Midian Ranch Blog

This is the web log for Midian Ranch, an isolated homestead in rural Nevada. It is owned by Jason and Tina Walters, whom are also its regular posters. This blog is exclusively for the enlightenment and edification of our friends, family, and colleagues.

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Location: Gerlach, Nevada, United States

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Weekend of April 8th, 2005

Out on the desert things never go as planned, even when you’ve prepared exceptionally carefully for them. Actually, especially when you’ve prepared exceptionally carefully for them. After a grueling midnight “death ride” from San Francisco to Midian fueled by two cups of coffee, five energy drinks, and an unbending determination to beat the rising sun, we collapsed into our bed in the ranch house at 6 AM. Well, Tina collapsed; I sort of vibrated around in semi-hallucinogenic caffeine daze until Tom (of Tom’s Mobile Home Transportation) and his assistant/buddy showed up with our brand new 400 sq foot GE Modular Office space! All right, it’s not actually new (a new unit costs 30 grand) but it’s new to us and represents a vast expansion of our usable living space out at Midian.

The only problem was that the space I had cleared out using the tractor wasn’t big enough to allow Tom to properly use his special, highly modified mobile home moving rig without heading off into the salt brush, where he was certain he would acquire a flat tire, a punctured air hose, or some other fatal semi-truck malady. So the four of us had to clear out a new space quickly using shovels, a couple of sawzaws, and a lot of elbow grease. In the end he deftly maneuvered the god awful unwieldy thing into perfection position. Tom and his buddy were good guys, and we shot-the-shit for a while after the work got done. He used to be a cop in South San Francisco way back in the day before moving out to the Silver State and, naturally, had a couple of amusing tales to tell. After a couple of cold ones they headed back toward Gerlach, presumably to eat at Bruno’s (yes, I tried to feed them.)

I got a lot of useful things done this trip. The olive trees are still alive, though some of them are doing better than others. I put up a new solar panel and added another battery to our bank, which is charging up more and more quickly as the sunny, windy summer grows nearer. With some help from Tina I pulled the carburetor off of the tractor and checked the spark plugs, which were not in terribly good shape. I hope to have it running next trip out. We moved the generator/welding trailer over to the area that I have designated the “vehicle storage area,” which took a lot of unexpected doing, as the thing weighs a ton (probably literally). I’m hoping that Kevin will lend me a bobcat next trip so that I can finish it and the “materials storage area” respectively. That should help me to organize things “downtown” at lot more effectively.

Tina, Snap, and I took several morning walks up to the hill I affectionately refer to as “Walters’ Wart,” which is notable mainly for the large amounts of bone white petrified coral that can be found there. I imagine it is left over from when Midian used to be covered by Lake Lohantan, a vast inland sea that covered most of Northern Nevada and Utah about ten thousand years ago. I imagine it is this ancient body of water that first drew the ancestors of the modern Paiute Indians to the area. In any case, the first morning I went up the hill armed with my shotgun and, after hiking around, asked myself the all important question “Why am I bothering to haul this damn thing around?” The next morning we found some dinner-plate sized mountain lion tracks, which pretty effectively answered the question.

It pays to be prepared out on the playa.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

hi,chris here.
man that new trailer is a beaut!
looks realy cool!!!
and it's white -meaning it will be easier to cool in the summer.
judgeing by our book caliber test
of a month or so ago I think your .45 should be adequate for lions,tigers or bear...oh my!

12:30 AM  

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