GeoWandering

09/15/2021

Take a ride! Day and night scenes from a typical Playa ride-about. The 500 stand alone art pieces weren't on the Play this year, but pieces of human art was strewn about. We made up for solo rides across the playascape looking at isolated art pieces, with ever greater focus on the human connection. BLM rules limited much of our activities, from there being no public toilets, to no fire art of any kind. Our art was limited to the wheeled kind, although ranger enforcement seems slacking. It was a Burnless Burn. Lots of human sparks, without the fire!

Take a ride! Day and night scenes from a typical Playa ride-about. The 500 stand alone art pieces weren't on the Play this year, but pieces of human art was ...

01/06/2021

Returning to Rodeo, New Mexico. In 2008 I travelled to this remote place to be a part of the new sport of Aerotrekking. The infamous John McAfee (of spyware fame) is an extraordinarily creative person that I was intrigued by - he was an extremely successful businessman, a yoga teacher and lover of alternative living. His best friends had told me that he was the world's first hacker - he thus created the world's first anti-virus programs that made him worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

I arrived at the abandoned military base (bought by McAfee) only weeks after John's own nephew was killed, along with a trainee sharing the tandem ultralight craft. A third death occurred soon after, and only a week before my own arrival. The tangled wreckage remained eerily behind the tarmac shed, and was located only steps from my lodging.

This was an uncomfortable introduction, yet I continued with training. The idea of flying ultralights had been in my dreams for years. I was determined to proceed. Learning to fly with the eagles had been a dream of mine since helping friends organize the world's first 'round the world' ultralight flight in the mid 80s.

The highlight of my training included looking down upon the maze of rocky fins where Geronimo and his band of Indians hid out from the Cavalry, including the exact location where Geronimo Surrendered! From 2,000 feet above, I could see how easily Geronimo could lose the hot pursuit of the cavalry within such a maze of slot canyons.

The Sky Gypsy's are continuing a scaled down version of Aerotrekking to this day, but from a different location. The beautiful $16 million Rodeo aerotrekking grounds that John had polished out with movie theatre, restaurant and multiple hangers was sold in 2009 for pennies on the dollar. John exiled himself to Belize as he was escaping the huge liability for the criminal death of his nephew. It was found that his nephew was training without a licence and had made a fatal, if amatuer, decision to fly up a canyon that didn't have the width to turn around, particularly as he approached the pinched walls at the Canyon's head.

John has been on the run ever since, and he lost most of his fortune in the real estate collapse and other bad investments.

A few days ago, 12 years after my time in Rodeo, I've returned to see the abandoned buildings. However, my memories are firmly implanted. I'd been assigned an Airstream trailer located adjacent to Howard Hughes own trailer. John felt a kinship with the world's most famous reclusive billionaire and had paid a fortune for the trailer, and had it hauled to Rodeo. John would sometimes sleep over in the trailer - one eccentric person bonding with the ghost of another.

So impressed by Airstreams, I quickly went out and bought my own, and enjoyed it for the next decade.

John remained on the run for years -- after being implicated for the unsolved murder of his neighbor in Belize, and for tax evasion in the U.S. He was arrested only weeks ago and is currently in a Madrid Jail pending extradition to America.

12/29/2020

Thru rural Arizona, New Mexico and Texas...A photographers palette😊 Churches of a different era, poor ones to exuberant ones, the town of Hope....”I am now beyond Hope”🤣. A confederate flag over a “compound” (only way to describe it). I dare not hover close to that one 🙃. Abandoned houses catch my imagination of forgone history. Art!!! I love the artistic expression appearing in unexpected places - zany...eccentric and otherworldly. I’ve purposely adjusted Google Map settings to avoid highways. Rural America of 50 to 100 years ago is alive and weathering in hidden corners!

12/26/2020

Who woulda thought Texas has some landscape-magic! Of course I’d be drawn to the tallest mountain range in this huge state! Guadalupe National Park hosted me on this Christmas Day! My hike took me boulder-hopping up a cactus strewn ravine! The destination being a high walled narrow grotto. The 200 million year old mudstone (basically petrified algal mats) contained imprints of ripple marks, petrified branches and more! During that ancient period, this part of Texas was under an ocean. Crazy.

12/23/2020

Organ Pipe National Monument is definitely worth my 3 night stay! Hikes abound, with sunshine and near 80F temps that dosed me big with needed vitamin D! Organ Pipe got its name from pioneers that thought that when the plant dies and lay across the ground, they look like a church’s organ pipes!

Symbiotic’s at work - like the Saguaro, the bat is the Organ Pipe’s primary pollinator.

The otherworldly feeling of this place is teasing me to remain longer. If you’re a diver - this place looks like a terrestrial mix of hard and soft corals and will draw you ever inward, like how coral draws you downward and clenches you within its maze of mysterious forms.

I’m right on the edge of the Mexican border and man, talk about a huge new industry! Border wall building is a billion $ pop-up industry here. Crazy amounts of gravel and concrete trucks are crowding the roads! This is where the first section of trumps “Bollard” border wall was built (see pic). Conservationists say it cuts thru the most spectacular Sonoran desert ecosystem on the planet. Trump went around all environmental reviews to build this wall within a protected National Park, which is also a UNESCO world protected landscape (Biosphere Reserve)!

There’s also some kind of supersized MRI machine that we must pass our vehicles within if we choose to access the little border town of Lukeville. With a name like “Lukeville,” you gotta know it’s not a Mexican town 🤣 - so why the scrutiny? I wanted to use their post office, but decided not to proceed. The area had trump written all over it, which seems all the more surreal because the Park is full of chill nature lovers. Big tangent here - do you think trump has ever stepped foot on a nature trail?

Another side note, I picked up a chunk of ore rock from a historic mine that I hiked to. The oxidation and big crystals tell of a copper/gold blend. However, I’m traveling for adventure, not a payday🤣

12/21/2020

Heading out to the southern edges of America! First stop...Parker Dam (Colorado River). When LA people say “I’m headed to the River”...this is where they go!

My paternal grandmother was an amateur geologist (rock hound) and this is where she retired in the early 60s. Twice, my mother put me on a Greyhound bus to spend several days with grandma Genevieve, and I was only 5 and 6 years old! Once with my 8 year old brother and the second time solo! Those were different days! This was a 6 hour bus ride!

I recall that the only places along the River were her mobile home park and the corner Indian owned shack/store. Keith and I were allowed to walk to the shack alone to buy candy. It was maybe a mile away and we’d make it like ten, as we’d hunt for jasper, arrowheads and rattlesnakes. I own a big arrowhead collection from that era - inherited from Genevieve.

Genevieve owned a 4x4 truck and she once took me along on her mail (and home-cooked muffin) delivery route. We headed off into the desert to visit old miners working solitary diggings in no-mans land. Man, they loved seeing grandma - likely their only visitor in a week!.

My three brothers and I had an affinity for exploring old mines and often reminisced about the life during the many weeks-long desert camping trips dad took us on. 15 years later, my brother Dave and I took up the mining life in the Sierra Nevada (even Keith later joined in). We knew there was gold to be found in them thar’ hills! We spent a couple summers diving for gold with scuba-like gear and submersible dredge. Of course, all this eventually led to my becoming a geologist. The hunt for gold was thrilling, but mostly, I just wanted to be outdoors. I went on to have a 20 year career as an environmental geologist - actually cleaning up the messes left behind by miners and “exploitation” geologists 😞.

Returning to Parker Dam has brought me a lot of fond memories - back to my roots! The area’s changed crazy-like! Now, there are trailer parks lining both sides of the River for untold miles. ATVs are ripping up the desert landscape all round, and I won’t stay long....but my memories are forever❤️