View of the Office

This week we're working on Pike's Peak in a lot of small diameter limber, pondo, and Doug fir.  But, while the cover types are not too interesting, our bunk house is:  We are working out of a 1930s CCC era stone and log lodge maintained by the Manitou Experimental Forest.  The place is in great condition and features a big kitchen, a long dining room/work area, several bedrooms and bathrooms, and a massive, native-stone fireplace.  Best of all, we are not in a thin walled motel where my neighbors, the Bovine family, feel the need to move the furniture around all night.

The End of an Era

In October of 2003, we bought our 1993 Mercury Sable for $2200.  Today, the salvage yard came for it, and gave us $220.  The car was operable, registered, and insured.  But . . . last week it failed the Utah safety inspection . . . and our mechanic refused to work on it.  Which is just as well because when the camshaft bearing started to go last fall, we decided not to spend another dime on it either.  The remarkable thing is that it lasted a whole year without even changing the oil.  In fact, earlier this month, I was still using it to go back and forth to the Cedar City Airport for work travel.  Without getting choked up, let me just say that the Sable was a beast—powerful, roomy, reliable—and that it gave us nine good years.  But, what I really want to point out is that our ownership costs (purchase price minus sale price) were $1980 for nine years and 75,000 miles.  Sure, we had operation and maintenance costs—tires, fuel, mufflers, insurance—but our straight ownership cost was $18.33/month.  If my reader can beat 18 bucks a month to own a car, I'll buy him a six pack.  In fact, if I can beat 18 bucks a month to own a car, I'll buy myself a six pack.  Heck, I just lost an 18 buck a month car, I think I need a six pack.

Mt. Ellen

At just over 11,500 feet, Mt. Ellen is the highest point in the Henrys.  Mt. Ellen is not, however, much of a point.  It is more of a long north-south ridge with a series of small humps.  It is my opinion that the tallest of these humps is towards the north end of the ridge.  It is also my opinion that the entire summit ridge is a pile of ankle twisting loose rock.  Between rock pile, the long approach, and the howling wind, we were ready to turn around at the south summit.  A traverse of the entire summit ridge will await another day.

A Note on the Sources

A few months ago, one of our readers noted that Rural Way's reading list is "nuttily eclectic."  While we don't disagree, one of the advantages to this method of reading is the opportunity to discover unexpected connections.  Doesn't it give you a jolt to discover the same idea in two different works written sometimes thousands of years apart and in completely different contexts?  Does anyone doubt, for example, that One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is the same story as the one found in The Gospel of Matthew (or Mark, or Luke)?  Or that Thomas Merton's No Man is an Island covers some of the same ground as Scott Peck's The Road Less Traveled (no pun intended)?

Even better is the triple play, where you discover a connection between three authors.  I had one of those earlier this year when I was reading Martin Cruz Smith's Gorky Park.  Smith makes, in the middle of his thriller, a connection between Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment and Camus's The Stranger.  Bingo.  Haven't you read those two back to back and wondered if Camus was responding to Dostoyevsky, or perhaps updating him?  Here is how Smith's Gorky Park character has it:

"But you can't do Camus's The Stranger for a soviet audience.  A man takes the life of a total stranger for no reason but ennui?  Its purely Western excess.  Middle class comfort leads inevitably to ennui and unmotivated murder.  The police are used to it, but here in a progressive socialist society no one is tainted by ennui.

What about Crime and Punishment?  What about Raskolnikov?

My very point.  For all his existentialist rambling, even Raskolnikov just wanted to get his hands on a few rubles.  You'd be as likely to find an unmotivated act here as you would be to find a tropical bird outside your window.  There would be mass confusion.  Camus's murderer would never be caught here."

See what I mean?  If you've got the tortured face of Raskolnikov stuck in your mind when you're reading Camus, you start to feel like there might be a connection.  And, then you read an American best seller and find that you're not the only one who thinks so.

First Fire

It is not unusual to have had our first snow at The Homestead by now.  Last year, in fact, the first big, wet storm of the season overwhelmed Highway 14 on October 7th.  This time around, however, the autumn weather has been slow to arrive and we've had nothing but (maybe) a mild frost.  Until today.  Today, EDO went to Cedar Breaks with the third grade field trip and found, yep, lots of new snow.  Meanwhile, I started a fire in the stove at 5:30a and let it burn all day:  The first fire of winter 2012/2013.

Sunset at Indian Rocks Beach

The view from the office is a little different this week.  We're working in St. Petersburg, Florida on the Deepwater Horizon spill, and the sun sets every evening over the Gulf of Mexico.  Florida is hot, dirty, humid, and flat.  There doesn't seem to be much reason for its existence until you see its beaches.  I'm not much of a beach guy, but who can resist the crash of the wave, the salty breeze, and the cry of the gull?  As for the Deepwater Horizon, please don't tell anyone that Rural Ways is a dirt forester.

Anasazi Show

After winning an award at the Escalante Canyons Art Festival last week, Valerie spent a few days cramming for her fall show at the Anasazi Museum in Boulder, Utah.  We hung the show today . . . a spectacular fall day in south central Utah . . . so, if you're in Boulder this month, stop by with your checkbook.  The lead-off painting is one she made of the San Juan River last fall.  It is pictured above.  While the picture is adequate, the real thing would look spectacular over your mantle.