Lif Strand

Many people don't truly see what's around them. They look at the trail immediately in front of them, maybe at a bird in a tree that they hear - but they don't look near + far, in front + to the side + behind.  They don't pay attention to the sky - where the sun is, what the sky looks like above and in the four directions in the distance.  Many people don't pick a point to head for (like a mountain top, or a tall dead tree, something easy to find again if they lose view of it temporarily), and they don't do it every time they are moving in the wilderness. Even when they're on a clear trail. So many people just go any which way, so of course they don't know how to get back to where they came from..

It's stunning to me how many people have no clue where north is. To me I'm always subconsciously aware of compass directions.
It's equally stunning to me how many people don't look to see what the view behind them is. I mean, when you want to go back, it's nice to know what going back will look like.

Too many people in the wilderness think of themselves as the center of the universe where everything revolves around them, when in fact they are motes moving through an infinite universe and it is each person's responsibility to understand where their place is in that universe by paying attention to their surroundings as they go.

Gordon Longfoot wrote:
There were prairie dogs in our front field before we moved to our farm. This was out in Springerville.

Are you still in Springerville? If so, that would explain why your conditions seem so similar to mine, because I live in NM 30 miles east of Springerville! And if you are still there and that's what all your posts are about, your experiences will be super valuable for me and the tough growing conditions of this area!

Jeremy Baker wrote:Our neighbors use trench gardening in the southern AZ. They love it for plants that are not “desert” plants. They dig down about a foot then toss a bunch of weeds, grass, and organic matter in the bottom. Then they replace some of the topsoil and plant herbs, vegetables, or berries.

Anything I plant in the ground has to have the hole lined with metal screen for critter protection (gophers, moles, even prairie dogs). Everything is so hungry around here because of the drought that even the rusty water troughs I used to plant in won't work - the critters somehow get through the rust places. This year I'm going to try planting in straw bales that are on top of metal roofing panels PLUS will have metal screen on the sides. I can't even get angry about the loss of my garden knowing that starvation desperation is driving them.

Climate change changes everything.

Gordon Longfoot wrote:Petty much everywhere you look there's dead bushes or a mix of red dirt and sand.

Looks like you're over 5000' altitude, more like where I live in NM - 7000' and near the NM/AZ border. I recognize that red sandy soil!  

I've had so much gardening failure over the years that if I was way more rational than I am, I'd have given up years ago. One frustration is that the gardening solutions for even low desert don't apply here. The altitude changes so much, meaning that it's not just wind to deal with, but also extreme temperature fluctuations on a daily basis, poor soil, severe water shortages, and a short growing season.

There are some amazing solutions, though, and for that I look at high desert solutions elsewhere in the world, and also historical gardening solutions that are specific to these very specific conditions. The greatest success seems to come from creating microclimate zones and historically this has included terracing (which,  when there weren't any slopes to terrace, were created by digging deep pits and terracing the sides); irrigation systems, crops that were adapted to high altitude extremes, and intense soil management.  

Check out trench gardens, African Zai pit gardening, sunken beds, and traditional  Zuni waffle gardening. Ancient Incan pit gardens were hundreds of feet deep for community gardening, but 1-2 foot deep pits will work just fine for individual farms, too.  

Also, check out rock gardening - where rocks are thermal balancers and mulch all at once!

Finally, check out high prairie gardening as well if your area isn't as extreme as mine, e.g. https://www.theprairiehomestead.com/2015/05/desert-gardening.html

Jay Angler wrote: I didn't have to meet the cops, but I sometimes carry collapsible chopsticks with me.  

Oooh, I had to look online for collapsible chopsticks - do you have metal or wooden? I see some that are bamboo on the food end, stainless steel on the hand end. I never knew there were so many choices!

I remember my first flights across the country on a commercial plane, coast-to-coast nonstop. I loved flying then. Unfortunately that love turned sour and now it's been 20 years or more since I've flown anywhere.

The airlines changed my mind about the flying experience with increased "hub-and-spoke" stops, and with smaller seats. I've never liked being in crowds and the whole rush in airports and then being trapped in seats between people was torture for me.  I still flew, though - going to warm places when it was brutally cold at home, and being with family or friends, too, was a treat I'd suffer flying for.

But then came 9/11 and TSA. The addition of security and its absurdity and indignities, plus the need to show up at airports hours before a flight was just too much. I already live 3 hours from the closest major airport and because my flights were so artificially long (more and more layovers added), I'd be putting in 12 hours or more of travel before I even landed at my destination.  After that I figured I'd rather drive in my own car with all the stuff I'd like to have with me no matter how long it took, rather than spend a whole day traveling and a second day cranky as I recovered from traveling.

Driving did rule out flying to tropical islands in the winter, though.

Even before there were strict carry-on limits, I started shipping my clothes via USPS or UPS depending on where I was going. Shipping meant I didn't have to fight the people who carry on all their huge suitcases and claim all the space the overhead storage, and I didn't  have to deal with hunting for my own suitcases after landing, when inevitably it was the middle of the night and I was exhausted.  My carry on bag was small, only as much as would fit under a seat - easy access to it plus no worries about no overhead space. To me not having to deal with luggage was worth the extra cost, plus I liked having my stuff waiting for me at my destination because  I shipped far enough in advance to already know it was there.

Note that my current feelings are because my flying experience started in a time when I could buy a ticket right at the airport in Boston or NY at the last minute, hop on a plane, stretch out with elbow room, get a nice meal, and end up in CA with enough time to go out to dinner and party after with friends. I didn't have to buy a first class ticket for that, either! Paying more for being treated like cattle on the way to the slaughterhouse does not appeal to me these days.

There were some really wet winters in the central California coastal areas in the 1980s. We lived in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains east of Freedom CA, which were covered with Monterey pines and eucalyptus trees all 75 ft. and more tall.

The pines have really shallow roots, and during one particular storm we could see the ground moving as the trunks of the huge trees swayed in the wind. Our horses were freaked out. I went out to calm down one of our Arabian stallions, and was standing next to him in his pen when suddenly a two-foot diameter tree trunk was laying on top of the metal fence panel inches from my shoulder. The tree had fallen so silently that we had no warning. The stallion and I simply stood there, trying to comprehend what had just happened. To this day I have no memory of any sound but the wind, though the top rail of the fence panel was deeply bent!

That was a near miss, for sure, but we put off taking down the pines that were too close to structures until one fell down on a single-wide mobile home during another storm. Luckily no one was hurt in that incident either. Lesson learned: clear the land of trees near structures, no matter how much you think you need shade on your roof.

(Kudos to Powder River for their equine fence panels that we hauled all the way to New Mexico when we moved, because they were too good to leave behind).

Jay Angler wrote:
The idea of using solar collectors and fiber optic cables makes sense to me, as I don't think we really appreciate some of the nuances of real sunlight. It's the difference between "NPK  fertilizer" which hurts the biome, vs homemade compost tea. To make lights "more efficient", much of the range has been removed and focus is on the "essential to work" light wavelengths. Just because we don't know what goodness comes from the non-visible spectrum, doesn't mean it isn't important?

I think that DVDs or aluminum foil or whatever "found" reflective materials we might use would be great for bouncing light from the non-visible spectrum, but I know that glass (and many plastics) block at least the UVB rays needed for vitamin D production in humans. Metal bounces UVB rays better than regular mirrors due to the glass surfaces of mirrors. I'm guessing that this would be true of other non-visible spectrum lighting.

If the important thing is getting full-spectrum light into a building, then it has to somehow not have to go through glass or most plastics.  Google says good quality plastic greenhouse panels (clear polyethylene or polycarbonate) transmit the entire full light spectrum best, so to me the setup would be a sunroom attached to a building, with clear polyethylene or polycarbonate greenhouse panels. Then light that is bounced off of metal surfaces deeper into the house or other structure would be healthier for humans, critters, and plants.  

Pearl Sutton wrote:
The other things I like are carefully crumpled tinfoil behind glass, smooth foil with no glass, and dead CD and DVD disks. The DVDs change the scatter pattern a lot and soften the glare, and change the color.
The crumpled foil really spreads light around. Smooth foil doesn't do as well (I think it gets dirty fast) but still brightens up dark corners.

I would think that crumpled foil would work the way you are describing because it has many surfaces to reflect kind of like the DVD discs do. Now I'm thinking about some kind of a combination of aluminum can tiles with DVD discs. A work of art rather than merely functional.

Pearl Sutton wrote:What I'm looking at here is bouncing light around in a house...

I love that you are experimenting. That makes me want to experiment, too!

Now I'm thinking about what using a bunch of "tiles"made of aluminum cans  on a ceiling would do. Or the same on walls.