CROSSING INTO KENTUCKY.

We crossed into Kentucky on Highway 79/68  at Guthrie where we were greeted by a huge spotted cow with sunglasses on. There was a time I would have asked Jim to stop so I could take a picture of such and unusual sight. Before I could think twice we were looking at a life-sized pink elephant. Nope, didn’t stop for it, either. This is green, green grass of home country.
We hope to see some bluegrass before we leave the state, and a race horse would be nice. Currently, we are in Bowling Green, a name that intrigues. and  is catchy enough to excite a song about it. Remember the lovely Bowling Green by the Everly Brothers? Named for other places called Bowling Green, possibly. It’s origin is uncertain. But, what is certain is it sits on the Barren River, the area is lush and an 1830′s  report about agriculture mentions a turnip 32 inches around, and a beet weighing nine and one half pounds. Zounds!!

I saw enough barns to remind me of barn photos I’ve taken, all from the window of the car or motor home and unedited.

A barn and a real cow, too.

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There is something honest and endearing about an old barn, this one with a brand new roof is going to last for a while. And, they are getting scarcer then hen’s teeth. I should yell stop when I spot the next one. Maybe make it a point to photograph a barn from every state we pass through.

EASTER FUN

This morning I looked for items the family left behind after a full weekend of Easter fun. Ken left his tennis shoes. Doug left a Care Package of chicken alfredo he wanted to take home. And Virginia left her shopping bags that she had previously left in my car when I returned to Murphys weeks ago.

The kids colored a glob of eggs. Ken colored one egg with a rock band symbol and told the boys aged 10 and 13 whoever found that egg on Easter morning and could name the band, he would pay $5. The boys got on the internet, figured out the band, Blue Oyster Cult, and conspired among themselves that they’d share the 5 bucks and that way, no matter who found the egg, they’d both be winners. Smart kids.

Even though they are too old for the bunny, the fun is in the egg hunt. With 23 hidden eggs, it took them two hours to find them. The hardest was finding a purple egg hidden among the bouquet of lilacs, invisible among the flowers. And, one brownish egg hidden in the woodpile next to the stove.
We who hide the eggs take pleasure in providing a challenge. I took great pictures of the whole scramble.

Cedric loves to bake and he made a wonderful woven Easter bread. We all enjoyed card games, the food and sweets. Ken and Virginia are training for a 65 mile ride, so they got out twice on the bikes. Easter morning they road 45 miles with hills before the rain set in. Ah, well, we have to count our blessings. We had good weather between storms. The lightening show was fantastic. We skyped family members who couldn’t come. All fun.

But, getting pictures up in my blog is a challenge that get’s worse with everything I try. Maybe next week.

SCIENCE TERRIBLY WRONG, GRATEFULLY RIGHT.

This scientist once approved the killing of 40,000 elephants to cure overgrazing in Africa. He knows now he got it terribly wrong.
In this astounding video presentation, his mistake made him careful and he answered a question that puzzled scientists for many years. It has great portent for all of us sharing a finite planet and may be the most important solution to reversing climate change. Don’t miss this video.

http://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world_s_deserts_and_reverse_climate_change.html

ST PATRICK'S DAY-NUDESTOCK

Three Peta activists shed most of their clothing and donned bright green paint to celebrate St. Patricks’ Day and get their message out at the same time: “Meat’s Not Green”. They passed out leaflets about eating a vegan diet.  Abandon meat, eggs and dairy products and go vegan.  The meat industry is a polluter that also gobbles up natural resources. This information and the pictures come from Josh Trujillo’s Seattle blog.


The Peta ladies are tastefully covered for most sensibilities. But, we are a culture that shuns the naked body and public nudity as though there is something wrong with the natural human body uncovered. But, Seattle also hosts Nudestock, you know, like Woodstock?  Only it is a nude fest. People disrobe on street corners, go to work on public transit sans clothing, enjoy a parade and nudity in general.


There’s just something fun about getting nude and enjoying the breeze, so  they say. And the watchers don’t seem to mind one bit.


Peta activists were present at Nudestock along the parade route too. This time protesting the use of animal skins.

Looks like a fun crazy day whether you participate or observe.  Everyone smiles, no one is being ugly or in your face. I like it! And, the top o’ the mornin’ ta yuh whether yee be green or orange.

FAIR WEATHER WALK.

Yesterday was a beautiful weather day. Jim fixed a blown fuse on the back-up camera, and a few other little chores. I lost my mobile home to an indoor flood and dealt with the related issues much of the morning and late in the day. Jim received news that Aaron Canvasser, a good friend of his died and he was feeling blue.



This is Aaron giving me a haircut on the first day that we met in 2010.  He came to visit us where we were staying in Yuma. Then I gave him a haircut. He was so much fun to be around. It is a haircut I’ll never forget.


We didn’t feel like doing much so we drove around the park, took more swamp pictures. The swamp was  gray and cheerless. I kept trying to find color.


Moving water and shadows produced an abstract.


This one tree near the boardwalk had three different pieces of tackle stuck in it.


This piece was hanging in the wind. The third piece was one of those yo-yos.


I talked to five fishermen on the board walk. This guy was using a baby crawfish for bait. He said he usually gets perch in this lake, and an occasional bass. None of them had fish yet. He told us about an alligator farm nearby.


The boardwalk here is lengthy and makes a pretty pattern.


A clump of iris. The green just emphasizes the gray of the cypress.


But, spring is just around the corner. I expect to see  green leaves soon. We spent the late part of the day sitting outside for the second time this winter. It was comfortable enough to read our books and enjoy the fresh air right up to supper time. Life is good.

TOTEM AND FLOWERS.

Karen caught me up the ladder as I began decorating the totem. My thought was to get the high parts done and get things started before the gang arrives.

And, I took another last look around the yard, knowing I’ll be missing all the green of this spectacular spring, and my flowers.

Last minute chores and packing is my agenda for today. Have to get everything off this computer that I will need in the Motor Home computer and hope I don’t forget anything crucial. See ya down the road.


Beauty is its own excuse for being.

WHAT I MISS ON THE ROAD.

Flowers are equivalent to stars, as beautiful but earthly. The heavy rains brought bounteous blossoms, and leaves, too. Like this strawberry. The blossoms tell of the delicious fruits I’ll miss. Yesterday, while pulling weeds, Karen and I got the last of the asparagus hiding  in the weeds.  We ate the spears raw while we rested.

Red valerian, easy to grow, any soil, pot or in the ground.

Iris blooms the size of softballs.

At one time I had about 50 different varieties. Not all bloom at the same time.

Two days ago, this azalea had zero blooms.

Spiraea, too, has larger flower heads than usual.

The only Rhododendron I have left after moving them away from an ancient oak that didn’t like the water during warm weather. The others didn’t survive, but the majestic oak will live on to shade another generation or two.  (Several oak species die a slow death if watered in the summer.)

The bleeding heart and lily of the valley, along with a few others sit potted beneath the oak. This is the first time since I’ve  been ramblin’ that I’ve seen my daffodils in full bloom, my lilacs, cyclamens, honey suckle  and other stars of the earth. I do miss my garden when I’m on the road.  I enjoy other people’s gardens and public gardens I’d never see from home. It’s a good mix of two lifestyles.

HOPING TO SEE A METEORITE

Yesterday acted like rain.  The sun poked through late in the day. I walked to a neighbor’s for an early dinner and a board game, RummiKub.  All the talk surrounded the van sized meteorite that broke the sound barrier with a loud boom, then split into three pieces and fell to earth in a smoking fireball.  It was visible from Lake Tahoe to Turlock.  It was strange, it didn’t feel like an earthquake, it was just LOUD. I was inside and didn’t see it when it happened at about 8:00 a.m.   Its been three days ago and people are still looking for pieces of it in their yards.

Before the event,  Karen’s cat did some strange machinations, pulling open my screen door and whisking into the house.  Cheyenne, my host’s dog, is very sensitive and barked at “nothing.”   She does tricks on demand. Brian places a piece of dog food on her nose and when given the signal, she tosses it in the air and catches it in her mouth. She loves it when she gets to catch hot dogs.

When I worked as a feature writer many years ago, I loved doing pieces on men who cooked. It seemed they were few and far between, then. Now, most men like to try their hand at something. Brian outdid himself, with an eggplant parmesan sauce for spaghetti, and a salad.

But, the molded butters blew me away. Men who cook rarely achieve such fancy perfection. It was a wonderful dinner and such a treat as I wind down my home projects and get ready to return to my other life in the Motor Home. Brian beat me at two games of RummiKub.

This frog plate was full of  hors d’oeuvres when I arrived. It was so beautiful I couldn’t resist putting it in my camera to take home. I walked home through a star filled night. It was so dark I could barely find my driveway, but I wouldn’t want it any other way. It is a treat to live where light doesn’t pollute the night skies. Besides,  I was hoping to see  a meteorite.

A BETTER HAMBURGER

What is fairly common knowledge is that beef cows, because we raise them by the gazillions, and raise mega amounts of grain and hay that need chemicals to grow  to feed them, and pump them full of steroids and antibiotics that affect the chain of healthful medicines, and increase cancer in humans, while they release methane gas enough to become a planetary problem, and everyone closes their eyes to how they are treated and killed, and a new law pushed through the quiet of the night makes it against the law to secretly video tape farm and other animal cruelty and expose them, and kids think meat  comes from a plastic tray,  and if the farmer grazes them near bluffs or rivers, they erode banks and…shoot.  It isn’t  the cow’s fault they are such a problem and everyone loves hamburgers.
But, an encouraging  piece in the Natural Resources Defense Council Magazine, Onearth has a blueprint for an agricultural revolution and a better burger.
Instead of stuffing cattle in feedlots, stuffing them full of expensive corn, grabbing calves away from their  mothers, hot-iron branding them, vaccinating, castrating, and dehorning them before shipping them off to  slaughter house, why not raise them on grass?
Back in 2003, a few contrarian farmers were doing just that and claiming they had better tasting beef. Will Winter and Todd Churchill decided to find out if it was true. They sampled grass-fed beef, some of it was inedible, and some of it was excellent.
Winter and Churchill have worked with companies that raise grass-fed beef, a sustainable farming practice,  that is profitable and growing. What they learned is that cattle are like teens at a buffet table. They only want to eat what tastes good. They wander all over the pasture and eat selectively. Shifting to grass-fed farming  is successful and tastier by rotational grazing.  A new kind of polywire  movable  fencing, allows farmers to force the cattle to graze  two-thirds of available forage, where they get a higher sugar content in the mix of grass species. Then, they up and move them to another fenced acreage.
Churchill now runs the Thousand Hills Cattle Co. in Minnesota. Theo Weening  who carries grass fed beef in all of his Whole Food Stores says the demand for it is growing.
You raise more beef, on less land, without chemicals. It turns  corn ravaged land into better habitat, promotes human health, humanizes farming, and produces a guilt-free steak.
Jim and I like a once-a-year hamburger. I occasionally cave in to a pot roast and some summer tri-tip.  Now we can do it without the guilt.

MONTE WOLFE WILL LIVE ON.

It’s interesting to me that when I first heard of Monte Wolfe and interviewed Harry Schimke, Monte’s unusual  life had been covered by the San Francisco newspapers, the Stockton Record, local newspapers and several historical societies. But, no one investigated Monte like Don DeYoung. Don first contacted me about my blog in 2009 and went on from there to meet the Schimke family. Harry’s daughter, Susan had all of her father’s photos and notes, and his brother Art was still alive.  Don did a major investigation about Monte that led to a  vastly more accurate portrait of Monte than anyone had before. As he put it, thanks to the internet, his skills and his own boyhood fascination with Monte from a boy scout camping trip, (that  he describes in one of the links below), Don  satisfied a lifetime fascination.  Monte disappeared in 1940, a date established by Harry Schimke,  who was the last person to see him alive.
Mark Bonar, too, became fascinated by Monte as a young man through his father-in-law, Paul La Teer, and subsequently collected materials, visited the cabins and introduced his own children to the legend of Monte Wolfe.  Monte built the “new” or second cabin in about 1933, Mark is guesstimating. As you can see, the hinged door is missing but the old woodsman’s device for “barring the door” was  in place.

Mark told me, “Paul knew that country and used to stash food, sleeping bags and wool blankets in rocks behind Camp Irene, which was about eight to fifteen miles below Monte’s cabins.  A Forest Service trail led down to the  new cabin from the Blue Lake side.  It is located about 12 miles from the mouth of Summit City Canyon Creek. The creek funnels into the Mokelumne.  The cabin was well hidden, nestled among the trees about 100 yards from a sharp bend in the river. There was a horse trail leading down behind the cabin (as yet not re-discovered). Monte, too, used “spike” caches to hold food and traps on his forays throughout the steep Sierra Nevadas, a common practice for ranchers chasing cows, sheepherders, trappers, fishermen and hunters.
Mark found a paper at the cabin describing how Monte built that cabin by himself. He hoisted all the material up onto the ridge pole using the wetted incline plane principle. The door was small, but extremely heavy. “The door probably weighed 150 pounds and had massive hinges. No one could remove the door without special tools or help.
“The cabin was beautiful; strongly built,  with two rooms. The foundation of lightly charred cedar rounds  discouraged insects. He had a screened pantry high up off the floor to keep out mice.  Monte dug a fresh spring near the cabin from which he piped water into a carved wooden sink and to a solar shower he hooked up on the cabin’s outside wall.”

“He also built a partly under-ground smoke house with hooks enough for 100 trout or a large deer cut into pieces.”  Mark showed me pictures of  carved log chairs, a table and other items Monte made. There were also  comfortable furnishings that Monte  hauled into that steep canyon from long distances.

(The above two pictures were taken by Mark on one of his many visits to the cabins.)
“Monte hauled a heavy cast iron cooking stove from Hermit valley to the cabin, piece by piece.  He was exceptionally strong.”
Monte was reported to throw a canvas sack of nails over his shoulders weighing 80-100 pounds, stand with it on his shoulders and visit for an hour and never set it down, then move on as  though carrying nothing. He was seen setting off from Blue Lakes on skis to his cabin on the Moke,  at night, an incredible feat in the day time,  without the deceptive shadows cast by the moon. Paul Le Teer described him as “…a swarthy, short man; a dead shot with a rifle, small feet, enormous calves, slender waist, and the broad shoulders of an athlete. He wore his long hair in braids, sometimes tied by a ribbon.”
There are many engaging stories of Monte’s exploits.  One I heard from a former bartender at Tamarack concerns the romantic Monte. Supposedly no one, the law, nor wardens could  “sneak up” on the expert woodsman. But,  the Bartender  came across him lying in a naked embrace  with a woman on a large flat rock  in the bright sunshine. He retreated undetected.
After Monte’s disappearance, people began using the upper cabin until the U.S Forest Service burned it down. The main cabin was harder to find, was locked, and  under the “protection” of the Linford family.
Mark  has a letter from the Lindford’s to the El Dorado Forest Service  Supervisor, Edwin Smith, after Monte’s disappearance was formally acknowledged. The Lindford’s were well off and owned an Oakland Construction Company. They befriended Monte and convinced him to jointly establish a mining claim on Monte’s properties, meaning the area of his cabins and property he occupied, but didn’t own. The Lindord’s enjoyed, with Monte, a private, free, Shangri La Cabin in the mountains. From the letter, Mark speculates the Lindford’s were interested in the amazing private cabin retreat more than Monte. The letter admits that they had never mined nor taken any minerals on their claims, they simply wanted to use the cabin and lands that Monte occupied and asked permission to continue to do so. Permission was granted them as long as they did not extend that privilege to others. So, they shared a special  lock with the forest service on the cabin door.
“Between 1955 and 1970, ” explained Mark, “fewer people were going to the cabin. The elder Linfords were essentially gone and their son, family and friends used it on rare visits.  A tree fell on the cabin and took out one corner of it and the end result would certainly be steady deterioration. The cabin was repaired much later by a committee of interested people formed to protect the cabin. The non-profit Monte Wolfe Society was formed by James Linford.
The U.S. Forest service decided in recent years that the cabin should be left to deteriorate and removed the door to hurry the process and prevent people from using the cabin. They emptied the place of everything but the stove. The group has taken legal action against that decision, arguing that the Mountain Man’s place is an historical  artifact like an Indian Ruins and should be preserved.  The group has succeeded thus far in having the door replaced and the chimney pipe hole patched in 2010. That is heart warming progress indeed.
Don DeYoung’s book is still awaiting publication. But, in the meantime, there are several websites about De Young’s extended research, including locating Monte’s grandchildren and learning his real name at the very interesting links below.
http://blogs.esanjoaquin.com/san-joaquin-river-delta/2009/07/28/monte-wolfes-cabin/
http://deyoung.org/MonteWolfe/
http://montewolfe.blogspot.com/
http://www.montewolfe.com/
http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090727/A_NEWS/907270305

WITH A BIT OF LEVITY

I bought this 1998 camper van that I don’t need. My family believes it to be a ridiculous idea. “What are you going to do with it?”  I’m not sure yet!

Many times during the last 30 years I’ve been in situations where I would have liked the convenience of visiting people and going places without  inconveniencing friends or staying in a hotel. Those occasions come up rather regularly.

It was a great buy, clean, low mileage and easy to handle. If I stopped to question my motives too long, I wouldn’t have bought it.

One asset to owning this type of van is that I have the ability to park it on any city street or neighborhood without having to pay park charges.  It goes anywhere, the beach, the mountains and narrow roads, with ease. Now I have to build a garage to store it!  I should probably stick to cooking when I’m home. Human psychology is as difficult to understand as electronics and who can understand electronics? I should probably stick to cooking when I'm home.

The older I get, the simpler my Christmas becomes. I feel closer to old friends as I write my cards.

As a family, we gave up giving each other gifts long ago, except for the children. As I age, I know that Christmas is a matter of the heart and we value the gift of time with each other over anything else. That includes the food,  an important part of our shared time together. Special dishes, lovingly and thoughtfully prepared.

Fond remembrance for Christmases past. The profound enjoyment of the music, the tinkling of bells. Teasing the kids, perpetuating the magic, and looking at Christmas through their eyes.

Appreciating the trappings of the season all around us, glowing lights, cheery voices, the smells of cedar and pine, the colors shining bright, secret smiles, hidden glances, the scurry and hurry and expectation of things to come.

And Peace. We don’t expect World Peace to happen as much as we may wish it. But, in our country or city neighborhoods,  where Christmas dwells, 80% or more  people take a day out of their work to celebrate Christmas, and there is a sense of peace. Little traffic on the road. The quiet of a neighborhood as everyone turns inward to reflect upon the  beauty, the warmth,  holiday hugs, the family together, the deeper meaning of Christmas Spirit. Love, Joy, Hope and at least, a day of peacefulness.