Two and a Quarter Tons

Actually, it's not that much rock. Well, it is a lot if you have to carry it all at once, or if you had to move it some dozen miles from the landscape rock yard. But if the pile is on your driveway, you have a wheelbarrow and a half an acre of gully, and you want to build terraces, it's not that much rock.

After four days of a few hours each morning (it's really hot this time of year), I have only two small piles left, but the slope by the five steps has some nice rock groupings.

Plus, I burned off the weight I put on visiting Lower Alaska last month and sitting on my derriere for thirty-two hundred miles of driving over two weeks.

The gully with its rock groupings is looking more and more archaic, as if the remnants of some ancient civilization.

Next time, I think I will order four or maybe six tons. I wonder how many tons that truck can carry.

But for today, I think I will let this resting rattler be and work inside the house. Where, oh where are our king snakes?

Two Days, Twenty-Four Hours

The Great Basin, Nevada, south of Ely.

Geography and flora shock us as we sit at home in Tucson two days after we left Lower Alaska, after about twenty-four hours of driving time. We've seen so much change in a short time.

The Salish Sea is so lush with vegetation and water. Drive over Snoqualmie Pass and past Ellensburg, the rolling hills of the almost treeless Inland Empire spreads out. Then the Yakima River and its vineyards and orchards, then bare hills, then the Columbia River, "Welcome to Oregon" near Umatilla, and more bare hills until Pendleton and the Blue Mountains. On and on.

Most of the places we passed and their sequence are fresh in my mind, like a road map inside the head of a wagon train guide.

I was hoping to take a photo of this sign
marking the east end of the
Extraterrestrial Highway . . .

It rained as we left Seattle, it again rained in the Great Basin, our second morning after overnight in Ely, and it rained very heavily just as we pulled into out little dead-end street of San Simeon.

. . . but this was how it looked to us,
blurry. The other snap is off the web.

Indeed, on our drive north two weeks earlier, it had drizzled in Nevada's Great Basin, then just as we drove onto Whidbey Island from the ferry, it started to rain heavily.

Rain is a blessing.

It's impossible to describe what it's like being by the Salish Sea. It's gorgeous. It's impossible to describe countless places of dramatic and subtle beauty along our route — and that's only from the road as we whizzed by. (One of these days I will retire and actually pull off the road occasionally.) It's equally impossible to describe the harsh, stunning, and inspiring beauty of the Sonoran Desert.

I can write that it's good to be home and that I'm glad we have made our home on our little acre of the Sonoran Desert.

Snowbirds and Bedouins

If snowbirds are folks from cold areas wintering in warm areas, what do you call folks from hot areas summering in cool areas? 

Bedouins?

When Shari and I first moved to Tucson, it was mostly for winters. Summers we spent at our house on Whidbey Island. After three years of seasonal migrations, we settled on Baja Arizona and sold our house on Whidbey.

We'd visit Lower Alaska maybe for a couple of weeks in autumn. My last visit was October two years ago. We had fog so thick we didn't see the sun for several days.

This year we're visiting in high summer when afternoons are sunny and hot, locals party for Seafair and get sunburned, and mornings and evenings are moderate enough to wear short pants and sleeves — it's all just like Tucson most of the year.

It's a rural environment on Whidbey Island, isolated by a long wait to get on a ferry boat. Yesterday, the wait was four hours. That's eight ferry boats. There are plenty of weekenders, but the Island is still rustic.

I was walking Nazar this morning, savoring the cool, fresh air of rural Whidbey, enjoying the sunshine, green vegetation, and blue sky. I remembered why we tried the snowbird lifestyle in the first place, migrating like geese over Nevada.

We tried living in two homes in order to savor the best of two very different yet equally beautiful worlds. We boast about the Sonoran Desert, but we still love a rural Lower Alaska that's very familiar and nurturing.

And if staying at Dodi's house overlooking Holmes Harbor is the equivalent of a Bedouin tent, sign me up for Arabic classes.

Holiday in Green and Blue

There are reasons why we regularly return to the Salish Sea: family, friends, and familiar haunts. But the one reason that is powerfully attractive is obvious. It is the magnificent, life-nurturing beauty of its green and blue.

The green is the grass, bushes, and trees. The blue is the pale blue of a clear summer sky and its reflection over the deep blue of the Sea.

Nowhere do Shari and I enjoy the stunning beauty of Lower Alaska's short summers than on Whidbey Island. The realization strikes us as we take in the view overlooking Holmes Harbor, the Cascade Mountains and its volcanos in the distance, or walk its quiet, forested residential streets, or drive through tunnels of giant hemlock, fir and cedar trees. We smell sweet, moist, cool air, admittedly with a hint of decomposition. We come here to absorb the nurturing mix of water, sunshine and earth. We come to Whidbey for a vacation.

South Whidbey on the Salish Sea isn't the congestion and noise of Seattle. No wonder the ferry lines are excruciatingly long in the summers. Most of the license plates are Washington and the cars wear Seahawks paraphernalia. I reckon they are local South Alaskans taking a vacation from the man-made environments that congest I-5 and I-405.

The grey, damp cold of when we lived here is forgotten. We are no longer concerned about mowing lawns, moss on the roof, power-washing walkways, or fighting back stinging nettles and blackberry canes with their flesh-tearing thorns. We can sit on the deck, enjoy the view, stroll through green, and graze on the abundant blackberries —just like the abundant deer. We are visitors. We are tourists.

The madrona trees remind me of the singular, striking beauty of the Sonoran Desert where every shape embodies a unique history. The huge fir, hemlock and cedar trees, even the alders, all adopt a standard shape: large, straight trunks with radiating branches. In dense stands, they are like a super-sized lawn. But the madrona trees twist and turn in their growth, adorned with carefully arranged clumps of leaves, like a banzai contrived to look natural. The madrona's peeling, vibrant red bark creates another one-of-a-kind pattern of shape and color. Each madrona is unique.

The forecast for Lower Alaska is more warm sunshine. Heck, we are tourists in our old stomping grounds. It could be cloudy and raining and we'd still enjoy the place — as long as the rain is warm.

Back in Lower Alaska

Puget Sound, on the Whidbey Island ferry.

I jokingly refer to Puget Sound as "Lower Alaska." It's typically wet, damp and cold, just like the Alaska panhandle coastline. The regular rain makes trees so giant you can't see the sky. Actually, you ordinarily can't see the sky anyway. It's hidden by overcast.

We drove for two and a half days and 1600 miles from Tucson to Whidbey Island. The road in Arizona, Nevada and Idaho is almost entirely through open desert. Big sky. Huge terrain. Even most of Oregon and Washington is open country. Only in the Blue Mountains, around Baker City and La Grande in Oregon, did we see a bit of evergreen forest, followed by the open land of the Inland Empire. Finally, we reached Ellensburg and things got really green. Heading up and over Snoqualamie Pass, we drove through dense forest. Familiar, dense forest.

Shari and I entered a time warp. Were't we in the Mojave Desert yesterday? And the Sonoran Desert the day before? Where did all this dense forest come from? Where's the dirt and the rocks?

Dense forest, vegetation everywhere, and the familiarity of an area where I have lived for four decades but now seems foreign, all that makes for a culture shock and a time warp.

They say it's been unusually hot and dry in Washington this summer so it's unfair to refer to Puget Sound as Lower Alaska. Hard to tell today.

Maybe the local weather spirits wanted to welcome us Baja Arizonans to Lower Alaska. What was cloudy at the Pass became overcast in North Bend. Then as we got off the ferry in Clinton, it started to rain. Welcome home, Whidbey Island ex-pats. Welcome home to Lower Alaska.

In Profit We Trust

The size, power and influence of multi-national corporations rival that of most countries. Wealth is increasingly concentrated among a few who wield disproportionately large influence among our politicians. Makes me think of ancient Rome where generals and the wealthy vied for control over their republican government. Poor plebs. Then there were the medieval kings who struggled with their barons and dukes for resources to raise bigger armies. Poor serfs.

Historical examples are many because the struggle for power hasn’t changed much. Today we have corporations that control the food supply, the financial system, oil, military hardware, health care, pharmaceuticals, and news media, not to mention gangster cartels. They all lobby and effectively control what is supposed to be our democratically elected politicians.

Our government is prohibited from competing. Health care, drug, and insurance companies are all for profit and their profits are protected by statute — or the lack of them. Patents on life forms are protected by statute. Public services (you know, electricity, water, communications, and other monopoly-utilities) are run for profit. We have private prisons run for profit. Education, the great democratic equalizer, is farmed out to subsidized for-profit businesses. College grads are in debt-servitude to banks.

I say we adopt a new national motto, one that better reflects our national values. Our original motto, E Pluribus Unum ("Out of Many, One"), was adopted in 1782. Clearly, it's a passé sentiment. Why, it's downright socialist! Congress replaced it with "In God We Trust" in 1956. But it's not God we trust in, it's the profit incentive.

I suggest a new national motto, one Ayn Rand and any respectable Ferengi from the Star Trek series would approve: "In Profit We Trust." We should emulate Donald Trump who used his wealthy pedigree, arrogant greed, government tax breaks, and even the bankruptcy code to accumulate billions, denigrate the needy, and run for president.

We should recognize that the purpose of life is to accumulate personal power, and anything that regulates that pursuit is bad for us. I'm not exactly sure why it's bad for us, but it's supposed to be bad, very evil, and very un-American.

The Huff of Mindbook

Some people think that after they die, they go to heaven, or maybe purgatory, or hell. Others think they are reborn in a better or worse life depending upon their current conduct and desires. I say, why wait? It's here. It's called the mind. Like the Eveready bunny, it just keeps on going.

In my hell, I get daily notifications.

"A lot has happened"? I don't think so.

Perhaps on a weekend morning, after I tire of playing solitaire, I tap the Facebook logo and scroll down my "newsfeed," which is a compilation of others' mind-chatter. "What's on your mind?" I suppose if my own mind-chatter isn't enough, it's fun to share it and read someone else's.

Posting what's on your mind can be very self-revealing. Sometimes I wonder whether people realize how revealing. As I scroll through my "newsfeed", I see myriads of heavens and hells, and a lot of depressing banality. I think to myself, if there is a hell, it's having to plug into others' mind-chatter. One mind-full of chatter is bad enough. Imagine a world-full.

I check into Huffington Post more often than Facebook. I admit, I lean heavily towards the liberal ("progressive") persuasion, so I enjoy the twist that Huff puts onto the news, and the hypocritical, mucky and salacious tidbits they drag up on politicians.

Like Facebook, Huff contains a lot of mind-chatter, most of it in the Media and Entertainment sections. Huff is a bit more creative than Facebook in that Huff pays people to make mountains out of molehills and think up hyperboles.

This is just a random sample from today's "Breaking News":

• Farrah Abraham Gave Her Daughter $600 For Losing Her Two Front Teeth.
• Jared Padalecki Stunned As Fans Honor His 'Always Keep Fighting' Campaign
• The One Thing Brandy Does Every Day To Find Balance
• Future: Ciara And I Prayed After Sex
• Justin Bieber Defends Kylie Jenner And Her Cornrows
• Mom Of Twins Uses Hilarious Signs To Shut Down Strangers Who Ask Intrusive Questions

Who are these people? Why in God's creation (or why in hell) should I care? It's too funny. I mean, I can't begin to make this stuff up. But "Breaking News"? I don't think so.

Like Facebook, Huff makes me chuckle, dread and joke about the creativity and banality of the modern mind. "What's on your mind?" "Breaking News"?

It's Bastille Day, so as I wonder about minds, heaven & hell, and banality & creativity, a quote comes to my mind, and I imagine that "pimpernel" isn't just a flower, but an expression of creativity.

“They seek him here, they seek him there

Those Frenchies seek him everywhere

Is he in heaven or is he in hell?

That damned elusive Pimpernel”

Is it in heaven or is it in hell?

That damned ellusive -- mind.