Just after passing into Colorado from Arizona, I crossed the San Juan River, one of the major tributaries of the Colorado River. That was my favorite sight along the route from Flagstaff to Cortez. I can't say which was more impressive: the rapid flow or the lush green boscage along the banks. It looked so out of place in the red sandstone landscape.

This was starting to seem like the experience I had in northern New Mexico last June, just after I started the blog. Running water, high altitudes, and mosquito-free ponderosa forests. A forest without bugs is no small advantage--presumably it is due to the openness and dryness of ponderosa forests, compared to higher and darker subalpine forests.

I am boondocking north of Mancos in a ponderosa forest at 7800 feet. It's too warm for me, but if I could harden myself against this implacable foe, there would be many benefits.

An experienced full time RVer is not a vacationer living the "RV Dream". Dealing with difficult things is part of the job. RV glossies, books or blogs won't tell you that an "alternative lifestyle" is a job. They only want to whip the reader--presumably a wannabee nearing retirement--into a horny frenzy over a sightseeing-obsessed, romantic fantasy. That is why, after a couple years of chasing around, most RVers end up in Camp Yoostabee.

I am no longer surprised to find that agricultural pastures add so much to Western scenery, even when it is right outside a national park, as it is here. So I'm not surprised--but I appreciate it as much as ever. Maybe it's the dignity and classical balance of land that is both beautiful and useful. It shows that Man can be an integral part of Nature, instead of an interloper as is commonly believed.



There are small reservoirs that ranchers tie into with small irrigation ditches. 'Cute' isn't a word that I use a lot; but these ditches are just plain cute.


I ran into another boondocker today who was different from the "one step above homeless" campers who hang out on the Mogollon Rim down in the Arizona Territory. He wasn't a paranoid ranter.

As it turns out he is a naturalist, that is, a nudist. Perhaps later there will be a chance to get him to bare his philosophy on this topic. Until then I can only speculate that nudists are one flavor of Rousseau-ians who are trying to be "natural."

In other words, they see clothes as being unnatural. I wonder about that. If homo sapiens lost its fur when our progenitors came out of the forest and into the hot savanna of Africa, and then developed melanin to protect the skin...well then nudism is natural.

But then homo sapiens spread north and east to Eurasia and became melanin-challenged. So they started wearing clothing--or was it the other way around?

Anyway, anthropologists tell us that clothing is about as old as language: a 100,000 years or so. So then, why don't nudists wrap themselves in silence...why don't they renounce language as well as clothing in order to be "natural"?

But let's get back to the here and now. At the bare minimum we can say that there is nothing more unnatural than a white dude walking around naked in the southwestern sun, unless it be in cholla country.