That which does not kill me
The weather has settled down into perfectly normal, 70s and 80s in the daytime, 50s and 60s at night, with humidity in the teens, and some clouds now and then, in other words, "nothing to write home about"..... But that doesn't stop me from writing about it anyway.
I've given up trying to make a plan, or even think about what I'm going to do in the immediate future. My distant plans are to leave for Colorado somewhere around the middle of May, but what I'm going to do between now and then, I have no idea. Do I stay here or go somewhere else? I haven't a clue. At the current diesel fuel price, can I even afford to go somewhere else? And if I could afford it, do I really want to?
Ordinarily, this time of year, I would be running around southern Arizona looking for the Super Bloom that takes place every once in a while, where the desert flowers get to show their stuff. But in my current situation, running around hither and thither could get expensive, considering how far hither is all the way over to thither.
So these and many other questions will probably remain unanswered, since when faced with difficult questions, I generally revert to doing nothing at all and letting nature take its course.
This certainly has been the weirdest winter of my 11 years of full-timing life. Between losing New Mexico State Parks for boondocking, the weeks of extremely cloudy weather with hardly any solar charging for my batteries, the endless hundred-degree weather during what should have been the coldest months in Arizona, closing the Arizona Trust Land near Ben Avery's gun range, which was one of my favorite places to stay, and the highest price for diesel fuel I've ever experienced.
Without a doubt, this winter will be a memorable one, but not for its seemingly endless troubles; I will remember it for the obstacles and challenges I had to overcome to live and enjoy this boondocking life that I've adopted.
Theboondork..... That which does not kill me makes me stronger.
These are some pictures of where I have to walk nowadays, since I have some concerns about rattlesnakes, given how hot it's been.
This first picture is of a normal cow path I deal with in the middle of the picture; it's a little narrower than most, which increases the chance of a rattlesnake being hidden beside it. But my biggest concern with any cow path is the occasional cow pie that requires constant situational awareness.
Next would be this medium-sized dry wash. I kinda like walking in dry washes, because you never know what you're going to find, so walking down dry washes is always interesting.
My favorite place to walk is just to strike out through the desert, and see things that not everyone has seen yet. But since it's not wise to do that, then Jeep trails are my favorite places to walk. I hardly ever see anyone else there, so it's a quiet place, and it’s wide enough so the sneaky snakes can't sneak up on you.
A far less interesting place to walk is a dirt road. Sometimes they get fast-moving off-road traffic, and they can be dusty, but overall, dirt roads of any kind are far better than pavement when it comes to enjoying a place to walk.
I still have a few neighbors, but their dwindling day by day.