Maverick Philosopher

Richard Peck, Seeker of Lost Gold

Substack latest.

Western Superstitions: Hieroglyphic Canyon Hike out of Cloudview Trailhead

MavPhil commenter Trudy Vandermolen and her husband Ken from Michigan paid me a visit yesterday. It's becoming an annual thing. Next year: either the Garden Valley Loop out of the First Water Trailhead or Fremont Saddle out of Peralta. Here are a couple of shots of me and Trudy from the hike I took them on. Photo credit: Ken. 

Trudy, "The guidebook said this hike is moderate!" Me, "It is by the standards of the Superstition Wilderness." 

"These are trails that try men's soles." Thus spoke the Sage of the Superstitions.

Gunfire Tonight!

One of the exciting things about living out here in the Arizona Territory is that all too many local hombres love to greet the the New Year with a hail of gunfire aimed heavenward. It adds a nice Middle Eastern touch to the Copper State.

Part of the problem is the sad state of science education in these United States. There are people who do not understand that a falling projectile poses a threat. (I have actually met such people.) They understand that they cannot catch with their bare hands a round fired at them; but they don’t understand that that same round, falling on a human head from a sufficient height, will kill the head’s unlucky possessor.

Let’s see if we can understand the physics. If I jump from a chair to the floor, no problem. Same if I jump from a table to the floor. But I shrink back from neighbor Bob’s suggestion that I jump from my roof to the ground. "Just kick away the ladder, like Wittgenstein, and jump down." Nosiree Bob! But why should it be any different? The mass of my body remains invariant across the three scenarios. And the gravitational field remains the same. But the longer I remain falling in that field, the faster I move. A body falling in the earth’s gravitational field falls at the rate of 32 feet per second PER SECOND. Thus the body ACCELERATES. The body’s velocity is ever increasing. Now the momentum of a moving object -- which is roughly a measure of the amount of effort it would take to stop it from moving -- is the product of its velocity and its mass. So a small mass like a bullet, left falling for a long enough time, will attain a high velocity and thus a high momentum, and so do a lot of damage to anything it comes in contact with, a human skull for example.

Sunset Crater

Better the Visitor's Center than Flagstaff!

 

On the Water Front

It is still deliciously cool, mornings, this Sonoran spring in the Zone, but the summer will soon be upon us. And so my regimen changes. I leave for my desert mountain bike ride earlier and earlier. This morning I was out from 5:11 to 6:37. First light is now around 5:00. The idea is to get to the Easternmost point of my loop before Old Sol is up and in my eyes. Ideally, he peeps his ancient head over the Superstition ridgeline just as I am turning Southwest.

The true Zone Man follows the sun.

Will I buy an e-bike? Eventually, after I can no longer respectably crank my Trek 930 over hill and dale, road and trail.

As for what Thoreau calls "the philosopher's drink,"  I double the early-morning hydration this time of year: no less than two 12 oz glasses of water right after arisal, and only then to coffee, that synaptic lubricant par excellence without which morning would be a mistake.

I exaggerate slightly and your mileage may vary.

To Those Fleeing California

DO NOT come to Arizona! It's just too damned hot here for you snowflakes. And on top of that everybody is packing heat. That's why you don't hear any honking on the highways and byways. "An armed society is a polite society."

We are racist to the core in this rattlesnake-infested inferno which is also home to the scorpion, the Gila monster, and other venomous critters no librul would want to tangle with. There is nothing here but hot sand and dirt lightly covered with some dessicated but still prickly-as-hell vegetation such as cat claw.

Everything here either sticks, stings, or stinks.  Go elsewhere! Oregon and Idaho would love to have you.  Or better yet: wallow in the shit you shat. Enjoy the sanctuary that your sanctimonious silliness has built. Receive the wages of wokery.

 

 

California lost a Congressional seat due to mass exodus. Excellent! Geographically beautiful, California is now a political craphole to rival the People's Republic of Taxachusetts. I say that as a native Californian who lived for most of the '70s in Boston.

Arizona Sunset, New Year's Eve, 2022

Tulsi Gabbard Endorses Kari Lake for Arizona Governorship

Here

Mark Granza Interviews Blake Masters: 'Woke' Capitalism and Kyle Rittenhouse

(Related: my Substack article, The Trial of Kyle.)

Here is the interview.  A couple of excerpts:

Mark Granza: A decade ago most people would have considered ‘Woke Capitalism’ a contradiction, and probably laughed at the idea. Today, nobody questions its existence. Do you think there are there inherent characteristics within Capitalism that transform it into a progressive machine, or are corporations simply responding to the ideological demands of the political class?

Blake Masters: Capitalism works. It’s a really good system for generating wealth. The problem with capitalism is that can work too well in a sense, it can create the conditions for people to grow complacent, which ultimately, as Ross Douthat has written, contributes to the sort of decadence we’re experiencing today. Capitalism’s an incredible engine of material progress, but it’s not a self-contained moral system. It has its own incentives, but those incentives aren’t always necessarily correlated with a conception of the good. Companies under capitalism just respond to profit incentives. If you act on them you’ll generate a lot of wealth, but it won’t tell you what to do with that wealth, which is why a parasite like Wokeness can basically spread and take over. An example is offshoring. Maybe it’s good for GDP, but if you have too much of it, that’s clearly really bad for the country and most people living in it. It crushes the middle class by sending jobs overseas by the millions. But such are the incentives that the capital owners are responding to. So I think problems like Woke Capitalism, or ‘globalization’, are actually much older and bigger problems than people think. Because you can’t just be a capitalist country, because a country is not just an economy. You also need a conception of yourself as a nation, as a people, and as a culture. And that’s what America is increasingly lacking today.

BV: The last three sentence are very important. A country is not just an economy. Do libertarians understand this? Not to my knowledge. They want to reduce everything to economics when it is the history, heritage, and culture of a nation that provides the framework within which a successful economy can operate. Or is the rule of law an economic concept?  How about the concept of citizen?

Mark Granza: I’d like to move from here to the issue of Justice in America. You were a vocal supporter of Kyle Rittenhouse before and during the trial. What do you think the fact that Kyle (as opposed to someone like Gaige Grosskreutz) was the one being prosecuted says about the US justice system?

Blake Masters: I think we’re very close to a two-tier justice system, if we’re not there already. Look how differently loyalists and dissidents are punished today. The Kyle Rittenhouse case was simple. The ruling class hated that a young man defended himself with an AR-15 because it contradicts their official narrative. And so they did everything they could to punish Kyle. The FBI literally withheld high-resolution version of the footage from Kyle’s lawyers, because it basically clearly exonerated Kyle and they found that inconvenient. Now I think the jury’s decision to acquit Kyle of all charges showed that you can still get sort of a fair trial in America, that there’s hope. But again, that only happened because in this case, there happened to be extremely clear video evidence in his favor. If there weren’t, Kyle would be in jail for life. So this case is a wake-up call. It’s crazy that Rittenhouse, and not his attackers, was on trial at all. Contrast that to how the BLM and Antifa looters and rioters who committed violent mayhem during the summer of 2020 – nothing happened to them! And on the off-chance one of them did get arrested, then-Senator and Vice Presidential candidate Kamala Harris was there with her bail fund, just waiting to bail them out. Meanwhile, the January 6 protestors, many of whom were not violent at all, are treated like terrorists, with some being held without trial in solitary confinement and others getting sentenced to many years in prison. If we don’t do something now, the rule of law will soon be gone forever. Anyone who questions the left’s narrative is going to be hunted down. I truly believe that. That’s what we’re fighting against.

BV: Again I say that the last three sentences are very important. 

^{Blake Masters gives a speech next to Donald Trump, December 2021.}

Superstition Wilderness: Garden Valley Loop out of First Water Trailhead

The boys were a little anxious but acquitted themselves well on this five and a half mile loop through characteristically rugged Superstition terrain except for the easy walk through Garden Valley itself. The guide books say it takes four and a half hours. It took the old men a bit longer. We left at 6:36 and were back at the Jeep at 11:22 ante meridian. We made the full trip to Hackberry Spring which involves an arduous return via some scrambling  and a lot of streambed rock hopping.

In these times that try men's souls it is excellent therapy to be on trails that try men's soles.  Isn't that cute?

Dennis proudly standing and your humble correspondent sitting near Hackberry Spring. Photo credit: Jeff K. 

Dale Tuggy has a good eye. Here is a shot from our Good Friday hike, 3 April, 2015.  We are headed back to the trailhead from Hackberry Spring  via the First Water Creek bed.

And here is the man himself in the vicinity of Hackberry Spring:

Easter Monday Local Ramble

Out the front door, plenty of elevation gain and loss. Hike much, stay sane. The boys acquitted themselves well. Photo credit: Dennis M.

Sonoran Spring

Photo credit: Wifey

Treasure Loop, Western Superstitions, 5 April 2022

Lost Dutchman State Park with the Goldfield Mountains to the West behind me. Double left-click for close-up. Photo credit: Dennis Murray.

All's Well that Ends Well

The hike was almost over.  The light was failing as we gingerly negotiated the last steps of the treacherous downgrade of Heart Attack Hill on the Bluff Spring Trail in the Superstition Mountains.  Suddenly my hiking partner let out a yell and jumped back at the unmistakable sound of a diamond back rattlesnake (crotalus atrox).  It was a perfect hike: physically demanding in excellent company with a dash of danger at the end. 

The Lure of the Trail

Modern man, a busy little hustler, doesn't know how to live.

Substack latest.

Fremont Saddle, Western Superstitions. Weaver's Needle

To Those Fleeing California

DO NOT come to Arizona! It's just too damned hot here for you snowflakes. And on top of that everybody is packing heat. That's why you don't hear any honking on the highways and byways. "An armed society is a polite society."

We are racist to the core in this rattlesnake-infested inferno which is also home to the scorpion, the gila monster, and other venomous critters no librul would want to tangle with. There is nothing here but hot sand and dirt lightly covered with some dessicated but still prickly-as-hell vegetation such as cat claw. Everything here either sticks, stings, or stinks.  Go elsewhere! Oregon and Idaho would love to have you.  Or better yet: wallow in the shit you shat. Enjoy the sanctuary that your sanctimonious silliness has built.

Arizona Governor Issues Stay-at-Home Order

Here:

Gov. Doug Ducey on Monday issued a statewide "stay-at-home" order to slow the spread of the new coronavirus, preventing Arizonans from leaving their residences except for food, medicine and other "essential activities."

The directive, which also allows for outdoor exercise, will take effect upon close of business Tuesday [3/31] and apply through at least April 30.

You extroverts will suffer, and it will be a moral challenge for us introverts to contain our Schadenfreude.

Richard Peck, Seeker of Lost Gold

(A re-post, with corrections and additions, from 13 January 2010)

Living as I do in the foothills of the Superstition Mountains, I am familiar with the legends and lore of the Lost Dutchman Gold Mine. Out on the trails or around town I sometimes run into those characters called Dutchman Hunters. One I came close to meeting was Richard Peck, but by the time I found out about his passion from his wife, Joan, he had passed away. Sadly enough, Joan unexpectedly died recently.

Joan had me and my wife over for dinner on Easter Sunday a few years ago, and my journal (vol. XXI, pp. 34-35, 28 March 2005) reports the following:

Joan's dead husband Rick was a true believer in the Dutchman mine, and thought he knew where it was: in the vicinity of Weaver's Needle, and accessible via the Terrapin trail. A few days before he died he wanted Joan to accompany his pal Bruce, an unbeliever, to a digging operation which Bruce, a man who knows something about mining, did not perform. Rick to Joan, "I want you to be there when he digs up the gold."

Via the wonders of the Internet I found a Time Magazine article, Adventure and the American Individualist dated 19 November 1965. On p. 4 we read about Richard Peck:

Richard Peck, 44, is a Princeton graduate, the father of three children and the owner of a Cincinnati advertising agency. He has spent the past 16 months trying to find the famed Lost Dutchman gold mine in Arizona's barren Superstition Mountain range. "The more I read about the Lost Dutchman," he recalls, "the more I kept coming back to it. Finally, I was sure I knew where the Lost Dutchman was. I was going to tear this thing open. I thought I was going to have it wrapped up in two weeks." So far his search has cost him $80,000. "I had to try something like this because it was so impossible. But if this mine is ever found it's still going to hurt in a lot of ways. Something is going to be lost out of this world."

What a story! A successful, educated, 44-year-old man, possibly in the grip of a midlife crisis, spends 16 months and $80,000 grubbing around in wild and unforgiving (but not "barren"!) country searching for an almost certainly nonexistent mine. Unlike Adolph Ruth, another white-collar type who sought adventure in them thar hills, Peck came out of the mountains alive. And that was back in the '60s. Peck, whose name was shortened from 'Peckstein' according to Joan, lived on for another 40 years or so. It thus appears that the quest for the lost gold was the main passion of his life. He believed in its existence until the end of his life.

As I write this, I look out my window at Superstition mountain wreathed mysteriously in low-lying clouds and reflect that to live well, a man needs a quest. Without a quest, a life lacks the invigorating "strenuosity" that William James preached.

But if he quests for something paltry such as lost treasure, it is perhaps best that he never find it. For on a finite quest, the 'gold' is in the seeking, not in the finding. A quest worthy of us, however, cannot be for gold or silver or anything finite and transitory. A quest worthy of us must aim beyond the ephemeral, towards something whose finding would complete rather than debilitate us.

Nevertheless, every quest has something in it of the ultimate quest, and can be respected in some measure for that reason.

......................................................

See also:

Richard Fuller Peck, '43

I Introduce Two New Friends to the Superstition Mountains

One of the great boons of blogging is that the blogger attracts the like-minded.  Below are two medical doctors I had the great pleasure of spending the day with in a satisfying break from my Bradleyan reclusivity. Dave K. found me via this weblog and initiated correspondence, so I knew he would be simpatico. I didn't know about his wife, Barbara C. , but she turned out also to be a member of the Coalition of the Sane, a Trump supporter, and one charming lady of Italian extraction.

Halcyon October in the Western Superstitions

Photo credit: Barbara Caffaratti

Train Bound for Nowhere

Theme music: Kenny Rogers, The Gambler

The Open Road from the Cockpit of a Jeep Wrangler

Theme music: Eagles, Take it Easy

Parker Pass, Western Superstitions, March 2019

Dennis M. holds forth.

Peripatetic Philosophy in the Western Superstitions

Dale Tuggy and I explored some new trails in a four and one half hour ramble out of the Cloudview Trailhead, 30 March 2019. Weather exquisite, companionship excellent, conversation both deep and wide-ranging. Physical condition at the end: righteously tuckered and ready for re-hydration. In a word, beer.

 

 

2

Snow on Superstition Mountain

On the Dutchman's Trail to Parker Pass

My e-mail to Jeff and Dennis:

Weather forecast looks favorable. The Sage of the Superstitions will take you boys on a pussy cat hike and introduce you to Parker Pass.   I don't believe you two have been out this way. Out and back, 4. 6 miles. Little elevation change, but a number of creek crossings. If we feel like it we can  explore an unmarked side trail.

 

Sunrise at 7:06. Please be at my house at 6:30.  No hike if rain.

 

https://hikearizona.com/decoder.php?ZTN=201

Weather proved more than favorable. Cold but clear after a few days of rain. Distant ridges flecked with snow. Ethereal wisps of cloud wreathed some peaks. Streams running strong; one even babbled in a language indecipherable. Numerous stream crossings tested our agility. Not too much mud and dreck, just enough to add interest and texture. The hike commenced at the First Water trailhead at 7:15 AM. A leisurely climb brought us to the pass at the stroke of 9:00. A half-hour at the pass for coffee and snacks, and then we mosied on down, making it back to the Jeep at 10:45. I calculated our pace to be about 1 and 1/2 miles per hour. Nothing to crow about, of course, but not bad for old men in rugged country.

Access road in very good shape despite all the rain. Didn't even need the four-wheel drive, but used it anyway to give it some exercise and keep the fluids viscous and happy.

From Peralta to First Water: A Tribute to Lloyd Glaus

This morning I received the news that my neighbor and fellow hiker Lloyd Glaus had died. What follows is a redacted entry from an earlier pre-Typepad version of this weblog in which I reported on a memorable trans-Superstition hike we took together over ten years ago, on 29 October 2007, when Lloyd was 75 years old and I was 57.

....................

How long can we keep it up?

I mean the running, the biking, the hiking and backpacking? Asking myself this question I look to my elders: how do they fare at their advanced ages? Does the will to remain fit and strong pave a way? For some it does. Having made the acquaintance of a wild and crazy 75-year-old who ran his first marathon recently in the Swiss Alps, uphill all the way, the start being Kleine Scheidegg at the base of the awesome Eiger Nordwand, the North Wall of the Eiger, I invited him to a little stroll in the Superstitions, there to put him under my amateur gerontological microscope. Lloyd's wife Annie dropped us off at the Peralta Trailhead in the dark just before first light and we started up the rocky trail toward Fremont Saddle. 

Eight and a half hours  later she kindly collected us at First Water, the temperature having risen to 95 degrees. Lloyd acquitted himself well, though the climb from Boulder Basin to Parker Pass left him tuckered. And he got cut up something fierce when we lost the trail and had to bushwack through catclaw and other nasty flora.

But he proved what I wanted proven, namely, that at 75 one can go for a grueling hike though rugged country in high heat and still have a good time and be eager to begin planning the next trip. Some shots follow. Click to enlarge. Weaver's Needle, the most prominent landmark in the Superstition Range and visible from all corners of the wilderness, but especially well from Fremont Saddle, our first rest stop, is featured in several of them.  

This is how I will remember Lloyd, and this is how I suspect he would want to be remembered -- with his boots on in the mountains.

 Tribute to Lloyd Glaus

Peralta-First Water October 2007

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

 

The Rugged Routes of the Superstition Mountains

These are trails that try men's soles.

......................

Most of my erudite and esteemed readers will catch the allusion, but in case you don't.

Age Quod Agis

Age quod agis is a well-known saying which is a sort of Latin call to mindfulness: do what you are doing. Be here now in the activity at hand.

Legend has it that Johnny Ringo was an educated man.  (Not so: a story for later.) But so he is depicted over and over. In this scene from Tombstone, the best of the movies about Doc Holliday and the shoot-out at the O. K. Corral, Ringo trades Latinisms with the gun-totin' dentist, who was indeed an educated man and a fearless and deadly gunslinger to boot, his fearlessness a function of his 'consumption.'

I don't mean his consumption of spirits, but his tuberculosis. His was the courage of an embittered man, close to death.

The translations in the video clip leave something to be desired. Age quod agis gets translated as 'do what you do best'; the literal meaning, however, is do what you are doing. Age is in the imperative mood; quod is 'what'; agis is the second person singular present tense of agere and means: 'you do' or 'you are doing.'

Curiously, Doc Holliday did not die with his boots on. He died in bed.

Related articles

Maverick Philosopher: Latin Versus Italian: Differences

The Picture Says it All

And this miserable flake had the chutzpah to steal Barry Goldwater's title, "Conscience of a Conservative"?

A paltry 100 semolians? 

The good news is that Flake is history and Milque-Toast McCain will soon be as well.  No, I don't want the latter dead; I want him and his obstructionism out of the Senate.  

The UT philosopher Rob Koons has penned an important article, Loyalty to Trump Important in Two-Party System.

Please read it. Several cuts above the usual political column.

A Little Road Trip . . .

. . . to Sedona, Arizona and back. Left early Friday, back at noon on Saturday. 338 miles round-trip from my place in the foothills of the Superstition Mountains by the leisurely and scenic route via Payson which avoids Phoenix and most of Interstate 17.  Wifey read a paper, so we had posh digs at the Bell Rock Hilton at conference rates.

I've lived in Hawaii, Santa Barbara, Boston, and the Midwest, not to mention other places in the USA and abroad.  No place beats Arizona, all things considered. That is a mighty subjective judgment, to be sure, but if a blogger cannot vent his subjectivity, who can?

For one thing, Arizona is in the West and we all know the West is the best, far, far away from the effete and epicene East, lousy with liberals, and the high taxes they love; but not so far West as to be on the Left Coast where there was once and is no more a great and golden state, California. Geographical chauvinism aside, there is beauty everywhere, even in California, when you abstract from the political and economic and social malaise wrought by destructive leftists, the majestic Sierra Nevada, for example, the Range of Light (John Muir). Herewith, an amateur  shot of the the Sedona red rock country:

Related articles

15 creepy destinations in the US for anyone obsessed with the supernatural

Trump Pardons Joe Arpaio

And conservatives cheer. Of course. Paul Mirengoff gets it right:

Arpaio was accused by the Obama Justice Department and other left-wingers of targeting Hispanics. Indeed, the legal case that led to his conviction arose from claims of racial profiling. But in Maricopa County, the illegal immigrant population is overwhelmingly Hispanic. Had the County been plagued by mass illegal immigration by Koreans, chances are Sheriff Joe would have targeted Asians. And he would have been right to do so. Sheriffs shouldn’t be expected to check their common sense at the door.

To be sure, the pardon of Arpaio is, at least in part, a political act by a president who campaigned on a tough-as-nails immigration policy and who received Arpaio’s backing. But there’s a pretty good argument that the prosecution of Arpaio was also political.

It was the highly politicized, left-wing Obama Justice Department that chose to prosecute Arpaio in connection with the hot button political issue of enforcing immigration laws. The judge whose order Arpaio defied apparently was satisfied with civil contempt. Team Obama went criminal on the octogenarian sheriff. And it did so, according to Arpaio’s lawyers, just two weeks before he stood for reelection.

The pardon thus can be said to represent a political end to a political case.

Some may defend the pardon by comparing it to egregious pardons of the past, like President Clinton’s pardon of wealthy fugitive Marc Rich and President Obama’s pardon of a Puerto Rican terrorist. Arguing form [from] these outliers strikes me as misguided. Their pardons were so flagrantly unjust that the same argument could be used to defend a great many indefensible pardons.

No such argument is required to defend Trump’s pardon of Arpaio. It was a reasonable exercise of the pardon power.

Clinton and Obama used the pardon power destructively, pardoning scumbags. Trump used it constructively, pardoning one who upheld the rule of law.

You say Arpaio is a racist? Do you understand that illegal aliens do not constitute a race?

But there is no point in addressing liberals with rational arguments. They don't inhabit the plane of reason. They will ignore your arguments and go right back to calling you a racist. They have found that that works, and they are out to win by any means.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Grave Matters

Mattie Earp was the first common-law wife of Wyatt Earp. She is buried in the Pinal Pioneer Cemetery a little east of where I live. I located her gravesite a few days ago and took the picture to the left.  'A. T.' abbreviates 'Arizona Territory.' More photos and commentary later, perhaps.

For now, a few tunes.

Carter Family, Bury Me Under the Weeping Willow Tree

Rosalie (Rosie) Hamlin of Rosie and the Originals died at age 71 on March 30th. A one-hit wonder, she will be remembered for her Angel Baby from 1961. John Lennon loved this song and recorded a version of it. But of course nothing touches the original.

Gregg Allman, too, shuffled off the mortal coil a few days ago, at age 69. Midnight Rider.

It's all a passing scene muchachos, a vanishing quantity, a riddle wrapped in a mist. Faith, hope, and love will help you through it.

 

February in Arizona

February brings to the Sonoran desert days so beautiful that one feels guilty even sitting on the back porch, half-outside, taking it all in, eyes playing over the spring green, lungs deeply enfolding blossom-laden warmish breezes.  One feels that one ought to be walking around in this earthly heaven.  And this despite my having done just that early this morning.   Vita brevis, and February too with its 28 days.  The fugacity of February to break the heart.  It's all fleeting, one can't get enough of it.  All joy wants eternity, deep, deep eternity.

And now I head back outside, away from this too-complicated machine, to read simply and slowly some more from Stages on Life's Way and to drink a cup of java to stave off the halcyon sleepiness wrought by lambent light and long vistas on this afternoon in the foothills of the Superstition Mountains.

Arizona Pot Prop 205 Defeated

I smoked my fair share of the stuff back in the day, and so I know whereof I speak: more potheads will only hasten the Decline of the West in its prime instance, the U. S. of A.  

Libertarians often argue that drug legalization would not lead to increased drug use.  I find that preposterous, and you should too.  There are at least three groups of people who are dissuaded from drug use by its being illegal.  See Libertarians and Drug Legalization.

I don't know how much dope Gary Johnson smokes but he seems to suffer from traces of amotivational syndrome as one might have gleaned from the collapse of his campaign.  (The Aleppo business, the sticking-out-of-tongue incident, his general dopiness.)  Even in dope-friendly Colorado, a good place to get Rocky Mountain high, he snagged only 4.9 % of the vote.  

As for the AZ pot prop, 47.9% voted for legalization, and 52.1% against.  

Related articles

A Gary Johnson Gaffe-Track: All the Times the Libertarian Candidate Really Didn't Know What He Was Talking About

The West is the Best

In every sense.  Well, maybe not in every sense: I live on the far eastern edge of the Phoenix metropolitan area with those glorious mountains right outside my window.  The western end of the Valle del Sol is flat and boring.  You may as well be in the Midwest.

Related articles

Diplomad on Drawing Mohammed

Conservative Cities are Better: Mesa, Arizona, for example

Arizona and California Gas Prices

Tough Phoenix sheriff may have new foe: George Soros

The Killer Mountains Claim Another Victim

Do as I say, not as I do.  Stay out of the rattlesnake infested inferno known as the Superstition Wilderness in summer! 18 June 2016:

A 25-year-old Phoenix man died while hiking on the Peralta Trail near Gold Canyon, according to Pinal County officials.

Anthony Quatela III, 25, was found dead after  county search-and-rescue personnel responded to a heat-related emergency call just after 1:30 p.m. Saturday.

Quatela was hiking with a friend who also suffered from a heat-related illness but is expected to recover, officials said.

The friend told deputies the pair had been hiking since 7:30 a.m. and were on what they called a "day hike." After a few hours, they ran out of water and Quatela began showing signs of heat illness, according to Sheriff's Office reports. The friend called 911 for help, officials said. Temperatures reached 111 degrees in the Valley on Saturday.

I often hike in the Killer Mountains in the summer, sometimes alone.  But I observe the following precautions:  I hydrate throughly before leaving the house and carry at least a gallon of water and enough gear and food to get me through the night if that should prove necessary; I carry a whistle and bright bandannas to attach to my hiking staff for signaling; and I stick to the itinerary that I leave with my wife, e.g., Black Mesa Loop, 9. 1 miles, out of First Water Trailhead, counterclockwise direction.  And of course I stay on the trail.  Don't go looking for the Lost Dutchman's gold.  There ain't no gold in them thar hills, but you could easily fall down a mine shaft.  Naturally you must start such a  hike at first light and be done with that ankle-busting 9 mile loop by about 10:00 AM.  Only a jackass with a death wish hikes in the middle of the day in these mountains in summer.

Here is a tale of three Utah fools who died several summers ago near Yellow Peak near the Black Mesa trail.  Here is Tom Kollenborn's account of when and where and by whom the bodies were recovered.

Here are my Five Ways of roasting your ass to a crisp in the Sonoran desert in summer.

Up for a hike?

Related articles

February in the Zone

Arizona and California Gas Prices

First Day of the Year, First Hike of the Year

Owl in Nest High Up in Saguaro Cactus

 Note the half moon, faintly visible.  Click to enlarge.

In the Vicinity of Hackberry Spring, Superstition Wilderness

Dale Tuggy has a good eye. Here is a shot from our Good Friday hike, 3 April, 2015.  We are headed back to the trail head via the First Water Creek bed.

 

February in the Zone

February brings to the Sonoran desert days so beautiful that one feels guilty even sitting on the back porch, half-outside, taking it all in, eyes playing over the spring green, lungs deeply enfolding blossom-laden warmish breezes.  One feels that one ought to be walking around in this earthly heaven.  And this despite my having done just that early this morning.   Vita brevis, and February too with its 28 days.  The fugacity of February to break the heart whose day is at its center.  It's all fleeting, one can't get enough of it.  Joy wants eternity.

And now, I head back outside, away from this too-complicated machine, to read simply and slowly some more from Stages on Life's Way and to drink a cup of java to stave off the halcyon sleepiness wrought by lambent light and long vistas on this afternoon in the foothills of the Superstition Mountains.

First Day of the Year, First Hike of the Year

I began the year right with a two-hour ramble right out my front door over the local hills. Very cold temps ramped up the usual saunter to a serious march.  I always go light: short pants, T-shirt, long-sleeved shirt, bandanna, light cotton gloves.  Rain that turned to snow overnight gave Superstition Mountain a serious dusting.

And I always take a notebook and a pen in case I get a really good idea.  Haven't had one yet, but you never know.

Walking in the wild, alone, is a pleasure to keep one sound in body and mind. "Really to see the sun rise or go down every day, so to relate ourselves to a universal fact, would preserve us sane forever." (Henry David Thoreau, Life Without Principle.)

Click on image to enlarge.

Conservative Cities are Better: Mesa, Arizona, for example

 Story here.  Excerpt:

While it’s willing to make investments, Mesa is also lean in ways that more bloated liberal cities can’t boast. Take the City Council. Despite Mesa’s hefty population, council members are part-timers who have day jobs in fields from education to copper mining. City leaders also pay themselves considerably less than those in other cities do. Mesa City Council members make only $33,000 a year, and the mayor is paid only $73,000. (And those salaries represent the fruits of a big raise: Before last year, city councilmembers made less than $20,000 a year and the mayor earned only $36,000.) By contrast, as of 2012, in similarly sized Fresno, the mayor made $126,000; city council members brought home nearly $65,000. In neighboring Phoenix, meanwhile, the mayor makes $88,000 and city councilmen earn more than $61,000.

 

 

Related articles

Black Top Mesa, Western Superstitions, 21 April 2013

Arizona and California Gas Prices

Big road trip last weekend: Phoenix, Barstow, Bakersfield, Santa Barbara and back by a different route.   The Jeep Wrangler runs on unleaded regular.  Paid $3.349/gal on 9/27 at Quartzsite, AZ off of I-10, one of the last Arizona gas-ups enroute to California.  Wait 'til Blythe on the California side of the Colorado River and you will get 'hosed.'  In Barstow, same day, I paid 3.579/gal at a Circle K.  In Bakersfield on 9/30 paid $3.979 at a Shell station.  Back home, yesterday, at Costco, $3.099/gal. Home, sweet home.

And the Sonoran desert is so much prettier than the Mojave!  But all deserts are beautiful to questers and other oddballs. 

Related articles

Staurday Night at the Oldies: Captain Beefheart and Buck Owens

The Strange Saga of the Last True Hermit

Why There's No Such Thing as the California Desert

I Feel the Earth Move Under my Feet

I missed Saturday Night at the Oldies because I was in La Mirada, California, for a conference at Biola University.  Ed Feser gave the keynote address and I was the commentator.  More about the proceedings later, perhaps.  But for now a quick  make-up:

Carole KIng, I Feel the Earth Move, from her 1971 Tapestry album.

An appropriate selection given the seismic events of Friday and Saturday in LaLaLand. On Friday evening I was quietly and comfortably ensconced in an easy chair in the guest suite of the Biola Philosophy House reading the Bible and Feser's Scholastic Metaphysics back and forth, when I felt the chair shift.  I was puzzled for a second until I realized that I was in Southern Calfornia, earthquake country.  I thought: no big deal.  As a native Californian, this was nothing new to my experience.  (I remember in particular the early morning San Fernando/Sylmar quake of February '71.)

Later that night, in bed, it was a bigger deal: the bed began moving back and forth.  I reflected that the Philosophy House  was single-story and that egress was quick and easy should that be necessary.  So I went back to sleep.

The third tremor I recall was near the end of the conference, and the fourth, rather more serious, occurred on Saturday night while David Limbaugh, Adam Omelianchuk, Ed Feser and I were enjoying a nice quiet conversation over beer in the Philosophy House.

It is good to be back on (relative) terra firma, here in Arizona, where earthquakes are infrequent and mild.  I've been out here 23 years and I don't recall experiencing even one.

There is no absolute terra firma.  All terrestrial things must pass. 

All hylomorphic compounds are subject to dissolution, and you are a hylomorphic compound.  Work out your salvation with diligence.

UPDATE:

Experts say a bigger earthquake along the lesser-known fault that gave Southern California a moderate shake could do more damage to the region than the long-dreaded "Big One" from the more famous San Andreas Fault.

The Puente Hills thrust fault, which brought Friday night's magnitude-5.1 quake centered in La Habra and well over 100 aftershocks by Sunday, stretches from northern Orange County under downtown Los Angeles into Hollywood — a heavily populated swath of the Los Angeles area.

A magnitude-7.5 earthquake along that fault could prove more catastrophic than one along the San Andreas, which runs along the outskirts of metropolitan Southern California, seismologists said.

The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that such a quake along the Puente Hills fault could kill 3,000 to 18,000 people and cause up to $250 billion in damage. In contrast, a larger magnitude 8 quake along the San Andreas would cause an estimated 1,800 deaths. [. . .]

Related articles

Book Notice: Edward Feser, Scholastic Metaphysics

Feser on Nagel

Krauss Kreamed

L.A. Fears Surprise Quake on Newly-Discovered Fault

Tony Flood on Governor Brewer's Capitulation

Commenting on a NYT piece on Brewer's capitulation to the anti-liberty forces of political correctness, long-time correspondent Anthony Flood writes:

 

“Religious liberty is a core American and Arizona value,” Governor Brewer philosophized, but “so is no discrimination.” The syntactically challenged governor, or was it her ghost-writer?, evaded the implication that, should the two conflict, religious liberty must give way to "no discrimination." 

To elicit the desired Pavlovian response, "discrimination," a "boo" word, replaced "freedom of association," once a "yay" word. The Christian photographer or baker who invites a same-sex couple to seek services elsewhere is slandered as the moral equivalent of a Jim Crow-era bigot. "No discrimination" -- which no American founding document honors -- is the inviolable dogma of post-Christian Humanism, itself a species of religion. 

The LGBT "civil rights movement," apparently bored with mere "tolerance," now demands participation by Christians in the celebration of what they deem morally abhorrent if they are "asked." If they refuse, they can risk prosecution or shutter their businesses. Humanism's propagandists, including many deluded but professing Christians, get to label their opponents "bullies" and "bigots." Meanwhile, AG Holder brazenly suggests to his state counterparts that they need not enforce statutes they swore an oath to uphold but which, in their superior wisdom, deem indefensible, particularly laws that defend traditional marriage. 

Let God be true, but every man a liar (Rom 3:4). He will not be mocked (Gal 6:7)

 

See my Liberal Fascism: The Floral Variation

Related articles

It's about Liberty, not Race

Anthony Flood on Philosophy as Misosophy, Part I

Anthony Flood's Tenth Anniversary

I Add to My Supply of Incandescents

On 11 June 2011, I wrote:

Banned on the Left Coast in the People's Republic of Californication!  It figures. It's sad to see what has become of my native state.  But I am fortunate to flourish in Arizona where bright sun and hard rock and self-reliant liberty-lovers have a suppressive effect on the miasma of leftists.  So with a firm resolve to stick it to the nanny-staters I headed out this afternoon in my Jeep Liberty to Costco where not a single incandescent was to be had.  So I went to Lowe's and cleaned 'em out.  I bought four 24-packs.  Three packs were Sylvania 60W 130V A19's @ $10.03 per pack  and one pack was Sylvania 100W 130V A19's @12.02 per pack.  Total: $42.11 for 96 bulbs. That comes to less than 44 cents per bulb.

The 130 volt rating means that I will get plenty of life out of these bulbs at the expense of a negligible reduction in illumination.  A voltage check at a wall socket revealed that I'm running just a tad below 120 V.

And now I am reminded of what were supposed to have been Goethe's last words: Licht, Licht, mehr Licht!  Light, light, more light!

....................

Today I went to Home Despot Depot  to bag the last of their stock.  I bought 24 4-packs of Phillips 60W A19 1000 hour soft white bulbs @ $1.47 per 4-pack.  So I paid $35.28 for 96 bulbs.  That comes to less than 37 cents per bulb.  Nice warm cheap light.

I reckon I'll burn out before they all do.

So that's  my politically incorrect act for the day.  Or at least one of them.

Sonoran White Tail Deer Breakfasting on Jojoba Behind My House

Peralta Canyon, Western Superstitions, 17 August 2013

Peter's girlfriend Carolyn wanted to go on a hike, but Peter the biker is no hiker.  So the guide task fell to me.  It was a tough job, but somebody had to do it. The day's high was 113 F. with monsoon humidity.

  

Related articles

Jeep Wrangler: Trailhead Access in Style

Another Hiker Lost in the Superstitions

It's a Dry Heat

It's hot and dry in these parts this time of year, the candy-assed snowbirds have all flown back to their humid nests, and we desert rats like it plenty.  That's why we live here.  You Californians stay put in your gun-grabbing, liberty-bashing, People's Republic of Political Correctness.

It may reach 121 Fahrenheit this week in some places.  Excessive Heat Warning. 

There's a rattlenake-infested wilderness right outside my door.  Up for a hike?

Risks of Desert Hiking

On Roasting Oneself: The Five Ways