Midian Ranch Blog

Magical Wal-Mart Reindeer On The Soul

2012-01-01T21:07:00.000-08:00

A few days before Christmas Cassidy and I walked into Wal-Mart and saw a reindeer.

Well, Cassidy didn’t really walk. She was riding in a shopping cart. And it wasn’t really a reindeer. It was, in fact, a middle-aged minimum-wage greeter wearing an enormous pair of foam antlers (with bells on the ends, no less.) And this particular reindeer didn’t seem to be overflowing with endless amounts of yuletide joy, either. She was plainly exhausted; most likely at the very end of a tedious shift of smiling at shoppers as they came in, and then checking their receipts as they went out. Not a job likely to fill anyone with Christmas spirit seven hours, one half-hour lunch break, and two fifteen-minute state-mandated breaks into their work day.

But Cassidy was convinced that what she was seeing was, in fact, a real reindeer. She oooohed. She pointed. She repeatedly made the sign for reindeer: thumbs pressed against her temples palmed outstretched, with fingers waving. When I seemed insufficiently impressed she repeated the entire process, as if to say “Look Dad! Can’t you see her? A real, live magical reindeer is right in front of us!”

And then…

Cassidy is one of those people. The kind that is capable of walking into Wal-Mart and seeing reindeer. I’m the other kind of person. The kind that is only capable of walking into Wal-Mart and seeing tired, minimum-wage employees. Or so I thought. Lately I have come to the conclusion that, like my daughter, I have a disturbing tendency to look at things that are self-evidently one thing, and see something entirely different. Or, to be more specific, to see things in ways that irrational and self-serving, rather than seeing them for what they are: namely, bleak.

Doubt. It’s a powerful emotion. It’s also why this blog hasn’t been updated in almost six months. I haven’t been writing at all, really. The tiny Wal-Mart reindeer weigh too heavily upon my soul.

X X X

Well, that’s not entirely true. I’ve been working a lot. And I actually wrote a couple of posts: long, rambling weird ones. But I ended up scrapping them instead of putting them up on the blog. They were all too angry, too depressing, or too crazy sounding for me to inflict upon my friends and family. A typical example was “The Redneck as Jew,” an angry 4,000 word tirade about how rural Americans are treated by urban Americans in the 21st Century, with historical references, footnoting, and quotes from Napoleon.

So, yeah: you’re not going to get to read those.

But I’m also not going to lie to you. I’ve been having serious misgivings about my life out here. Not that I have any desire – or even ability - to live anywhere else. The dust has been ground too deeply into my personality for that. Midian is who I am. For someone like me, the trip to the desert can only be a one-way trip. Every place else is now and forever someplace else: one that can never be home. That can never really ever be real, even. But the vision I had for my life out here has eroded from the noble down to the grubby. Midian Ranch is a dirty, difficult place to live. Simply put, it’s a huge amount of work to live off-grid in a desert. Nothing you do here is ever easy. Everything is always breaking, freezing, blowing down, or simply disintegrating under the twin pressures of wind and sun (like my greenhouse, thank-you-very-much Mother Nature.) You never really get clean – not in the sense that townies and city dwellers think of clean – and your home never really gets clean either. It’s a never-ending struggle to hold the line at “mildly dingy.”

For a long time this lifestyle felt principled to me. Moral. An adventure. The constant struggle to bend wind, sun, and water to my will. To create my own personal paradise, free from the influences and controls of the outside world. [Solar panels.] To take the meaning from words like Freedom, Self-Reliance, and Independence and craft those meanings into a physical reality. [Wind mills.] To work. To live differently. To let the desert heal me, challenge me, and inspire me. To be a 21s Century frontiersman. [Spring Water.] To be a living roleplaying game character. To be science fiction. To settle Mars, at least in a metaphorical sense.

Now I increasingly feel that I’m see things for the way they really are. Doubt stalks my days, and my dreams are minimum wage Wal-Mart employees with antlers. I’m no visionary, no frontiersman, and no romantic figure. I’m a middle-aged, failed misfit who lives in poverty and obscurity with his unhappy wife, handicapped daughter, and oddball friend in a bunch of old doublewides and shipping containers on worthless land that nobody else wanted. My work and life have had no meaning, nor shall they. My exercises in preparedness and independence are exactly what they appear to me: evidence of a paranoid, deteriorating mind.

Or at least that’s how I feel on some days. Others are better. Those are the days on which I pretend to see the reindeer.

X X X

At its heart, there are three problems for me: or, perhaps, for someone like me. (You know me. You know the type.) Each is unique and horrid in its own special way. Each is a treasured problem, to be polished unceasingly like the barrels of assault weapons in that imaginary, secret basement compartment each of us has constructed in our souls.

(Okay… maybe that’s just me. Though, thankfully, some days involve less obsessive metaphorical barrel cleaning than others.)

The first - and perhaps the most important - is the obvious truth that changing locale doesn’t automatically change who you are. (Not that I saw that.) I wasn’t able to leave Jason Walters Stressed Out Messenger Service Owner behind when I relocated to the Black Rock Desert. I should have. It was part of my goal to kill that bastard as dead as cordwood by moving out here. But he was much, much more a part of me than I had expected. Taking him out of his element didn’t kill him. It just made him stronger, and now I find myself mired in numerous complex business schemes that have little to do with writing, building Midian, being a father, or simply having a good time. It’s like that part of me is a hydra: I chopped off Flash Messenger, and out grew DOJ Logistics, IPR, Hero Games, and Blackwyrm to take its place. All with the best of intentions, of course. Economic independence and whatnot. Puritan work ethic and so forth. Pulling my weight and blah blah blah.

It’s all a bunch of obsessive-compulsive crap. Or fear. A subconscious fear of becoming something other than what I was, even as I consciously strove to do just the opposite. But what’s the point of abandoning a society if you just tie yourself right back to it? It’s like I’m Gulliver and his Lilliputians all at the same time, perpetually binding myself to the ground when I could be flying around on the city of Laputa, throwing rocks at rebellious cities… or something. I might not be remembering Gulliver’s Travels properly.

In any case, the second is that it’s almost impossible for me to be happy for very long. Or, at the very least, I don’t seem to be able to be happy to the same extent or in the same manner that other people are happy. I can only catch fleeting glimpses of a happiness that slips through my fingers like sand when I try to grasp them. (Or maybe I flatter myself in to thinking this unique. Is it like that for you too?) When I was young I tried to inspire those glimpses with drugs. It didn’t work. As I got older, I switched to looking for them with alcohol. No luck there either. Then I came out to the wilderness, still looking for them in the vastness. No luck here either… though I don’t feel the lack quite as much.

Maybe it’s the same thing. Maybe that’s what happiness is: a lack of unhappiness. Or maybe that’s just what most of us settle for. Or maybe that’s just another minimum wage worker in antlers too.

X X X

The first two problems are ones that you, gentle reader, may have already dealt with in your life. The third and final problem is perhaps peculiar just to me. (Or, again, I may be flattering myself). It is this: I’ve grown to distrust pleasure, comfort, and convenience. When I spend time at Casa Azul (my mother’s lovely house in Gerlach), Reno, or in the Bay Area, I feel somehow guilty. Uncomfortable deep within my center; modern society, it seems, has become almost physically repulsive to me. It’s like central heating, nearby grocery stores, good restaurants, unarmed neighbors (okay: that would just be the Bay Area), normal water pressure, “stick houses,” and homes that lack entire packs of animals that consume all possible organic table scraps are somehow sinful, unclean things. It feels like I’ve violated a religious prescription… which seems to suggest that living out here has become my religion.

Or maybe it means I’ve become a genuine desert rat: by definition a one-way trip to nowhere. Or at least to here. But where is that? Somewhere… or nowhere? I’m uncertain. I have doubts.

I have magical Wal-Mart reindeer on the soul.

Which reminds me: I didn’t finish my story, did I? You know: the one actually about magical Wal-Mart reindeer. The one that ended with “And then…?” That one.

And then the lady with the reindeer antlers noticed Cassidy. She smiled, waved back, and said “Aren’t you a little darling? Merry Christmas!” She even looked a little less tired.

Cass waved back a final time as we rolled away, and then turned to me with a smug look, as if to say “See? I told you she was a magical reindeer.”

And of course she wasn’t. She was a tired, middle-aged, vaguely humiliated woman making $8.25 an hour to make certain nobody steals Monster High Dolls from the Sparks Wal-Mart.

And yet maybe - just maybe - for an instant, if you squinted very, very hard, she was.

“Is Winter Finally Over?” and random thoughts on being blessed

2011-06-14T23:17:00.001-07:00

[Note: It.Was.Hot.Today! Finally! This posting is a little more “stream of consciousness” than I like for things to be, but it’s time I returned to blogging. So there we are.]

It’s been a strange time out in the Blackrock Desert, but I think that it finally FINALLY won’t snow anymore. Really: it was snowing last week (the final week of May), though not particularly hard. In any case, it’s lovely today and I shouldn’t bitch, what the rest of the country being 90-degrees and riddled with man-eating tornadoes.

Though it’s been a hard winter, things are well here at Midian Ranch. Not easy, of course: these are hard times. But physically well, which counts for a lot. Now comes another frightening fire season. Fortunately our firebreak situation is greatly improved, with 30-foot cleared areas around the (now expanded) warehousing area, greenhouse, and generator shed. The burn areas around the homestead have also been improved, though for various reasons you can’t just drive a front-end loader around them, so there’s a lot of “hand” work involved in that process, not all of which is finished. But very soon it will be.

Cass is doing well: healthy, large, and developing well. She’s trying to walk, can stand a little, and is using her arms in the appropriate manner. She points when she wants something. Cass also speaks a little at this point, though she’s sometimes hard to understand due to the unusual shape of her mouth and tongue - though she says a lot words and phrases clearly enough. These include: mom, dad, hi, hi dad, Hi There(!), water, and what is it (?) ( which comes out sounding kind of like “izit,” but you know what she means.) Her sign language vocabulary is now large enough that I don’t always know what she’s trying to tell me: I’m guessing it’s somewhere between 30 and 40 words.

She also knows most of the Wiggles dances. Really.

I have no standard for comparison, but I would say that she’s 90% pretty much just a normal, terrible two year old (almost) - and that remaining 10% isn’t what I expected. It’s more like eccentricity than impairment, though perhaps I’m subconsciously putting a happy face on her disorder. #Shrug# Doesn’t really matter, does it? Nobody out here at Midian but us chickens… literally.

With my dad’s help I managed to buy an excellent 28-foot shipping container from the Bay Area and get it out here. It’s got an unusual ceiling height of almost 10 feet, making it perfect for a shop. I’ve begun the epic task of moving everything car, motorcycle, and small engine over to it, as well as constructing shelves inside. It’s going to be an enormous amount of work getting it just right, but it will free up a tremendous amount of space for work-related storage. Which, if everything goes according to plan, should prove incredibly important as we expand the operation to include two more specialized retail websites.

The money situation is naturally dreadful. But, then again, it usually is, so I’m worried but not particularly impressed. That’s one of the many advantages to living on land you own outright, working on your land, and having a certain amount of your diet come straight from that land: there’s only so much poverty can do to you. And our poverty is intermittently spiked with plenty, due to our own work, the generosity of others, and occasional good fortune so well timed that it can only be providence. So it isn’t all that bad if you have a certain amount of faith.

In conclusion, the various people, dogs, puppies, cats, and chickens at Midian Ranch are getting along passably well in trying times and under difficult circumstances, which is a great blessing.
Possibly it’s the only blessing you need.

The Angel And The Sage

2010-12-19T17:18:00.000-08:00

The Angel And The Sage [a parable about being the parent of a child with Down syndrome]

An Angel tumbled from heaven and struck the ground with such force that she broke her wings. Fortunately, she fell near the cottage of a Sage, who found her and took her home with him. He put her in his bed, tended her wounds, and cared for her until she awoke one day.

“Thank you for your taking care of me Sage,” exclaimed the Angel, “Soon my wings will heal, and I’ll be able to fly back to Heaven where I belong.”

This made the Sage very sad, because he could clearly see that her wings were forever broken and could never, ever heal. However, because he was a sage, he was also wise enough to know that he could never tell her this: for if she lost her hope of returning to Heaven, she would surely perish from sorrow. But he also could not lie to an angel, as she would surely know. So he thought very carefully before he spoke.

“Angel,” he said, “It may be that one day you will fly back to Heaven. But until then you will have to learn to live like a normal person. You shall have to learn to walk, speak, learn, work, and play like the rest of us, so that you can be happy until that day comes.”

The Angel agreed to learn to do these things, and he taught them to her. In time she became a special and loving woman, adored by everyone in the Sage’s community for her good cheer and compassion, and was happy even though her wings never healed.

Then one day to the Sage’s surprise the Angel unfolded her broken wings and flew away, leaving him to wonder: who was really teaching whom?

[Your child is already the Angel. Are you wise enough to be the Sage?]

The Coals, Waiting To Become Ash

2010-12-03T18:49:00.000-08:00

Yesterday the United States Gypsum Corporation (or USG) announced the January 31st 2011 closing of its mine and plant in Empire, Nevada. Residents of the Empire – the last company town in the west – will have until June 20th 2011 to leave their homes, at which time the mine, plant, and entire town will be “idled.” One hundred employees and their families will have to leave the area to search for work and housing.

Those are the bare facts of the story. The reality is, of course, far less sterile and far more terrible. What is actually going to happen is that my community is going to die – and, as I predicted in the introduction to An Unforgiving Land, a way of life is going to pass forever from the earth, largely un-mourned save by the few of us that have lived it.

Empire Nevada has been in existence since the 1920s. Many of the people who work for USG there are second or third generation miners and factory workers. I personally have a friend that worked for the company for 42 years. It’s a very small but relatively pleasant place whose roads are lined with shade trees and slightly ramshackle duplexes. It has a community center, a small airport, a swimming pool, a golf course, and two churches (Protestant and Catholic), all backstopping the enormous edifice of concrete and steel that is the board plant. All of this is set back a half mile from the road. The first thing most people see when they approach the town, however, is the Empire Store on 447: the only store in northern Washoe County.

But within a matter of weeks the massive chimneys of that factory, which I have watched billow steam since I first came out here fifteen years ago, will go completely still for the first time in 90 years, and the lights of Empire will wink out one by one until they are no more. All of my friends that live there will be gone, scattered outward into a busy, hostile, and strange world in a slow Diaspora of rural, white, and working-class people who are in many cases unaccustomed to the sheer volume of crap that is 21st century urban life. A way of life – and not the worst one I’ve seen in my 40 years, either – will cease to exist outside of footnotes on Wikipedia and the odd story told to children raised somewhere else.

I suppose I should be angry with the USG Corporation. They would make easy villains, especially to someone who distrusts and dislikes urban America as much as myself. They’re based in Chicago, are a Fortune 500 company, have an annual revenue of 4.61 Billion, and operate 21 gypsum board plants and 14 gypsum mines in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. But, as someone who has operated a business, I find it hard to hate a company for simply trying to survive. A quick glance at the facts show that USG’s been in and out of bankruptcy for years, mostly as the result of a hostile takeover attempt in 1987 and continuing asbestos legislation. It’s stock prices have gone up and down – though mostly down - in an unhealthy manner, and it’s now competing unsuccessfully with cheap imported sheetrock from our BFF (Or is that our master?) China. Simply put: the company as a whole is either not profitable or barely so, and this is a corner they’ve decided to cut in their struggle to meet the conditions of their “Joint Plan of Reorganization,” as their most recent bankruptcy is called.

It’s simple, unpleasant math, administered as is usual in Nevada by faceless men on the other side of a continent.

Of course, the whole “idle” thing is garbage. The factory will never actually reopen, and the town will never repopulate. How could it? Within two years this entire region will be dead, and there will be nothing to attract potential workers to it. USG will wait a year for everything to die down, and then a salvage company will come in and strip everything out of the town right down to the copper piping in the walls. Within 20 years Empire will be little more than foundations, a huge, crumbling industrial structure, a couple of very elderly people who’ve been somehow forgotten about in their little decaying houses, and dying trees.

And, in all likelihood, Gerlach will be a variation on this same, melancholy theme.

Those of you who are familiar with the area know that Gerlach and Empire – technically referred to as the Gerlach-Empire Area – are really the same town. Empire is by-and-large the “neighborhood” with the families, churches, and people who work. Gerlach is the place with the hippies, bars, and retirees. Together they have a population of roughly 400, counting the people who live in the scattering of farms and ranches nearby: just enough people to have 75 school-age children between them and support a restaurant, a store, two gas stations, and three bars.

Now, much as the death of a Siamese twin quickly slays her sister, Gerlach is going to die, because a community without children is dead. 68 of our school-age children are going to have to leave, leaving a total of seven. That’s right: seven. Of the 30 employees of our school system, no more than two or three will be allowed to stay, and those only to teach kindergarten through eighth grade. All older children will have to be home schooled – an outcome which Washoe County has dreamed of for years in its never-ending, epic quest to defund its northern territory.

Oh, I know some of you reading this work for the county, and probably don’t like me saying this sort of thing. And most of you are nice people and mean well enough. But in the interest of complete honesty (And what’s the point of a blog – essentially, a public diary - if it isn’t honesty?), during a recent meeting about the closing of our medical clinic, I had some loud, unpleasant, and unfriendly things to say to county representatives. You know the type: the smiling, condescending facemen and power-helmet-women that governments and corporations send out when they have to actually interact with the local rednecks. The kind of people that, when they get back into their white cars with the symbol on the doors, talk about what an ugly place this is and how all the people are old and how they hate driving all the way up here.

These same people have contacted recently about changing what I had to say “for the final record” of the meeting. So let me say this: I only regret that I didn’t say more, harsher things to you, because Washoe County is the enemy of everyone who lives north of the Pyramid Lake Reservation.

Need proof? Let’s review some facts:

1) We had our own law enforcement under a constable system. Washoe County took that away and replaced it with their deputies. (No offense to our two local deputies: this isn’t directed at you personally.)

2) We had our own judge. Washoe County took that away and replaced it with nothing.

3) Washoe County tried to shut our senior center down over a $13,000 budget shortfall, while at the same time approving 1.5 million for an “open area” for the homeless to camp in downtown Reno. (Because, apparently, they’re more deserving than Gerlach’s elderly.)

4) Washoe County failed to warn us or offer to make up the budget shortfall of $160,000 when Nevada Heath Centers decided to shut down our clinic, while fully knowing they were about to get an additional 3.2 million in tax revenue from our area in 2011 with no outlay, due to the natural gas pipeline being built out here.

(I guess now we know why, don’t we? You knew something we didn’t: namely, that a ghost town doesn’t need a doctor.)

5) Washoe County has always wanted to shut down fully or in part our schools, and has never made any secret of this. After all, we don’t want valuable resources being spent on a few scraggily hillbillies in the north when there are real, civilized people down in Reno, now do we? And now they are going to get to do what they have always wanted to do: collect property and sales taxes from us and give us little or nothing in return.

So Merry Christmas Washoe County! I hope that property values continue to plummet, the Ruby Pipeline Corporation gets a property tax exemption from the Feds, and you go bankrupt anyhow.

I understand that in Judaism there is a weeklong period of mourning when a beloved family member dies called shiva. Not being Jewish I’ve never done this, but it strikes me as a good custom. So in the spirit of sitting Shiva for a loved one, I promise as an author to morn Empire using words, as fickle and fleeting as they are. It is the least I can do under the circumstances.

I will remember you as best as I am able with my often-poisonous pen. I promise.

As a father and a husband I have no idea what I’m going to do as Empire dies, pulling Gerlach down into the grave with it. It’s not economic. As long as the post office doesn’t close and UPS and FedEx don’t cancel their routs, we can go on being exactly the same amount of poor and in debt as always. But most of my wife’s friends are going to leave, leaving her with little in the way of a social life. The store will almost undoubtedly close, depriving her of her few little, but highly deserved, spontaneous comforts. The children who would have been my daughter’s friends are going to be gone, and I know that Washoe County will fight hard to give my child as little support as possible. I can expect to spend the next 15 years suing them to get the minimum that federal law requires for her.

Come to think of it, all of my carefully laid plans for the precious, wing-plucked angel I call “daughter” are now royally fucked. She will now not be raised around children she can be friends with for the rest of her life, and she will not be educated exclusively by men and women who are friends of mine. For all I know there will be no other children her age for her to play with at all.

All of these things fill me with impotent rage. But whom can I point the stark finger of accusation at? Who can I make myself feel better by hating? The Chinese for making cheap drywall and (rather cleverly) buying up my nation’s debt? That’s too big of a topic socially and economically for me to even wrap my head around. USG? That’s like hating the ocean for being wet. Corporations are not - and cannot be - charities. Washoe County? That’s like being angry at the vultures for eating a dead rabbit off the road, even when you’re a rabbit. You’re beloved mate was dead anyhow, and it’s simply the vulture’s nature to dine on corpses.

So nobody, really. Nobody to blame. Maybe things just die sometimes: pets, people, towns. Even 100-year-old ways of life. Sometimes the life of a thing is like a campfire you build on a cold night. It’s starts out promisingly with sparks and little flames. Then it roars into its prime, giving off more light and heat than anyone could reasonably expect. Eventually it dies down into coals, which can smolder on for what seems like an eternity. But in the end there is nothing but ash blowing away into the wind.

We who will remain are but the coals, waiting to become ash.

The Raconteur

2010-09-10T19:56:00.000-07:00

It’s been a while since I’ve posted to the Midian Ranch Blog. Things have been busy, and I’ve been working on my new blog Jason S Walters, Raconteur. This new blog is dedicated to my writing, editing, and publisher projects in general, rather than Midian Ranch in particular. Feel free to visit: there are sample stories from my collection An Unforgiving Land, a story from Michael Williams’ excellent upcoming novel Trajan’s Arch, and links to Michael Stackpoles’ excellent project The Chain Story. You can even have a look at my bibliography, if you like.

Speaking of which, An Unforgiving Land has been selling well locally out here in Gerlach, and even picked up a favorable review in the Reno Gazette Journal. If you want to read the “lost” story from the book (meaning the one I didn’t include so I could use it for other purposes), Crucified Coyote is also available for free. (Please forgive the incomplete introduction. It will be filled out as another link in The Chain Story soon.)

I will be putting up my next blog post/essay The Firebreaks shortly, detailing what we went through when the Rock Creek Fire nearly destroyed the Midian, Granite, and Iverson Ranches over a month ago. In the meantime know that Cassidy is cute, Tina is beautiful, and we have way too many dogs.

Gerlach 2010 Graduation Speech

2010-06-09T11:23:00.001-07:00

For reasons that both flatter and baffle me, I was asked to be the guest speaker at this year's Gerlach High School graduation. Amusingly, I was introduced by one of the graduates as a "well-traveled, published author and man of many professions."

Sheesh: why not just call me a "dubious person of uncertain profession?" In any case, it was a great honor, and a good time was had by all including the always cheerful Baby Cassidy. For your enjoyment the text of my speech:

Graduation: The Passage Into Adulthood

Good Evening everyone. It’s an honor and a pleasure to be here today to witness the transition from childhood to adulthood of these four outstanding young people: Nick Vanosdal, Stephen Chason, Tyler Rinehart, and Daphne Reynolds. (Especially Nick and Daphne: congratulations you two, you made it.) In commemoration of this occasion, I thought it might be a good time to clarify why the ritual of graduation is important, what it means to step away from one’s childhood and into adult life, and what parts of childhood are important to bring forward into adulthood in the hopes that they will keep you eternally youthful in your hearts.

Every culture has its rituals. In fact, in many ways it is ritual that defines culture, giving it shape and form. Birth, marriage, and even death all have their rituals, as does the transition of a child into an adult. In America high school graduation is one the ways in which we mark this transformation, acknowledging it not only as a rite of passage, but also as an accomplishment achieved by the individual using his or her God given abilities.

In other words: you four have earned this. It wasn’t just given to you.
It would be easy for you graduates to be cynical about the ritual of graduation. You put on a long robe, wear a funny hat, listen to people give speeches, and get an official looking piece of paper suitable for framing. Probably you don’t feel any different today than you did yesterday. But such cynicism would be unwarranted. This graduation is a chapter header in the story of your life, a punctuation mark in the paragraph of your existence. It’s important because you are important and because without punctuation, life becomes a single, unsatisfying, and impossible to understand run on sentence.

In short, we are here to celebrate you, and to celebrate with you on this occasion. Feel free at this time to consider us a supporting cast in the movie of your life, because today we – your parents, teachers, and other adults of your community – are here for you. And because tomorrow… your going to have to go get a job.

This concludes your high school years: that uncertain end of childhood. I remember during my final two, miserable years of high school being told that I should be enjoying myself, because these were “the best years of my life.” I’m going to let the four of you in on your first adult secret: those were not the best years of your life. Now is the time where things start to get really interesting: where opportunity, adventure, and yes responsibility begin the unique and often satisfying commingle that will typify much of your life henceforth. Where you get to go out into the wide world and discover who you were always meant to be. And don’t worry: you were meant to be somebody. Now it’s up to you to find out exactly who that might be.

Don’t be concerned: if you need to come back here for a while, we’ll be here. If, after going out into the world on your voyage of discovery, you wish to return here and join us, we’ll be happy to have you. Know that you have this community as a fixed point on the map of your lives. Of course, don’t expect it to be precisely the same. The people who were your teachers, the people who are your families, and other adults of this town: as of now we’re just people like you, making our way through life as best we can.

And that is another part of the doorway you’ve just stepped through. You just moved from being someone else’s responsibility to being responsible for yourselves. Eventually, ready or not, you will in turn be responsible for others. (Trust me: it’s not as easy as it looks.) One day, if you are very lucky, you may even sit where your parents sit today, feeling the pride in your own child they feel in you.

Finally, what should you bring through that doorway as you take this final step from the world of children into the world of adults? There are many useful things. Innocence, of the thoughtful kind that some people are fortunate to carry throughout their lives. Imagination, which is a profoundly useful part of any profession. A sense of wonder at the world, which will serve to keep you young should you live to be a hundred. And compassion for others, which is the kernel of all wisdom and the wellspring from which grows a family of your own.

In conclusion, congratulations on your graduation Class of 2010: not only from high school onto your further education, but from the final stage of your childhood into the first stage of your adulthood. Say a final goodbye to the life you have known for the last four long years, and prepare to embrace the life that awaits you. For it you do that, that life will embrace you in return.

-Jason Walters, 2010

Geppetto’s Bench

2010-05-15T17:22:00.000-07:00

A strange thing happened two or three months ago: I stopped being the father of a Poor Retarded Daughter, and simply became a father. It was a complete transition, like the sudden, shocking passage from desert storm to sunlight one often encounters out here. I’m not completely certain when the transition happened, either - though I can speculate about why. I also won’t pretend that I fully understand my own emotions: my own heart can be as obscure to me as, surely, yours can be to you; filled one minuet with raging waters, another will calm, beautiful sunrises. But I will wade through the foggy murk of my feelings in that hopes that, should anyone reading this find himself or herself in the same situation as me, it might serve as a humble beacon, leading you from ocean to shore.

***

One reason for this transition was almost certainly Cassidy herself. It simply became impossible to feel sorry on a deep, emotional level for such a friendly, good-natured, loving, and quixotic child. Of course, people upon occasion say extremely strange things to me. Recently, while I was at the wake of a well-liked Gerlach resident, a very nice lady came up to me and asked if my daughter was Cassidy. When I responded that she was, the lady said to me “I had six children, the last when I was 40. But she turned out fine – there was nothing wrong with her. If I knew then when I know now, I would have been too scared to have her.” When I replied that Cassidy makes an extremely good Cassidy and that we loved her very much, the lady became embarrassed and excused herself.

She needn’t have. I wasn’t upset with her. It’s no crime to not be able to express yourself well under unfamiliar circumstances - and she really is a very nice lady. And what I told her was no platitude: Cassidy does make a very good Cassidy, and we do love her very much. That is part of the unseen transition that happened when I wasn’t looking. Not the love (I’ve always loved her) but the emotional understanding that having Down syndrome doesn’t somehow make her invalid as an individual, anymore than being blind or deaf makes one less of a person. Though I intellectually understood that early on, the knowledge simply hadn’t made its way to my heart until a few months ago.

The second reason was my beloved (and, at least to me, enigmatic) wife Tina, who has never worried about what Cassidy wasn’t, instead always concerning herself with what our daughter was. Tina’s one and only cryptic comment on the matter: this kid’s alright, and this kid’s going to be all right. So, while I busied myself reading Down syndrome-specific books like Groneberg’s Road Map To Holland and Pueschel’s A Parent’s Guide to Down Syndrome: Toward A Brighter Future (both excellent books), Tina was reading general baby books like Murkoff’s What To Expect: The First Year. While I spent my time looking at the Down syndrome child development chart, Tina was looking at the standard child development chart. And a funny thing happened. It became apparent that, like nearly every other child, Cassidy was ahead on some things, behind on other things, and pretty much the same on most things.

Like nearly every other child. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not deluding myself. Cassidy’s emotional and intellectual development may – no, most likely will – in many ways freeze when she is four, eight, or twelve. They also might not. She may have serious health problems beyond her current heart issues. Or she might not. For months these facts ate away at my soul; the soul of an idealist, a worrier, a preparer obsessed with his family’s complete independence from a society he had personally declared irredeemably corrupt… and that he now desperately needed for his daughter’s sake. Having a child with Down syndrome seemed like an unbearably cruel joke played upon me personally by God, one of those awful “teachable moments” college professors and politicians are always banging on about. Everything was lost. Everything I had worked toward, pointless. My dreams, empty. I was filled with dread at having a child that could never live up to my ideals, and terrible guilt at even conceptualizing such a cruel thought. My idols shattered, I became as I told my friend Elizabeth Jackson, “ideologically up for grabs.” It was for me an extreme admission of hopelessness.

Then, like a quiet voice in the darkness, the transition. Reasons why God had done this that were not at all cruel, but loving (Though not easy. No, never that: it isn’t the desert way.) Was I not raised alongside of a disabled brother? Who better to raise a child with Down syndrome but a father obsessed with personal independence? What better way to the test a man who had always claimed to be a champion of the individual, than by giving him a child whose individuality is predetermined? (As are all men’s, but you surely know what I mean.) What better place for such a child to grow than a small, odd community more accustomed to eccentricity than normalcy?

These things made sense to me. And, by suddenly clicking together, I found myself more at peace.

Finally, two or three months ago, I got over the tragic death of a daughter that never was, but whose non-existence I felt as bitterly as anything I had ever felt in my life. Let us call her Elisa, after my real daughter’s middle name. I had big plans for Elisa. I spent endless hours at the intellectual equivalent of Geppetto’s bench, carving out my imaginary Pinocchio daughter. She would naturally be highly intelligent (as I flatter myself into thinking I am), extremely naturally healthy (as I have fortunately always been), and extremely energetic (as I am annoyingly so). Elisa was going to continue my intellectual legacy after I died, crafting works that celebrated rural self-sufficiently and decried urban duplicity. She was going to get the college degree I never got, and then become the young traveling adventurer that I, perpetually at my small-business workbench, never was. She would continue the epic struggle to build a multigenerational Jerusalem from sand and rock that is Midian Ranch. Only she’d do it better than I ever could have, because she would be better. She would also have all of the children that I, an autumn father, was too foolish to have when I was younger and stronger.

Elisa… no, Cassidy was going to be a cross between Lara Croft, Ayn Rand, and Wonder Woman. I was certain of it; as I’m sure all men who father a beloved child are certain of such things when they hold that child in their arms for the first time. These dreams were all dashed to pieces 30 minuets later with two words: Down syndrome. And so was I.

***

In my defense, I didn’t get even an hour to enjoy being A Father before I became A Father Of A Poor Retarded Child. It was terribly… abrupt. Subsequently discovering that my daydreams were those of a self-centered idiot didn’t help, either. There are only so many unpleasant revelations that a sane, solid, and rational man can have about his own character, life, and worldview in a very brief period of time and remain stable – and I’ve never claimed to be entirely sane, solid, or rational. So, for a time, the traumatic “death” of Elisa hovered in the background of my love of Cassidy, though I did not consciously know it. It took some time for me to sort the whole thing out. To quote Wordsworth:

Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,
Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,
Knowing my heart's best treasure was no more

Only, unlike poor William, I was quietly mourning the death of a daughter that never was outside of my own mind, rather than a real one (a horror I recoil from conceptualizing). And, in mourning phantasm Elisa, I was doing Cassidy the worst disservice possible. I was discounting the possibility that she actually was Elisa: in her own unique way, better than me. Purer, and less intellectually weighed down with philosophical and ideological baggage. Lighter, freer, and perhaps even continuing a legacy that I haven’t even fully grasped yet.

That was the final part of the transition: grief for what-wasn’t passing away, to be replaced by love and quiet optimism. I’m pretty sure that this a normal experience for thoughtful parents of children with Down syndrome (and I pray that we all are just that about our children: thoughtful). In fact, award-winning Sesame Street writer Emily Perl Kingsley said it much better than I ever could:

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this...

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guidebooks and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says ,"Welcome to Holland."

"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."

But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills… and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say
"Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very, very significant loss.

But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.

Maeve Hugs Cassidy

2010-04-22T10:21:00.000-07:00

Cassidy At Pier 39

2010-04-22T10:18:00.001-07:00

Cottage Cheese Is Yummy

2010-04-22T10:02:00.000-07:00

This Hat Is Too Big.

2010-04-11T11:39:00.001-07:00

This Hat Is Too Small.

2010-04-11T11:38:00.001-07:00

This Hat Is Too Tall.

2010-04-11T11:36:00.000-07:00

This Hat Is Just Right!

2010-04-11T11:34:00.000-07:00

Ironic Antipathy: The Relationship Between Gerlach Locals and the BLM

2010-03-10T21:02:00.000-08:00

To the right person with the right set of ascetic tastes, the Black Rock Desert is one of the most beautiful places on earth. The towering mountains, the vast, dusty flatlands, the scattered green oasis of life: there's no place like it. Living here is like living on another planet. Each morning I can walk out of my front door and look out across the Hualapai Valley at the mighty Granites to the west, the desolate, imposing Calicos to the north, and the Playa itself to the east. A vast, unconquered landscape which is... almost completely owned by the Bureu of Land Management, headquartered on the other side of the continent in Washington D.C.

Bastards.

That's not a rational reaction, of course. I'd probably say the same thing if the same land was owned by a holding company based in Los Angeles or a ranching outfit from Arizona. I'm always looking for a reason to bitch. But reactions generally aren't rational. It's not rational for city people to distrust police officers tasked with protecting them from... well, other city people. But many of them do. It's the basic American disposition to distrust authority. In fact, it could be argued that the only reasonable attitude to have toward authority is a mixture of cynicism and curiosity. Any other reaction smacks of naivete, and even a lack of civic responsibility.

Those of us who live out here approach the doings (or, more often, alleged doings) of the BLM with a mixture of dread and morbid fascination. What areas are being closed off to quads this year? Where are they letting that coal power plant be built? Which cabins did they tear down, again? Often the things we imagine the Bureau of Land Management is planning to do are more frightening than anything it actually ends up doing, but the psychological effects are the same: fear, dread, and a certain sense of melancholy. But when you consider that it owns 87 percent of our state, a bit of paranoia doesn't seem unwarranted.

Few of us locals view the National Conservation Area - the act of Congress which the BLM and its subsidiary organization the Friends of the Black Rock are sword to help implement - as anything other than meddlesome and baffling. But to be perfectly honest, we're not big picture thinkers. We just want to be left alone to live our little lives. Why do people in Los Angeles, Reno, and San Francisco care where we drive our quads or hunt deer? Why do they care where and how we camp, or what hot springs we use? It's not like they come out here except for Burning Man, anyhow. It's really no different than a San Franciscan wondering why people in Texas might object to the city legalizing gay marriage. What business is it of theirs, anyhow?

But life is seldom simple, and people are eternally meddlesome. Which, in a democracy, means that the government is eternally meddlesome. Hence the BLM and the NCA. It wasn't always this way. The two component organizations from which the BLM was formed – the Grazing Service and General Land Office – were probably the best friends rural westerners ever had. Even after the creation of the BLM 1946, its duties mostly consisted of managing grazing, water, and mining easements for people like us. But in 1976 (re: Carter Administration) Congress decided that these lands would remain in “public ownership” in perpetuum to “meet the present and future needs of the American people.” The Bureau was given the mandate of eternally managing these lands and any resources they contained.
In other words, the BLM administers the greatest non-military land grab in human history.

I don't mean to make the Bureau of Land Management out to be some kind of ogre. It does many fine things that we Gerlach types appreciate. It puts out fires and controls the mustang population. (Not that the locals didn't do a better job of that before it took over, but that's a whole other post.) It reintroduced big horn sheep into Nevada and works to protect other legitimately endangered desert species. Overall, it's mostly a neutral, understaffed organization charged with managing millions of acres of barren land according to the shifting policies of whatever barely-interested administration is in power on the other side of a continent. As part of its mandate the BLM has to listen to all sorts of cranks from all sides of the spectrum complain about every action it takes... or doesn't take. At least from the outside, it seems like a pretty thankless job.

Which brings us back to Gerlach, where we aren't particularly thankful. We're a cantankerous, individualistic, reclusive bunch, happy to ignore the rest of the world and be ignored by it in return. For better or worse the NCA has put an end to that. It's a little like being a tenant farmer whose absentee landlord hasn't come around for a century. When he finally shows up and starts making rules, it's only natural to respond with ambivalence, whether his rules are fair or not. It just doesn't feel right

Of course, the irony of this ambivalence is that we locals and the BLM need one another. Without us rustics there would be no one to clean hotel rooms, pump gas, serve beer, fix cars, repair roads, and perform the many other minor tasks that make 99% of tourists feel comfortable enough to come to a National Conservation Area. Without those crucial tourists, the billions of dollars allocated to the BLM each year would end up as a “bridge to nowhere” piece on the O'Reilly Factor. Without the BLM, the Black Rock Desert would probably be a massive strip mine punctuated with coal power plants.

Well, that and high paying union jobs with benefits. But that too is another post.

Mega Playa Art Image

2010-02-09T11:32:00.000-08:00

New Pictures Of Cassidy

2010-02-04T12:32:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas From The Desert

2009-12-24T09:30:00.000-08:00

Frozen pipes. Broken generators. A septic system that froze, then backed up through every drain in the house. Debt. Massive propane bills. More debt. Unreliable Internet. Days in which there is no sun for the solar panels and no wind for the windmills. Leaks in the office roof. A battery bank rendered inefficient by freezing cold. Illness. A right hand for a time rendered useless by infection. A child that needs surgery.

And, oddly, a sense of peace. None of these things matters beyond its station. Somehow, I have found something close to happiness here amidst the distracting clutter of ranch life. We Walters came her to be modern day settlers, and to live upon this hard land in the manner of our ancestors: free, independent, and answerable to no one. Those tough, hard people of a century and a half ago suffered like saints and martyrs for the right to be here. They suffered and endured things none of us have had to, tough old birds that they were. Some, like Kit Carson, became legends. Many didn’t make it past their first two years, retreating back to civilization or dying anonymously in the dry, desolate mountains.

We have endured.

To be honest, I’m not sure how much of an accomplishment it is to simply hold on in the face of adversity. It does certainly feel like an accomplishment, especially in this harsh, barren, and beautiful place. Yesterday a freezing fog rolled into the desert whose impenetrability rivaled any you would find in San Francisco or London: cold, thick, and mysterious. It stayed throughout the day, reducing sunlight to a dim twilight and visibility to a few car lengths. It left white frozen tendrils clinging to every available surface: trees, homes, and even the salt brush, transforming the Black Rock from somber brown to glistening white.

Is this what it might be like to be a settler on Mars? The Moon? One of the moons of Jupiter? Endless mighty vistas, shocking weather, hard work, isolation, and the small pleasures of life shaped into razors by the threat of death hovering in the background like an unmentioned party guest? In another future time, living another life, could that have been our life? Is it possible that, whether through the gentle hand of God or some miracle of modern medicine, this could be Cassidy's future still? To be a pioneer out among the stars: free, independent, and answerable to no one?
I pray for this, but only dreams answer me.

* * *

I was driving through that frozen fog when I stumbled upon a photographer, standing by his car at the edge of the Playa, looking out into the white nothing. As is my habit, I pulled over to see if he was all right. Having been stranded in the Black Rock before myself, I've developed a sort of “leave no man behind” attitude about this sort of thing. I always pull over. I hopped out of my pickup truck and strode over to where the man stood with his camera, taking pictures of the snowy infinity.

We spoke. In retrospect, he to me as one might handle an escaped lunatic or an overly affectionate drunken stranger: delicately, carefully. I can see why. I was dressed in snow boots, a filthy surplus industrial jumpsuit, and a battered black fedora. Beard, earrings, hair uncut for years – all moving toward him in the fog in the middle of a (nearly) uninhabited wasteland.

A mutant. A Crazy. Somebody Mad Mel shot in Road Warrior.

Many of us get like that out here, given enough time and an initial disposition toward craziness. Our day to day appearance sort of... unravels, turning us into weird, dusty cartoon characters. Many don't, too. There are cowboys out here, real ones, whose clothing outside of their ranch is so crisp and sharp you can set your watch to them. Then there's the Burning Man DPW people, who often look like the road warrior has already killed them, and they've been reanimated for a sequel that involves flesh eating zombies. They make me look like a Montgomery Street bank manager.

But, then again, they're not out here in the freezing fog.

* * *

Christmas is in full swing in Gerlach. We attend a Christmas pageant in which our community's preschoolers [5] sang three songs. Then our elementary school students [27] sang a selection of Christmas and Hanuka songs. All of this was done with great enthusiasm, not to mention a little spontaneous dancing on the part of the kids, and was well attended. Cassidy wore her red “reindeer” outfit – a gift from our postmistress Jola - that came complete with a pair of antlers. She got to sit on Santa's lap afterwords and, as is her habit, was a good sport about the whole thing.

On Saturday the three of us (our dogs weren't invited) went to the annual Christmas party thrown by our friends the Carters, whose home is a shrine to all things Elvis and Star Trek. Today I shall make the rounds, giving out small presents to friends here ant there. Christmas is about the little things.

It's odd, really. I moved us here because I wanted to flee civilization, and end up finding community amongst people I never thought would ever accept me (Tina is a different matter. I was never worried about Tina.) Is that ironic, or does it mean that I'm finally at this late date becoming a fully socialized human being? Only time will tell.

* * *

In conclusion, best wishes to all of you on this Christmas 2009, as we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ – whom even those of you who are atheists, Buddhists, neo-pagans, and what-have-you must admit was a pretty great fellow. I hope that you are all in the company of beloved family; or, at the very least, good friends. I hope you get to do all of the fun stuff we all do this time of year: open presents, wear red, drink eggnog with perhaps a bit of rum in it, and in general celebrate the ideal (if not the reality) of peace on Earth and goodwill toward men.

God bless.

The Tyger

2009-11-28T01:26:00.000-08:00

TIGER, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand and what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And water'd heaven with their tears,
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee?

Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

- The Tyger, William Blake 1794

2009-11-27T12:12:00.000-08:00

2009-11-27T12:06:00.000-08:00

2009-11-27T12:01:00.000-08:00

2009-11-27T11:58:00.000-08:00

With Cousin Maeve [the Mega Baby]

2009-10-24T22:48:00.000-07:00

Baby Cassidy Laughs

2009-10-24T22:44:00.000-07:00

Eye Hand Coordination

2009-10-24T22:41:00.000-07:00

Great Article

2009-10-24T22:13:00.000-07:00

I've just gotten done reading an eccentric article by author Claire Wolfe (called by some the Ayn Rand of the 21st Century) in this month's issue of Backwoods Home Magazine (Issue #120). Entitled Learning To Love The High Desert, it sums up what it's like to live in places like the Black Rock Desert quite nicely. Since it isn't available online – and since I highly recommend having a subscription to Backwoods Home in any case – I've taken the liberty of including a few quotes:

“Then there's the damn weather. It's so hot you want to shove a dog out of the only patch of shade, dig a pit in the dirt, and snooze. Then – bazam! - It's so cold you're slamming windows shut, donning jackets, and stuffing old tee-shirts into cracks in the walls of your trailer.”

“The terrain is severe and gaunt, it's true, and the plants are more likely to puncture the skin than delight the eye. The animal life is more likely to bear scales than fur and even the hoppy toads are deadly poisonous. But the desert is every bit as alive as the woods, and you feel the age and raw, primal violence of it everywhere you go. The constant cycle of life and death is everywhere evident.”

“The beauty of a home electrical system, when it works and even when it doesn't work all that well is that you built it... It only works if you stand on your feet and do something about it, ignoring a lifetime's indoctrination that you shouldn't worry your little head because this is a job for the big boys. This, to me, is more precious than electric lights at night.”

Really, I couldn't have put these things better myself.

Family Picture

2009-10-24T13:08:00.000-07:00

Cassidy On Flickr

2009-09-25T12:19:00.001-07:00

These pictures are a little old (she's a bit bigger and, of course, at home), but they are still nice pictures of The Sprout.

We Have Built Jerusalem

2009-09-25T10:57:00.000-07:00

I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
'Til we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land

-William Blake

This is the text of a post I made on Burning Man's official blog last week. The original text of the blog can be ready here.

I’ve never read this blog before but, as the things being discussed here will have a direct impact on my family, neighbors, and myself, it behooves me to comment.

My name is Jason S. Walters and, along with my wife and daughter, I live almost directly across the street from the Fly Geyser. We are some of the roughly thirty inhabitants of the Hualapai Valley. In fact, there are nine inhabited ranches, farms, or facilities in the valley: Granite Ranch, Midian Ranch, Black Rock Station (of course), Dog Ranch, Jackson Ranch, Orient Farms, the Fascio Ranch, and the Spoo Place. Though I am a relative newcomer having only lived there full time for three years, there are people who have lived in the valley for decades. The valley’s population includes two children, and that number will probably increase over the next few years.

I’m generally a fan and a friend of Burning Man. I’ve attended the festival ten times and have numerous friends that work full or part time for Burning Man LLC. The community of Gerlach (our town, in essence) benefits economically from the event, and its spinoff company of Black Rock Solar has done fine work putting up solar systems for the high schools in Gerlach, Nixon, and Wadsworth. I’ve also seen Black Rock Station evolve from what was basically an 80-acre junkyard into an organized, well-run facility… in part due to a bit of arm twisting from neighbors and Washoe County, but that’s water under the bridge, as they say. In the end the LLC put its money where its mouth is and built a great facility. And that’s what counts.

I like art too. Especially art that catches on fire and explodes. That’s part of what’s cool about living in the Black Rock Desert.

BUT… and this is a very big but… ultimately those of us who live in the Hualapai Valley do so because it is remote, seldom visited, and has a low-population density. Or, to put it another way, we live there because Gerlach is too crowded for us. So what sounds like a very exciting project to all of you sounds kind of threatening to our way of life, especially if the goal is to make the Hualapai Flats the permanent home of the festival itself. That’s…kind of hard to contemplate, though I know it’s been there before. I was at that one myself.

Still, Tina and I sacrificed everything to get away from San Francisco. Now it looks like arrangements are being made to bring the city we fled to our doorstep. #sigh# There’s probably a lesson there somewhere.

In any case, I’d like to ask a few questions of the Burning Man LLC, as once again this project could effect my family. What do you mean by a “conference center,” exactly? How big will it be? How much will the traffic on State Route 34 increase? How much noise will its (presumably large) diesel generators create? How many more people will live in the valley? How will it effect the antelope, mustang, and other animals that currently rely on the property for their water?

Is the Bright Holland Corporation selling you the water rights along with the property? If not, are you aware that there are very real long-term plans to pump the Hualapai Valley’s water to the Reno area via a pipeline? It’s not talked about publicly, but the “nervous politicians” mentioned in the post certainly know about it. After all, the Hualapai Valley is one of only two places in Nevada where basin-to-basin transfers are still permitted under state law: and if they do build that pipeline, that geyser won’t stay one for very long, no matter what they’re telling you.

In conclusion, there’s plenty of room in the Black Rock Desert for everyone. There may even be plenty of room in the Hualapai Valley for everyone who wants to actually live there. But with all of the discussion of “community” on this blog, I would like to point out that the Black Rock Desert already has a community of some 300 or so people, including those of us that live in the Hualapai Valley. What is being proposed on this blog will definitely impact that existing community. And, while we are generally neither “progressive” or even “interesting,” we do actually live there – and I fear that few of us were included amongst the beautiful people being fed appetizers and drinks under the moonlight.

-Jason Walters, Midian Ranch, 1287 State Route 34

So, what's my problem exactly? It's this: Burning Man as an organization exhibits exactly the same behavior as the BLM (Bureau of Land Management), an organization which they have close ties to, when it comes to the people that live in the Black Rock Desert. Both organizations operate as though we are naughty children whose input could not possibly be of any value, even though what they do often effects our lives. If fact, they don't care enough about what we think to even call us together in our own community center and lie to us. At least Washoe County does that!

It's arrogant and insulting.

I understand Burning Man's motivations. Every religion needs its Jerusalem, and they can take the one million dollars a year they spend on leasing the Playa from the BLM and spend that on building permanent facilities in the Hualapai Valley: housing, meeting spaces, stages, coffee shops, and the like. It's a free country and they have a right to do this. Maybe it will even be fun and cool. But why in God's name does it have to be across the street from us?

“The Kid's Alright, And The Kid's All Right”

2009-09-05T23:14:00.000-07:00

These words of wisdom were spoken by my wife Tina a few days ago and I think them to be true. But before I explain, let me take a moment to confirm something that many of you have already guessed: things didn't go smoothly with Cassidy's birth. She's still in the Renown NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) in Reno thirty days after her birth, though her condition is greatly improved at this point. I am fairly confident that she will be released shortly, though these things cannot be rushed and are in all ways beyond our control. Cassidy will decide when it is time for Cassidy to go home, and there is little Tina, the doctors, or I have to say about it.

Before I continue, I would like to thank all of you singularly and collectively for the congratulations, goodwill, and – in the case of those of you familiar with the situation – advice and support you have had to offer over the last month. In particular I would like to thank my family, the Tina's family, and the people of Gerlach, Nevada for your support and encouragement. I would also like to thank our friends and colleagues at Hero Games, Indy Press Revolution, Blackwyrm Books and Games, and Flash Messenger for your support (and patience) in our time of trouble. When I can I will take the time to thank many, many of you personally, either by phone, email, or in person. I am sorry that I have not done so already.

This has been the hardest month of our lives. For the first few weeks we were, to be blunt, as crushed as a pair of beer cans unfortunate enough to encounter John Belushi's forehead. Tina has stayed by our daughter's side continually in what can fairly be called a superhuman act of motherly devotion. I have had to move back and forth between Reno and Gerlach in a not-always-successful attempt to keep our affairs in order. But we've already cried our tears over things we can't control and feel confident in our ability to move forward, doing what is necessary to help our daughter have a happy, independent, and successful life.

The Bad (what went wrong and why)

Cassidy was born with the chromosomal disorder known as trisomy 21: better known as Down's Syndrome. As is not uncommon with children suffering from Down's, she was born with a heart condition (two actually; one major, one minor) that caused her blood to oxygenate poorly. She quickly contracted pneumonia, which led sepsis, as her immune system was not fully formed (though Cassidy wasn't born prematurely). The first two days were extremely touch-and-go. She nearly lost her life. Then she spent the next two weeks intubated and on morphine being fed intravenously and through a tube.

The experience was extremely heart wrenching on many levels, some of which I've only begun to grasp.

The Good (what didn't go wrong)

Cassidy is a reasonably big baby: eight pounds, one ounce at birth, about nine pounds right now. Her size may have been what saved her. She has recovered completely from the pneumonia and sepsis. Her lungs are functioning well, her major heart problem seems to be sorting itself out. The minor one will probably take care of itself as well. She's quickly getting the hang of eating on her own. She's still on low-flow oxygen, but she should be off of that within the month (we may take some equipment home with us). Her eyes are open, she seems alert, and is all-in-all a cute little sucker.

There are many health problems beyond the developmental and mental capacity issues associated with having Down's Syndrome. (As much as one can be said to “have” something that isn't really a disease.) She's had a couple of them already: heart problems and pneumonia, to be specific. However, thyroid malfunction and poor muscle tone seem not to be issues (though the tires quickly). Her vision seems good and I think her hearing will turn out to be within the normal range as well.

Down's Syndrome has extremely variable effects on the individuals it afflicts, with no two cases being exactly alike. We are optimistic about her intellectual development, which we can and will have considerable influence on. Though there is a small chance that she will be severely retarded, mild or moderate retardation is more likely, with hard work on our part as parents reaping measurable rewards (as is true for any parent). There is even a tiny chance that she will suffer from no retardation at all, though this is unlikely.

Observations

I want to thank the many of you who have contacted me with information about friends and family members with Down's. I knew little about the syndrome before Cassidy was diagnosed with it, and am heartened to learn that there are professional chefs, stockbrokers, housewives, motivational speakers, successful actors, and college graduates with Down's. I was also encouraged to discover that the average life expectancy of a person with the disorder is currently 65 and expected to climb higher (100 years ago it was, rather shockingly, 9). I also wish to thank the many of you who have prayed (and, in the case of at least one friend who is a Buddhist, chanted) for the well-being of our family. I believe it has helped.

I have met several remarkable people in the course of this experience – people who, in our time of pain and distress, worked hard to calm and assist us. I would like in particular to thank Linda from the Nevada Bureau of Early Intervention Services, Randy from Renown's Social Services Department, JoD and Darnell from Reno's Ronald McDonald House, and Mrs. Anderson from Reno's branch of the Social Security Administration. I would also like to thank the NICU nursing staff at Renown Medical for their professionalism, understanding, and the tender care they have given our daughter.

I have had many insights into life, my own shortcomings, and the power of love in the last month. As time goes by I will share them with you. But, for now, keeps us in your thoughts and prayers.

Baby Cassidy

2009-08-11T16:51:00.000-07:00

Baby Cassidy and Tina

2009-08-11T16:47:00.001-07:00

Poisoned Dog

2009-08-10T14:13:00.000-07:00

This why I know that John Farnsworth is really my friend: he helped me make my dog puke.

I was busy counting books in the warehouse and hanging out with the dogs the other day when I heard a crunching sound. Didn't think much of it at first, but then I heard it again. Suddenly it occurred to me: I'd recently put a half dozen little green blocks of rat poison out. Panicking, I dashed around the warehousing, checking the locations where I'd put them.

Yep: Michelle had eaten them all.

Well, at the time I wasn't certain if she had eaten them alone or if Snap had helped her. I was fairly certain that he wasn't that stupid, but I couldn't be sure. Panicking, I shoved them both into the car and bolted for Planet X Pottery on the far side of the Granites. Rachael Bogart is a veterinarian and, correspondingly, the most logical person to find under the circumstances. Along the way I called General Mills; the manufacturer of the poison. Helpfully, they had a poison hotline! (Three, actually: children, house pets, and livestock). They advised me to get the poison out her as quickly as possible by inducing vomiting, or risk death by poisoning within four hours. Rachael seconded this recommendation, so it was off to Gerlach to find John: the town EMT and thus the only person around technically qualified to induce vomiting in children, pets, and those rare adults in our area who don't regularly induce their own vomiting via liquor consumption.

John and I forced hydrogen peroxide down poor Michelle's throat, then down Snap's (who took it far more stoically). The peroxide bubbling away in her little dog tummy, Michelle projectile vomited out blocks of poison, dog food, and what appeared to be a mouse. Then she kept right on going and going, until I had to hold up her head like a teenage girlfriend while the dry heaved in the bushes.

Snap, being kind of macho, simply refused to puke. No matter. The next stop was the Emergency Veterinary Clinic in Fernley two hours away. (Not to worry. He puked up all over my truck on the way there. No poison, but they were both covered in it by the time we got there.) There was fun to be had there for Michelle: liquid charcoal for her stomach and she got her temperature taken... the only way you can take a dog's temperature, if you get my drift. THEN a two hour drive back to the ranch for something both of them hate more than poison, puking, or getting their temperature's taken.

A bath.

The Manly Art Of Shelving

2009-07-28T23:31:00.000-07:00

There are certain activities and objects one inherently associates with manliness. Shooting. Motorcycles. Muscle Cars. Clewing Tobacco. NASCAR. Beer that comes in a can. This doesn’t mean that women cannot participate in, enjoy, or excel at these activities. Once could hardly be a rural Nevadan and not know that women can enjoy chewing tobacco and NASCAR! But these are generally male activities, much as Bunko, a deep appreciation of the baby shower as a social event, and watching the Today Show with Kathy Lee and Hoda are generally female activities.

With great humility I would like to enter another activity/object into the vaulted library of masculine undertakings: shelving, both the noun and the verb. I love shelving. I love buying it, building it, designing it, and using it. I love what it means, too: you have stuff. Useful stuff that makes other stuff. Stuff you just like to look at. Stuff you want to read, have already read, or will never read but want others to think you’ve already read. Stuff you want to store. In my case, stuff you need to store for other people, enabling you to make a living. You’ve organized yourself in a useful fashion that is itself a reflection of your masculine competency. (Again, not that women don’t love shelving too.)

Living out at the ranch I find myself haunted by the idea that I don’t – possibly can’t – have enough shelving to meet my family’s needs. Greenhouse? Needs plant shelving. Pantry? Food shelving. Warehouses? Box shelving. Game room? Shelving. Baby’s room? Shelving.

Shelving. Shelving. Shelving.

Not everyone shares my unhealthy obsession with shelving. Walters’ family friend JB has extremely kindly (and perhaps a bit recklessly) given me access to his storage yard of used pallet racking: the El Dorado of shelving. Which is a little like locking the town “mayor” in the bar at 2 AM. (Just kidding JB! Love you baby!) A dream come true! I’ve also developed my own method for quickly constructing large amounts of shelving out of old 2 by 4’s and those fifty-cent brackets you get from Home Depot.

Which isn’t exactly on par with designing an artificial heart, but it feels impressive to me.

Ah shelving! The smell of it!

2009-07-16T12:51:00.000-07:00

Most Excellent Cover By Sam Kennedy

2009-06-21T22:26:00.000-07:00

What Are We Up To? (part three)

2009-06-21T22:19:00.000-07:00

The long awaited Mexican wrestling roleplaying game Darren Watts and I wrote has at last come out! That's right: Lucha Libre Hero is for sale in stores across the English speaking world and the Internet.

Hero roustabouts Darren Watts and Jason Walters put on their magical wrestling masks, get cranked on tequila, and create for you the ultimate gaming guide to monster-hunting, gangster-fighting Mexican wrestlers in Lucha Libre Hero! Dive right into the weird, fight-filled world of Mexican wrestling adventure movies as you and your masked cohorts save the villagers from werewolves, help the police round up vicious criminals, and then head out for a night on the town with beautiful women!

To learn more about Lucha Libre Hero, click here.

What Are We Up To? (part two)

2009-06-21T22:10:00.000-07:00

As some of you also know Tina and I run a business here at Midian Ranch. More specifically, we run a branch of a corporation known as DOJ Inc here at the ranch. DOJ is the parent corporation which Darren Watts, Steve Long, several others, and myself formed in 2001 to acquire Hero Games from Cybergames. Our division is known as DOJ Logistics (or DOJ-L for short), and it handles shipping, receiving, storage, and convention support for Hero Games, Indy Press Revolution, Burning Wheel, and several other companies. Besides Tina and myself it employs Tara, a friend of ours who lives in Gerlach.

To learn more about our operation you can click here.

The Cover Of My Novel. Pretty Cool, Huh?

2009-06-15T21:41:00.000-07:00

What Are We Up To? (part one)

2009-06-15T21:08:00.000-07:00

This isn't strictly about the ranch, but as some of you know already I'm part owner of a small publishing imprint called Blackwrym Games and Fiction (www.blackwyrm.com). Besides such award-winning game books as Scott Bennie's Gestalt: The Hero Within and Lux Aeternum, we also publish a line of experimental fantasy novellas of between 40,000 - 80,0000 words in length: just the sort of thing to take on a long flight or to enjoy on a warm Saturday afternoon. Our titles include Lynn Tincher's psychic thriller Afterthoughts, Dirk Vandereyken's necromancy courtroom drama Baour: Strands of Death , and my own military fantasy novel The Vast White.

So, if you're interested in what we're doing over at Blackwyrm, go check it out!

Fly Geyser At Moonrise

2009-05-19T20:52:00.000-07:00

If You Feel Like Donating...

2009-05-19T20:45:00.000-07:00

...to the shockingly large number of items one needs to have a baby, you can link to our Baby's R Us account here. My personal favorite is the Bright Starts By Your Side Infant Seat, which spews forth a wealth of what sounds like French 80's sythasizer music.

I want to get my child started with that young.

Yeah, It's As Sketchy As It Looks

2009-05-13T20:27:00.000-07:00

When You Own A Bunch Of Windmills...

2009-05-13T20:20:00.000-07:00

...you're going to have to climb up them now and again. It's an unfortunate fact of modern life that mechanical devices require routine maintainance and occasional repair. Windmills are no exception. In this particular instance, one of the rubber gromets that hold the windmills in place on their masts had worked it way loose and tumbled to the ground. The windmill was thus held in place only by gravity and its wiring, forcing me to strap on my safety gear, attach a ladder, and climb 30 feet into the air to reattach it.

Yes, it's as sketchy and dangerous as it looks.

A Lot Bigger Than Ariel and Daphne? Check.

2009-05-11T19:47:00.000-07:00

Wheels The Size Of A Small Car? Check.

2009-05-11T19:41:00.000-07:00

The Last Steam Train

2009-05-11T19:39:00.000-07:00

OK – so I wasn’t expecting much when I heard that the “last steam train” would be stopping in Gerlach for a half hour. I figured it would a cute, red, wood-burning, Old West-y looking thing that would amble into town, get some water, and wander up the tracks with a few toot-toots.

Boy was I wrong.

The “last steam train” was, well, one of the last steam trains ever manufactured: a massive, brutish, jet black contraption straight out of Atlas Shrugged. A quintessential piece of wondrous dead-tech somehow dropped into our world from the pages of a steampunk novel, it’s powered by boiling massive amounts of water using – wait for it – diesel fuel! Instead of actually burning the diesel in an internal combustion engine, it uses it to create stream in an external combustion engine in a marvelous display of over-engineering.

The wonderful thing was obsolete before it even left the factory floor.

Have a look at the pictures above to get an idea of the sheer size of the thing.

Caleb Schaber, Self Portrait

2009-04-21T19:56:00.000-07:00

RIP Caleb “Shooter” Schaber. The Darkness Claimed Him.

2009-04-21T19:54:00.000-07:00

Best of all he loved the fall
The leaves yellow on the cottonwoods
Leaves floating on the trout streams
And above the hills
The high blue windless skies
Now he will be a part of them forever

- Ernest Hemingway

I returned from a business trip to GTS in Las Vegas to find that my friend Caleb was dead. Without warning or explanation he took a shotgun, put it underneath his chin, and blew his brains out right in front of his girlfriend. He had only been back in Gerlach for two days, having returned from Washington State after gaining a five-year lease on our local (but unused) train station, which he planned on turning into an art gallery and studio. As far as I know it was a project he was greatly looking forward to. Frankly, I was looking forward to seeing him do it.

Caleb Schaber was a dark, moody, gifted man. He was tall, tattooed, wore thick glasses, and needed to bathe far more often than he did. He was prone to bursts of ineffectual violence which, combined with his appearance, made him less-than-popular with a lot of people. He was a talented artist and a gifted, mellow musician with psychedelic sensibilities. Also, including me he was one of only three professional writers within 130 miles of my ranch, which made him a welcome presence here. Like me his sensibilities as an author were dark, which made him the only person out here I could talk to about certain topics. Amongst other things he’d worked as a freelance war correspondent in Iraq and Afghanistan for Hustler and for Playboy, who awarded his online column their Blog of The Month award in August of 2006. I can personally attest to the fact that he was also an excellent and skilled outdoorsman, perfectly comfortable in the wild. In fact, he may have been more comfortable in the Granites than anywhere else I ever saw him.

I didn’t always like Caleb Schaber. Along with two other men (who will remain nameless as I’ve grown to like them as well), he attempted to intimidate me on my own property during the ranchers vs. Burning Man dispute of a few years back. It didn’t work very well and, I suppose in retrospect, was kind of comical. Even though all three of them were a foot taller than yours truly, I was the one wearing the .45 pistol, and they were all high as kites. The whole incident was more uncomfortable than confrontational.

Years later I met Caleb again after he returned from Iraq. He was sitting alone at Joe’s Gerlach Club, drinking. “You know,” he said to me, “I didn’t used to like you.”

I shrugged. “You know,” I said. “I didn’t use to like me either.” After that we were friends, though never close. I don’t suppose much of anyone was, really.

I almost always encountered Caleb alone, silently drinking, writing on his laptop, or painting intently on his battered easel. Even in a crowd he seemed alone: a tall, dark, filthy figure dressed in paramilitary rags. He was intense, filled with bleak observations about human nature, and often difficult to talk to, as time spent in two separate warzones had destroyed his ability to make small talk.

While in Afghanistan and Iraq Caleb saw and, from what I can understand by reading between the lines, did some terrible things. One magazine referred to him as a “DOD contractor, embedded, un-embedded journalist and bar manager in Afghanistan.” He took unnecessarily chances as well, going into warzones with little concern for his own safety, showing up at anti-American protests, and cheerfully hanging out with lowlifes of every description in the red light districts and desert outbacks of both countries. He was no physical coward, which I suppose makes sense. Hemmingway was on coward either, and he took his own life in exactly the same manner.

In conclusion, I’m mad a Caleb right now, but I do understand. I’ve heard a lot of theories about his death over the last few days: how he had been combining antidepressants with other drugs, drinking too much, and the like. Those explanations are too complicated for something so simple. The darkness he’d fought against his whole life claimed him, leaving what might have been the great work of his life – five years of uninterrupted time to paint - unfinished. He was an outsider with three strikes against him: he was a painter, a writer, and a musician. It was bound to claim him. More than anything else I feel bad for our mutual friend Ullas. Now perhaps the only painter in the Black Rock Desert, he is surely left with no one to talk to.

While I have Tina, the dogs, my unborn daughter, and you.

Baby Cassidy

2009-04-13T00:16:00.000-07:00

It looks like we’re going to be the proud parents of a baby girl! We’ve decided to name her Cassidy: a solid Western name for a solid Western girl. Tina’s pregnancy is coming along nicely. The doctors say that she’s as healthy as a woman ten years her junior and, as far as I’m concerned, it shows. I think it’s a combination of clean living, good genes, and a cheerful disposition on T’s part.

I completed my greenhouse and it seems to be functioning nicely. I’ve come up with a zero-electricity way of keeping the inside humid, and the design is keeping it hot. I would guess that it’s 10 to 20 degrees warmer inside than outside. Which is great, as Winter’s heavy hand is still upon the Black Rock. The floor is still a bit muddy inside and I need to do a lot more work building racks and so forth, but the basics are in place and working.

Plants are beginning to come up in the garden in spite of the usual problems with alkaline salt buildup on the top of the soil. A friend over as USG (U.S. Gypsum) is getting me a sack of Ag-Gypsum, which should help not only to counteract that but help to break up the clay even more than my homemade compost already has. I have big hopes for our vegetable garden this year, backed up as it is by the greenhouse. Additionally, I’ve planted a lot more trees, and put a great deal of thought into their location, species, and irrigation. I’m optimistic that many – possibly even most – will survive this time, barring unforeseen circumstances. I’ve also begun a second “lawn” (those of you who have visited in the past know that our lawns are very small) that I’m calling Cassidy’s Lawn, as I plan on putting a swing set there in the future.

I have some other exciting news about what we are doing professionally out at the ranch, but it can keep for now. Just know that we are healthy, happy, and

Our Child In Production

2009-02-24T20:22:00.000-08:00

First Hints Of Spring

2009-02-24T19:58:00.000-08:00

The end of winter is close. If you’re paying attention out here in the Black Rock Desert, you can already catch tiny glimpses of the spring that is soon to come. The buzz of insects awakening as they take flight from whatever secretive places they’ve been hiding in. Tiny sprigs of grass growing in the damp shadows of still slumbering sagebrush. Buds beginning to grow on the red stalks of salt cedar trees. Days in which you just barely need to wear warm clothing. Light rains falling early in the morning just as you stagger out of bed to make your coffee.

This is one of the good times.

I apologize to you all for not posting more often in recent months. It’s been a busy time. As you can see from the picture above Tina is pregnant. This is a source of enormous joy and wonder to me, as I never thought I would get to be a parent. Now I can’t wait. This is just the right time in just the right place. We are very blessed.

My newish operation is doing all right, though things are still a bit up in the air. You can read more about us here. I keep reading that times are very hard back in the real world, so I’m considering any step forward no matter how small to be a blessing. Also, my fantasy novella the Vast White is out to good reviews. You can read more about it here and here. You can even buy a copy if you like the genre of dark, military fantasy. Likewise, Urban Fantasy Hero has come out to brisk sales, though oddly not a single review. I wrote 30,000 or so words of that book of which I am (hopefully justifiably) proud. It was a fun assignment.

I’m working on building a functioning, sturdy greenhouse for almost no money. It’s a challenging project but it seems to be coming along well. I hope to have it completed by the end of March. I have created additional frames for growing more food in my garden, fortified its walls, and hauled in more dirt. I hope to quadruple my yield from last year, which was admittedly tiny. Still, one has to start somewhere, and I was astounded that I got anything edible to grow out here at all!

Unloved Dogs. Unloved Children. Unloved Old Men and Women.

2008-12-08T23:56:00.001-08:00

Unloved dogs. Unloved children. Unloved old men and women. The world is a messed up place filled with unwanted people. It doesn’t have to be that way – but it is. All you can do is try to be a little less messed up than the world you live in.

The Crippled Stray came back for a while. I’ve decided to call him Toulouse, after the lame French artist Toulouse-Lautrec. I’ve always loved that whore-mongering degenerate. Jeff Barker brought him over, wondering if I knew the owner.

“Yeah.” I said. “He’s a mean ass little vaquero who beats his dogs – when he isn’t working them to death. Can’t say as I like him very much.”

“Shit.” Replied JB. “This is a nice dog too. I kind of like him.”

“Me too.”

Toulouse began playing with Michelle while we talked. Tough old boy. Probably been kicked, beaten, stomped, and trampled more than any other living creature in the Black Rock Desert. Fortunately, a thick scar has grown in where his missing pad used to be, giving him something like 3½ legs. Unfortunately, at some point in the last year something damaged his hips. Toulouse can’t sit like a normal dog; he has to sort of lie on his side and stand up with his front legs.

So I took Toulouse in again – and decided that his owner and I were going to have a little talk if he came over. I’m not sure even know what that would have meant. Probably something violent and stupid that couldn’t have been “undone” once it was done. I understand the hard reality of ranch life out here. I know that Toulouse is a tool, not a pet. But there are things you shouldn’t tolerate given the chance. How you treat your dogs is a good measure of how you should be treated.

Toulouse was with us for two days before the little bastard showed up. Not that I knew. Sensing that I was about to write a check with my mouth that my ass couldn’t cash (in other words, starting a feud with the desert’s tough-as-hell sheep herders), Tina left me working in my office while he picked Toulouse up.

No matter. Crippled Stray came back the next day.

But he didn’t stay. Three days later he simply took off again. Vanished. It’s hard to say what goes on in old gray-muzzled Toulouse’s mind. Did he miss the companionship of the other dogs in his sheep herding pack? The other Boarder Collies with their intelligent eyes and touchy dispositions? The massive Great Pyrenees with their independent habits and filthy, dreadlocked hair? Maybe sleeping somewhere warm that involved regular meals was too alien for the old boy. Too soft and sissified. Maybe he even missed the little bastard that owns him.

Tonight I sit on my porch listening to the coyotes howl. There are hundreds of the bastards down in the valley this winter looking for food. Hungry. Big. They’re getting bigger every year too; these aren’t the little scavengers most of you reading this have seen poking around the edges of suburbs. These boys are almost the size of wolves.

And Toulouse -- enigmatic, crippled bastard – walked right out into them.

Unloved old men and women. Unloved children. Unloved dogs.

Jumpsuit Weather

2008-10-25T19:41:00.000-07:00

All right, I didn’t expect it. Things normally work like this: first you have the final week of summer. Then you have the first week of autumn, followed by a month or two of passable weather. I honestly didn’t think that we would transition directly from summer to winter with nothing in the middle.

Literally.

One week it’s late summer. It’s 80-plus degrees outside during the day, 60-something at night. All very nice. Then summer officially ends and WHOOSH! It’s 30-degrees out at night and snowing. You walk outside first thing in the morning and there’s literally an inch of snow on the ground, even down here in the lowlands where the ranch is (well, if you consider 4500 feet to be low). All that time you thought you had to get things ready for winter… well, you don’t have that time now.

To be honest I don’t know why I’m griping. Having the weather go from pleasantly warm to shockingly cold in the space of a week isn’t really at that uncommon in the desert. If you want predictable weather, you really need to live in a place like San Francisco or Florida. It just takes some getting used to out here. San Francisco only has one season: cool and damp. Florida has two: wretchedly hot and perfect. The Black Rock Desert has three seasons: dust, frozen, and nice. Nice generally occurs twice a year. The first interval of nice occurs in mid to late spring and continues into early summer. The second interval begins in late summer and usually lasts to late autumn. Nice is typified by cool evenings, warm days, and a bit of rain. Early-nice this year lasted about two months. Late-nice appears to have lasted two weeks.

In any case, I’ve gone back to wearing jumpsuits again. As many of you already know, when the weather turns cold I just like to wear jumpsuits. There was this old fellow who had a sort of kiosk near where I used to live in Richmond. He sold industrial jumpsuits at a rate of three for $15.00. I don’t know where he got them, though my guess is that they were castoffs from either the California prison system or EBMUD (the East Bay Municipal Utility District). The old boy sold them cheap and was always friendly about it, so I bought at lot of them. I still use them too. In fact, I use them so much that several of my neighbors weren’t aware that I wore anything but jumpsuits. But unless you’re breaking rocks along the side of a road as part of a chain gang, you’re definitely not wearing a jumpsuit in Nevada in the summer.

So, to make an extremely short story long, now that it’s cold again I can start wearing jumpsuits. Which is nice. Sentimental almost. Unfortunately, it shouldn’t be that cold yet. Which brings me back to what I was bitching about in the first place.

In other news, with the help of Tina and my father-in-law Frank, I now have a genuine wind farm. Two more wonderful Air-X units from Southwest Windpower are up in the air as of Friday. John Farmington – better known to everyone out here as Farmer – kindly gave me two 20-foot lengths of 2” pipe to put them up with. Those heavy bastards are practically indestructible. I already had everything else I needed to wire the windmills into the system, though not as elaborately as the existing unit. I’m skipping the fuses, kill switches, and DC Amp meters until I’m certain they’re functioning properly. Plus, as far as I can tell from months of running the existing unit all that extra rigging is pretty superfluous. (I’ve never had to run out and hit the kill switch – nor has the fuse ever popped.) It can certainly wait for a few months until I get around to it. Now all I need is some wind to test the whole system out (it’s been oddly still over the last week).

And the point of all this wind farming? Come autumn the Black Rock Desert starts to get windy. REALLY windy. I’m talking about 20 to 30 mph winds almost all the time at tree level… well, what would be tree level if we had trees out here. It’s milder closer to the ground. Nevertheless, it gets windy and stays windy. With just one Air-X unit we’ve sometimes been able to go for days without running a generator. With three we hope to take generator use down to a bear minimum. Of course, even if everything goes according to plan the wind will die back down again mid spring, but by then I hope to have another 600 watts of solar panels in place to match the 400 I have up now. This will give me a potential peak power – meaning conditions are optimum, with both bright sunlight and strong winds – of 2.2 kilowatts. Not too shabby for an amateur, zero-budget operation where almost everything besides the basic solar and wind units are constructed from scrap pulled out of neighbor’s boneyards: old pipe, fasteners, wiring, kill switches, and what have you.

Of course, it won’t work all the time. Hippy power never works all the time.

Things are winding down in Gerlach post-Burning Man. Last week they stopped providing free room and board to their volunteers, precipitating a mass departure of a hundred or so of them. That leaves just us locals, the dozen or so Burners who have become permanent residents, and the usual gaggle of hunters and tourists that are always seem to be passing through. Hunting season is in full swing for fowl -- chucker, quail, and a few other species – and the place is just swarming with men in camouflage. There are hunters driving quads, hunters in jeeps, hunters driving SUVs, and even hunters in SUVs pulling jeeps that are pulling trailers loaded with quads.

Fortunately, they aren’t bothering me… because I don’t know anything about bird hunting! That wasn’t the case during pronghorn and deer season. I had a hunter come through my front gate every day or two to ask me where they should go. I claim no particular expertise in this department, but since I live out here with the deer and pronghorn, several hunters have accurately surmised that I probably have an idea of where they are – which, in fact, I do.

Birds are a different matter. Birds are Zen: everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

I can’t help you with birds.

Lightening Storm

2008-09-27T21:20:00.000-07:00

Living in the desert makes you do things you wouldn’t normally do. Stupid things. Crazy things. After a while you come to understand that the stereotype of the “crazy old desert rat” you see on television and in movies isn’t really a stereotype at all. It’s real.

It’s you.

Take that lightening storm last month.

Now, a normal person sees the black clouds, hears the thunder, and thinks to him or herself “Hum; there’s a storm coming. Probably lightening too. I should go inside.” But let’s say you’re a desert rat. You live without air conditioning. It’s 100-degrees in the shade by nine in the morning. You haven’t felt rain on your skin in over two months. In fact, you’re having a hard time remembering what it’s like to see liquid stuff fall from the sky. So when the heavens turn black and raindrops begin to strike the roof of your crude porch like a thousand tiny Brigham Young’s coming to take you away to mythical Deseret, it doesn’t occur to you to go inside. No. You pull your shirt off, scream “Hell Yes,” and run out into the storm whooping and hollering with your two stupid dogs at your heels. Delicious wet coldness beats against your skin like something out of a half-remembered dream. Glorious!

You make it half way across your ranch before lightening starts striking the hills around you, causing the hair on your arms to stand on end. Both you and the dogs start running in earnest, because all three of you know what’s coming. You’re the tallest things in the valley: a pack of de-facto idiot organic lightning rods. You’ve got to get under cover or die. So you run to the nearest building and duck inside. Smart, except that it’s a 100% metal building, and your hair begins standing on end again. So you run back out into the storm again and make for your ranch house - which is conveniently not made out of metal alloy – hoping that God really does love fools like the Koran says. Or at least that he loves dogs.

These are the sorts of crazy things that cross your mind when you’re making a mad dash for your house in a lightening storm. Or possibly just mine.

Might As Well Be Listening To Journey

2008-07-29T22:02:00.000-07:00

As you already know this blog is dedicated almost exclusively to discussing Midian Ranch and the various strange things that go on here. However, it’s almost impossible to live in Nevada and never discuss the Oldies Circuit. That would be like living in Hawaii and never talking about the beach. It’s everywhere in this state: Las Vegas, Reno, Stateline, Laughlin. Heck, even tiny Wendover is part of the Circuit. If you’re a washed up, previously famous, or simply old rock star then odds are good that you’ll end up playing one of these places sooner or later.

Tina and I are now old enough that the bands we once loved as teenagers are starting to hit the Oldies Circuit. I’m honestly not sure how I feel about that, but it does give me a chance to see some acts for the last time that I was certain I’d never see again. (Hell, I’m not certain that some of them should ever have been seen in the first place!) Tina in particular has been enjoying the cavalcade of 80’s hair-metal bands parading through the Silver State. It was with great excitement that she bought tickets to see Cheap Trick, Heart, and that titan of 14-year-old-girl-rock, Journey. So we packed the dogs into the SUV and drove down to Stateline.

Now I’m going to gripe like an old, cheap, Jack Benny kind of guy. This turned out to be a surprisingly expensive proposition. With gas at $4.35 in Nevada it cost over $160.00 to go roundtrip between Lake Tahoe and Gerlach. The tickets themselves were 70 bucks for good seats. Not unreasonable, actually, but we bought three of them - only to have the third person bail out at the last minuet. Nobody else in Gerlach wanted to go, either, so add another 210 smackers onto that with 70 of them wasted. The hotel (which was much closer to one star than five) cost $180.00 for the night. Then there’s food, booze, and so forth. Add on another hundred.

So, yeah, in the early 21^st century it costs almost $700 for two people to see Journey. In 1986 we would have spent $40 on the tickets, $40 on gas, $12 for a case of Black Label, and slept in the back of my Volkswagen Fox! The Walters Family West – accredited and acknowledged masters of the ultra cheap vacation – got waxed pretty thoroughly this time. But what the hell: you only live once. Onto the bands.

Cheap Trick shouldn’t have been – and obviously didn’t want to be – on stage. I have no idea what motivated them to go on tour. Maybe the drummer’s third marriage didn’t work out and he couldn’t make his alimony payments. Maybe the base player’s restaurant in St. Luis was failing. Whatever the reason, the band famous for recording “She’s Tight” just wasn’t. Cheap Trick sounded like they hadn’t had a band practice since they released At Budokan back in 1979. To try and make up for it they used a few gimmicks that were kind of entertaining. Guitarist Rick Nielsen, he of the bald-head-black-suit-and-bowtie fame, changed axes at least once and sometimes as many as three times each song, producing a dizzying assortment of colorful and unlikely-looking instruments. Too bad he couldn’t seem to play them.

Didn’t help that he’s pushing 350-pounds either.

Famous for his blond mane, lead singer Robin Zander wore a cowboy hat throughout much of the show, strongly implying that he’d gone from goldilocks to baldilocks at some point in the last decade. Now, Zander has got to be pushing 50 at this point, so no big deal there. All of us guys are headed in the same direction. It’s only a matter of when you get there. But, right before the end of their set, he dramatically removed his chapeau to reveal an impressive cascade of flowing toe-headed hair. Hurrah! Robin Zander is forever young.

It was a good shtick. Too bad they sucked.

Heart was on the opposite of the suck-o-meter from Cheap Trick. The Wilson sisters sounded like they hadn’t done anything but practice since they released Little Queen in 1977. They were awesome. Looked terrific too. Obviously their version of the rock-n-roll lifestyle involves a lot of not drinking, not doing drugs, and probably spending some quality time with a personal trainer as well. Nancy Wilson in particular looked good. She felt no particular need to switch guitars four dozen times, either. She just put one shapely leg up on a Marshal speaker and beat on her axe for an hour like it was what the Lord put her on Earth to do. And her sister’s vocal skills have improved dramatically as well. I would guess that Ann Wilson is twice as good as she was at the height of their fame back in the 80s. Maybe even better.

Heart also seemed to “get” the Oldies Circuit in a way that neither Cheap Trick nor Journey did. Nobody going to an oldies show wants to hear new songs. (Journey!) They want to hear songs they already know played skillfully. (Cheap Trick!) Heart banged out their 70’s and 80’s hits (and there were a lot of them) with genuine expertise and feeling. They also played two covers: Going To California by Led Zeppelin and Love, Rain On Me by The Who. The crowd (rather predictably) knew both of these songs quite well, and responded enthusiastically to them.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the Wilson sisters should probably be considered Masters of Metal, dwelling eternally alongside the likes of such icons as Tony Iommi, Lemmy Kilmister, and Rob Halford. It’s a traditionally entirely male pantheon, so it seems only fair to me that at least a couple of women should be admitted into metal Valhalla. But I digress.

Journey was the main act of the evening, the one that thousands of 40 something’s in frayed and stretched Ratt t-shirts had traveled all the way to Stateline to see. Ah, the sweet mullet and malt beer memories of youth! Now tragically gone, of course, destined only to be recaptured for brief moments on Nevada’s Oldies Circuit. OK, OK – I admit it. Journey isn’t really my thing. Too smooth and polished by far (and they were). But here’s the funny part. I knew that Journey’s original lead singer Steve Perry was long gone, replaced by a youngster of some sort. Which isn’t a new thing. I’d seen the ugly phenomenon of young Hessian vocalist fronting creaking trolls of metal before. Judas Priest. Iron Maiden. Black Sabbath. And now again, though it pains me to even mention Journey alongside such august personages. And this kid was extraordinary too. He sounded more like Steve Perry than any three normal Steve Perry’s ever could hope to sound. He rocker kicked through the air in tight pants like a flying tiger, long hair flowing behind him, working the crowd with incredible enthusiasm and generally behaving as though we were all trapped in some sort of 80’s time warp just waiting for our jeans to become stonewashed. Only one thing was off.

Arnel Pineda is a five-foot tall Japanese guy.

All right, he’s not actually Japanese. He’s from the Philippines. But you know what I mean. I just couldn’t get over the feeling that I was watching some kid having a really, really good Karaoke night at the Japantown bowling alley. Come to think of it, I wish that I did have a time machine; because I would take little Arnel back to the wonderful, politically incorrect era that he was meant to grow into thin-whiskered manhood in. He would have been big in the 80s. Huge! Well, bigger than Dio, anyhow. We could have done an entirely Japanese themed metal act. Yeah, I know he’s from the Philippines, but 80s metal heads didn’t know where that country was. Or that it was. Or how to spell it. He’s Asian, so close enough! I’d have him fighting mechanical Godzillas with pyrotechnic spewing guitars, leaping through burning rising sun flags, waving flaming samurai swords around the stage, and the whole bit. An undead Samurai “Eddy” mascot. Albums called things like “Tora, Torment” and “Imperial Bombshell.”

#Sigh# How glorious it would have been. Maybe we could even make enough money to be able to afford to see Journey in the early 21^st century.

(Note: I just found out that Journey frontman Arnel Pineda is actually 40. He's simply youthful and athletic enough to be 20! Not fair! Damn you Pineda!)

Ascending and Descending the Banjo

2008-06-18T23:08:00.001-07:00

Once every year or two I develop an itch that takes a phenomenal amount of effort to scratch. I try to ignore it, but it’s like trying to ignore a tick that’s dug firmly into your scalp. First it’s worrying, and then it’s annoying, and – finally – it’s painful. You just have to have it out.

In my case this means climbing the Banjo: the lowest and, frankly, the most hospitable of the Granite Mountains. I just have to go up to this place where nowhere ever goes. A place where the bobcats, mustang, and pronghorn all go about their affairs without ever having to worry about humans. Even the most determined and experienced hunters never bother to climb more than a third of the way up the Banjo. It simply isn’t worth it. The ascent and descent are treacherous: just one step below true mountain climbing. Quads and Jeeps can’t make it. Few horses have the stamina to make it, either. Game has plenty of places to hide that far up in the mountains. The Banjo is an enormous lump, a Cerrito of hundreds of large hills stuck together at odd angles. The entire mess is crisscrossed with ravines and gullies that run straight down from its top to its bottom. It’s difficult to see what lies a thousand yards ahead of you, and almost impossible to see what’s a thousand yards behind. It contains countless groves with a few dozen trees each, as well as half-a-dozen thick, primordial forests of aspens that have never felt the bite of a settler’s axe.

If a hunter is lucky enough to bag an antelope or a deer under these conditions, there’s still the daunting prospect of taking it back down the mountain on his shoulders or back. It’s an even more discouraging proposition when one also considers the fact that it is impossible to safely descend the Banjo without the help of a spiked walking stick or staff.
The mountain is simply too steep.

For those of you unfamiliar with the local geography, the Granites are a short but extremely tall mountain range located in northwestern Nevada. To be even more specific, they’re located directly behind my ranch. The Granite’s are cold, windswept, uninhabited, and tower up to a distance of over 9,200 feet above sea level. Their only residents are a few homesteads clinging tenaciously to their lower foothills (such as mine). They are impassible in most places. Their only visitors are hunters in the winter, cattleman in the summer, and the occasional masochistic backpacker such as myself.

The lowest and easiest to climb of these mountains is the Banjo. This isn’t to say that it either low or particularly easy to climb. These things are a matter of scale, after all.

Although Tina has gamely hiked up into the Banjo with me before, this wasn’t an urge she felt any particular urge to scratch. It is a hard, unforgiving tick to pull out of your flesh. Climbing that mountain is dangerous, cold, and uncomfortable. You have to have a sort of queer mentality to think that it’s worthwhile thing to do at all. So for companionship I took our boarder collie Snap and Michelle, our McNabb-Collie-Coyote-What-Have-You mutt of a thousand types. Since the Weather Channel indicated that it wouldn’t get any colder than 48-degrees that Saturday night, I decided to askew the use of either a sleeping bag or a tent and “light pack,” bringing just a tarp, a blanket, and a sheet. For a walking stick I borrowed Tina’s cleverly constructed Survival Staff: an easily disassembled metal rod that comes equipped with various different optional screw on tips. For a weapon I took my Henry AR7 Survival Rifle. Not exactly the greatest weapon in the ever created, but it has the twin advantages of weighting next to nothing and being practically indestructible.

As the sun came up above the desert Snap and I shouldered our packs, gathered up Michelle, said goodbye to Tina, and headed out. Yep: you heard me right. Snap wears a pack when he goes camping. Some dogs are capable of wearing a pack and some aren’t. Border collies are one of the breeds that can. In Snap’s case that pack is a harness-saddlebag combo manufactured by a company called Outward Hound. Pretty cute, huh? He can carry about three to five pounds. This generally means dog food for himself and Michelle, some snacks, and maybe some light items.

Before you begin to think that I’m being cruel: Snap likes carrying a pack. It’s a job, and boarder collies as a breed need to have jobs. It makes them feel “grown up” and important, since it’s something they’ve seen humans doing. As an experiment I tried putting the same pack on Michelle, who’s a mutt (and a bit of a ferial mutt at that). She just ran around screaming “Get this off of me! Get this off of me!” then rolled around on the ground and tried to rip it off with her teeth. So it wasn’t much of a success.

This brings me to an interesting digression. Several people whom I deem to be more intelligent and better educated than myself have commented that I tend to assign unwarranted human motivations and characteristics to animals that they could not possibly have - especially to dogs. I’ve given this some thought and have come to the conclusion that these people aren’t looking at the situation correctly.

It’s reassuring to human beings to think that we don’t have precisely the same motivations as, say, a dog. And I’m not suggesting that we are all exactly alike. Dogs and humans have different ways of looking at the world, are motivated by different priorities, and correspondingly have different ways of handling the same situations. As Tina has commented on numerous occasions “Dog smart is not people smart.” BUT – and this is a big but – much of our desire to see ourselves as superior to animals is simply hubris. We ARE animals. Genetically we aren’t even that dissimilar from dogs. I can tell you from living in close quarters with dogs, cats, and (God help me!) starlings now that we all have our particular likes and dislikes. We all have separate personalities. We get cranky and develop prejudices against individuals or groups that we don’t like, get excited by things others don’t understand, and develop peculiar tastes in edible things that don’t appeal to anyone else.

Perhaps most poignantly, we all have nightmares.

At the very least I know that dogs have nightmares. Which must mean that they have anxieties in the same manner as human beings do. At least a couple times each weak I have to wake Michelle up from a nightmare and comfort her. When Snap was younger I used to do the same thing for him. I’ve noticed cats having what I believe to be nightmares. I’ve even God help me noticed the starling having what I think was probably a nightmare. If you’re capable of anxiety, that makes you a person. Which means your motivations can’t be that much different from mine.

In any case, we set out. On the first leg of our hike we walked to where Barker Creek emerges from he ground. When I’m hiking in the desert in summer I judge distances based on locations where the dogs can drink. Though I can (and do) share the water I’m carrying with them, it’s much easier on everyone if we stop at places where they can refresh themselves. Between the oasis that contains Barker Spring and Barker Creek - it’s subterranean brother that flows straight to my property – and the foot of the Banjo are a couple of miles of particularly bleak, harsh, and waterless scrubland. This face of this plateau is occasionally scarred by gullies that lead a hundred feet down to creek beds that are sometimes filled with muddy water. These are a little tricky to transverse but, as I was reasonably certain that one of the larger ones I had explored before had a bit of marsh at its bottom, I decided to try traveling along it so that the dogs would have a constant source of water to drink. This was difficult, as anywhere there is water in the desert there is also abundant life, and in the case of a gully this means thickets and tall grasses that it is difficult to pass through. The dogs – as always overjoyed to be on any sort of adventure – ran up and down the sides of the gully, pausing occasionally to drink or wallow in the thick mud at its bottom. Just as often, however, they ran from one ridgeline to the other like skateboarders in an abandoned swimming pool.

About half way between Barker Creek and the base of the Banjo Snap ascended to the top of a ridgeline, froze, and began yelling at something. Whatever it was wasn’t backing down – and he wasn’t backing down either – so Michelle and I scurried up the slope to join him as quickly as we could. He easily beat me to his side and, freezing in place, also began to stare at whatever it was. Snap stopped barking. They both stared at something silently. But when I finally scrambled to the top there was simply nothing there. I looked out into the ocean of sagebrush and couldn’t see a thing.

“Huh.” I thought to myself. And, like an idiot, I paid it no mind.

We reached the base of the Banjo without further incident and began our ascent. My goal was to reach the three-quarter mark before three in the afternoon so that I could set up camp and still have time to scale to the top where the snows were. Even in June there are noticeable patches of snow on the top of the mountain and, for reasons that I still don’t clearly understand, I wanted to go look at it. But I had never been that high and I didn’t really know what to expect.

So we climbed from grove to grove, pausing so that the dogs could drink while I pumped filtered water into my depleted camel pack. Soon the going got incredibly steep. It would have been entirely impossible without the use of my spiked staff. At first signs of human visitation were relatively common: boot prints along game trails, the odd shotgun shell, or the odd obviously shorn hoof print. But after a while this tapered off a stopped, indicating that we had traveled beyond the first third of the mountain’s face. This was farther up the mountain than I had ever gone. I quickly noticed something at this altitude that had never been obvious from the lower elevations or the valley below. From down below the Banjo appears to be a rounded, undulating collection of hills gradually making its way toward a ridge. But this is an optical illusion. The Banjo is really a series of sheer steps that have the appearance at a distance of being gradual and round. These vertical hillsides are almost unnavigable and completely obscure your view of the plateaus above. You honestly can’t tell what is one or two hundred yards in front of you.

Rounding each ledge is a surprise. Sometimes there’s a small grove of trees, sometimes a stream, sometimes there’s an incredibly beautiful field of purple and yellow wild flowers, and sometimes there is nothing. Nothing but sand and rock.

As I was spending much of the climb literally facing the ground in front of me, I began noticing something else as well. A small plant that looked incredibly like an onion grew everywhere. Plucking one I broke its stem and realized that it smelled like an onion too. It’s root even looked like a tiny onion when you pulled it up, so I decided to run three out of four of the poisonous plant tests. First, I smelled the plant carefully to see whether it emitted the scent of almonds. It didn’t – it smelled like onion. Then, I cut a section of its root open and rubbed it against my skin. Generally a poisonous plant will cause the skin to inflame within about an hour. It didn’t. Then I sliced up a tiny bit of the bulb, put it into my mouth, chewed it thoroughly, and spat it out. A poisonous plant usually tastes bad. Even mild exposure to its contents should make the consumer slightly ill within a couple of hours. Instead, it tasted delicious and I felt fine.

These plants became more and more common until I reached a grove where they substituted for grass, carpeting the ground between the trees to form a wonderful (if oniony) sylvan glade. I got on my radio and called down the mountain to Tina. I asked her to go into our library and see if there was any record of an onion native to this area. A few minutes later she reported back to me that there was a native species called the Aspen Onion that grows in the same terrain as Aspen trees and is completely edible. So, I ate this wonderful tasting plant straight out of the ground during the ascent. It doesn’t store well, quickly becoming rubbery and difficult to eat. But if you stick to pulling them straight out of the ground and consuming them, aspen onions are delicious, filling, and the mountainside is covered in them.

After several hours of steady climbing, the dogs and I reached a very pretty little plateau that contained a glade and a fast-moving stream. A perfect place to pitch camp: perhaps 400 square feet of wet, soft grass on damp ground surrounded on all sides by healthy, shade-giving aspen trees with a couple of large fallen ones for firewood. The idea behind this venture was to camp in a minimalist style, so I quickly began fashioning a lean-to using fallen branches and a spool of twine I had brought with me. When it was complete I stretched a simple top over the top to give us protection from the wind as well as any sudden rain showers that might occur. Then I dug a pit for a small fire and lined it with stones to help increase the amount of heat it put out.

With our preparations complete, Snap and I removed our packs and the three of us continued our hike to the snow. It was warm out – at least 80-degrees – so hiking without packs was a great relief. Up and up we ascended until we had reached the level of the Banjo that held its choking, primordial forests. We passed entire sections of trees that had been smashed by spring landslides like so many matchsticks. We maneuvered around thickets so dense that that the dogs hesitated to explore them. Finally, after two hours of climbing, we pushed our ways through a thicket of young aspens to emerge onto a field of June snow glistening in the sunlight. Delighted, Snap and Michelle charged ahead, nipping at one another in unbridled enthusiasm as they ran across the field of incongruous white.

Having only two legs to work with I slipped and slid my way after them, trying to steady myself using a combination of my walking stick and the odd stunted tree. All of this was for naught, as Snap tackled me from behind and sent the both of us sliding down the hill in a tangle of snow, branches, human, and dog. Laughing, I regained my feet and the two of us made our way to the center of the field where Michelle awaited us with her tail wagging and brown eyes filled with amusement. Squatting down I made small snowballs which my canine companions ate eagerly, thirsty and dehydrated despite the enormous amount of frozen water surrounding us on all sides. The wind grew still, and with it the forest beneath us. All became quite and serene.

There was a sudden loud “snap” as a branch broke somewhere below us. Both dogs paused, staring intently down into the forest at something I could not see. They did this for some time. They looked worried.

“Huh.” I thought to myself. And, like an idiot, I paid it no mind.

Feeling a bit nervous and foolish by my dog’s skittish behavior I decided to make my way back to our camp for the evening. It was an easy decent, although I got repeatedly sidetracked by my inability to see more than a few hundred yards ahead of me. We ended up in a gully that I had never been in before, with the dogs predictably wandering out and ahead of me. Coming upon its crest, I found them nervously pacing around a boulder. It was a nice-looking piece of stone perfectly placed to give anyone standing atop it great view of the mountain below. It was also covered in fresh urine of some sort. Snap kept sniffing and pacing, sniffing and pacing, whining a bit as if worried about something.

“Huh.” I thought to myself. And, like an idiot, I paid it no mind.

After wandering around for a bit we finally found “our” grove. I gathered firewood for a half an hour or so, then settled down to cool dinner (or, to be more specific, to heat up MRE’s). Uncharacteristically after such a strenuous day, the dogs refused to eat. It grew colder, and colder, and colder, the temperature dropping below the Weather Channel’s promised 48-degrees before the sun had fully disappeared behind the Granites. By 10 PM it was well below 35. The three of us shivered in a clump beneath the lean-to, Michelle lying so close to the fire that I became worried she would actually burn herself. Still, even underdressed in the cold, being the center of a clutch of dogs near a fire has its advantages. I began to mercifully fall asleep.

11:30: “Wake up!” Snap yelled in my ear, and then charged off into the dark yelling. The fire had died down to smoking coals, giving off even more heat than before but no light. Cursing, I called my errant border collie back, and then stocked the fire into a blaze once more.

12:00: After a bit, I began drifting off to sleep once more, only to wake up with a start as Snap barked directly into my ear before vanishing into the night. Annoyed, I yelled until he came back, and then built the fire back up again.

12:30: It happened a third time before I began to understand the pattern. Snap didn’t want to fire to go out. Or, to be more specific, he didn’t want the light produced by the fire to go out.

“There is no such thing as a dog-eating monster.” I scolded him. “Lie down and try to get some sleep.”

13:00 I awoke to what sounded like a ferial housecat shouting through a bullhorn from a few dozen yards away. A dog (and people) eating monster. A mountain lion.

“Dog-eating monster!” screamed Snap, charging into the brush to challenge it.

“Dog-eating monster!” screamed Michelle, who promptly ran in the opposite direction. I fell from my blanket cursing, one foot in the fire as I desperately scrambled about in the darkness in search of my rifle. Finding it at last I hurried to my feet, chambered a round, and peered out into the darkness. I couldn’t see a thing. What the hell was I supposed to do? Shoot randomly into the brush? And shoot one of my dogs?

Shivering from more than just the cold I called them back. Michelle returned first, looking vaguely embarrassed. Snap returned a few moments later looking smugly pleased with himself. I built the fire up as big as I could, and resolved to stay up for the rest of the long, cold night.

And to always listen to Snap when I go camping on the Banjo.

Well, it’s not Falconry: The Squeaker Diaries, Volume One

2008-06-13T21:41:00.000-07:00

(Note from Jason: The following is an excerpt from the journal Tina is keeping about raising a wild starling from chick to adulthood. We hope you enjoy it.)

Sunday May 18, 2008

A pigeon fell out of his nest, got caught in chicken wire, and we became adoptive parents to the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen. We did a little internet research and found out a baby pigeon is called a Squeaker, so we named our new addition Squeaker.

Monday, May 19, 2008

I was excited and relived when Squeaker survived his first night in captivity. This is my second try at taking care of wild birds. When I was a kid I tried to nurse a couple of black birds back to health and they died in a couple hours. The one thing I learned that is a mistake most people make. Do not feed your wild bird bread and water. It’s not good for them.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

He’s growing pretty much by the hour. Today he has a tail when there wasn’t one yesterday.

Saturday, May 24, 2008

Well, Squeaker isn’t a pigeon. She is a Starling and a she.

Sat/ Sun May 31 June 1

I gave Squeaker flying lessons. I had her in my hands and dropped my hands fast a couple of times she let go of my fingers. I had her with me in the game room without dogs she flew a few feet. It was pretty exciting.

I’ve been reading www.starlingtalk.com Squeaker probably won’t “fly the coup.” She won’t learn how to forage for food and doesn’t view humans as enemies. Her eyes were closed when we got her so, she’s imprinted on us. As far as she’s concerned she’s a little flying human.

Monday June 2, 2008

I wanted to see if Squeaker would drink water by herself, so I filled a little ceramic dish with water (something heavy enough for her to stand on the edge and not tip it over). She walked around the dish a bit. I put my fingers in the dish and splashed a bit. She jumped in the bowl and started taking a bath. It was messy but really funny to watch. You could tell she really enjoyed that.

Tuesday June 3, 2008

Well it looks like we’ve trained Squeaker a bit. She runs to the cage door when it’s time to eat. I’m guessing she’s about 3 weeks old. She can fly pretty well now and likes to explore (though not too far). Yesterday I got her to fly about five feet. Today she’s flying about ten feet. It’s time to build a big cage.

Wednesday June 4^th.

She’s drinking water by herself. Now we just need to convince her to eat by herself. We are feeding her mostly soaked cat food. I mix in a tiny bit of formula for taste. They say you can teach Starlings to talk. We talk to her I don’t know what she’ll pick up. Sometimes it looks like she’s studying the sound. I’m going to laugh my ass off if she starts barking

Off Grid Power: Step One, Version 2.0

2008-06-12T16:36:00.000-07:00

I’ve finished the first step of version 2.0 of my off grid power system. This includes eight 12-volt solar panels producing a peak total of 420-watts at somewhere around 25 amps in combination with a single Southwest Windpower Air-X windmill, which produces even in light winds between 3 and 5 amps according to its DC Ampmeter. In high wind conditions it produces somewhere between 15 and 30 amps. The system is up and seems to be functioning pretty well, although I think the time may come soon when I need to replace some or all of my battery bank. In any case, the new system has cut down drastically on the amount of time I need to run a generator each day to just a handful of hours (somewhere between 2 and 4).

I had envisioned the second step of version 2.0 of my off grid power system as involving the purchase of a massive amount of solar panels – an entire skid worth – along with the complete retooling of the system from 12 to 48 volts for efficiency’s sake, including the purchase of a new inverter. I’m beginning to change my mind. I think that the next step may be more windmills. A LOT more windmills! I’m not sure whether I’ll change the voltage of not. Probably I will, as 12-volt is inefficient for moving current (especially DC) over any real distance, even though I’ve gone to great pains to put in heavy gauge, extremely insulated wires.

I’m very impressed by the windmill. When it’s windy (And there is always at least some breeze at my place. It’s rare that we have a still day.) it just churns along producing amperage. I would guess that if I put another two of these units into place, the three windmills combined will have almost the same effect as running a generator. Now, that might be a bit overly optimistic on my part. I certainly can’t control when it’s windy and when it’s not, but the difference that even one functioning windmill makes is dramatic.

Over the years I’ve come up with a lot of different schemes for how to generate power out at my place. Some of them have been admittedly pretty elaborate, bizarre, and fantastic. But I’ve come to the conclusion that a combination of solar and wind backed up by small, fuel efficient generators is the best way to go for the ranch. This system is simple, easy to maintain, and – above all else – technologically feasible.

For some time now I’ve been following all sorts of online conversations about people’s plans for generating power off grid. These have included everything from hydrogen, to methane collection, to solar condenser powered stirling engines and micro-hydro generators. All of them are either extremely expensive, technologically infeasible (not that that can’t change over the next decade), or simply difficult to implement in my unique instance. Of them micro-hydro is the most practical, as the technology is definite there and I have some water. But installing it would require a great deal of effort and a retooling my water system that I’m not willing to undertake at this time. Plus, setting up one micro-hydro generator would cost as much as setting up two more windmills - with considerably more thought and effort having to go into the setup of the micro-hydro generator!

In conclusion, they system is functioning roughly how I thought it would. My goal was to only have to run a generator once every two or three days. Instead I’ve ended up running one a couple of times a day for very brief periods. Which I suppose amounts to basically the same thing. The off-the-shelf technology for this type of system is there. Sun and wind power are definitely “there” at this point. I’m satisfied through my own experimentation that such a system functions. All that remains now is to tinker with what I have and make small, incremental improvements while I put together the funds to take us to the next level.

The Whirl of the Windmill, Squeaker is a Starling

2008-06-01T21:35:00.000-07:00

So... Squeaker isn’t a pigeon. She’s a starling. Which is good because she (Yep. She’s a she.) can learn to talk like a parrot or a raven. It’s also bad because she’ll never leave. Having been raised by humans she considers herself a “human” in the sense that domesticated dogs and cats do. She’ll be totally helpless in the wild. So, welcome to the monkey house Squeak!

Oh, God! Did I just say that? I take it back. Don’t want to give Tina any more ideas!

In any case, starlings are a widely hated pest species here in rural Nevada. They chase other birds away, make a terrible racket, and have a reputation for being unsanitary. This is partially unfair. Starlings are very territorial and they do make a lot of noise. In fact, starling instinctually try to raise their voices higher than anyone around them. (It’s very annoying). But they are actually extremely sanitary, which is why they defecate away from themselves and their nests. Straight at you. I’ve never seen an animal projectile... well, you know. It’s fascinating in a train-wreck-ish sort of way.

As is usually the case Squeaker has decided that the sun rises and sets around Tina. If she wasn’t rather reasonably afraid of getting eaten by the other animals following Tina around. Squeaker would probably hop and flutter after her everywhere she went. Pretty much like every animal around this ranch except for Michelle, whom I practically breast fed as a puppy. My beautiful, devoted whatever-she-is follows me around wherever I go, sleeps on my feet at night, and slobbers on my face when I’m trying to wake up in the morning. Nobody loves you like a dog loves you.

So I finally got my power generating windmill working. I had to send it back to the factory to have the electronics and bearing replaced, but wow what a great machine! I did it right this time too: big, thick wiring, a DC amp meter, kill switch, and a specially made fuse. Even in light wind it kicks out between 2 and 5 amps. I can’t wait to see what it will do in a real wind. Between that and the new solar system I’ve put in place I should barely have to run my generators this summer.

Some people hate the sound of windmills. But what would you rather hear? A generator? I love it. W-h-i-r-l. It sounds like victory.

Locally Harvested Paving Stones

2008-05-21T19:12:00.000-07:00

Sqeaker Doing What He Does, Saturday Night at Trego

2008-05-21T19:03:00.001-07:00

Squeaker the Pigeon, Paving Stones, and a Little Rain

2008-05-20T20:41:00.000-07:00

First of all let me apologize to all of you for not posting more. It’s been a while since you last heard from Tina and I. We’ve both been a bit busy lately: working on the ranch, working for Hero Games, traveling, writing, and generally enjoying the Black Rock Desert lifestyle that we’ve worked so hard to achieve. Please forgive me if this post isn’t particularly organized, even compared to the flow-of-consciousness style I periodically slip into.

Infancy isn’t a very attractive stage of life. Oh I guess babies, puppies, and kittens are nice enough looking, but infants mostly spend their time in a repeating cycle of cry-eat-defecate that is only satisfying to the one who is engaging in it. Newly hatched birds are way less attractive than newly born mammals of pretty much any type. What few feathers they have stick out in clumps, their beaks and legs are way to large, and they instinctively projectile poop as a way of keeping feces out of the nest.

How do I know this? Through a strange chain of events we’ve found ourselves taking care of a perfectly healthy baby pigeon. Tina and I are well-known animal lovers. Apparently word has gotten around that greater Gerlach animal community that we’re suckers too. So when somebody around here does something stupid like knock a chick out of its nest or beat their dog, it somehow always seems to end up a Midian Ranch (at least for a while). It’s been pretty educational. Squeaker the Pigeon is, well, a baby. He (She? Who knows? Let’s say he.) cries (Cheeps? Squawks?) all of the time, eats constantly, and… well, a lot of the third thing too. I guess that there is baby bird formula you can get, but we haven’t been into town in a bit so we’re been alternating between feeding him cream of wheat and high protein canned cat food. Since a pigeon rather sensibly moves from infancy to adulthood in about a month, he’s really hungry all the time and grows visibly each day. So far the little guy seems pretty healthy, but cross your fingers. Baby pigeons are notoriously hard to keep alive.

Tina and I finished our long-term project of burying hundreds of pounds of paving stones in our front yard to create a T-shaped walkway. Since I’ve basically turned the yard into a giant mud puddle in my ongoing (and so far successful) attempts to grow a front yard, this allows one to walk to the front door of the mud room without getting one’s feet, well, muddy - in theory at least. We harvested all of the stones ourselves from the property ourselves, so the whole thing has a nice desert “vibe” to it. The grass has even started growing between some of the stones, which I take to be a good sign.

The weather has been unpredictable lately. Yesterday it was 93-degrees out and 70 at night. Today it was 80-degrees and should be in the 50’s at night. The weatherman says that in a couple of days it will be below 70 at noon. It also rained a bit today, which was really, really nice. Everybody – sage brushes, mountain lions, jack rabbits, potato plants, and even humans – likes a nice rain out here. If it did that everyday this place would be a normal person’s paradise instead of, you know, the kind of paradise people like me enjoy!

I should have the three solar panels and my windmill back here in a few days, allowing me to complete this stage of my off grid power system - give or take some new batteries. If things go as I have planned we should be able to go for two or three days without running the generator. The way I am finishing this up should allow me to make the leap from a 12 volt to 48 volt system all at once. It’s going to be a while before I have the money to make the leap from running the generators once a few days to once a week (I’ll have to buy solar panels by the skid to do it), but I am confident that I can pull it off. There is some new wind technology out there that is looking pretty promising as well.

Our garden is doing pretty well. The beefsteak tomatoes died the second I put them in the ground, but the bush tomatoes, mustard greens, and spinach seems to be doing alright. So are the garlic, potatoes, and onions. We’ll be planting some gourd seedlings soon as well, with cucumbers and zucchini following shortly thereafter. Everything starts its life on our kitchen table before being planted, which is kind of ironic when you think about it. I hope to get to building the greenhouse I’ve planted poles for this summer, but we’ll see what happens.

We’re gardening on a pretty small scale, of course – no more than a dozen plants of each type – but it should serve as a model for the future. I’m optimistic that by 2010 Tina and I should be able to supply a certain percentage of our own food from the property if things continue to be successful.

Well, that’s about it. I pray that you all are well. Billy and Novella: I hope that your farm in the city is doing well. Jenny: hope that things are still groovy down on the Sea of Cortez. Chris Karma: get some sleep man! Lucy & the Kids: call me. I want you to come out here before it gets too hot.

Strange Days Have Found Us

2008-04-30T16:26:00.000-07:00

Even by our admittedly chaotic Black Rock Desert standards the weather has been utterly freaking unpredictable this week. On Monday it was hot: up into the mid eighties. Today it’s 55-degrees outside at noon! We had a small snow flurry today and it looks like the Granites have had a fresh dusting of powder… but it should be in the 70’s this weekend. Late yesterday afternoon I rode a motorcycle into Gerlach and encountered high winds, freezing rain, a sandstorm, and fog – all within an 18 mile stretch of road!

So, yeah, we haven’t planted our vegetable garden yet. I’m sure you understand.

I traded by old Ford 8N tractor to an interesting fellow named John for a couple of generators on Sunday. It was a good trade. He got an antique vehicle that I could never seem to do much with, and I got two generators that I desperately needed to keep things functioning smoothly around the ranch. One is a small but powerful Coleman that I have already strapped to the back of my big truck. It will be especially useful for running things Downtown. The other is a 500-pound electric start Onan that I’ll probably use as the backbone of my non solar and wind power for Uptown. I can even buy a remote control for it… an unthinkable luxury if you’ve ever lived off-grid on a budget of not-to-damn-much.

John proved to be an enjoyable kind of guy to spend a few dangerous hours loading and unloading equipment with. A former Marine pilot, he spent 30 years in the service before retiring to become a refrigeration specialist, sunbather, and all-around northern Nevada desert rat. Interestingly, he’s also the nephew of Olympic great Jim Thorpe, and quite strong and spry at the tender age of 68 (I had him pegged for 55).

John and his wife Millie maintain an informative website about hot springs bathing that you can link to here.

The Fortress Garden

2008-04-13T14:44:00.000-07:00

The construction of a vegetable garden in the Black Rock Desert is no small matter. You can’t simply pick a patch of ground, pull of the weeds, and plant some seeds. Nothing is ever as simple as that out here. A vegetable garden in the desert has to be as impregnable as Fort Knox, constructed with every imaginable defensive measure against the voracious fauna destined to attack it. Your list of potential opponents includes deer, pronghorn antelope, mustang, rabbits, mice, rats, and chipmunks – not to mention the insect world.

So what do you do? Well, first you have to select the location on your property where you want to plant. I choose a lifeless patch of bare ground behind my house. The soil is toxic, but that’s all right because I don’t plan on using any of it. I’m using either compost or imported soil in eight by four foot boxes constructed from lumber, so the plants won’t have much contact with the indigenous dirt. Then I’ll drip feed the boxes constantly so that they never dry out.

After selecting your plot you have to enclose your garden. That means building not only up, but digging down as well. In our case the Western Pacific Railroad was kind enough to give Midian Ranch five rolls of storm fencing: four foot wooden stakes connected by an ocean of bailing wire. I had already augured four by four posts in as anchor points, so after digging trenches around the garden I buried about a foot of the fences underground as protection from any critter that gets adventurous enough to try to go under the barrier. Then I layered the fencing to create a rabbit proof barrier on the ground and a deer proof barrier higher up. With that completed I began to stack rocks (not lack of those out here) around the base of the fence line, which will hopefully increase the “hassle factor” for any mice or rats that plan on trying to squeeze through the storm fencing to the point where it won’t be worth it for them to try. Unlike their more dandyish and sissified woodland cousins, desert animals don’t have the luxury of throwing calories recklessly away on projects with dubious outcomes. In other words, if it’s too much work a desert creature won’t try.

With that completed I placed four cinder blocks in front of where I’m putting the gate and then filled them with dirt to hold them in place. Behind them I drove a series of metal stakes into the ground to form a subterranean barrier. Again, with any luck this will keep out rabbits and prove too much of a hassle for the smaller mammals to bother with. I’ll post in a few weeks and let you all know how well these preparations worked.

In other news Tina and I attended Gerlach’s Italian Dinner, held annually at Bruno’s Country Club. Bruno is quite fond of my wife and kindly went out of his way to invite the two of us. The food was wonderful - better actually than much of the food I’ve had in Italy itself – and the company of our neighbors was pleasant. Afterward we adjourned over to Uncle Larry’s for drinks with our friend Elizabeth Jackson. All and all a pleasant evening.

If it doesn’t sting you when you touch it, it’s grass

2008-03-25T20:39:00.000-07:00

The last month has been extremely eventful in a positive and productive way. Although winter has yet to drag her frigid cloak entirely from the land things have become markedly more pleasant, hovering in the 40’s and 50’s the vast majority of the time. The trees have begun to bud, the vegetable plants we have started indoors have begun to sprout, and we have started the process of buying more trees for the spring. The FFA (Future Farmers of America) has offered to come out and plant a grove of 20 fruit trees behind the house next month, and we were more than happy to agree to it. With any luck the new trees will pollinate the existing apple and peach tree I planted a couple of years ago, but you should never get your hopes up out here. The wind is so sometimes so severe in the spring that it literally pulls the flowers off of things, preventing them from fruiting.

Ah, well. If it was easy to live out here everyone would be here, right?

I rented a skid steer and did some major work on the place. I cleared a pad for Tina’s long promised personal building (which is here and set up, but more on that later), spread gravel around the warehouses, cleared a family graveyard, and forklifted (Is that a word?) all sorts of annoying and heavy items down into our boneyard where they are now mercifully out of sight. Then I attached an auger to the front of the skidsteer and began sinking fence posts. I put posts around the graveyard, posts around our front yard, and posts at each spot I intend to put a gate. I put posts around where I’m planting our garden and posts where I’m building a greenhouse. For good measure I put some posts in other places too. Basically, I put posts anywhere I ever thought I might need a post.

You would think that using a powerful auger with real leverage would be easier than it is. But there’s a reason why this part of Nevada isn’t farmed extensively. There’s a solid foot of rock about two feet below the surface, probably left over from when this was part of an inland sea. It’s harder than hell to punch through, even with a couple of tons of weight and some respectable modern hydraulics behind you. More than a few times I had to shrug and say to myself “Well, this post is only going to be buried two feet down.” It was that or go rent a jackhammer, and I don’t think I care that much.

As I mentioned before Tina’s personal Modular Office Space came in, and it’s a nice one: 400 square feet, plenty of windows, and in very good shape. We’re planning on putting video games, an air hockey table, and movie theater into it after she finishes putting down the floor she wants. Tina went out and bought some very attractive red and black tiles to put down to achieve exactly the effect she wants; sort of a checkerboard look. It should turn out very nicely when it’s finished.

I’ve been working on putting in a front yard as well. It’s kind of challenging because we are attempting to use grass seed rather than sod, but it’s slowly coming around. Tina put a bunch in before the winter, and we rotor-tilled a whole bunch of seed in a few weeks ago, but it’s going to take a lot of work. I’m watering it daily, and next week I’m going to systematically drip feet the yard, but it may take another year before we get it right. The grass is coming up strong in some places but not coming in at all in others, so my plan is to transplant as much native grass as possible into the sections that don’t seem to be working while also encouraging the grass seed to grow. I’m also none too picky about what I consider “grass.” If it’s green, low to the ground, and doesn’t sting you when you touch it, it’s grass.

RIP Adrian The Cat

2008-02-26T11:41:00.000-08:00

Adrian the Cat suffered a heart attack, wept, and died in my arms the other day. Her final cries sounded almost like those of a human child: desperate and afraid. This in no way reflects poorly on her personal bravery. She was a fearless and stoic animal for the most part, bullying around dogs four or five times her size even as she slipped gracefully into her dotage. She actually seemed to enjoy moving from the city to the wilderness, though she seldom ventured outside. I can only conclude that her coronary was tremendously painful. She gasped a few more breaths as Tina and I petted her, purred almost undetectably, and was gone. I buried her in the Walters family cemetery that I have cleared next to the ranch’s historical graveyard.

Adrian lived to be 19-years-old and managed to look five or so almost to the very end. This is ancient in Cat Years – the equivalent if I am not mistaken of living into one’s 90s. I think that earns her a reasonable obituary as best as I can give it.

Adrian was Tina Walters’ cat for most of her life. She had two litters and was by all accounts as good a mother as a cat can be. I personally witnessed her rushing maternally to the assistance of crying infants, kittens, and puppies (though she has no idea what to do once she got there). She shared her home with other animals with as much equanimity as one can expect from an aged cat. She attempted to mouse upon occasion, but became winded too quickly to be successful (it was comically painful to watch). Most of her final year was spent sitting on the back of one or the other of the ranch house’s couches, sleeping and waking only occasionally to eat, use her litter box, or complain about the dogs.

Her final month was an unpleasant one. Adrian liked to sleep on the ranch house’s heating vents. Unfortunately, she isn’t the only who does. While we were away in Florida she was bitten on her stomach by something necrotic - probably a brown recluse spider, but there are a lot of poisonous animals to choose from out here. Her attacker’s poison got inside of the fat cells in her belly, killing a clutch of them and creating an infection. She began bleeding profusely. By the time we returned the house looked and smelled like an abattoir. We took her to the veterinarian, who proscribed her antibiotics but couldn’t operate due to her advanced age. In spite of maintaining a reasonable appetite and a desire (I believe) to live, she slowly lost half of her body mass. I think in the end that is what killed her.

Still, though her end was not what anyone would have wanted, Adrian had an extraordinarily long and full life. She lived comfortably, had children, was as pleasant and productive a member of the household as her age and temperament allowed her to be. She managed the adventure of moving from urbane San Francisco to the rugged Black Rock Desert as well as anyone ever does. RIP Adrian: 1989-2008

The Snows of Kill-A-Man-Jason

2008-01-27T10:20:00.000-08:00

It's not idle arrogance or empty masculine vanity to say that I've spent time outdoors in some of the coldest places in the world. Thanks to a love of skiing inherited from my adventure/scientist father, I've been into the depths of the Pyrenees, the tops of the Alps, high into the Rockies, all along the best parts of the Sierra-Nevada's, and up in the frozen mountains of British Columbia. I've skied down vast glaciers in winter. In snow storms, no less.

During the many years I spent trapped at a desk in downtown San Francisco, I spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about places I would rather be. For most men I imagine that would be someplace warm and comfortable, where scantily clad brown skinned women frolic and play in bikinis and alcohol comes equipped with tiny umbrellas. Hawaii. Mexico. The Bahamas. But I always fantasized about desolate places where human beings of any sort are rare - never-you-mind brown skinned women in bikinis - and alcohol is served out of a yak's foot or something. Rugged, untamed wildernesses where men are free to do as they please, and they paint their dreams across the canvas of an unspoiled land. Alaska. Montana. The Yukon. Antarctica.

In retrospect, part of my problem is that I've never actually lived anywhere where it gets really, really cold. Visited, yes. But lived? No. I was raised in central Florida, not northern Minnesota, so the snow and cold has always seemed romantic to me. Particularly since I've spent my life confronting it on ski slopes with hotels, bars, five star restaurants, and women who look like Hannah Teter. I don't think that gave me the best perspective on trying to build a ranch in winter. I had sooooo many plans for things I was going to the place this winter: level ground, gravel pads, add another Mod Space trailer for Tina, and put in two more shipping containers to name but a few.

#Snort# Maybe I should focus on getting the plumbing working, huh?

It's hard for me to adjust to being unable to work done outside. The ranch is a freaking mess. There's crap everywhere, and it eats at me. But at least it's all Under Sixteen Feet of Pure, White Snow. (Not really. That's the title of a Nick Cave song about going insane in winter and murdering your loved ones. But not to worry: my crap's only under about two feet of snow, and Tina and her damn bestiary would undoubtedly get me before I got them.)

In spite of the snow, sleet, and snowy-sleet, I've continued working on my massive front porch project. I've completed the first two-fourths, save for painting and ornamental flair, and now I'm working on the Mud Room. For those of you unfortunate enough to live somewhere other than the Silver State, a Mud Room is the small room in front of your front door where you change shoes, hang your coat, store firewood, and so forth. I've integrated it into my front porch you that you'll be able to walk into the Mud Room, turn right, and walk out onto the porch proper. I've almost finished building it, so now the trick is to make it look nice. Or at least neat. Or at least very desert rat.

I'll post a picture when I'm done.

Where Have We Been?

2007-12-14T21:11:00.000-08:00

I suppose a more accurate title for this posting might be “Where Haven’t We Been?” The answer is: we haven’t been together. Oh, it’s not what you think. Tina and I are still happily married. But due to a rather unfortunate alignment of the stars in precisely the wrong order, I was forced to leave Midian Ranch for the last two months. Tina was forced by the same circumstances to stay here. Neither of us was thrilled by this situation, but sometimes life throws you a curve ball. All I can say is that I suppose what really matters is how hard you swing when one comes your way.

THE GOOD

Tina has done a fantastic job of living on her own out here in the wilderness. Everyone and everything is in good shape including (and most importantly) Tina herself. She’s gotten fantastically good at lighting fires - scary Jeremiah Johnson good. So good in fact that it’s a little unnerving. All she has to do is touch something flammable and it becomes a raging bonfire. Kind of makes me wonder what other supernatural abilities she’s developed in my absence.

I managed to sell the house in Richmond. We’ve closed and he money should be in the bank on Monday. That’s in part what I’ve been away doing over the last couple of months. I’ve been working for my former business partner Dominic (BTW: Thank you for the help Dom.) as a driving courier while I basically visited everyone I’ve known in my adult life to see if they were in the market for a home. It took a couple of months but I found someone. My old paintball buddy Paul Conrad and his wife drove a hard but fair bargain. Now they have a new home and Tina and I have a new lease on life. We didn’t get exactly what we wanted for the place, but we’ll walk away with enough to pay off our debts, live for a while, and make some investments. Plus we own the ranch, our home, and all of our vehicles outright. They may be humble but they’re 100% ours. That’s good enough for me.

THE BAD

I had to live apart from my wife for two months, work 12 plus hours a day, and live in my sister-in-law’s spare room (BTW: Thank you Keri.) I put a huge number of miles on my truck and ended up sinking a lot of he money I made back into it. People I’ve known for years felt sorry for me, which actually sucked way worse than being broke an in debt (though not more than living apart from Tina). I don’t enjoy pity.

Mom thinks that I’ve shown some rather uncharacteristic humility during this entire episode. While I don’t know about that, I do know that I didn’t find being a driving messenger particularly humiliating. Actually, it was kind of enjoyable. In another life I might have chosen to make it my permanent profession. But in this one I’ve got bigger fish to fry.

THE UGLY

I’ve been spending a lot of time alone lately. The last two months gave me ample time to reflect on the less-than-pleasant aspects of my own personality, conduct, and past. I don’t want to go into amazing detail or anything but failure has a way of putting things into perspective. I suppose it’s all part of the humility thing Mom was talking about.

I’ve been blessed with a life in which most of the things that I’ve touched have turned into gold. Maybe a stint in leadsville was just what the doctor ordered.

THE AWESOME

On Monday we drove down to Las Vegas to see our friends Mike and Melissa Noe get married… by an Elvis impersonator! He sung three numbers climaxing with a resounding Viva Las Vegas. What could be more Nevadan than that? You can link by clicking here and clicking on the M. Noe wedding (you'll need real player).

Apologies, Guests, Burning Man, Exit Planet Dust

2007-09-11T21:03:00.000-07:00

First of all, I would like to apologize to all of you that I haven't updated the Midian Ranch blog in a month. It has been a busy, busy month, and neither Tina nor I have had as much free time as we would have liked. Still, better late then never, right?

Tina and I went to Indiana in August to work GenCon Indy. Things went well financially and logistically for both Hero Games and the GPA. When the convention concluded, Belgian novelist Dirk Vandereyken returned to Gerlach with us for a brief vacation in the desert. We had a very strange, very amusing time that included cooking, watching movies, and drinking at Joe's Gerlach Club. As soon as Dirk left, my former business partner Dominic Lawrence came out to go rattlesnake hunting and fishing. The snake hunting didn't go so well, but our afternoon spent fishing on Pyramid Lake went (if you'll forgive the expression) swimmingly. Though we had to catch and release, we pulled up dozens of cutthroat trout. They put up a real fight, providing terrific sport that was worth more than even a nice meal. The day after Dominic returned to San Francisco, Tina's old friend Max arrived for Burning Man. The two of them went out to the Playa and set up camp on Thursday, but I stayed behind to do ranch work until Friday, at which point I entered the festival by motorcycle.

In spite of the fact that it was a particularly hot (90 to 100 degrees), crowded (est. 48 - 65 thousand people), and dangerous year (three deaths, one child abandonment), I enjoyed Burning Man 07 greatly. In retrospect I think that there are several reasons for this. The first is that I was uniformly sober. Oh, I tried to get drunk one night, but there were just too many interesting and strange things to see, so I simply gave up on drinking. Plus a belly full of beer doesn't go well with jumping on trampolines, spinning about on giant merry-go-rounds, and watching heavily pierced punks fighting it out in a Tina Turner/Mad Mel inspired Thunderdome. Another reason I enjoyed this particular Burning Man is because I left a couple of times to go home, take a shower, use a real bathroom, and cook myself a meal. Being a local comes with some real perks. Finally, I spent the actual evening of the Burn riding around on a modified German Unimog, which gave me an entirely different perspective on the entire event. Since I'm getting a little old for "partying," and am definitely far too married for chasing skirt, I think an art car would be a nice thing to make for this event - especially since I have the space and workshop to create one.

Finally, although as I write this I'm suffering an allergic reaction brought on by the enormous cloud of smoke blown into the Hualapai Valley by a fire near Susanville (where they have - or at least had- trees I hear), last week saw the first rains in the Black Rock Desert in 84 days! Yes, it's been an outstandingly dry year. Northwestern Nevada has suffered one of the worst draughts in recent (and possibly recorded) history. Our neighbors the Jacksons, who have lived their entire lives in this valley, have never seen it this dry. But the other day it rained for almost ten whole minutes, briefly forcing me to go in search of a rain jacket. Consequently, it has been a lot less dusty around here. Good times, good times!

And That's What Living In The Black Rock Desert Can Be Like

2007-08-06T21:32:00.000-07:00

The Sun was just dipping below the Granites when Tina and Jason pulled down an unmarked gravel road on the north side of the Black Rock Desert. Driving almost to the railroad tracks, they pulled into the small grove of trees that marked the location of the abandoned frog farm. A remnant of Reno's roaring twenties, the frog farm at one time supplied amphibian delicacies to diners as far away as Chicago. Now its buildings are long gone, but its perfectly circular spring-headed pools remain. It has been improved by generations of casual bathers through the addition of ladders, tables, bathing benches, Astroturf, and the occasional (and thoughtful) pruning of branches.

Tina began cooking chicken and fried potatoes while Jason lounged in a pool sipping a cold Pacifico. A few moments later she joined him, and they soaked in the warm, sulphurous water under the shade of a Russian olive tree while eating with their fingers. A short time thereafter an attractive blond couple pulled up in an old orange Family Wagon. They removed their clothing, climbed in, and retreated to the far end of the pool, where they murmured intimacies to one another under the sheltering arms of a large tamarisk. Sometime later they emerged and dried off. The man went to his van and retried a dobro, which he played softly while smoking a cigarette. The woman leaned against him.

The Sun drifted completely behind the mountains. Small bats known as pipistrelles emerged from the depths of the trees, swooping down over the surface of the water to drink or snatch insects out of the air. Two rotund and bearded scientists pulled up in a dust covered Volvo. Dirty from a hot, dry day conducting experiments on the Playa floor, they stripped and eased into the pool with deep sighs of satisfaction. A moment later they were discussing the metallic properties of hydrogen.

"Do you mean at some temperature hydrogen is a metal?" Jason asked.
"Well," answered the older of the two, "its more a matter of pressure than temperature. Say, on the surface of Jupiter hydrogen is a metal."
"So I can't look forward to hydrogen struts for my truck any time soon?"
They both laughed.
"Not unless you can drive it on the surface of Jupiter."

Tina gave the two scientists each a Pacifico from her cooler. The moon rose to the soft, melancholy sounds of the dobro.

And that's what living in the Black Rock Desert can be like.

2007-07-24T19:52:00.000-07:00

The Big Four O, Fires, and a Mongolian Living Room

2007-07-24T18:59:00.000-07:00

Not to be outdone by California, Oregon, and Washington, northern Nevada is on fire right now. Smoke chokes her skies during the day and her hills glow devilishly during the night. Lightening hitting hilltops during storms have started most of these fires - which technically speaking makes them part of (queue music) The-Cycle-Of-Life. But when your doublewide is gone, it’s gone, and how good that is for the salt brush and field mice is a somewhat moot point.

The State gives each of these massive fires its own name. Right now the Hawkins Fire is attempting to relieve Reno of its burdensome western suburbs. That probably means something profound, but I have no idea what it might be. Don’t build houses for affluent Californians out in the brush? Go to church more often? Buy a surplus fire truck? Maintain your firebreaks? All of the above? Only the Big Guy knows, and He generally prefers us to figure these things out for ourselves.

Tina turned the big Four O this week, which made for a lot of drinking. A small group of friends and family members came out to the ranch to join us, including Tina’s sister Keri, her husband Gary, his brother Chris, fellow author Thomas Rafalski, and his charming wife Yo-Mi. (I probably didn’t spell that right.) It was hot – maybe a bit too hot – but we had a good time setting up Gary’s yurt. I was fascinated by the damn thing. I want one now! It was the size of a living room! Back in San Francisco I lived in apartments way, way smaller (not to mention less comfortable) than the inside of this crazy Mongolian tent. It had a 20-foot diameter, enabling us to set up a hammock, two chairs, a table, and a bar inside. It was also quite comfortable inside in the 90 plus degree weather.

I’ve taken it down now, but I find the yurt to be such a wonderful structure that I’ve been inspired to create a semi-permanent version for our ranch in the spot where we put it up. I believe that I’ll pour an actual foundation and make permanent walls that bolt onto it, but leave the rest of the arrangement temporary so that it can be taken up and down at will. Or something like that – I haven’t quite figured it out yet. I’ll take pictures as I create it.

In any case, I would like to thank not only all of you who traveled all the way out here to help celebrate Tina’s birthday, but also those of you who called or wrote to wish her well. Your thoughts are appreciated and your absences are always acutely felt.

Ranch House In Summer: Hey, Where Do I Sleep?

2007-07-01T23:42:00.000-07:00

Desert Sunrise

2007-07-01T23:37:00.000-07:00

Desert Flower In July

2007-07-01T23:35:00.000-07:00

Dress For Succes

2007-07-01T23:06:00.000-07:00

Hawaiian Shirt? Check. Dust Encrusted Sandals? Check. Kilt? Check. Five-Dollar Mexican Fishing Hat? Check.

What can I say? I dress a little eccentrically around the ranch. What the Hell: odds are good that if you’re kicking around the Black Rock Desert, you’re not exactly dressed like a GQ model either. There are several schools of dress out here in the summer. The first and most popular is Traditional Cowboy: boots, tight jeans, open necked cotton shirt, hat, and scarf or bandana around the neck. It has the advantages of being rugged, practical, and it protects you from the sun. It also has the disadvantage of being a bit on the hot side…. not that you want to be wearing Bermuda shorts when herding cattle.

The next school of dress could be called Classic Desert Rat: Hawaiian or baseball shirts, stained jeans or camouflage pants, flip-flops, faded tattoos, and a baseball cap. All covered in a comforting layer of Playa dust. I tend toward this look myself; only I like to wear shorts (or my UtiliKilt, but only on the ranch) in the summer. It has the advantage of extreme comfort, but the disadvantage of looking like Hell – not that anyone gives a damn.

The final school of dress (excluding the Mennonites over in Smoke Creek) could only be described as Burning Man: kind of a cross between Cowboy, Desert Rat, and San Francisco Alternative Freak. Leopardskin cowboy hat, boots, tooled leather vest, green hair, strange goatee, and a glazed over look to the eyes. I kind of like it, but I don’t want to be it, if you know what I mean. It has the advantage of being strange, but the disadvantage of getting you hit on by even stranger people in Gerlach’s bars.

Completely unrelated to the world of low fashion, I’ve been spreading gravel around the buildings lately. Since I lack the proper equipment to do the job, I’ve hit on what I think might be a novel method. I strap four buckets to my quad. Then I drive down to the dry riverbed, rake the rocks into piles, and shovel them into the buckets. I drive the quad to the location I want to gravel, dump the bucket out, and rake them out evenly. This method has the advantage of being extremely inexpensive and simple, but the disadvantage of being a whole lot of work! Oddly, the quality of gravel I rake out of the old riverbed is way higher than the stuff that “fell off of the back” of a Washoe County Road Department truck (God bless them). I can’t recommend harvesting gravel as a hobby, though.

Other than that, I just keep on working away at things as I wait for the house in Richmond to sell. I have BIG plans for things I’m going to do out here once that happens, but until then there’s really not much I want to buy anyhow. Which is fortunate, as there’s no place to get anything in the Black Rock Desert!

Moved In

2007-06-06T12:14:00.000-07:00

First of all, let me apologize to all of you for not updating this blog recently. It’s been a very busy, very physically intense time with a dash of travel thrown in, and I’ve been less, shall we say, “intellectually lively” at the end of the day than normal. Not that that’s a good excuse for letting oneself drift out of touch with one’s friends, family, and colleagues, but there we are. Life gets overwhelming sometimes.

Tina and I have fully and finally moved out to the ranch, where we have gotten intimately involved in an endless circumambulation of our crap (not to mention Hero Game’s crap) between various locations on the property. It’s all in the worthy cause of organization of course. Though it will take years to properly finish, the ranch house is well on its way from “club house” to “actual house,” the office/library trailer is on its way to resembling…. well, an office/library trailer (as opposed to a trailer filled with boxes), the workshop is increasingly filled with tools and equipment, and the book warehouse is actually finished. I’m particularly proud of the way it turned out.

The weather has been extremely strange over the last two weeks. Last Wednesday it was 90 degrees by nine in the morning with the occasional dust storm. This Wednesday it’s 46 degrees at nine in the morning and the Calico Mountains on the far side of the valley are getting a dusting of snow even as I type. Last week we had to wear sand goggles. Yesterday the ranch was pelted with freezing rain – not that I object. The more rain out here the better, even if the news says it was only 1/10 of an inch, but it’s more than a little unusual for this time of the year.

It’s a great lifestyle out here – in some ways better than what I expected. Some of that is due to the years of preparation and many thousands of dollars Tina and I have put into this project, but also it’s the place. People call this God’s Country, but I would say that it’s more like the Country of the Gods. You could easily picture Zeus, Apollo, or any of the other ancient Greek gods living in a stone pagoda atop the Granites, Black Rocks, Jacksons, Limbos, or any of the other mountain ranges out here, hurling the odd thunderbolt down on us desert rats below during a drunken Saturday night revel. Which is why it’s odd that most people don’t bother to spare these majestic ranges a passing glance when they drive by them…. and also why nobody besides a few hardy mountain men lives up in them. You would think that retiring Californians would be busily building Starbucks atop them right this second. I mean it’s way nicer than the hills around Los Angeles.

Maybe if I build a Starbucks, they will come. I’ll have to make a point of not doing that.

If you have made the investments and are prepared, it can be shockingly inexpensive to live in the middle of nowhere (hope I’m not cursing myself there). A few luxuries – satellite radio, television, and the Internet – and a few necessities – propane, gasoline, food – and you’re good to go. There are even a fair number of genuinely interesting and nice people to socialize with out here when the mood strikes you. Of course, I may feel very differently when my various generators, vehicles, and tools start to wear out – or if I break my leg – but at least for the moment this has got to be the finest lifestyle I have ever had. It’s worth working for, fighting for, and maybe even dying for. In my whole life I’ve never lived anywhere I felt strongly enough about a place to make that statement, but there you are. The desert changes people.

It’s interesting to live without the actual physical wires that tie the individual or family to the remainder of the collective. Both frightening and liberating. No power lines, no water lines, no phone lines, no sewer system. No grid of any kind. Have you ever seen the old 1939 animated version of Gulliver’s Travels? There’s a part where he wakes up on the beach and realizes that he’s been tied down by thousands of tiny little things. So he stands us, all of the ropes binding him snap apart, and he’s free.

That’s what living without wires is like.

Goodbye Calfornia!

2007-05-20T22:11:00.000-07:00

Well, we’ve finally moved. In all fairness, Tina moved out to Midian about two weeks ago while I remained in Richmond to finish work on the house. It required an astounding amount of careful work to get the place ready for the market. I believe that I was averaging about 12 hours a day of painting, cleaning, repairing, and so forth for the last couple of weeks. I’m almost brain dead with exhaustion at the moment…. but not so brain dead that I’d fail to promote the sale of my house! If you’re looking to buy a decent two bedroom, two bath home only 15 minutes from San Francisco (5 from Berkeley), contact my real estate agent Jasmine Dominguez at jasminedominguez@gmal.com. You can also link to a description & pictures of the house here. Complete (and extraordinarily positive) pest and home inspection reports are available upon request.

Tina and I have finally accomplished what we’ve spent the better part of the last six years working toward. We’re here, living in relative comfort with the kernel of a new business in place. The ranch is (of course) nowhere near where I want it to be. That will take another two or so years of backbreaking work, not to mention some of that folding green stuff I seem to have less and less of. I imagine that I will be almost 40 before Midian Ranch really looks and feels exactly how I have envisioned it over the years. But, as that wisest of wise men Confucius once said, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

Time to start marching.

How Do You Drive This Again?

2007-04-30T12:24:00.000-07:00

How Big Redux

2007-04-30T12:23:00.000-07:00

How Big Is The Trailer We Bought You Ask?

2007-04-30T12:22:00.000-07:00

Palletized Motorcycle

2007-04-30T12:18:00.000-07:00

Moving To Midian

2007-04-30T11:43:00.000-07:00

Well, it’s about halfway done. With the help of our brother-in-law Gary and Tina’s sister Keri, we loaded up 95% of our belongings into a 45-foot trailer & shipped them off to the ranch. This was kind of a tricky operation, as we boxed, palletized, and finally shrink-wrapped most of our belongings before lifting them onto the trailer using a rented Bobcat (see the pictures above). We’ve got a few more weeks of work to do on the house before we can put it on the market (actually, we could work on the house forever, but we’re capping it at a few more weeks), then Tina, Snap, Michelle (the dog), Adrienne (the cat), and myself move to the Black Rock Desert for good. With the help of the Lord and our real estate agent Jasmine, it should sell relatively quickly, allowing us to move on to the next stage of our lives.

I haven’t posted anything about the last two trips to the ranch, as they were dedicated entirely to turning around book shipments for Hero Games & thus had little to do with working on the place. As of last week everything was functioning smoothly out at Midian: the power situation was good, water was plentiful, and nothing had blown over (God willing nothing will, either!). One of my trees may have been killed by a late April freeze, but the others are in full bloom and seem healthy. I hope to plant somewhere between 10 and 20 more this year, weather and finances permitting.

Well, that’s all for the moment! The next post will be from Tina and Snap, as they’re going to move out there a week before I do.

April Fool's Day

2007-04-01T22:00:00.000-07:00

Often it’s hard to describe exactly what the weather is like in the Black Rock Desert. It’s kind of like going to the drink dispenser at McDonalds, mixing together Coke, Sprite, Mountain Dew, and Root Beer, and then trying to explain exactly what the flavor is like. Sweet? Certainly. Different? Definitely. Tasty? Yes-No-Maybe-No-Yes.

It’s tempting to try to establish some sort of nomenclature for this strange desert’s weather. It’s also probably futile; I’m no Eskimo and this isn’t snow (or at least it isn’t at the moment). But I would describe today’s (April Fool’s Day) weather as Biblical Weather: a dust storm the size of Moldavia is blowing around on the horizon to the east, while angry black storm clouds rumble in from the west, emitting the occasional shard of bright light like some sort of alien spacecraft looking for a cow to mutilate. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if Moses (well, ok, Charlton Heston: there is some hunting going on out here) came straggling into the ranch clutching two stone tablets. (And then asked for a beer. Everybody that comes straggling in from the desert out here asks for a beer.) It’s all very pretty in an ominous, frightening, let’s-all-stay-inside kind of way.

This time I did.

Last week we had Abyssal Weather: a blinding, frigidly cold storm comprised of 50% London fog and 50% dust (Somebody else’s dust, not ours. It tasted wrong.) blew over the Granites and settled comfortably down on the valley, reducing visibility to about 15 yards. Then, about an hour later, a freezing rainstorm blew in from the north, turning the whole thing into a falling mud storm. Hell gets better weather than that. It was a good day to stay inside - so of course I went outside, started moving stupid crap around with the forklift, got it stuck, hooked it up to the Chevy K-10, and then got that stuck too. Tina and I had to wear breathing masks and surplus military desert goggles while the sorted the whole mess out.

Hey, at least I bought the goggles!

This will be my last post for a month, as I’ll be back in California getting the house in Richmond ready for sale. Then, we’re moving out here once and for all. Out in our beautiful, hostile, terrible, welcoming wilderness.

Week Of March 12th

2007-03-25T11:39:00.000-07:00

“It shall be done right, or it shall not be done.” – Old German Proverb

Different people notice different things when they visit a foreign country. Some take particular notice of how the natives dress. Others are more interested in their manners - how polite or differential they are to tourists, in other words. Still other, perhaps more sophisticated travelers take an interest in the cuisine, architecture, or technological development of the nation they are visiting.

Me, I look at their farms.

Now this might sound like an odd thing for a man who has lived half of his life in the city to do but, as I plan on spending the final half on an isolated ranch, the way a rural Austrian chooses to store his hay for the winter takes has suddenly taken on a new and profound importance. On my recent trip to Europe, I was particularly impressed by the way the Swiss, Austrians, and Germans ran their family farms (yes, they still have those). Being all essentially rural Germans steeped in the same thousand-year-old traditions, the farmers of all three nations structure their affairs in almost exactly the same manner. They live in two-story, timber farmhouses of the distinct Alpine-style placed next to (or sometimes on top of) a massive stone-and-wood livestock barn. Surrounding these idyllic homesteads are 80 to 120 acres of meticulously cultivated land dotted with tiny hay barns about the size of a large shed. Apparently, this unusual arrangement is due to the fact that lighting strikes are so common in the Tyrolean region that a farmer looses a hay barn to fire every decade or so, necessitating what appears to the American eye to be a bizarre an inefficient method of storage.

I found the German method of firewood storage in particular to be interesting. Our resourceful Teutonic cousins build distinct cord-and-a-half firewood sheds everywhere there is a spare wall or open area at the edge of a field (of course, trees are very plentiful in the mighty Alps, unlike my poor Granites, where they are a precious commodity indeed). Mostly, they are rectangular structures covered by corrugated tin roofs, though I saw some more ornate and elaborate versions in (naturally) Switzerland. It goes without saying that the firewood within is cut to precisely the same length, then sorted and stacked by its diameter and type of cut: the quarter logs in one section, the half logs in another, and so forth.

All very neat and German, which is basically the same thing in any case.

I felt so inspired by the Tyrolean style of firewood shed that, as soon as I got back to Midian Ranch, I immediately built one. We’ve always had a hard time keeping firewood dry during the winter (it’s not hard during the summer, believe me), and neither Tina nor I want firewood stacked up against the ranch house for fear of termite infestation. I even had a nicely sorted stack of thin, pliable metal available to work with; the remnants of our former Downtown generator shed. My “alpine shed” has stood up to a month of Black Rock Desert winds without any ill effect. Now all I have to do is fill it!

Last Week Of February

2007-03-12T23:26:00.000-07:00

It’s the end of February. Winter gasps out its old man’s breaths in a final, desperate attempt to give the Black Rock Desert some water. Or at least that how it seems to those of use with a Black-Rock-O-Centric mindset. Three inches of snow fell on Midian Ranch in one night; not too bad, until one considers the fact that seven inches of snow fell on the Spoo Ranch slightly further up the mountainside. I don’t think its going to be enough – my guess is that we have a long, dry summer ahead – but a little is far better than none: especially when all of your water comes out of a natural spring funneled into a ½ inch PVC pipe.

I don’t like to jinx myself, but everything seems fine out at the ranch. Tina and I have decided to move in late April and put the Richmond house on the market, regardless of how ready it is or not. Homes are going for a small fortune in our neighborhood right now, and we simply can’t miss the spring home buying rush. Once moved (and sold), we begin on the dozen or so construction projects that have long been off for far too long: the construction of a 40-foot front porch for the ranch house, a massive kennel for the dogs, two new 1000-square foot warehouses, a half-acre garden. The list is as endless as the rest of our lives.

Oh, we plan on working on something else too… but we’ll let that be a surprise.

January 28-31

2007-02-09T21:14:00.000-08:00

Water, water everywhere, and I can’t get a drop of it to flow through the pipes - probably because they’re frozen solid. Well, they’re frozen solid in the places where they haven’t burst, but why spit hairs? Apparently, while we were always from the ranch, the thermometer dropped down below the negative five mark, at which point a temporary plug I had inserted into the water system popped loose. Instead of flowing into the house – and, not incidentally, through the taps I always leave on when I’m not around – the water shot out of the side of the house, dropping the water pressure inside and causing some copper pipes to freeze and burst.

So, that’s what greeted Tina when we got out the desert on Sunday: a lot of water, but not anywhere we could use it. Dutifully, I reinserted the plug, cranked up the water heater, and shut off the part of the system that had burst; but somehow, in the time it took me to do these things, the flowing water froze straight into the ground. The next day I replaced the damaged pipes, attempted to heat the lines up, and even went to the source of the spring to try and flush the system out using my portable Honda pump – but nothing worked. As of January 31st Barker Spring is frozen solid.

Well, enough gripping: the ground will thaw eventually (heck, by the time you read this it may have already) and free up our water. Besides being kind of filthy, we actually had a very nice trip to the ranch. Because we won’t be able to get back to Midian until the end of February, we spent an inordinate amount of time simply cleaning things up, strapping them down, and generally tidying up the place. It wasn’t easy - the Black Rock Desert is as cold as a Norwegian’s lunchbox in late January – but we did what we could. The next step (though probably not the next trip) is the big one: we’re going to move everything, hopefully next month. I’m not certain that we are going to move ourselves (the Richmond house still needs a bunch of work), but we’re going to move 99% of our stuff.

Soon, now. Very soon.

We're Over Another Hump!

2007-01-13T19:40:00.000-08:00

With a sigh of relief that could probably be heard as far away as Carson City, we passed our State and County inspections. Honestly, I never expected to make it this far. I was certain that we had completely missed something that would cause us not to be up to code, or that some terrible disaster would befall the ranch moments before an inspector showed up. I spent hours wondering why, not if, we would fail. But nothing went wrong; Mr. McCloud and Mr. Korson (State and County inspectors, respectively) have graciously cleared the way for us to fulfill our life’s dream.

We can legally live at Midian Ranch.

Now we are free to sell our home in California and, at long last, move out to our beloved ranch. There are a variety of non-Midian matters that have to be taken care of first; but, God willing, we should be totally relocated in either March or April. Of course, there are still a million short-term things that need to be done to the place, not to mention years of backbreaking labor to turn it into the home we have spent the last half-decade visualizing in our Mind’s Eyes. Tina and I have spent countless hours – at breakfast, late at night when the lights are out, while driving – talking about the many, many things we wish to do with Midian Ranch.

Now, we shall have a chance to do them. Even if we fail, can one ask for more from life?

Last Month of 2007

2006-12-14T21:21:00.000-08:00

First of all, let me apologize to all of you for not updating the Midian Ranch Blog sooner. It’s been a very busy time for Tina and myself, and it doesn’t seem like I’ve had a spare moment in weeks. I’ve been rushing to complete a book for Hero Games, paint the house in Richmond, and bring the ranch up to code. So far I’ve achieved…. well, none of them! Ok, the book is very close to done and the ranch could possibly pass code as is, but I can’t in all honesty claim that either of them is done, exactly.

I sear, as soon as we get moved and get the house sold, I’m only going to do one thing at a time. No more “Man of La Mancha” stuff for me. One-Thing-At-A-Time. Sweartagod!

Anyhow, It’s a good time of the year for 60 to 100 mph windstorms out here in the Black Rock Desert. The last one pounded the heck out of the ranch, totally destroying the Downtown’s generator shed, bending our flagpole (at the base!), and knocking over Tina’s 10-foot tall cast iron incinerator. The one we’re having right now is supposed to be worse. The office is shaking like a leaf in a hurricane…. or maybe more like a singlewide in a desert snowstorm. I guess the later would be more accurate. Its kind of spooking me a little bit, but Snap is really freaked-out. Last night I woke up to find he had gotten into bed and was clinging to me. No joke.

Anyhow, keep us in your prayers (not over the wind – that’s normal out here): we’re going to call for the first inspection tomorrow. We’re not totally done, but we figure we will be by the time the State gets out here.

Week of November the 5th

2006-11-20T10:40:00.000-08:00

Two things dominated this week: shooting God’s little creatures and getting book shipments ready. My father-in-law Frank came out to the property for a successful four day hunting drip, specifically for small game. Frank has been hunting, fishing, and camping his entire life, so his woodcraft skills are quite good. I got a useful (if smelly and bloody) crash course in skinning, plucking, gutting, and cooking wildlife, while Frank got to dine on rabbit stew and go home with four quails in his cooler. On Wednesday my neighbor and buddy Ron kindly took him up to into the backcountry while I got a big shipment ready, and both of them seemed to have a good time.

While I worked, dammit!

The satellite cable guy came out, so now the ranch house has something like 186 channels. Which is cool but not very rustic. Tina and I now have the Internet, a phone, cable TV, and satellite radio out there. All of these are run either through dishes or antennas, of course – there’s no grid of any type – but are not quite as Outlaw Josey Wales as I imagined.

Ah, well. Civilization and every other damn thing.

Late October

2006-10-25T10:18:00.000-07:00

There’s nothing extremely exciting to report. As a last minuet precaution before my inspection, I had Ron Cole look over my work. Then I cancelled the inspection. There was absolutely no way that the ranch house was going to pass without a lot more effort. So I’ve spent the last few weeks going back and forth between California and Nevada, alternately working on one house or the other. Ron has been kindly advising and assisting me in my attempts to get up to code. It’s kind of like being back in school, with Ron as my professor. I’ve learned all about the NEC (National Electrical Code) and what the various inspectors want to see while they’re here.

So, while I’ve suffered a small delay, it’s nothing that some time and money won’t fix. While I don’t have an unlimited amount of either, I think I have enough to get over this particular hurdle. Then (of course) it’s on to the next hurdle!

In other ranch news, I think that I’ve finally got the water situation under control. Barker Spring is beginning to get more active (which is normal this time of year) and is gradually increasing its flow rate. I hope to be back up to the optimal 2/3’s normal household pressure within a month. I’ve also built a 110-gallon reserve out of two 55-gallon plastic drums that are linked together and sealed. Each has its own vigorous pump that is capable of pressurizing the house – and, not incidentally, water heater – up to maximum in a matter of seconds. Now you can wash the dishes, brush your teeth, or take a shower here exactly like you were back in civilization.

Ah, progress!

2006-10-14T21:38:00.000-07:00

Right Side of Warehouse

2006-10-14T17:27:00.000-07:00

Right Side of Warehouse

2006-10-14T17:26:00.000-07:00

Left Side of Warehouse

First Week of October

2006-10-13T19:38:00.000-07:00

The Midian Warehouse really is a warehouse now. Over a period of four days, Big T and I transformed it from a random and chaotic assortment of boxes stacked atop pallets into an identifiably professional operation. It took some investment, of course: $1200+ worth of shelving, $400+ worth of 2x4’s, the purchase of a battered but serviceable forklift (another $2,500 dollars), and – perhaps the greatest expense of all – almost a week’s worth of backbreaking work. There’s still a bit more to do, but it’s nearly all fine-tuning from here on out. The backbone of the warehousing and fulfillment business we wish to establish in the Hualapai Valley is firmly in place. All that remains is to attract more clientele – and, as soon as my licenses come in from the state of Nevada, I will do just that.

We accomplished some other tasks over the last week as well. I added another six 2-volt batteries to the “Uptown” battery bank, which should increase its overall storage capacity by a not inconsiderable 6000-watt hour to roughly 20,000-watt hours. I also set up and began charging a “Downtown” battery bank. I still need to purchase a couple more solar panels of at least 40-watt capacity and add another solar regulator, but it’s all yet more fine-tuning from here on out. We (naturally) shipped out a bunch of Hero’s books, but that’s pretty much a given on any day of the week.

Tinker (our missing cat) turned up… at Dog Ranch, of all places! Neither the Cole’s nor we have caught him yet, but Ron’s spotted Tinker raiding his rottweiler’s dog food twice already. My guess is that the old guy is ranging between Black Rock Station, Dog Ranch, and the Jackson Ranch, stealing where he can and living off of mice and lizards the rest of the time. No one could be more shocked than me, but Tinker seems to have heard the call of the wild. It’s honestly hard to imagine – he was the most thoroughly domesticated feline I have ever seen – but something snapped in his tiny mind and suddenly went ferule. Steve S. told me this was common out at the Black Rock, but I didn’t 100% believe him until now. Live and learn, I suppose.

The last three days saw a full moon out in the desert. This means that a) it was almost as light during the night as the day and b) the coyotes were out in force. They call to one another from across the valley from sunset to sunrise; which, as I mentioned in my last post, probably means there are too damn many of them. Don’t get me wrong. I like and respect coyotes, but they’re predators and I own animals, so they make me nervous.

Anyhow, I just got word that I’ve got an home inspection coming up from the State of Nevada next Tuesday. Wish me luck – everything in the ranch house is pretty much home made, so I figure my odds of passing aren’t tremendously good. Ron Cole is going to help me get ready, though, which is a great comfort. And pray for us, as any more complications or expenses in what we’re doing right now could be catastrophic.

Missing Cats, Rocket Scientists, and Scrap Metal

2006-09-21T21:42:00.001-07:00

To start with, let my offer my apologies to all of you for not updating this blog sooner. It has been an extremely busy last couple of weeks, with Tina and I engaging in a great deal of activity in both California and Nevada. The high points have been very high and the low points very low, but thankfully there have been a lot more high than low points. We remain under budget and reasonably on target for our work on both the Richmond house as well as the ranch, although circumstances have put us a little farther behind than we would have liked. So, to get it out of the way, let me begin with the bad news.

Several nights ago Tinkers - our cat of over ten years - took an evening stroll into the desert and never returned. Tina, Snap, and I spent hours looking for him but (honestly – Snap worked hard at it), for good or for ill, we could find no trace of him. The most likely prospect is that the poor old guy wandered too far from the homestead and got nabbed by a coyote or mountain lion. Needless to say Tina is inconsolable, but after speaking to our neighbor Steve I’m a bit more optimistic. Apparently the Black Rock Desert has an odd psychological effect on housecats: feline-appropriate game is plentiful, water isn’t hard to find, and there are millions upon millions of places to hide. It’s apparently not uncommon for them to go ferule without any warning. I’ve seen a couple out in the brush myself. Steve had a cat that vanished into the salt brush for three months and then reappeared as if nothing had ever happened. Tinkers has definitely been exhibiting signs of desert wanderlust lately, so I remain hopeful that he will turn up.

Regardless, I see two things in Tina’s future: a kitten and a coyote skin jacket.

Delta West Ironworks (my father-in-law’s business) has hit some hard times and has had to shut down, at least temporarily. I spent most of last week helping Frank close the place down: loading welding machines onto trucks, dumping literally tons of scrap metal into recycling bins, and trying to figure out if some of the older equipment was worth anything. We worked hard at it but it was difficult going under hot and dirty conditions. Again, although this was not exactly a high point in anyone’s life, I remain optimistic. We’ve salvaged core portion of Frank’s shop, loaded up his two good work trucks, and he continues to work on big money bids even as I write this. The man is very good at what he does, and I think that Frank will be able to move in with another welder/fabricator within the next month.

Now at long last for the good news. I bought this lifted half-ton 1988 Chevy K10 pickup truck for two grand that I freaking love (see below)! It’s got a few typical older truck problems – mainly, some leaky hoses and gaskets – but I’ve already gotten to work on fixing those. No big deal. It has this rocking carpeted bed enclosed by a Reno-manufactured Caravan shell that cries out “Go camping! Go hunting! Go fishing!” I’ve already paid them to make me a butch three-bar rack for the top of it. It’s four wheel drive, gets about 3 gallons to the mile, and charges down pitted dirt roads like they’re the finest of highways. I doubt it could pass even the most lenient of emissions requirements.

What can I say? Man, after all of these years in California, it’s good to feel like an American again!

My work on both Lucha Libre Hero (my next book for Hero Games) and expanding our warehousing operation to include more clients is coming along nicely. We’ve got a couple of sales nibbles that we hope to reel in soon. We’ve got a budget of about two grand for more industrial shelving and I think we will come in well under that, largely thanks to the fine folks at Twin City Surplus in Reno. We expect to be able to comfortably hold around 50 or so pallets worth of books and CDs in the Midian Warehouse. Tina estimates that Hero’s books will take up about 30 pallets, leaving us with about 20 more to fill with other company’s products. I look forward to the challenge of talking enough small publishers into using our warehousing/fulfillment service to have almost no spaces open by next summer when I expand the warehouse by another 1000 square feet.

On a more interesting note - the desert is filled with rocket scientists! All right, they’re rocket science students and a few professors, but there are dozens and dozens of them from around the world in Gerlach right now. The playa floor – the flattest portion of the Black Rock Desert – is apparently an excellent place to test their rocketry experiments from, so they all gather here once a year. While I was having a few beers at Bruno’s with the team from Georgia Tech the other night, about ten students from Japan walked in. I swear Gerlach is the most bizarrely multicultural small desert town in the West. Between the cowboys (and girls), local desert rats, hunters, Burning Man people, bikers, geologists, off-road enthusiasts, and rocket (cars and actual) people, you never know what you will find.

2006-09-16T10:59:00.000-07:00

Soon I'll Be Driving Down Highway 40 In My Big Ol' Pickup Truck!

September 1st: A New Beginning

2006-09-03T10:31:00.000-07:00

And so I walked away. After 15 years of owning a messenger service - 15 years of defining myself professionally, spiritually, and in every way that matters as a messenger service owner – I left the Flash office after putting in a final full day’s work. It’s hard to describe what the experience of being a hands-on courier service boss in a major metropolitan area is like unless you’ve been in the business. Try to imagine that you’re a college sports coach, a NYSE floor trader, a psychologist, and a carnival conman all rolled up into one ball – that would be close. You could probably throw ghetto mother in there for good measure. It’s very intense: the emotional highs are very high, the lows are very low, the legal exposure is very real, and the money can be very good…. or not there at all. It’s above all stressful, and the chemicals produced in the human body by stress have been medically shown to be addictive.

Maybe that’s what’s happening to me right now. I’m detoxing.

As has long been my habit I pushed myself as hard as I could until almost the last moment, in all ways I acting exactly as if I’d be back in the saddle the next business day. In retrospect it was both comical and tragic. I would like to think that this tragicomic behavior came from a deep sense of professional ethics, but in reality I just don’t think I knew what else to do. I’ve pulled the plow so long I don’t know how to act without a harness strapped to my back. I’m not feeling sorry for myself; it’s just a fact. Two days out of the harness and I already feel directionless from lack of pulling.

Dominic threw a small party for me in the final hour. Many of Flash’s messengers came to wish me well; it was genuinely very touching. There was good pizza, excellent beer, and a lot of good cheer had by all. Dom and I said or professional (but not personal) goodbyes in a solemn manner, hugged, and I walked out the door never again to be Flash’s owner. Tina and I went downstairs to the Montgomery Street motorcycle parking lot, got our gear in order, and paused so that I could cry like a baby. What can I tell you? I had honestly thought that leaving Flash would be like having an enormous weight taken from my shoulders. It is – only that it turns out that without that weight I feel completely empty. The weight of Flash has been 90% of my life for so long that just philosophically knowing that it’s gone is like loosing a close friend or a family member. It’s been two days and I still feel like death on two legs.

Or maybe it’s been all of the hard drinking.

All right, it’s not just Flash. It’s Dominic as well. For almost a decade we’ve been closer than most brothers ever get to be. We’ve shared the same terrors, savored the same victories, and overcome the same obstacles together for so long that I have a hard time imagining doing anything without him. Even as I’m writing this I keep thinking, “How would Dominic feel about this?” We’ve spent more time together in that tiny, stressful office than we ever have with our wives at home. I honestly not certain that I’m a fully competent adult without the man I’ve come to think of in my adult life as an older brother. For much of my life I haven’t had to be.

I’m also not certain I’m a full man away from the helm of the business I stared a mere three months after I became old enough to drink. Or even a complete person away from the city that, for good or ill, has shaped my entire adult life. I’ve deliberately and systematically stripped away from myself everything that makes Jason Walters who he is so that I can become something that doesn’t really exist. It’s just a dream; abet one that has haunted me in waking visions for half a decade. More like a compulsion than a desire. To be really and truly free in that uniquely American way that our nation’s Founding Fathers envisioned. To live apart from others, liberated even from the wires and cables that tie us to one another. To live, as Jesus Christ once said, “As a passerby.” To become a real writer like Darren Watts, Steve Long, and Ken Hite rather than limping along as a dilettante. And, perhaps most importantly, to become the husband, father, and man I always hoped to be.

In the last two days I’ve learned this: while separating from the things one despises may indeed be the highest virtue, separating from the things one loves is the greatest torment. It is simply one of the Universe’s great cruelties that the two are often inseparably joined together.