Now here is a place that has not changed too terribly much. It is a road into the southern end of the Santa Rosa Mountains. The place is called the Calcite Mine. Now, this place is a geologic wonderland. There are igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rocks all in the same area. There are faults and folds visible in the strata. There are faults with measurable offset visible. There are structures like Grabens visible in the canyon walls. The graben we saw was in fact a textbook example, the best I seen in the field for a very long time. There are roads into the areas, but then the roads quit as the canyons become very narrow and steep.

The canyons we hiked had not apparently been traversed in some time as there were no tracks at all. Actually, we were to learn that common storms tend to cover up most tracks. However, the evidence of previous mining for Calcite was everywhere. The earlier miners didn’t miss much in their greed to get at the biggest and best crystals in the area. Deep and long slots have been cut into the sandstone where the only previous cuts had been by faults and fractures. Into these faults and fractures seeped fluids that deposited the Calcite Crystals.

After all, it was the crystal mine that brought us here. Time has a way of healing mining scars. If you ignore the fact that there was an intense activity totally dedicated to unbridled greed, you can still see the original beauty of many of these places. It seems that minerals often get into places that by coincidence have a natural geologic and scenic value to them as well as mineral wealth.

We probed around the mine tailings for left over crystals and enjoyed snaking our way down vertical sandstone shafts. It was easy to imagine the high velocity and force possible by flood flows racing down these waterways abandoned 99% of the time.

We went to the park potluck today. It was pretty good for the most part. I thought the chow was pretty good, Jo not so much. The drinks were free. This was the oldest age group I have yet hung around with. I need to remember to slow down a bit moving about…at 53 it makes me feel like a teenager in comparison…most of these people are not very fit. Anyway, we were welcome like everybody else, and that was pretty cool. Here we are far away from any real home and having some company feels pretty good. There is still a bit of holiday cheer that Christmas, in my experience has been good at bringing about.

There was a 30 pound Corvina mounted on the wall opposite above my head. This was a fine fish varnished in an action pose for all time. It is interesting that that fish, caught in 1987 was likely one of the last ones in this lake. According to a fast aging and long time resident and fisherman here, they were all fished out. It is interesting that people supposedly so smart are not able to control their greed when it comes to taking resources that they have the power to take. People will take as much as they can without regard to the thing they are catching or even the fact that their kids will not be able to do the same. In this case, the generation just before mine took all of these fine fish and left me and my generation with these crummy little 1lb Tilapia to catch. It’s no wonder that kids today are off into cell phones, computers and the like…they have been sold out of many natural resources by generations before. Interestingly, the process is accelerating as people get better and better at exploitation. The natural world becomes a kind of museum that used to exist for most people. The rest of the world is a factory, city, street, mall or electronic cyberspace. We are seeking whatever remnants of pre-exploitation we can find. It is taken for granted that nature so to speak will always be there for us to abuse as we please.

Still, it’s ironic. In this case we had a room full of people going extinct seated beneath a fish they made extinct.

I like to play the guitar, the harmonica, and the mountain dulcimer. Although I am far from a professional musician, (much smaller repertoire) I am pretty good at what I do know on the guitar. I have had the comment made several times “I thought it was the radio” made from people hearing me playing one of my more rehearsed pieces. This has been at times I was sitting playing somewhere people could not see me playing until they entered the room or area where I was. When the weather is moderate, I like to sit outside and play. It gives a certain sense of satisfaction. Sometimes the birds will sort of chirp along with the classical numbers. I have been doing this for close to 30 years now. I mostly play classical guitar outside. It is not loud or amplified music.

I have been playing outside for about 15-20 minutes at a time as we have been traveling. Actually, I have tried this a few times we were tent camping in the past few years as well. Here are the results:

First, nobody in the past 10 years or so has come up to me or my wife, while we were playing out of doors in one of these camp or park settings.

Second, people will walk by or look over while pretending not to hear. Then, predictably, they will return with some kind or radio or portable boom box and start playing “Their” music. This happened here yesterday. I sat out here next to the trailer on a warm Saturday AM playing a few tunes while waiting for Jo to go to town. Now, one thing about this place is its relative quiet (except the machines, more on that later) and the clear lack of outside radio. I notice these things. Anyway, sure enough, this AM we were outside again. And sure enough somebody needed to bring out their radio and start playing the popular music loud enough to be heard inside this trailer.

Now, most of the people hare are older, 60 plus or more. There are some younger people, but they are not the average. It surprised me that this older generation would react to my playing in the same way that the younger types. So, why does my playing quietly cause an emotional reaction? It seems to me that either any sound is an invasion of space or there is something else going on. I realized that many people do not play their own music, including the older generation. Actually, many of the so-called older generation was raised with electronic music on the radio, then the TV, and finally digital. The age of common self produced music was probably more like the turn of the century in this country, before the widespread use of the radio. It is a whole lot easier to select your type of music from a list and turn a few knobs than to spend hours learning to create the tunes yourself. Besides, home made music lacks all of the production possibilities of the professional modern music studio. The fact that live music is in fact live and cannot be reproduced does not seem to be realized. After awhile, people get used to the produced “canned” music, and now appear to be to the point of accepting it as the better product. This is a marketing coup of the highest order. A mass produced product that has certain slickness to it is considered to be superior to the real roots from where it came. Now if the product were just considered superior, that would be one thing. But now you have generations that actually try to blast out and cover up quality live music with out even giving it a listen. Man, this is some kind of conditioning. What else can one say about it? Maybe people are made to feel less than seeing somebody playing music. Maybe it seems odd that anybody would be providing anything for free. In any case, it seems that for the present time it is better for a music maker to be heard than to be seen.

We went to the Salton Shores Christmas Parade today. This was the first time I ever saw the marching band baton girls wearing sunglasses…Actually Santa and a lot of his helpers were wearing shades as well.

The parade was clearly a local affair. However, it was all very up close. We were showered with candy…we enlisted help from kids on the other side of the street to pick it all up. The people were friendly to a fault. It was all very low key with apparently a low need for law enforcement. The same Imperial County Sheriff we had just seen at outside the Library was the only law enforcement visible at our end of the parade route.

This is in interesting juxtaposition to Susanville (Ca) parades. There are several large State and Federal Prisons in the Susanville area. At those local parades however there are County Sheriff’s, CHP Officers, and City Police present in large numbers all along the parade route….not that they detract from the parade…but it is interesting that the Susanville parade route was lined with seemingly law abiding citizens…The parades were roughly the same size with the Salton Shores parade probably a bit smaller. Go figure.

We were canoing along yesterday on a warm sunny afternoon following a hard morning of work. We hear this little loud little girl like voice hailing us from the bank. This woman was literally following the canoe asking lame questions. Comet was swimming about like he likes to do. She started off asking how he got in the canoe and followed up with comments like he doesn’t look mean to mind if I pet him? Jo said he didn’t always take to strangers and perhaps no petting. She insisted of course saying stuff like oooh he’s so strong…enough to make you want to turn and paddle away fast…which we did…her still chattering away about her properties in the distance…You see, at one point as we were paddling along the shore, she managed to let us know that she lived there in one of the bigger houses, and that she was a Realtor, and that many of those real estate signs there were hers. She then asked where were from and tried to get chummy fast. So, here you are out for a bit of relaxation and this person is trying their level best to turn your attention to their financial advantage as fast as possible. These people are almost universally human leaches. They only exist because of legal forms and well constructed channels that keep people from making transactions without them.

As we rounded the corner, there was this land pusher talking to another woman. We assumed they were friends. That’s when she started up on us. The other woman got in her car and left as soon as possible after that. We thought they were friends. No, the land sales specialist had just likely ruined another person’s reverie and was starting in on us…good thing we were in a boat.

We were just playing Bocce Ball with some of the regulars here. This game is many a retired persons escape and time drain of choice. As several of these folks have said “theres not much else to do around here” and “we are just passing time”… It seems like boredom is a constant companion…passing time is like passing gas to these guys…when overloaded with either the more you pass the better you feel.

Anyway, the Dog warden is the owner (along with her husband) of this park. There have been a few odd but bad experiences with bigger dogs here. It seems that a couple of these little barkers have been literally grabbed up and chewed on by big dogs tired of the little yappers. I wasn’t there at either of the two reported chewings, and maybe it was just big dogs bad. However, I have noticed many times that these little yappers will literally lunge at Comet with some lame comment from the owner. We restrain Comet and he’s not aggressive that way, but I could see where some little dog could really piss off a big cranky mutt ready to chomp down on the nearest hot dog or burrito of a dog.

Anyway, the first night here the owner lady managed to reprimand us like a couple of school kids regarding Comet needing to be on a leash. The funny thing is that this woman looks exactly like one of those little yappers coming up and getting in your face. Today Comet loosed himself after a rabbit outside the property of this place, then wandered back over. The yapper was inside the restaurant she runs as well. She was outside the restaurant in a skinny minute after Comet hit the sand dunes, then headed back inside the park boundary under his own steam. She made some pitiful gesture pointing at her neck like a mad woman, indicating to get the wolf back under control. He was still wearing his leash while chasing the rabbit. Now, this was comic (Comet?) relief to about a dozen or so other people out there. However, the joke was lost on the yapper.

However, in all of this regulatory zeal lies hidden a bit, or perhaps a bite of the ironic. In the area surrounding this RV park are dozens of ranchettes scattered all over the desert plain from the interstate down to the sea…a 5 mile swath of homesteads randomly scattered on lots from city sized to several acres or more. Many of these homes have dogs, many have more than one dog. Most of these dogs are outside dogs. These dogs are outside most of the time in hot and cold. They don’t seem to mind much in the daytime. However, about an hour or so after sunset the desert starts to cool off. The dogs feel the chill and with apparently little else to do start to bark. The key word here is start. Because, once started, the dogs seem to go on running at the mouth until about sunrise when it starts to warm up, and they either finally go to sleep, or just get tired of barking. You might think this is an exaggeration. You might think that the dogs are not really that loud or continuously barking as loud as possible. You would be incorrect on both accounts. Interestingly, nobody seems to say a thing about it. Maybe the perception is that this is what dogs left out all night alone are supposed to do. Maybe people feel more secure with barking dogs. Maybe there is a lot of unheard cursing and muttering at these dogs. It does however seem ironic that there is this constant barking loud enough to require ear plugs to sleep and yet there is more stir created over one well looked after dog momentarily loose off of his leash. The barking dogs are after behind fences for the most part.

Like everywhere, there seem to be factions, splinters, pods, gatherings, groups, and small globs of people that seem to aggregate like water drops into pools.

Here we seem to have several. First are the Bocce Ball group. These folks gather and play the Bocce Ball game and other discussions. Then there is the drinking club. These folks can be seen toting brown paper bags around. Actually they seem to be herding the bags. Here at least they seem pretty content to imbibe and let live. Jo has reported smelling of the alcohol on one or more of this group. Next is the working man’s group. We saw and heard them for the first time today. From 50 feet away, it was easily ascertained that the lead working man is an electrician. The electrician works on the new housing developments in the area we know. We also know his name is Steve and that he is very willing to provide electrical supplies to at least several of the campers here. One of the working man’s group is seemingly retired, and by his own admission is “just killing time like everybody else (here)”

Now here is a most interesting human phenomenon. Many of these chaps here have worked hard to retire it seems. However, the electrician has a radio of some kind and is in contact with his co-workers. It seems that actually he is on call, but there is the trick. In this place, time is slowed, especially to the persons with television as their main activity. For these people, life takes on a mundane predictable existence that is devoid of challenge, passion, or interest. These folks have “made it”. They were probably the ones in the work place that before they retired bored everybody in earshot with their constant reminders of their impending retirement bliss while everybody else was still slaving away. Anyway, the electrician has a real Tom Sawyer deal going here. He is very loudly active in communication with his many co-workers talking of other jobs to be done and making it appear as if the retirement life is not a fun as being a working stiff, or actually in his case, a “Team Member”. This guy seems very popular and people do visit the electrician’s trailer coming and going. He seems like an affable fellow underneath it all…it just goes to show that many times the attitude of the situation is more important than the situation itself. Somebody can always be sold something they do not need. This guy is boasting of getting up and ready to get after it tomorrow (Monday) morning. It sounds like this would be the best thing anyone here could do with their time, and that anybody not heading off to the salt mines is missing all the fun. Steve should become a recruiter or salesman.

This team member thing is real interesting. One of the charges previously leveled against me by my former crook of a supervisor was that I needed to be more of a team player. I was being strongly advised to go along with the crooks, or be ostracized. This went under the name of teamwork and most likely still does. I have seen and experienced this kind of stuff more than once. Still it is interesting. It looks to me that one of the things humans treasure most is the comfort and relative security of the group. The nature of the group notwithstanding. I am now reading a book about the capture of the WW2 Nazi Adolph Eichmann. His capturer’s were very surprised to find that stripped of his SS rank and authority, Eichmann was an average man, and really rather spineless at that. He did not confront the jews and tried to get along with them as best as possible to preserve his life as long as possible…as no doubt many of his victim’s did. Anyway, it shows that this Eichmann at one time enjoyed (and he reportedly did enjoy it) the vast company and constant attention paid to him. Eichmann was the ultimate team player. However, at the time of his capture, he was just a middle class working man with a few family acquaintances like most people. He was not important anymore and so just acted like everybody else. It explains how people can become so insensitive to other people.

Fear and Greed

One thing we have noticed on this trip is the ubiquity of the two emotions: Fear and Greed. It is universally accepted by the stock trading community that trading on the market is guided by fear and greed. As we travel, we see many people acting out these emotions in everyday life. There is a general fear of not having enough, and a greed to get as much as possible without regard to what is actually needed. We see this on the road at every moment. Women driving the biggest vehicles they can afford out of fear of them or their children being crushed. Men greedy to drive the biggest most powerful trucks they can afford regardless of the cost to them, their families, other drivers, or the environment simply to project an image of success. While fear and greed are useful emotions in some situations, they seem to be pretty much overused and overrated in 90% of modern day situations.

We see here and have seen many other places a class of people we are coming to call the legless Americans, or LA. Most of these people have legs attached to their torsos, but they seem to make a point of walking around as little as possible. In this place, electric golf cart tires seem to have have replaced sneakers with this crowd. We see seemingly fit people zipping past on these golf carts. There are people that walk around here to be fair, but we are talking about a cultural curiosity here. To the LA It’s like there is some shame in walking, or that driving anywhere is vastly superior to walking. These people go by wearing sunglasses and mostly looking straight ahead as if their destination was the only real thing on the planet. I have noticed the same thing especially with men who have decided that any form of locomotion other than a very large and loud pickup truck, motorcycle, or quad runner is to be strictly avoided. In neighborhoods, these people are rarely seen very far from some sort of internal combustion engine be it a weedwacker, lawnmower, or motor vehicle. These folks will predictably acquire the largest, loudest, most expensive, gas inhaling machine they can afford payments on. I don’t know who they are trying to fool anyway… most of these guys and gals are working stiffs with monthly payments and high interest rate obligations. It seems like a massive dedication to the ego, massage of the mind, projection of your own personal importance, negation of the natural, impression the unimpressed, a race to nowhere, a race to waste where the winner deprives the future of now. This is not really a new phenomenon, but it seems to be increasing where as the people actually using their legs and using a reasonable amount of transport gear seem to be on the decline or holding steady at best…there’s a reason for all of those recently reported overweight citizens tipping the scales and pressing their shock absorbers down.

This is an interesting place. It is generally quiet and neat. There are 3 rows of perhaps 20 – 20 wide x 50 foot deep RV spaces…a total of 50 or 60 RVs parked side by side. There are neat rows of small palm trees separating the spaces. Over half of the residents have built wooden facades and additions onto the sides of their trailers, thus doubling there interior floor space. There are colorful banners hanging from some spots along with clinking wind chimes. The gravel is a white granite variety well compacted in place giving the look and feel of coral. The wood mostly bleached and weathered to a comfortable shade of gray that seems to blend well with the fading variety of trailer colors. Everybody has at least one car or truck…some more…there are trailers of every type from the most modern fancy motorhomes to homemade looking windowless travel trailers. We have the only folding trailer in the place. Power cords and sewer pipes sprout like space alien feeder tubes and appendages. Speaking of space aliens, or just space in general, I read an interesting little treatise in the library today about space.

The book was about Christa McAiuliffe, the first civilian in the US Space program. She was a teacher. It seems that the US President Ronald Reagan had mentioned sending some average person aboard the space shuttle so that that person could in turn relate back to millions of other average persons the experience. This woman, a school teacher and mother was chosen as the best for this average job…now theres an oxymoron, or maybe just oxyaverage. Anyway, the story ends badly with the shuttle blowing up in front of the average millions. I guess the message was clear, bad things happen, space ships are big dangerous things or something like that. Anyway there is an interesting story behind the accident I never saw…there had been a lot of delays before the launch. The delays were making the agency, NASA look bad, or so they thought. On the morning of the final launch, it hit 27 degrees at the launch site. Now, I had not before seen the photo in the book, but there were major icicles hanging from base of the shuttle in the area of the engines and maybe elsewhere too. I guess the engineers spent all night trying to convince the management of the possibilities of icing of critical components like the o-rings. I mean, all you had to do was look at the ice…how could you ignore it? There was as much ice as I have seen on on a national forest waterfall…This whole thing is really typical of Government agencies…there is always some bureacratic power monger more interested in personal and agency promotion than the priority demanded of the project at hand, in this case safety. This is interesting in that it exactly parallels my recent experience at the USFS and as documented in the very well written book “The Bureaucratic Experience” As for the schoolteacher, after her selection she was quoted as saying (almost prophetically) “I do not see danger in this…I only hope to best share my experience after coming back down to earth” wow. What do you say to your kids about that?