Simple Living and Simple Travel

Well, back in the dog days of summer. Know where that phrase came from? It’s the period between early July and early September when Sirius, aka the Dog Star, rises and falls with the sun. Unfortunately, so do the temperatures. Oh well, winter’s coming. A thought on preparing meals—keep it short and simple. I no longer like to cook, let alone spend half an hour or more preparing a meal. I also have my main meal of the day midmorning, after I’m done with giving thanks. Since I get up at 5:00 for most of the year, I’m definitely hungry by 9 or 10:00. The rest of the day I’ll generally just snack. Most of my meals are prepared in one pot. Since I’m generally off the grid, water conservation is always a factor (I still only use 2 gallons a day). I eat a lot of spaghetti, buying different kinds when I can: brown rice, spinach, whole wheat (Bionaturae is great), whatever. As the water heats to a boil and the spaghetti is cooking, I’m mincing one or two jalapenos, cloves of garlic or shre...

One fall day a guy crashed his mountain bike up in the Wasatch Mountains outside of Park City, UT. A lower leg swelled up pretty bad from all the subsurface bleeding. He went to the doctor and was told to stay off the leg as much as possible and go to physical therapy to have all the dried blood worked out of the system. The following spring the same thing happened but the guy saw his regular doctor at the Park City clinic, who happened to be a friend, and told him that it was a pretty easy crash and the leg should not be lookin’ this bad. The doctor took a blood sample. Around 10:00 that night, the guy got a call from his doctor who apologized for calling so late but he knew his friend would likely be out the door at dawn. The doctor said, ‘It looks like you have leukemia.’ ‘What’s that mean?’ ‘Well, if you don’t do something about it, you’ll be dead within 3 years.’ The doctor knew he had to say something to get through to his friend or his friend ...

I posted a photo of a hike I took with Dave and Tim up Miller Canyon in the Huachuca Mountains back in March, the ‘back to Bisbee III entry.’ Well, here’s a photo of that section on mountains now. Dave emailed me the story and photo. http://www.kvoa.com/full-coverage/monument-fire/ I forwarded it to Tim. He has plans to come back to the area next winter for mountain biking. Tim emailed back saying that Sandy, at Gray Hawk Nature Center where he volunteered last winter, has some evacuees camping there and a couple of her friends have lost their homes. I want to call Lynn to touch base and see what she has to say about it all. She has a friend who was evacuated. It’s pretty bad down there. A comment from Diana on my ‘aging and disuse’ entry led me to her ‘Sixty Minutes Sixty Years’ blog. (http://sixtyminutessixtyyears.blogspot.com) Just before Diana turned 60, a WW challenge caught her eye—choose a goal in minutes of fitness-focused activity to...

This will probably be the last year that I work my way north through New Mexico. I really don’t like driving through the middle third of the state and it’s not the kind of land that I enjoy camping in. I did manage to finally see Taos this year though. Now that is a town that I could live in. Or rather just outside of. Seems like a nice community and there is ready access to some awesome mountains. If I come back this way in October as I head south, I hope to spend some time there. I knew it was a dry winter down here but it didn’t sink in until I stopped at some spots I visited in the past and found dry creek beds. Not good. They also started fire restrictions in the Gila’s in early April. Then elsewhere there is extensive flooding. Unreal. Early one day I took Carson National Forest road 439 off rt518 and that could have been a big mistake. It was a fairly steep, narrow, rutty road cut into the hillside. About a mile up was a pipe gate with a ‘road closed’ sign on it...

Aging is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we dread growing old, thinking it a time of forgetfulness and physical deterioration, then it is likely to be just that. On the other hand, if we expect to be full of energy and anticipate that our lives will be rich with new adventures and insights, then that is the likely reality. We prescribe who we are and what we are to become. Most, however, don’t question their perceptions of old age. Research shows that almost everything we have thought about growing old has been misleading. What we once considered to be marks of aging, we now know are the results of disuse or disease. Nutrition is a key factor enabling healthy aging. It affects the way we look, feel and act. Do you really care about your well-being? Are you truly interested in nurturing your body? The food we eat can make the difference between ending the day with a feeling of freshness and zest or fatigue and exhaustion. We tend to eat too much of what we don’t need, and not enough o...

I’m missing the Cherokee’s turning radius. At times, I go into another never-ending, ground-eating, horrendous U-turn with the Dodge and wonder if I will come out of the turn in the same county. If I start into a U-turn in the afternoon, sometimes I speed up a bit so the turn is completed before dark. I also glance at the fuel gauge before going into a U-turn to be sure I will have enough gas to get me through the turn. I look into the driver’s mirror from time-to-time and see the back of the pickup tracking slowly behind, ‘bout a quarter mile back. I swear I could pull a U-turn with the Cherokee pulling the casita in the distance I could spit. Sure do miss the old turning radius. Already got into some trouble out in the sticks. Oh well. I was standing there one day looking at this behemoth next to the casita and went to get a tape measure. It seems I live in a box—my HOUSE—that measures less than 14 feet long. I tow it with a vehicle that is—20 feet long. Is there som...

Made my annual pilgrimage back to Bisbee. Stayed three weeks at my friend Lynn’s place. Went out for more meals than I will for the rest of the year. We hit our favorites: Café Roka, Screaming Banshee, Bisbee Breakfast Club, and the Turquoise Valley café down in Naco. A new restaurant, Poco, opened up in Peddler’s Alley. We went there twice. Good food and some nice wines. I asked Lynn if I could take a bath, ‘I haven’t had one for a year.’ She said, ’You probably need one.’ Sounds kind of strange but I just don’t get opportunities to take baths with this lifestyle and I sure miss them. I’ll be back to the Sun Shower bag by the end of next month. Got back to taking Lynn’s dog, Chica, on morning walks over in Old Bisbee and the Mules. We either walk up 1,200 stairs or so and go down a few hundred more or do a few hundred stairs and then go off on the trails in the Mule Mtns. above town. One morning Tim Davis (a volunteer I met last year at C of R) met us with his d...