Rain in Black Fox Hollow

     The bad weather which was promised for this evening set in shortly after noon.  There is now a pretty steady rain which the birds at the suet and sunflower seed feeders are ignoring.   It is interesting to notice that the rain seems to trigger greater cooperation among the birds. Two and three species sit next to each other feeding.  A Downy woodpecker is sharing the suet with a Carolina Wren.  Even the Cardinals, who are giants compared to most of those at the feeder and who usually cause those gathered to scatter, is sharing.  

     I'm sitting at the window looking out into Black Fox Hollow.  Of course my eyes are attracted to the little blue flags that mark the new trees in the hollow.  That's because six of those flags are for trees that I just planted yesterday.  I knew that the rain was coming and I'm lucky to have them all in.  We return west next week.  We've been working to find under-story trees and large trees that will be able to replace our big mature trees when their time comes.  In the succession of a temperate deciduous forest we have a mix of the last two stages - mature forest (oak, hickory) and climax forest (beech, sugar maple).  Fortunately we are more in the mature forest succession which will hopefully give us time.  We do have one elder beech, but most of these last succession trees are still young.  Of  course Pamela and I won't see the fruits of this labor of love in our life-time, but if we are followed by people who will continue to protect this patch of forest, that seems to be more and more surrounded by the starkness of suburban sprawl, we will be happy. 

     Water is already gathering in an area just west of  the trail and our depression.  I think, if we really pushed it, we could get the area designated a wetland.  It takes very little water to have a couple of inches standing.  The depression - we have been told it isn't a sink hole - has a giant Beech standing like an island in the middle, flanked by a Sycamore in the lowland and a Chestnut Oak on slightly higher ground.  We have two PawPaw (Asimina triloba) between the Beech and Sycamore.  They like wetlands and will be good under-story trees.

     The county agent, who gave our trees a clean bill of health, said that he wouldn't be surprised if our depression isn't an entrance to a nearby cave that has filled in.  He knows that it goes under the school less than two-hundred yards away.  There are a few deep, dark holes that make us wonder.  Actually, if it is a hidden entrance, it most likely connects to the famous Mammoth Cave.  The Mammoth Cave National Park is less than sixty miles from here. Black Fox Hollow sits right in the heart of the Western Pennyroyal Karst area.  Our magnificent limestone outcroppings attest to this.  Digging in the hollow is anything but fun. If you don't hit rock you hit tree roots.  In attempting to plant one of the Eastern Red Buds I had to try three times.  But I wouldn't give up a single rock or root.

     Given the privilege of protecting this parcel of natural history is what keeps me sane as we return twice a year to visit family in the over-populated eastern US where you can not drive anywhere without being in sight of human influence.     

Is time precious?

Powderhorn Wilderness, CO.  credit thearmchairexplorer.com

     Scott Stillman, in his 2018 book “Wilderness: gateway to the soul”₁, raised a profound question in a very casual way.  He asked “Is time precious?”  

     I do believe that very likely a majority of westerners – US, Canada and Europe – would reply with a resounding “of course”.  Why would they do that?  Because we’ve all been taught since childhood that ‘time is precious. You don’t waste time’.  How many times in your life have you heard someone say or tell you ‘time is precious’.  I don’t want to get off the subject, but this is very typical of a capitalistic, consumer society.  We have been taught a concept of time as an entity that is fixed and can be wasted.  Not doing something which contributes to the promotion of the capitalistic consumer society is considered a waste of time.  But what is time? Really. 

     Martin Heidegger, the famous German philosopher of the early twentieth century, wrote a book in 1927 entitled “Sein und Zeit”  (Being and Time) which spends 529 pages making an ontological argument about the relationship between being and time.  Albert Einstein’s General Relativity (1905-1915) basically destroyed our simplistic concept of time as a fixed entity.  Most people think a minute is a minute is a minute.  Einstein showed that space and time are intertwined and that gravity causes masses; e.g. the Earth; to warp space-time around them.  In other words, time is not a fixed entity.

    So, what do we have?  We have those who believe time means taking action which is beneficial to the capitalistic-consumer society, we have those who relate it to our finite existence and those who see it as a factor in relation to gravity and space.  Wow!   The only one who calls time “precious” is the one who is benefiting from the labor which you contribute to their wealth and success. 

     In my mind this is all calling into question whether or not one can waste time.  If one’s life is as happy and content as possible, can we accuse that person of wasting time no matter what they do or do not do?  Whether or not we waste time is obviously a subjective determination dependent upon who pulls your strings.  If you are a good child of modern capitalism, it is that society that is convinced that we must do everything possible to contribute to the capitalistic society no matter what it does to us personally. No matter whether we find life happy or content.  

     That, of course, still doesn’t answer the question of whether time is precious?  I like Scott Stillman’s answer as he shares his experience of Powderhorn Wilderness, Colorado.

   "Is time precious?  What's more precious, time or the present moment?  Up here clock time is gone. Distractions are gone. In their place - peace, pure essence.  The essence of life.  I'm content to let things be as they are. If it rains let it rain. If it's windy let it blow. Everything I need I have.  There is nothing else to even decide, apart from should I eat, should I drink, should I pee?  Besides basic survival nothing has to be done at all.  The brain takes a well-deserved rest and meditation becomes my reality. What if there were a secret back-door portal to enlightenment?  A shortcut, so to speak. I believe that the answer lies here, in wilderness."  (p. 44)

    If you were expecting me to give a definitive answer, I’m sorry to disappoint you. Like so many things in life, you must experience to understand and find the answer for yourself.  Fortunately, we still have wilderness in North America that hasn’t been given to some corporation to mine, drill or otherwise destroy for the sake of profit. Wilderness where you will find what you cannot find in the chaos of modern life. Wilderness filled with peace, tranquility and enlightenment. Go and learn the answer for yourself.  It will give you new life and save your soul.  

FOOTNOTES:

1.      Stillman, Scott. (2018). Wilderness: gateway to the soul.  Boulder, CO.  Wild Soul Press.  (available on Kindle) 

Personality Disorder

Several years ago I had a meeting where a young graduate student, who was doing a practicum with one of the mental health care providers, started telling me about an amazing man he had met right there in the office.  The man, he said, was unbelievably intelligent, and responsible for all the progress in the company’s care program but couldn’t get the job he deserved heading up the agency because of staff jealousy. The young grad student was going to go to bat for the persecuted genius.  I didn’t need to be told this phenomenal person’s name. I knew him well. He was a patient of mine.

The truth. The man had a personality disorder (PD). This poor persecuted man had been recently released from a hospital for the “criminally insane” (archaic term but what it was called).  He had been incarcerated there after being caught baiting pre-teen girls.  I won’t share the gruesome details.  I somehow became the clinician responsible for his behavior program; i.e. keeping him out of trouble when the State turned him loose.  He lived with two other men with similar histories and full-time trained caregivers.  He had convinced authorities that he was cured and had gone for some years without any serious violations of the rules. 

There is no cure at this time for personality disorder (PD). People with PD almost always present as “normal” (whatever that is), very intelligent, even when they’re not, and being persecuted by an ignorant world that just doesn’t know or understand. They are always right and will throw a temper tantrum, even, as with this man, becoming violent and vindictive when their story or behavior is challenged.  Since I never saw a mild case, all of my PD patients were either in prison or a mental institution. I spent a lot of time trying to get judges to put them an institution instead of prison. Sadly, the judges all knew that the State would soon come along and discharge them and the process would start over.

Having convinced authorities that he was cured and not a threat to himself or others, this man gained more freedom even though there were always trained staff nearby.  It was a very short time later that staff caught him sneaking into a computer where he was cruising social media for young girls and had two pre-teen girls ready to meet him. It was also learned that he was telling at least one young woman at the sheltered workshop that he was going to marry her and take her away because he was really very rich and people were just jealous of him. Not surprised.  I’ve had a lot of patients with PD and they’ve all been very good at convincing the unsuspecting that whatever they say is true no matter how improbable it may sound. That might be because they really believe what they say so they speak from commitment. I’ve had physicians ask me why a patient was “incarcerated” until that “poor person” started acting out, throwing violent temper tantrums and telling people the physician was poisoning them.  

It is very hard for staff, and even clinicians, to keep in mind that people with PD are, in fact, mentally ill. Working with them is stressful and exasperating at best. It is made even more difficult by the PD’s total lack of remorse when they hurt someone, always blaming it on someone else, and their willingness to say absolutely anything to gain control or manipulate even to the point of making up horribly harmful lies. They can literally be caught with their hand in the proverbial cookie jar and swear it wasn’t them then become violent when they are not believed. When they make false statements about a caregiver the government has no choice but to investigate even if they know the person has PD and the statement is obviously false. This makes getting caregivers for them extremely difficult because, if the media gets hold of one of these false statements, it can destroy a person’s career and life.

Personality disorders are really quite frightening.  I was lucky.  I got through over thirty years of practice with no major accusations against me.  I think that is because, despite their thinking they are the smartest person on the planet they usually are far far from it, and they thought I had some tremendous authority that I didn’t really have.  I did get physically attacked on occasion and took a couple of good thumpings, but it was all in a day’s work.  It is very hard to balance their human/civil rights with keeping them, and those around them, safe. 

If you know a person with PD don’t confront them or try to deal with their behavior yourself.  Try to be patient with them and do your best to get them professional mental health help.

Reducing our personal carbon footprints - 25 ideas

To reduce our carbon footprint, clean our air,  reduce our landfills, keep trash out of our oceans, etc., we all need to conserve and practice some very serious "R"s - reuse, recycle, re-purpose, rebuild, re-think.  What always makes me a bit angry is that those who don't want us doing these things; viz. the supercaps (1) who continue to grow their fortunes by maintaining a consumer society;  have people convinced that practicing the Rs is hard, will cost the consumer money, and reduce your quality of life.  Nothing is further from the truth.  Simple logic tells us that if we stop our continuous, copious consumption and learn to practice conservation and the Rs we will save money and have a far cleaner environment. None of the ideas I mention here are hard. Almost all of them will save you money. And besides improving your quality of life, you will probably find some of them actually fun.  Obviously the supercaps  will be furious because they do not get richer if you don't buy more and more and more. 

The following ideas are things which Pamela and I have been doing since before we became nomads.  You don't have to be nomads to do them.  They are so natural to us now that we don't even think about them and do them no matter where we are.  In fact, they are so much a part of our everyday life that I spent an entire evening just coming up with this list, and I'm sure it isn't complete.  

1. Pamela cuts down coated cardboard milk cartons to make storage dividers.  What she cuts off can be recycled.  My point is ... she uses everything.  Little goes to waste.  It might be a jar that is particularly good for storing leftovers instead of buying more plastic.  It might be some sort of packaging material that she reuses as draw dividers so things don't slide around as we travel.  
2. Mend torn or worn clothing.  This requires minimal skill and it can often be done while enjoying an evening around a fire, or sitting with your spouse. Creative thinking might also turn a worn garment into something new and exciting.  
3. Shop at a thrift store.   You can get some really nice things that are like new.  Some poor person just outgrew them.  Some of my favorite shirts came from a thrift store and I got a pair of boots that look and feel good.   If you have something that you can't give directly to someone else, give it to a thrift store.   We always try to give things away first.   We know so many people, especially women, in the desert who have been screwed by the system and are now living in cars and vans on less than $1200 a month.  Many are college educated and some have been professional women; e.g. a newscaster for a major network. When we visit in Hopkinsville we list the item(s) on a forum and have actually delivered them to single mothers who had no transportation. 
4. Vinegar is a phenomenal product.   A small amount mixed with water in a spray bottle has so many applications I'm not sure I could list them all.  It cleans, disinfects, is cheaper, not toxic to the environment and you haven't purchased yet another bottle of dish soap or spray cleaner that may or may not end up in a landfill.  You can actually do dishes with vinegar and water spray.  Everything from dishes to cleaning the truck.  We used vinegar and water to get the mud off the back of the camper each night when we were at the Arctic Ocean. 
5. Consider solar energy.  If you have a large house it can be an expensive outlay, but it pays for itself in an amazingly short time. The cost of the panels, batteries and electronics is coming down.  The best batteries available used to cost >$1200 each. Today the same battery can easily be had for <$900.  We use AGM which cost us just under $300 each, but we get a lot of use out of them and they provide us with 120 amp hours of electricity.   We went 100% 12-volt because it is easier, safer and a whole lot cheaper in an RV.  Most people run up close to 50% of their cost by buying inverters to turn 12-volt into regular 110 house current.  It takes twice the energy to do that. Why bother? A lot of people want to run air conditions, microwaves, coffee makers and hair dryers so they are willing to put out the big bucks for the big pure sine-wave inverters. We like 12-volt.  It does everything we want and need. We save money and reduce our use of fossil fuels.  Based upon a 60 month battery life, our power costs are $43.33 per month for five years. After the five years that cost will drop to around $10/month. 
6. Washing dishes by hand can save you and the environment a great deal.  It also isn't hard work.  The average dishwasher uses 6 gallons of water per cycle.  An Energy Star rated machine uses 4 gallons, so at best you are going to use 8 gallons of water and emit 2.13 pounds of CO2 per load.  Besides energy use, this costs you money.  We use around 2-3 gallons of water a day.  We do dishes in a small basin and use the dirty dishwater to flush the toilet.  No difficulty. No big deal. Lots of personal and environmental savings.  
7. Use your own reusable bags when you go shopping.  There are times that we take the plastic bags because we reuse them as trash liners or poop bags.  If you're not going to reuse them, don't take them. We carry a canvas bag full of shopping bags in the backseat of the truck. 
8. Carry your own drink cup and reusable straw.  What a savings!  And it's easy.  Pamela and I have not had a single restaurant, fast-food joint or gas convenience store refuse to let us fill our own cups. 
9. Compost.  When we're on the road we don't have anywhere to have a proper compost pile, so we have to contribute to someone else's. That, however, isn't a problem for most people.  
10. Use "Sponge Cloths".  They are amazing.  100% natural and compostable, they last forever, do a great job, replace paper towels, and can be washed in a machine 300 times. We love our sponge cloths and they are not only convenient but they are environmentally friendly and a great money saver.  
11. Use produce bags when you go to the grocery instead of the store's plastic.  You can use your bags not only to transport, but they are good for storing veges in the fridge.  If you want to get an idea how much plastic you will keep out of the environment by this simple and very convenient practice, just stand in the produce department of a supermarket and watch people pull off a plastic bag for everything they buy.  All that plastic has to go somewhere. 
12. Related to that, don't buy single wrapped, plastic wrapped or fancy boxed goods.  Yes, we get some strange looks from young cashiers but we will show up at checkout with one apple, one orange, a couple of bananas, two or three onions, a couple of tomato, etc.   None are in the store plastic.  
13. Save coffee bags, heavy mailers and other non-recyclable containers instead of throwing them away.  They are very useful for disposing of broken glass, nails or pieces of metal from a project.  They are also very useful when a regular bag isn't going to do the job.  They will eventually get thrown away, but they'll get a second use before that. 
14. Lots of recipes produce very nice liquids and broths that end up getting put down a garbage disposal, which, by the way, we don't use.  Put the stock in ice cube trays or plastic storage containers. Once frozen you can put them in bags or some other more convenient storage container.
15. 

    Pamela loves her Thermal Cooker.  A Thermal Cooker uses minimal energy.  There is a pot inside the thick insulated device. You boil the contents of the pot for three minutes and close it inside the Thermal Cooker. Six hours later, no electricity or other energy required, you have a perfect meal.  You can even bake in them.  They are a marvel that makes life on the road simpler and saves tremendous time and energy.  Those of you still in the workforce and living in stick-n-brick (a house/apartment) can start your cooker before work and have a complete meal when you get home without using any energy.  Safe and cost efficient. 
16. Do not buy water in individual bottles.  I'm sure you know that companies like Nestle are taking water from people who are suffering from drought and selling it.  If you are buying water, as we do, buy it in bulk with your own container.  It keeps plastic out of the land fills and oceans, reduces our carbon footprint, and doesn't promote water theft by companies like Nestle.  We have a 40 gallon fresh water tank on board. That lasts us about two weeks. But we prefer to use that only for washing, bathing, etc.  We buy our purified drinking water from vending machines for about twenty-cents a gallon in desert states. In Montana we get it free from mountain springs. In both cases we keep four, one-gallon containers.  
17. Fix and refinish furniture.  Paint or sand and stain cabinets instead of ripping them out and sending them to the landfill.  You can create beautiful and unique pieces.  If the cabinets are so bad that they just have to go, look for someone who can make use of them.  You would be amazed at how many people want your old cabinets.  You might even find that you can use them in a workroom or shed.  If you have to break up cabinets or other wood items, salvage as much of the wood as possible.  Have a scrap/used wood box. I have built gates and made useful items completely from a scrap box. Not only does this help reduce trees cut and hopefully make lumbering virgin or old-growth forests unnecessary, but have you looked at the price of wood recently?  You'll save lots of money. 
18. I'm the cook in the family. Pamela is a good cook but just doesn't like to cook. I love to cook and I love my cast iron cookware.  Until I gave it some thought I would have never put it on a list of environmentally friendly items.  Cast iron heats more evenly and is easier to clean than any fancy new product on the market. As a result you are going to save time and money, and probably pass it down through generations instead of loads of cheap aluminum going in the landfill every time the coating gets scratched.  
19. Avoid glass bottles unless you are regularly in an area that recycles glass. 
20. Buy things you use regularly and go through quickly in larger quantities then fill smaller reusable containers. For example, we buy the larger bags and recyclable containers of sweetener and coffee creamer and put them in more convenient and easy to use small containers. It dramatically reduces the amount of waste and recycling.  I use Lucas for the vehicle engines. I used eight of the small single dose bottles and kept them. Now I get a quart bottle and fill my small bottles leaving me with one bottle to recycle.  The smaller ones are easier to store and use, and the process saves me lots of money, keeps lots of plastic out of the landfill and CO2 from production out the air. 
21. Avoid deep frying.  It creates a lot of nasty waste.  Trying to dispose of rancid cooking oil is as difficult as disposing of the oil from your crankcase.  
22. Even camping on the Arctic Ocean we turned our furnace off at night.  We don't use AC unless it's just too miserable and we have shore-power available. Both save lots of money and help the environment. A good feather quilt is a marvelous investment.  No matter how cold it gets outside our feather quilt keeps us comfortable.  (P.S. don't buy a down quilt. You don't want to know what cruelty the animal suffers for us to have down.)   If you live in sticks-n-bricks (a permanent house or apartment) consider turning your heat down at night.  Good for the environment and good for your pocketbook. 
23. Consider what I call an "Irish shower".  When we lived in Ireland we quickly learned how precious water is.  Our Irish friends didn't use showers because showers are, by nature wasteful.  They put an inch or so of water in the tub. When I take a shower it is simply (i) get wet, (ii) immediately turn off the water, (iii) soap down and wash, then (iv) turn the water on a rinse . . . . quickly.  The average American shower uses 17.2 gallons of water.  Remember we only use about 3 gallons of water a day.  That's a big savings for your pocketbook and the environment. 
24. Collect rain water for yard, garden and non-potable use.  
25. Fix it. You would be surprised how often items can be fixed. Recently I fixed a child's music box that is almost 40 years old. Saved it from the landfill and the kids (and even adults) love it.  Of course the supercaps don't want us to fix things. They want us to buy new.  Afraid to take it apart?  Why?  The alternative is to throw it away. The worst you can do is fail to fix it, not be able to put it back together and end up throwing it out. At least you gave it a shot. The best case scenario is that you will be able to fix it, save yourself a lot of money and keep it out of the landfill.  You will be amazed at how many times you will succeed. 

I am absolutely certain that I've forgotten many things, but this list should help you get started, give you ideas, and start you thinking in terms of conservation, reuse, recycle, re-purpose, rebuild, re-think.  The effort is minimal.  The benefits are tremendous.  

FOOTNOTES:

(1)  supercaps =df  the super-rich capitalist who, despite being only about 1% of the population, literally own most of our country and who need us to continue consuming at an ever increasing rate to keep them rich.  Capitalism is not a sustainable system but that's an entire book. 

The prescription for human survival

When we start talking about surviving as a species or environment or conservation there are many who will avoid the subject by saying "it's way too complex."  Yes, there is a side to this that is very complex.  Nevertheless, we can not ignore what we must do to survive or avoid acting because it will require some serious effort.  Our first step is, for some, the hardest; i.e. admitting that we are neither the most important nor smarter than nature.  We know its true, but arrogance gets in our way. Narcissism hominum. At the same time these three steps are very simple. They don't require money. They only require a commitment to being a part of nature, not an enemy of nature.  "Try it. You'll like it!"

#environment #nature  #ecology #SaveOurPlanet #survival

Kudzu of the Animal Kingdom

Ákakiááyo was sauntering along the high trail on the side of Naato Mtn. He had stopped to listen to a Pika and was thinking about their plight. These small, marvelous creatures are rapidly losing their habitat. You see, they can not live in temperatures above 70 degrees. Even in the high mountains the temperatures are literally killing the Pika.  It was a warm day and Ákakiááyo knew that these Pika were undoubtedly moving up the mountain. What, he wondered, was going to happen when they ran out of mountain? The obvious answer caused Ákakiááyo to hang his head in sadness. 

     As he was thinking about all of the thing which could be done to save the Pika; things which he knew people just weren't going to do;  Panoká came into view. 

     "The Pika must go higher," Ákakiááyo said as Panoká drew near. 

     "It is getting late," Panoká replied. "I certainly hope they have time to find food and shelter before the winter hits."

     "If people just understood . . . ," Ákakiááyo started to say.

     "They don't want to understand," Panoká interrupted. "Have you seen what is going on in the valley east of the Ihkitsi River?"

     You can see civilization from the mountain top above the river. It always bothered Ákakiááyo so he didn't go there often, but he followed his friend to one of the high promitories.  In the distance the two could see the haze under which the city lay. This side of the haze one could make out the golf course which was the first intrusion into their delicate ecosystem. Now one could easily see where bulldozers were pushing over trees and digging up the soil for a new subdivision. Ákakiááyo and Panoká knew that meant pollution and erosion for starters. Hundreds of species of flora and fauna would be displaced. The ground water would begin to disappear and what was left would soon be polluted. Everything would be out of balance. 

     "You know what they remind me of?" asked Ákakiááyo.  Panoká shook his head as the two stood watching the forest being once again invaded.

     "Humans are the Kudzu of the Animal Kingdom," said Ákakiááyo as he turned to walk away. "The Kudzu of the animal kingdom gives 'invasive' a whole new meaning." 

     "It won't be long now, will it?" Panoká's question was really rhetorical.

     "No, not long," agreed Ákakiááyo. 

     

Rocky Mountain High

We were traveling along the Alcan through the Canadian Rockies and suddenly Pamela said "I have to ..." She put in John Denver's CD and went to the song "Rocky Mtn High". I think we played it five or six times.  As I listen to the words I realized that it was describing me, except that it would be "born in the spring of his 67th birthday..." instead of 27th. "returning to a home where he'd never been."   According to Annie, the song was self-descriptive for John Denver.  I know it describes me and my first encounter with the Rockies and wilderness, and probably describes the great number of us who experience life in the mountain wilderness and never want to leave. It's why I now have a Montana driver's license and why 7 or 8 out of ten locals we meet up here came to visit and now call this home. I'm definitely home. Yes, I'm often many, many miles from help but I feel so alive, I'd rather die in the wilderness than spend what time I have left cooped up in a city or away from the wilderness and nature.  There is absolutely nothing phoney about life in the wilderness. Life, in fact, is very tough for many of the people living in the wilds. Pamela and I recently read an autobiography about a man who spent his entire life off the grid in the wilderness above the 65th parallel. His one statement says a lot. He said that the worst thing that could happen to anyone was to feel so defeated that they would go to a city and take a whiteman's job. Nothing was worse than that.  I guess I should be thankful that being hundreds of miles from the nearests city isn't for everyone. Otherwise we'd have an influx of people and we'd become like the eastern US - an overcrowded megaopolis.  Even in the hills of Kentucky, Alabama or Arkansas you can't get away.  After having my own 'Rocky Mtn High'  I must admit to feeling clausterphobic when I get east of  the Mississippi.  When I got a pop-up trailer in 2012 I wrote a slogan above the door ... "Don't stop living before you die."  I wrote it in Irish so people would have to ask me what it said. So many people really stop living when they have a mortgage, two or more cars, two or more children, a college loan and credit card debt. Whether or not you are a mountain wilderness recluse like me, don't let anyone or anything keep you from living life. Don't believe the capitalist who want you to think you have to work until you're half dead so that you can buy, buy, buy.  That is so much BS that their eyes are brown. No matter what a good life means to you, don't let anyone tell you that you can't have it.   

Don't stop living before you die. And if you're not living now, START. 

Death by Homo Sapiens

Wandering off into the wilderness

Far from signs and symptoms

Of the horrific human invasion.

Surrounded by nature

And for a brief while

Able to pretend I am again

A part of life on planet Earth

And not the feeding frenzie 

Of capitalistic activity

Built upon the carcass 

Of a dying world. 

Death by strangulation

As air becomes unbreathable;

Death by thirst

Because the water is undrinkable;

Death by starvation

Due to over-population; 

Death by homo sapiens. 

Total Interdependence

      Please don’t tell anyone, because I know it will upset them.  All people, and to a certain extent especially Americans, have long lived under an illusion of independence.  Quiet. Don’t say that too loud. You see, because there was so much self-reliance – which is a totally different matter – involved in the spread of the people of predominantly European descent in the 18^th and 19^th centuries across what is today the United States, that we, as a nation, have confused the idea of self-reliance with independence.  Go to Montana, my adopted State, and you will be told that we are fiercely independent.  You will hear intellectuals talk about being independent thinkers.  But what does it mean to be independent.

     The dictionary definition of independent is “(1) free from outside control; not depending on another’s authority. (2) not depending on another for livelihood or subsistence.”  The problem with this is that, like the ‘clysoptic thingaglober’, it doesn’t exist. 

Wait!  Before you decide that I’m some sort of looney, hear me out.  If you think you are so independent, it definitely won’t hurt you to listen to what I have to say. 

     I base my premise that we are not only not independent but totally dependent upon everyone and everything else in the universe upon an indisputable chain of connections and dependences. 

     This morning, when you turned off your alarm clock, you touched your interdependence with the universe.  If we follow all of the connections and dependences related to that simple clock, you will follow them back to the creation of the universe. 

Go ahead, laugh.  When you’re done laughing, stop and start making a list or a diagram.  To make it easy, let’s start with the fact that you had to buy that alarm clock.  That was probably pretty easy. You drove to a store and bought the clock. Period.  Well, let’s take a closer look.  How did you drive to the store?  In a vehicle of some description, I assume.  Consider how many people with whom you are interconnected and interdependent to acquire that car.  I don’t want this blog to end up being a 200,000 word dissertation, so let’s abbreviate: (1) the dealership and those related to and responsible for the existence of the dealership; (2) the person responsible for the transportation of the vehicle to the dealership and the company that employs her/him; (3) the manufacturer, those who work there and those responsible for its existence; (4) those who built the factory and all of the raw materials involved in that building; (5) the raw materials for the automobiles and those responsible for mining or harvesting, getting to the factory, etc., etc. (6) the earth in which the raw materials developed and the universe, most specifically the beginning of the universe, where the raw materials originated.

     That was very abbreviated, but I think you get the idea. Now we can do the same thing with (1) the road that you traveled to get to the store, (2) the building in which the store was located, (3) the company that obtained and sold the clock, (4) the transportation of the clock to the store, (5) the manufacturer of the clock.  Wow. And we still have a number of steps before we get to  - you guessed it – the beginning of the universe where the raw materials originated.

     Think about this and then try to tell me that you’re not related to and/or dependent upon every volcano, glacier and tectonic plate on earth.  Think about this and then try to deny that you are directly connected to the beginning of the universe.  Scientist tell us that we actually have elements from the beginning of the universe pass through our bodies every day. We are totally interdependent upon everything else in the universe.

This same process can be applied to our own existence and continued existence.  There is the biological – our parents and all upon whom they were dependent for their existence.  Then there is the physiological – all the chemistry that makes us. Where did it all begin and upon what is it dependent?   Nothing in us is new or independent.  All of it has developed over the billions of years since life on Earth began, and that development is dependent upon elements and circumstances created by the universe around us such as Earth’s distance from the Sun. We are constructed of the most basic building blocks of the universe, came into being as a result of forces beyond our control, and survive only because of other aspects and results of this marvelous phenomena.

     The only possible conclusion is that we are totally interdependent upon all of the rest of the universe.  Another way to say this is that we are one. We are one because everything leads back to the beginning of the universe, whether or not one believes the Big Bang theory. The universe is a living organism of which we are a miniscule part.

     So, is there any application of this reality?  I would suspect there are a lot more applications than I can think of or report here.  Conservationism and Environmentalism are the first that come to mind; i.e. showing respect to the world and the universe around us.  It is to our benefit to be good citizens of planet Earth.

#OldConservationist

The Days After - Installment 1

The Days After: the Journal of

Randall Denison

CHAPTER 1. 

Year 10. Day 1.  It is a beautiful day although there are some dark clouds showing themselves above the Chocolate Mountains west of us. Jason and Rusty are playing in a young stand of water birch near the river. Ten years ago that area was nothing but reed and scrub. Nature is taking back the Colorado River.  I can see Tiffany and Helen in the kitchen, Mary and Sally are sitting on the veranda weaving baskets. Mary is carrying the baby so low that we're certain to have a new member to the tribe very soon. It's been four years since we had a baby. 

     Timothy and Anthony are cleaning a deer while Earl is firing up the nearby smoke house. The three of them are experts at meat preparation.  Samantha and Gwen are tanning leather. We need some new boots for the journey to our summer camp.  Beth and LeeAnn are spinning a pile of cotton they just combed this morning while Valorie is weaving it into the soft fabric we use for most of our clothing. Linda, John and I just returned from early morning fishing. It was a good trip and I need to help clean fish as soon as I finish this journal entry. We'll probably smoke most of it for the migration. 

  We're still camped at our winter spot north of the old Imperial Dam.  We just finished the roof on the new adobe buildings and everyone is anxious to move in. The first longhouse has become a kitchen while the other will be converted to a stable for the horses.

     What started out as a winter camp has become a village. The new adobe buildings have four apartments each and create a plaza like area between them and the river. We have opened the side of the kitchen so it can get lots of fresh air on warm days and can be easily closed to keep in the warmth. Right outside the opening is a veranda where we eat as a community.  The two metal roof shelters that I salvaged from a campground upstream have been moved to a spot on the bluff above the river. That gives us some nice outdoor living area for activities or just to sit and enjoy the view.  

     The view is spectacular and gets better each year as nature reclaims the world around us. The Colorado River is half way up the bluff because of the rain up-stream so the backwater is full and there is good fishing. Each year we have been seeing more plant and wildlife. We actually have trees near the river now. White oak, water birch and cottonwood are thinning out some of the reed. Cactus are returning since the creosote is moving away from the water.  We like having creosote nearby though because it is our pharmacy, but it doesn't like too much water and other plants don’t particularly like it.  

The sun is moving up in the sky and the days are getting warmer. That means we'll want to be moving north soon.  Now that we have horses we can cut across to our summer camp in the high country north and east of us.  The first year we summered up by Parker. We like to winter along the river where we are right now. There are lots of pools and lakes where we can hunt and fish. The dam hasn't been operational since the Last Day.  It's in pretty poor condition so we're expecting it to break like the Parker Dam.  The water level in the river above the dam will probably fall quite a bit but there should still be plenty of water.  The only dam we're worried about is Hoover. If it fails there will probably be a cataclysmic flood but there's nothing we can do about that. We're just hoping that the sound of the approaching flood will carry far enough that we get some warning.  

     It has been 10 years since the Last Day. Well, it was the last day I had any contact with the outside world.  Even then I can't be sure how accurate my count is.  Tiffany and I were listening to a recording of the President calling for the people to remain calm. He went off the air in the middle.  After that I started keeping track of days, and, when I realized that this was going to be a long-term situation, I started keeping a record of the sun and moon. When I got to day 365 on the fourth and eighth year, I added a day, so I shouldn't too be far off.  It doesn't really matter. This is our time now. We have no use for days of the week anyway.  Our only purpose for keeping track of days, the sun and moon is to help us with hunting and gathering and knowing when to move.

     It was never a secret that I had little use for our so-called civilization. The word civilization, which is defined as most advanced, refined, enlightened and sophisticated and carries an unsupported implication of superiority, always bothered me.  Our society was never superior.  It could only claim superiority because it wrote the definition and the definition was self-descriptive.  The people were actually physically and psychologically inferior and unhealthy.  There was an unbelievable level of apathy and lack of compassion, and, while religions were extremely verbal and exceptionally militant, spiritually was basically dead.   

      Some years before the Last Day I had come to the conclusion that the combination that was killing humanity, and everything around it, was the merger of capitalism and religion. They are rather like O’-ethylmethylphosphonite (aka UL) and sulfur.  Separately they are relatively harmless. Together they are the ultimate lethal gas.  Capitalism is basically an eighteenth-century version of feudalism. For capitalism to continue the populace had to constantly increase their consumption. Besides the fact that all that did was make the rich richer, it was not a sustainable system.  They were destroying the environment and people in the name of profit.  The crazy thing was that religion, most specifically the Abrahamic religions that originated in the Middle East,  found it beneficial to buy into the capitalist story, just as religion had supported feudal nobility by giving titles like “Defender of the Faith”, making capitalism pseudo-sacred and causing the common person, whom the capitalists preferred to remain ignorant,  to believe that this travesty is how things were meant to be.  

     I had been a part of the system.  Tiffany and I both worked forty to sixty hours a week or more. Some people we knew also had ten or more hours of travel time to and from work on top of that. We didn’t have children.  I don’t know how we could have. We hardly had time for each other. We would eat our dinner with our smartphones in front of us reading texts and answering emails.  After dinner we would each work on projects meant to get us ahead at work or improve our place in the food chain. The only time you could, with a clear conscience, really do nothing was on your scheduled vacation time.  We had friends who did have children. I don’t know why. They never saw the children.  The children would be in day-care when their age was still calculated in days and weeks.  Mom or Dad would pick the child up from day-care between five and six in the evening, feed them and put them to bed.  When they got to school age they spent their day in school and went to a day-care of after-school program.  Tiffany would be at the hospital by six-thirty each morning and would often still be seeing patients at seven o’clock in the evening. We, like everyone else we knew, did this to survive.  And if we would, by some miracle, survive until retirement age – which kept getting pushed later – you hoped that you would have enough money that you didn’t have to find a retirement job.  More and more people were failing.  It was a miserably failing society. About eight years before the Last Day Tiffany and I decided to drop out.  We never regretted that decision and it is probably why we are alive today.

     Life is good now and ten years of survival and good living is something to celebrate.  It was quite a journey getting here. Ten years and it feels like yesterday. 

Year 1. Day 3.  This is the third day since we lost all contact with the outside world. I have no idea what's going on. It is extremely unnerving. Normally I don’t really care to hear all of the news from the outside world because it is generally bad news, but I always had some idea of what was happening. Suddenly there’s nothing.  I decided that I need to keep track of time and journal. Who knows how long we will be out here.  

     Three days ago we were listening to the President calling for calm. The best we could tell all hell was breaking lose around the country. That's why we're here. I'll be honest. We are hiding out in the desert.  We figure that we’d rather face rattle snakes, scorpions, mountain lions and other big predators than the violence of people who worship ignorance and get off on cruelty and violence. We've been nomads for eight years because we couldn't stand the bickering and fighting. After the President's speech was cut off we started to drive into town. From a distance we could see smoke and hear sporadic gun fire.  We had no idea what was happening but we were not going to drive into the middle of it. We turned around, hitched up our camper trailer, put the truck in four-wheel drive, and headed out on an old dirt road toward the Colorado River. About a half-mile from the river we found a nice thicket of palo verde and mesquite. We parked the trailer as far into the trees as possible.  Just to be safe we put tarps over the truck and piled branches around it. We're definitely not going to be driving anywhere until whatever is going on is over.  We are close enough to the river that we can walk there after dark. If the fighting is over water; which is very likely; we sure don't want to be too close or try to get water during the day. One of us keeps watch while the other fills our water containers.  We stay out in the desert where most people have no idea how to live. Our skills as nomads living in the desert is going to be our salvation. Our biggest problem is that we are going to have to become Hunter-Gatherers because we sure can't run into the grocery store. That really scares me. I've wanted to forage for food for years but every book I've read on the subject says that you must be extremely careful and should have an expert teach you because for every edible plant there is one that looks almost identical that can kill you. Oh, well. No choice. 

Year 1. Day 4.  I'm so glad that we installed solar several years ago. I love being out in the wilderness but I'm not ready to go totally primitive yet. Sure hope things out there are calming down and we can get our lives back. Tiffany figures that we will never get our old lives back. That could be a blessing, but it's also a bit scary. There is still no radio. I ran the cell signal booster up as high as I could get it. I know there are at least two towers within fifteen miles of us. There's one down on CA-78 by Imperial Wildlife Refuge and one north by Ehrenburg.  There was nothing out there. I really want to find out if our nomad friends are okay. The word 'alone' has taken on a whole new meaning. I hiked to a nearby area known for disbursed camping. There were five rigs there.  Someone yelled "stop or I'll shoot" as I got close. They were frightened and running out of supplies. At least they had water. 

     They told me that four days ago all hell broke loose. I already had that figured out.  It all started when a private army calling itself a security company shot a handful of people who were trying to take water from a California river. The security company said that their employer owed that water and they were protecting it. People from the town took up arms and went after the security force. Federal and State police arrived. Since the security force was protecting their employer's property, even though they were on public land, the police sided with the security company. It was a massacre. Word got out and the country went ballistic. 

     The folks at the camping area had been on vacation and found themselves trapped here.  I suggested that they'd be safest if they hunkered down somewhere in the desert and waited until things calmed down. They were determined that they were going to convoy out.  I gave them some tips on boondocking and left.  I told Tiffany what the campers had told me. She wished that I had been able to convince them to stay hidden in the desert but it was their decision. 

Year 1. Day 14.  We decided that we needed to go into town today to see if we could get some supplies and some news. I really wanted to go alone so I didn't put Tif in any danger. I got the usual 'stop babying me' speech. Actually, she's right. We need to stick together.  I strapped my 12" blade bowie knife to my leg, we both hung a can of bear spray on our belts and headed off to find out what was going on.  What we found was a ghost town. What a mess.  There were signs of fighting and death everywhere but there were very few bodies. Many of the walls were riddled with what appeared to be automatic weapons fire and some large holes that looked like they might have been made by a mortar.  Most of the buildings were standing open, windows broken out and obviously looted. I saw one of the rigs from the campers by the river. It was riddled with bullet holes but no one was inside and no blood. This is what we were afraid would happen to them.  There was nothing for us to do except see if we could salvage anything we needed. I headed toward the hardware store first. 

        The hardware store was pretty well sacked but the main things that were gone were items needed for towing and guns. I loaded up on fishing gear. Tif found an overturned Victorianox knife display. There were a number of the big knives with all the little tools. Even if I'm wearing one of my single blade knives, I don't go anywhere without my Swiss Army knife. They are amazing little tools.  Tif gathered all the ones that had multiple tools, attaching one to the utility belt she had picked up.  I was able to find two small pumps that I could convert into hand pumps. I had already decided that we need one for water. Filling our water containers by dipping was a real pain. Since there weren't any gas stations open I decided to make a second pump to see if I could pump any gasoline from the bottom of their inground tanks. We were taking everything we could find that would hold water or gasoline when Tiffany noticed the loft. The hardware had a loft that looters had missed or maybe didn't feel they had the time or safety to go up there. I did and I found enough containers to fill the back of the truck, dropping them down to Tif waiting at the bottom of the ladder.  I also found several portable solar panels in the loft.  Looters had left most of the very large batteries, probably because of their weight, and most of the six volt batteries.  We found three large lithium batteries and a pallet of six volt batteries. A good battery has about a five year shelf life. I'm hoping it won't be that long, but we need to be prepared. 

     The truck was getting full so I went looking for a wagon or trailer to help me salvage more while Tif continued salvage efforts at the store.  We didn't want to take a chance on a second visit any sooner than necessary.  Someone in the RV park behind the hardware store had left their cargo trailer. I guessed that they didn't want anything slowing down their getaway. I felt bad dumping their personal things on the ground but at that point I really needed the trailer and I doubt that they are planning to come back if they survived the getaway. 

    Returning to the hardware we loaded and finished packing our salvage into the cargo trailer. While I was getting the cargo trailer, Tif found a multi-band radio in the office. We figured that we had a small inverter that would power it and it might get us news or contact with the outside world, so we brought it with us. 

     The grocery store and pharmacy were probably the worst damaged. There was no food left. Even the big walk-ins were empty. We weren't surprised. We were rather pleased to find that the pharmacy still had some medications.  All of the basics that people know and anything whose name they might recognize and was worth money were gone. We weren't too worried. We have plenty of creosote bushes near us, the Native American's pharmacy. The looters had left almost everything that had big chemical names instead of trade names.  Tif and I started going through the bottles. Between the two of us we knew or could figure out most of the drugs. Looters had actually left a large supply of dihydrocodeinone, which is a form of hydrocodone. We also got some celecoxib and ketorolac, both nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories. For some reason the looters also left the antibiotics, so I loaded up. 

     On the way out I noticed that the stationary shelves were almost untouched. Who was planning to do any writing when the world seemed to be coming apart?  Some of the little notebooks and bundles of paper were still in shrink wrap under the display cabinets. I took all the paper, pencils and pens we could handle. Tif just smiled. She knows I would go nuts without a way to journal or write.     

     Our last stop was at the gas station. It was the old-fashioned type with two work bays. Just like at the hardware, the looters didn't take the time or the risk to go into the loft. Like most of those old gas stations there was a loft filled with tires, oil and lubricants, filters and a host of other essentials. I was lucky enough to find a crowbar and removed the cover from the gasoline fill port and with one of my hand pumps we filled all of the gasoline cans in the truck. We siphoned over 100 gallons of gas from the bottom of the three tanks containing unleaded gasoline. 

     Before we left I looked in the tow truck to see if there was anything which I might need. Tif was checking out nearby stores. That was when she heard the voice. It was a weak voice saying "help me. Please help me."    

     She called me over and we traced the voice to a dumpster behind what had been a fast food restaurant.  Laying on top of the trash was an old man. His body was broken and covered with dry blood. We got him out of the dumpster as gently as possible but he screamed with pain.  

     Tiffany examined the old man. Often he would give a short yelp from pain when she touched him.  She hasn't worked in an emergency room for years but she hasn't lost her touch. As I was talking to the old man, whose name was Fred, I caught her looking at me and shaking her head ‘no’. Looking down at Fred's broken body I knew what she meant. 

    Fred told me that shortly after the riot in California the people in town heard that the Meleketites were trying to take over the government. Daniel Meleketi, the founder of the ultra-conservative, militaristic cult has been dead for years but his son took over the cult. He has run for president several times and failed. Every time he failed he would incite riots among his followers. Most of the people in town merely got in their car, van or RV and left. Those who remained were either those who had no way to leave or thought they could survive the Meleketites. 

     When they arrived, the Meleketites were heavily armed and killed anyone who resisted them. The only way to stay alive was to either run or pledge allegiance to Meleketi. They had found Fred hiding in the back of his garage while they were looting the town. They beat him until they thought he was dead and threw him into the dumpster. 

     Tif's the physician but even I knew that this poor old man wasn't going to live much longer. He was in tremendous pain and we had a good supply of hydrocodone. When we offered him the pain killer he asked us to give him something that would put him out of his misery. He knew that he could not survive. He wanted to end his pain for good. 

     According to Tif the maximum amount of hydrocodone per day is 60 mg. Each of our tablets had 10mg.  I let Fred have eight tablets. He talked for a few minutes. His pain was greatly reduced and he was getting sleepy. He thanked us over and over until he fell asleep, or perhaps lost consciousness. In either case he had no pain. We sat and watched him until we noticed that he didn't seem to be breathing. It was over. 

     We drove home in silence. We were safe, but we wondered what was going on in the world around us.  Did the Meleketites bring down the government?  There is no way to know.  We hooked up the radio and scanned every frequency we could find but there was nothing. You'd think that whomever won would be on the air bragging or reassuring folks unless there just wasn't any power anywhere. Tif suggested that maybe no one won. That's a really scary thought. 

    As we sat watching a beautiful Arizona sunset we talked about the future. Strangely enough neither of us is worried about surviving.  We're facing a steep learning curve concerning edible plants. I'm sure of enough that we're not going to starve. The fish are probably full of chemicals but we can't help that. What does cause us to worry is whether there is any form of civilization left out there and, understandably, we are both terrified that the Meleketites will discover us. 

Thunberg-1, Wealthy Elite-0

Sixteen year old Greta Thunberg scored some major points at the WEC this week. Since, as she and the rest of the world suspected, none of the wealthy elite who make up the WEC delegates stood up to be counted, I'd say the score is Thunberg-1, Wealthy Elite-0. Is anyone surprised?  If there's no money in it for them the wealthy elite are not going to play.

I must admit that I find it rather amusing that older generations will ridicule the younger generations for not caring or participating, and then when they do the gray haired old farts get their noses bent out of shape and start yelling that the kids should stay in school and leave serious decision-making to them.  (Like they're really going to do anything. LOL)  I'm an old fart and I can see the temptation.  I'm also reminded that the old farts of the 1960s were saying the same thing about me and my generation as we hit the streets, but we made a difference. The gray haired old white men in Congress back then knew what needed to be done. They just didn't want to do it until we forced them.  

Greta Thunberg is a good example of this phenomena. There are plenty of gray haired old farts and financial elite at the World Economic Conference (WEC) being held in Davos, Switzerland. In challenging the WEC delegates to really do something about climate change instead of talk and traveling the world in their high polluting private jets (which by the way put an average of 1,102 pounds per passenger per hour of CO2 into the atmosphere and have an average cost of $1,611 per hour to fly),  Thunberg laid the blame squarely in the laps of the world's biggest capitalists and financial elite sitting right in front of her.  "Some people, some companies, some decision-makers in particular, have known exactly what priceless values they have been sacrificing to continue making unimaginable amounts of money. And I think many of you here today belong to that group of people."

From the reports I read that was received with resounding silence which says to me, as a retired psychotherapist, that they knew they had been caught.  When people, whether actually guilty or not, truly feel that they are being wrongly accusation, they will react and object. When a person(s) knows that the accusation against them is true, they get very quiet.  Mothers, you know exactly what I mean. What happens when you wrongly accuse your child of something and/or they truly believe they were right? Don't they throw a hissy fit, scream, yell, etc.? Mine did. What happens when you accuse them of something and they know they are guilty and have been caught?  Silence.  These guys might be the financial elite of the world, but they're still human (or so I'm led to believe) and will react as such.  They weren't quiet because they didn't like what she said, or didn't think she was right. They were silent because they knew she had exposed them.  

 What was particularly sad was that she expressed a feeling that I suspect most of the world watching the WEC shares.  She said, "I don't believe for one second that you will rise to that challenge, but I want to ask you all the same."

You can bluster all you want about a sixteen year old telling the world's financial elite that they are amoral and should pull up their big boy/girl panties and do what they know is right. We all know prefectly well that she's right.  You can fulminate about how she doesn't have the experience, education, etc., to talk to such a distinguished group of world leaders as she did. You can say anything you want. Besides the fact that she is right, and we all know it, she has become a voice of the generation whose future, or lack thereof, is totally controlled by people who can't think beyond profit and power today. She has become the voice of the generation whose future, or lack thereof, is being totally and absolutely ignored. 

With young people around the world responding to Greta, we can only live in hope that they, like we did in the 60s, will prevail and force those in power to do the right thing. If we can't live in that hope, we will die in dispair.