This morning the dogs and I went out exploring near Buena Vista, CO. We were looking for a place to sleep tonight. I was surprised to find a picturesque geology of granite. We walked up a dry wash of decomposed granite and for awhile it seemed like the foothills of the Catalina Mountains near Tucson. It was one gully or small canyon after another. Sometimes there was a micro-climate that harbored a copse of aspen, and then I realized I was back in Colorado.
Finally I saw a dirt road that I had overlooked before. It was quite boondockable, with a good Verizon signal. And so we snuggled in. I can look over a large part of the upper Arkansas River Valley from here, even though we are only a couple hundred feet about town.
Finding this campsite was satisfying at the time, but it was so subtle that its significance escaped me at first. We weren't hiking to burn calories, lower cholesterol, or to manufacture postcards for the internet. We were looking for lodging; doing our job; making a living. And doing it well gave me the same sort of satisfaction that homo sapiens has always felt working successfully with nature--until the last couple generations when our species started working in offices, wasting time at meetings, and staring at a computer screen all day.
Nearby some rock climbers are going at it. Buena Vista is my favorite tourist town.
Please don't tell me that fuel costs are no longer a worry now that gasoline has gotten cheap. I am still trying to find a way to beat the System, the higher fuel costs. It's my job. There are so many factors to consider. You can't avoid being an amateur prophet. But sometimes the line between planning and useless worrying gets blurred.
So I logged off the internet and went on a rampage of downsizing. It's been awhile actually. My rigs aren't overloaded so this might seem like a mere psychological cookie. But it will improve my habits. Ultimately the future of RVing is about reducing weight.
