the propane refrigerator was still out in transit somewhere. I would now have to drastically alter the grocery shopping list and stick to camp-out food for another week. I could probably tolerate the nasty kitchen as long as I had some sanitary place to store perishables. If not this week, this would become a reality next week. Or so I thought. You will see a lot of that last phrase in the coming months.

Next post? The rains have the creek threatening to rise again and disrupting the regular flow of life here so maybe give me an extra day or two, just in case. Then again, I might surprise you with something sooner. That's just the way life is out here.

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Humor of the day: (A little senior teasing from buddy John in AZ)

Maxine took her car to her mechanic. She told him "Every time I take any of my friends out in my car there is this terrible odor after a while. It never happens when I am on my own."

This intrigued the mechanic so he said, "OK, lets go for a spin and see what the problem is." Off they went. She drove down a one-way street in the wrong direction at 70 MPH, swerving, hitting the curb on both sides of the street, narrowly missed three people in pedestrian crossings, ran several red lights and just missed a policeman on traffic duty.

They returned to the shop and she said, "There ... there it is now, isn't that terrible? Can you smell it?"

"Are you kidding?!! Smell it? Lady, I'm sittin' in it!!"

The end of that first, long cold night

After supper and reflections, we realized that the cold had been doggedly prying its way into the trailer with leg ups from the wind. There would be no relief from the dropping temperatures except for a huddle in bed, a bed which didn't exist yet. We fumbled through the mound of retailer bags and found the new blow-up mattress and linens. The mattress pump had a charge and an inflated form soon emerged which would lightly separate us from the uninsulated floor. The linens seemed inadequate so the old arctic sleeping bags were added to the growing heap. Every 'man' and cat to himself now. Our bodies were the only heat source in bed for the first shuddering ten minutes but sleep would graciously end the torment for both of us in time.

Funny thing about those cats; they never were very social at bedtime ... until that night. Within an hour, they became purring, tunneling, heat-sinking long lost best friends. Don't let anyone ever tell you that two cats make up for a two dog night but we still appreciated the extra heat contributions. All four of us ended up with noses barely peeking out of the covers, all emitting steady plumes of condensate into the frigid night air.

No window shades came with the rat trailer so the cats were up as usual at the very first dull stripes of light to climb up over the mesas. As cats do, they were then compelled to awake us, their miserable palace eunuchs. Only half-awake, I tried to drag each of them back under the covers but they bested me. Mark, as always, was the first to concede to their demands and performed a frenetic gig as he slipped back into his icy clothes. The cats glared accusingly back and forth between him and their water dish which was now frozen solidly right to the bottom. Determined soul that he is, he set up the new camping stove on the scaggy kitchen counter and touched off the butane. He had to have coffee this morning, period - some rituals must not be neglected for any reason. The side benefit would be real liquid water for the cats. I remained in bed, awake but not willing to come out until my breath ceased to form clouds. Eventually the solar gain through the windows and the pathetic heat coming off the camp stove made that wish almost reality and I joined the trio.

Pen and pad were found to inventory the list of needed items which the night had explained to us in very clear terms. It was obvious that a long run into town was necessary before we dealt with one more night. While the high desert will usually offer above freezing temps during the day, it will bring well below freezing temps at night in the winter.

Items scrawled down: a better heat source, small propane tanks to supply it, panel nails and caulking to nail down the wind-friendly paneling, my favorite mylar bubble sheeting to cover the single glazed windows and blank off the unused parts of the rat trailer. Check if the new composting toilet and propane refrigerator had arrived at the shipping terminal. Hardy foods that may not object to light freezing every night, forget the greens for now. Water, yes, water would be nice to have on hand, too.

A new and dependable water source was certainly a priority. The natural spring which we had hoped would sustain us proved to be a floating mausoleum of long dead critters now. We would have to find another more sanitary permanent source of water. That new-fangled cell phone did not have a signal this far out but, once in town, Mark placed a call to the well-driller who had repaired our grazing well up on top of the mesa the Fall before. He would be out at week's end with the rig. Awesome luck, an immediate touch of civilized dignity so soon!

Or so we thought.

Next likely post: 2 or 3 days from now

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Humor of the day (courtesy of 'the tomato man') :

During these serious times, people of all faiths should remember these four religious truths:

1. Muslims do not recognize Jews as God's chosen people.

2. Jews do not recognize Jesus as the Messiah.

3. Protestants do not recognize the Pope as the leader of the Christian world.

4. Baptists do not recognize each other at Hooters.