Renewing the Borderlands Traverse Blog Posts

My blog is currently being rethought with the aim of restarting the project. Current plans call for the new direction to start around the first of ?.

Time to pitch the tent

Borderlands Traverse started out simple. After selling my newspapers due to the death of my business partner I was determined not to rush into anything new without some thought. Doing something too fast smelled like love on the rebound. I wanted no part of that. Better to wait and let the pain ooze out and the blood settle and coagulate. But, wouldn't you know it, while I was waiting I started to tidy up my home office. I ran across an old IDEA file -- dangerous buggers, those. There was a piece of yellowing paper stashed between other obvious loosing propositions with one sentence on it: "Walk the borders of a square state."

Technically there aren't any square states. Wyoming and Colorado are the closest contenders and both are more rectangular than square. But I knew what I meant when I wrote that sentence, one of the rare times of such clarity. We've got these straight lines on our maps which are really tokens of ignorance. I could expand on that thought but then I would get off-track with where I'm trying to go.

That single sentence signified an early experience of mine. Sitting in the back seat of our '48 Chevrolet crossing the border between Utah and Wyoming, age seven, expecting to see a straight line inked on the ground, maybe with abbreviations: UT on that side and WYO on the other. But of course there was nothing resembling a straight line, just rolling foothills of sage and some distance away, aspens and pines, fir; spruce higher up.

I don't think I felt disappointed but I know I felt lied to, deceived, and angry in a seven-year-old way. The maps collected, hoarded and stored in my treasure drawer - maps of magic with mysterious mountains, deserts and forests - did not tell the truth. I was morose and uninterested for almost a full week.

If my father had been alert and had lived any part of his life in his mind he might have recognized my distress. He was my idol, a war hero of mysterious accomplishments in Burma, an athletic man of grace who easily bowled over 220 in every game I ever watched, skied with the composure of a swan, swam with power and crispness, was fearless and competent in the face of nature and night sweats. I idolized him deeply and respected his few words and cautious, thoughtful approach to my questions. It took many years to realize that the answers came without a deep reservoir of contemplated connection. It may also be that they did, and that I remain merely ignorant of his Way.

"Is this the border?"
"Yep."
"Why can't we see it?"
"See the border?"
"Yeah, where is the line? There is a line on the map. I don't see any line."
"That line is so you can tell the border on a map. There isn't a real line. How would you make a line like that out there?"

I had no idea how I or anyone else would make a line 'out there.' But I promised myself that one day I would take my map and try to walk the line that some liar drew on my maps to see what the heck was supposed to be divided by that line. That is what that sentence in the IDEA file was all about.

It could have been a secret project. I didn't need to tell anyone about it. But I unfortunately am cursed with BIG IDEAS too often. And this, in rather quick fashion became one of those. I would start a blog, recruit school classes to follow the trek, send articles to the local papers, recruit a sponsor, talk interesting people into walking with me, write a book about it, become famous, go on a lecture tour, use the experience for launching myself. After all, I didn't have a real job anymore.

I talked to friends, or at least they started out as friends, and, puffed up and excited as only an aging Aries can be, painted wildly exciting and optimistic pictures of a Lewis & Clark-like venture taken up by thousands of co-conspirators who would all write wonderful essays of their experiences, take blindingly beautiful pictures and video and all of this would be a new sort of journalism.

My model was William Least Heat Moon, who did none of the stupid parts of this but did manage to do a deep mapping of a single Kansas County that occupies a full eighth of my heart, even though Kansas is not part of my own geographical imperative.

The obvious is cruelly apparent. My project is an abject failure. In the end, I didn't even choose a "square" state, although there were many reasons that made Utah, with its six straight-line borders more interesting than either Colorado or Wyoming.

No one else apparently wants to try to walk the stupidly straight borders of any state or country, marking way-points with their GPS units, taking pictures, telling stories. Geocachers, who I thought might be tempted, are more interested in finding "treasures" by coordinate, which is probably an entirely incorrect characterization since I can't say with any certainty that any ever heard of BorderWalking, Border Traverse or any of the other blogs associated with this Cervantean pipe dream.

So I am admitting the state of reality. This blog and its two sisters will go into stasis. I can't yet totally kill them. I'm not strong enough for that. Yet. I may even add to them from time to time or transfer some content. Who knows?

I don't, and that is really the point of this post. I'm going to camp for a while and see what turns up. If you have read this far though, please feel free to wander back along my trail thus far. I have walked some straight lines. And told some stories.

Drifting Up From The Emerald Triangle

Nightfall at Jackson Lake in the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area

The coastal borderlands have demanded my attention of late. Sea meets shore along 7,863 miles from California to Washington. Coastal borderwalking is brutal, and both unpredictable (storms, slides, weather) and predictable (tides, wave action, sea cliffs, beach stones driftwood tangles, etc.) obstacles are de rigueur. I have done small stints at different times in my life and while I generally love the coast I generally hate doing serious borderwalking along it.

The area I wanted to visit in particular burned for the second consecutive year in 2008, fulfilling all the dire prophecies for conflagration posted its way. This summer may be the third year in a row that Northern California and Southern Oregon burn through much the same areas.

Quite a few folks might be thinking justly so. Humboldt and Trinity counties on the north and Mendocino county on the south, form what is infamously known as the Emerald Triangle, an area where growing pot is a major industry. In the two northern counties marijuana production by some counts is the base industry. If everybody isn't growing it the ones who aren't are providing all of the ancillary products necessary to sustain the industry, including an accepting or at least passive attitude.

Marijuana has been legal to use in California for medical purposes since 1996. Since then other laws defining the scope and sources of that medical marijuana have passed almost as often as California forests have burned. It is legal to possess up to 28.5 grams of marijuana if you have a doctor's prescription and it is not an arrestable offense if you don't have a note from the doc. The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) lists the following additional consequences on its web site:

• The cultivation or processing of any amount of marijuana is punishable by up to sixteen months in state prison. There is an exception to the cultivation prohibition for patients or patients’ caregivers who possess or cultivate for personal use by the patient upon approval of a physician.
• The laws regarding possession and cultivation of marijuana do not apply to patients or patients’ primary caregivers who possess or cultivate marijuana for the personal medical use of the patient, upon the recommendation or approval of a physician.
• Selling marijuana in any amount is punishable by 2 – 4 years in the state prison. Giving away less than 28.5 grams is a misdemeanor and is punishable by a fine of up to $100.
• Sale of marijuana to a minor is punishable by 3 – 5 years in prison.
• For anyone under the age of 21 convicted of any of the above offenses, the state may suspend the offender’s driver’s license for up to one year.
• Possession of paraphernalia is a civil fine of $200-$300 for the first offense and goes up to $5,000-$6,000 for a fifth or subsequent violation within a five-year period.

See NORML: http://www.norml.org/index.cfm?wtm_view=&Group_ID=4525

If you are somewhat confused by this string of laws you are not alone although many connected to using and/or cultivating explain the seeming contradictions with both volume and the sureness of conviction. The bottom line is that there is a lot of pot being grown for so-called medical consumption. The people who sell it even pay taxes on those sales so the government is at least a tax partner of these operations.

More to come...

What's Over Thattaway?

The last rat-assed piece of logic has been filed away in the electronic netherworld. Whether it all hooks together is somebody else's problem now. I've stuffed my head for half a year with arguments about this and opinions about that, some of it written down and all of it running from room to room in my head.

It's time for the great beyond. I've got places to go where nobody knows or cares if I'm wearing pants. That big white moon, the smell of hot dirt and thirsty sagebrush, a dicky hen running like a dinosaur, covered in the brush, making sounds like a damn rattler.

I expect to be hot. Hope to be. Maybe blister up a bit along the neckline, tempt cancer with the naked top of my ears, eat some grit. Then toward sundown when all that heat is still shimmering up off the desert flats but shadows are lying down to bed I'll pull some beer from the galvanized tub wrapped in gunny sacks under the trailer - two, maybe three. The tops pop and the first one goes all the way down without a rest. That pain grows in a knob there between your eyes so you just shut em and breath the rest of the heat of the day up through your nose hairs and you smell night. It ain't arrived yet but it's comin'. And when your head stops throbbing you crack open your eyes with the next beer and think about dinner and through the slits of your eyes you look out where you ain't been yet.


Looking West Near Hickison Pass, Nevada. Toiyabe Range on the Horizon

On Semester's Border

Mostly I love school. But this last slurp at the trough of learning has been a long swallow. It coincided with an ugly rotator cuff tear on my left shoulder which eventually required surgery. Yep, it's as painful as you've heard. And very instructive on how much humans depend on being symmetrical.

I spent the winter in the mistaken belief that I had a small tear that could be overcome by exercise. Exercise,
San Rafael Swell to Wasatch Plateau

though, had the effect of making things worse. Eventually I got the message and opted for surgery. The doc said hey, that was way worse than we thought! Not at all like it looked on the MRI. Just more confirmation that medicine and car mechanics are the same line of work separated only by the color of grease on your fingers.

My classwork is online from the University of Missouri. In some explosion of short-sightedness I decided a Masters degree in Media Management would be just right for me. That was a few years ago when I thought I would always own newspapers and just drift into fewer hours of work for retirement. Hell, I thought, if James Russell Wiggins could do it so can I. But - like I didn't know - there is no forward track less known than your own.

My business partner, who was always healthier and carried a tenth of the body fat I do, gets Lou Gehrig's Disease. And declines. And dies. We barely get our papers sold before his ability to communicate pretty much stops. Unlike many business partners this one was a gem, probably because we seemed to compliment each other's missing pieces. You know, what I lacked he had and vice versa. We weren't alike at all, really. The only thing we shared was an abiding respect for the other guy's strengths and some discretion about weaknesses.

So anyway, I was talking about school. My experience has been to learn about stuff I've been doing all my life with a whole bunch of people who have done it better than I did and who are mostly a hell of a lot younger. It is damn depressing when you think about it. I feel like Max Evans, who wrote The Rounders and a handfull of some of the best books about the real West you can find. I've had some beers with Max and here is what he'll tell you: It's all a con game. The whole thing. Them that learn the con and do it well have a measure of luck more than those who don't. But the con ain't being run by the folks around you, or by people at all. Nope. And even if you figger out what or who IS running the con it won't matter a spit or a lick.

I've got one more paper to trim up to end this semester and two days to do it. After that, by god, I'm not playing for a while.

Four Corners Is Not

This just in. The only place in the United States that allows you to have parts of your body in four states (Colorado, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico) at one time - appropriately called four corners - has been tricking you.If you thought you did this trick you didn't.

That is, if you stood on the X at the elevated tourist marking of that boundary. Turns out it is 2.5 miles or so from the actual place. A 2.5 mile error these days is huge. My GPS unit says it has a rate of error of 20 feet. When I post my border way points, I have noticed a fairly consistent error of about that much when I'm trying to track right on a state border.

I have wondered though if that wasn't more due to the large, triangular pointer on the GPS screen itself. Put the way point on the interior cross hairs of the pointer and the actual is slightly off. Put it on the exact tip of the pointer and it is more often than not dead on.

But 2.5 miles off? For a landmark border like this? This deserves looking into. Even older survey techniques couldn't stand that kind of error factor. Somebody is laughing up their sleeve.

Lost On The Evolutionary Border

I really wanted to leave a tribute to Charles Darwin on his birthday in February. I could just never fight my way all the way through the damn thing. It was like the nerve block they now use in some surgery that keeps every feeling dead on the downstream side of the block. I couldn't finish it and I couldn't write anything else.

The idea I had was that dying daily newspapers were a demonstration of Charlie's principle of survival of the fittest. If you don't adapt to your environment, you die. Daily newspapers are dying, ergo, they did not adapt. Between Charlie's birthday and this date, our own loved and eclectic Seattle Post-Intelligencer died. It is more than ironic that its final issue sold out and went into reprint. Not enough people wanted it until it was dead.

Smarter people than me have talked (and still are, and will into the unforeseeable future) about why these formerly strong enterprises are a disappearing medium. I don't want to talk about business models today, or consolidation, corporatism, bowling alone, N2, media 3.0, journalistic arrogance or communication theory period.

I'm posting this and moving on.