Searching for Solitude

Great Basin National Park, Nevada - #2

Living in Thistle, one of our challenges, especially in inclement weather, is to find personal solitude. We've joked about living butt-to-butt, but sometimes it is no joke. Both the man and the dog need to move if I want to change activities or positions.

We knew, before entertaining the idea of life-on-Thistle, that one of our challenges would be to overcome feeling like canned shrimp. However, it's one thing to think about the shrimp-can-as-my-home, it's another to live it.

In looking for a way to indulge our reclusive impulses, up popped my ankle. Huh? Ankle? Reclusive impulses? What do they have in common? What they have in common is this:  I cannot engage in the long hikes Ed would like to do, so if he doesn't stick around camp because of my limitations, we both have time alone. Ha, why did this take us 86 days to figure out?

Today it was just the two of us...

We walked along the road, keeping Benton off the trails and legal...

We looked up at Grey Cliffs, where Ed was hiking...

We discovered sweet little flowers along the way...

And then we hung out in camp, hidden in the pines...

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"I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over

the solitude of the other."

- Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

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Mother's Day Delight!

The Great Basin National Park, Nevada - #1

A number of years ago, Brad and I, on one of our mother-son road trips, by pure happenstance, stumble into Great Basin National Park. We were enchanted! Remembering that trip, the Great Basin became a destination for Ed and I. We arrive in the wind, rain and cold, expecting snow at any minute. We snuggle into Thistle's warmth.

Temperatures drop to the low 30's during the night but this morning, the threatening clouds of last evening have vanished and the sun is out, promising warmth.

The Great Basin National Park is serving double duty today by letting me relive my lovely trip here with Brad all those years ago, and by providing a feast of beauty and of food. After an alluring walk, Mr. Ed serves up a special Mother's Day omelet for breakfast.

Mother's Day Delight, despite missing my dear Yessi and Brad

We are fascinated with Great Basin National Park and turn to the "Complete National Parks of the United States" book we carry aboard. We discover this park is situated within a greater Great Basin of 200,000 square miles, covering most of Nevada, half of Utah and sections of Idaho, Wyoming, Oregon and California. It's actually made up of a number of small basins, where the rain is disbursed by absorption or evaporation. All the rivers in the basin flow directly into lakes, none reaching the sea. The lowest point in this high desert basin is 4,000 feet.

The park is well known for the Lehman Caves. In touring the caves we were awed by the stalactites, stalagmites, columns, draperies, flowstone, soda straws, and, a particularly rare cave occurrence shields, for which Lehman Caves is most famous. Our photographs were a bust, but close your eyes and imagine, if you can, being inside a large, intricately majestic sand castle.

What Ed and I crave is to hike up to the 10,000 - 11,000 feet elevations to see the bristlecone pines, but snow has closed the trails. The bristlecone pines, at these high elevations, live to be 2,000 to 3,000 years, or more old. I've always loved Bonsai, and here, at the Great Basin, Mother Nature displays her most beautiful examples.

Thank you Terra Gallery for this photo.

We see critters too. Deer, wild turkeys, jackrabbits and marmots, with Benton pulling at his leash, so wanting to engage in a chase. A couple of new birds have been marked in our "Guide to Sibley Birds", Clark's Nutcracker and Red-naped Sapsucker. We also hear, but can't spot, a Horned Lark. Park literature brags 238 species of birds have been spotted within the park and nearby vicinity.

It's been a Mother's Day delight at the Great Basin!

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"The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time."

- Henry David Thoreau

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Moral Dilemma

"Continuing our theme of participating in things that leave us with moral questions..."

"Oh, yes!", I thought, as I read one of my favorite travel blogs, Bumfuzzle. I was taken with this statement's perspective. Along our travel route, both Ed and I had noted the moral dilemma of where to shop. Where to spend our money.

Because of our personal values, over the years we have avoided shopping at Safeway, Starbucks, Walmart, McDonald's, Home Depot. In fact, we shunned all the big corporate chains. Traveling, we find our resolve weakening. Shopping dilemmas pop up when we're faced with bewildering traffic and no local knowledge. In our boggled state of travel confusion, we too often settle for the line-up of chain stores on the edge of town. They are easy to find, convenient, and their branding tells us what they are. Just yesterday we were looking for a grocery store and pulled into Maurice's, thinking that name, Maurice, sounded like food. We still don't know what Maurice's sold, but not food.

On home turf, avoiding the big chains in favor of locally owned businesses is a snap. With our local knowledge we can conveniently indulge our moral stance. When traveling all our good intentions are tossed out Thistle's window. We still want to support the small local entrepreneurs, but finding them is a treasure hunt. Add hot, tired and befuddled to the equation, and taking-the-easy-road becomes a driving force.

"Look", I say, "There's a Safeway!" Both Ed and I melt with relief.

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"Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."

Mark Twain

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The "Other" Zion.

Zion National Park - #4

We took the road to the "other" Zion too! Kolob Canyon. The Visitor's Center is small. The services are limited -- summit road, trails, restrooms, picnic tables.

Driving up to the summit we spot another Sprinter Westfalia (California plates) parked at a trailhead. With only 250 of these vehicles in the U.S. we wanted to make contact. It's owners were off hiking so we left our card with a note under their wiper. Now we wait.

We linger at the summit enthralled with the view. Once again we have the Benton dilemma -- no dogs permitted on trails. Dogs in hot cars = stupid. Thistle ventilates well and we can leave a huge bowl of water, but still...our hike is short.

Next stop Cedar Breaks, but the road is barricaded. Snow! With the visitor center at 10,000 feet, it's difficult to pretend surprise, but our disappointment is real.


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"When you get to the fork in the road, take it."

Yogi Berra

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The wild west wears many hats!

Utah throws extremes our way, and, to my mind, conflicting values. We can't buy wine in the grocery stores, but customers walk by us with guns on their hips. We find the landscape calm and meditative while the freeways are a lethal, yet legal, 80 miles per hour. Eyes glued to the road, knuckles white from gripping the steering wheel, holding our own at 65 mph, feels anything but meditative, as huge trucks overtake us at deadly speeds.

FS Maple Grove Campground, Utah, Highway 50

But, hey, it's Utah and the wild west!  Open range, don't fence me in kind of stuff, with most political views leaning toward libertarian.  Until, that is, they circle back around to the church, and then family values hold tight and firm, with laws enacted to support them.

What's an overpass for, if not moving cattle?

We all have our own set of values, of course, and pretty much, without fail, we believe they are solid and true.  But, here's the rub.  While some of us are willing to let government into our lives, respecting it and working with it, we refuse to do the same with the church.  While others will let the church into their lives, but not so much government. 

A mixture of these values appear on our streets with the laws we make -- guns, speed, liquor, sex, gambling, marital rights -- having been pounded out in a messy government-church mix. One state, will bring more church, another state will bring more government. Our national ideal of church and state separation is weaker or stronger depending on locale, but there's always a push-pull mix. It's a messy mix, but hey, that's the beauty of government order and church doctrine tied up with state's rights. And, for an added complication, it all takes place under our nation's constitutional umbrella.

Love it or leave it, as they say!

As we drive into Nevada I chuckle. Talk about contrasts. How in the world did Nevada and Utah become neighbors? The wild west wears many hats!

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"Most of all, differences of opinion are opportunities for learning."

- Terry Tempest Williams
When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice

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And then there's Benton!

Zion National Park, Utah - #3

At Zion, we biked to town every morning for a cup of coffee and scone at Deep Creek Coffee Shop. Then we tended to chores, before accumulated exhaustion, followed by inertia, took over.

Finally, on our last day at Zion, we jumped on the bus and headed up the canyon.

We hiked Weeping Rock, Temple of Sinawava and Emerald Pool. Beautiful, as promised...

Weeping Rock

Temple of Sinawava

Emerald Pool

Unfortunately, people were thick as flies. Short of a long hike, which my ankle wasn't permitting, leaving the crowd behind wasn't possible. Zion, a much-visited national park, had approximately 3,200,000 visitors in 2014. When quiet and contemplation are desired that's just too many people.

Because of the crowds and crowd-control rules, we're finding the parks not-of-note much more to our liking. Fewer people to maneuver around! And then there's Benton! He's family too, but isn't allowed on any trails in National Parks -- a huge dilemma for us dog lovers.

From Zion, Thistle's weakening batteries forced us to take a trip to St. George for a new set to run our "home's" systems. If we wanted lights and refrigeration and computers we needed new batteries. Thanks to help from fellow Sprinter Westfalia folks, we knew what we needed, and had the experience of others for learning installation tricks. With Napa, and a shady tree, we got the job done.

 

We head for a backroad. We are now boondocked in a sweet oak grove, in Dixie National Forest. Since arriving last evening we've had sun, wind, thunder, rain, sun, and rain again. A cacophony of bird songs accompanies our morning coffee. Awww, sweet isolation! And, Benton can run free!

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"Nature is shy and noncommittal in a crowd. To learn her secrets, visit her alone or with a single friend, at most. Everything evades you, everything hides, even your thoughts escape you, when you walk in a crowd."

- Edwin Way Teale

 Circle of the Seasons: The Journal of a Naturalist's Year

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"Nothing, Everything, Anything, Something"

Zion National Park, Utah, #2

We've been so busy being "on vacation" we've been forgetting this is our life. Driving, setting up camp, hiking, biking, seeing, breaking camp, driving, hiking, biking, seeing -- whew! We're ready to do nothing. So, here we are at Zion filling our time with, well...with nothing.

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"Nothing, Everything, Anything, Something: If you have nothing, then you have everything, because you have the freedom to do anything, without the fear of losing something."

- Jarod Kintz

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