Uninteresting to the eye, that is. Now put the eye away for a minute and think about that red-lava, cinder road of last post. Today's ride was on the smooth dirt shown above. To my sense of touch it was more intensely pleasurable than the riot of desert wildflowers was to my eye, this spring.
The pleasure to the sense of touch must be even stronger for the dogs since they are running on it.
We encountered some hikers who told me that Show Low had a dog park. So Coffee Girl has had a couple workouts there, recently.
There are a few flowers here. Nothing spectacular, but nice. Actually I get just as much pleasure from them as from the wildflower spectacle in the desert, this spring. Again, it must just be a game of expectations. Or maybe it was serendipity: today's chapter in Frazer's The Golden Bough is entitled, "The Worship of the Oak."
I was a bit startled to see a man in the forest this morning, on the doggie walk. At least he didn't have camo clothing on. The towns in northern Arizona have quite a panhandling problem, and in the forests you have guys like this. They only have to hitch-hike for a couple hours to escape the inferno of lower Arizona.
One sentence out of his mouth sufficed to show that he was half-deranged. We didn't actually have a conversation, of course. He just wanted someone to listen to his rant: an incoherent cocktail--in more ways than one--of conspiracy theories, wild stories, sentimentalism, and Christian eschatology.
I suppose most guys like this are harmless, to other people. I really wanted to tell him to bugger off, but of course I bit my lip. Next time I will escape quicker by making up some excuse.
It would be so nice to actually run into friendly, sane people while boondocking. But I seldom do. For the most part it's characters like this "prophet" or noisy nuisances like motorheads on a busy weekend. I don't even feel an affinity for other bicyclists or hikers like I used to at the beginning of this career. I wish I knew what to do about it.
Anyway, the Prophet melted back in to the ponderosas, from whence he came. I don't actually know where he is camped out. Does he have a vehicle, or just some boards and plastic sheet? To sleep out with only that...well, he must be crazy.
