Desert and Walden (3/22/2024)

Last week I signed up for a workshop with Clay Jenkinson that will be held at a resort in Idaho in early January next year. I will need to fly into Missoula, MT and it is somewhat interesting to tell folks it is in Idaho, because it feels like it is in Montana. The workshop is a discussion of two books, somewhat like a book club. We will be discussing Theroux's “Walden" and Abbey's “Desert Solitaire.” Interestingly, I have both books and have read parts of both of them. While it is still nine months or more away, I started re-reading Desert Solitaire.

Desert Solitaire discusses Abbey's time working for the National Park Service at what is now Arches National Park. I spent time in the Moab, Canyon Lands area in 1980 and 81 during my graduate studies at Utah State University. We returned as tourists in 1991 when we lived in Gallup, NM. By training, I am an arid land (or desert) ecologist, or even better a plant-ecophysiologist or stress physiologist. Abbey's book is hitting close to home when he details the plants, animals and sights in the Moab area. His environmental views also align with mine, and I even think his cynicism. Naturally things have changed since the time he was there. I remember well that we felt terribly intimidated by the buff young mountain bikers during our 1991 visit, so we decided to just go for a hike in Arches and not rent bikes (and make fools of ourselves).

While reading Abbey's book I wondered about my desert experiences. Where have I seen them, encountered them and spent time in them? My first real encounter with a desert was that morning we woke up in the airplane that took us to our new job in Uganda. This was in 1978 and we were flying over the Sahara. I was in awe. Later in life I have set foot in what looked like a desert in the Turkana area of north-western Kenya; I spent a lot of time in the Four Corners Region of the US; on the dry Tibetan Plateau of Nepal; in the deserts of Yemen; Egypt; and in the Chihuahua in southern New Mexico. I also spent time in the Great Basin, the Sonoran and Mojave deserts of the U.S. I grew up on the Island of Curacao and lived there for 13 years and this island was pretty dry as well. The island was covered by cacti. This might explain my love for the desert.

One of these days I will try to describe some of my experiences in all these deserts. For right now I’ll start with some generalities about why I have this love for the desert. As I mentioned, I grew up in the Caribbean, and from my bedroom on the island I grew up on I could see for miles. I could see the main land of Venezuela on a clear day, and at night we often saw the lightning on the mainland. With every lightning bold you could see an outline of the mountains sixty some mile away. I often tell people that I need to see the horizon, or at least be able to see for miles and miles. The desert allows that. While as I am sure you are aware of, I love trees and forests; however, I need to get away from that and broaden my view. During our recent trip through the Dakotas I was in heaven as well, driving through the more arid short grass prairie and again being able to see the horizon.

Being an ecologist, desert survival of plants, animals and even people fascinate me. This is what I call stress physiology. Even when I was working on my bachelor’s degree in the Netherlands in pasture ecology and agriculture, I was spell bound by an article in (forgive me) the Readers Digest about reforestation in the Moroccan desert. I fascinated me so much that I requested a book by Evenari entitled “Negev the challenge of the desert.” The book detailed traditional (Bedouin) and modern ways of living and surviving in the desert. I read the book from cover to cover. This was before my Sahara flyover. Anyway, stay tuned and I'll write more some about my desert experience another day.

The high Arizona desert.   We are looking back at the mountain above Flagstaff.   I took this picture in September during our trip across country.

We finally can pee inside again (03/06/2024)

The powder room is completed; well, almost.  But darn it is usable and looks great!  It has been a long process.  Briefly after the memorial service for my father-in-law in March last year (I spoke about his passing <here>) we noticed that whenever we flushed the toilet water would come out underneath the toilet, in between the base and the floor.  We stopped using the toilet; we have two others anyway and the trees out back as well.  We eventually bit the bullet and decided to have things fixed professionally. 

I more or less knew what the issue was.  When they built our home in 1970, the plumbers of the time cut one of the beams in order to install the toilet drain.  The floor was sinking right under the toilet.  I had previously installed a few cheap jacks under it; however, I needed to crawl to the jacks every year or so to crank them up a bit.  Our homes were built in a swamp and the jacks were slowly sinking into the soft soil.  I was resting them on a brick.

Once we retired on June 1 it was time to contact folks to work on the crawlspace and fix things for good.  I am getting too old to crawl into the crawl space and crank on three jacks.  We decided to go for broke: have things fixed by installing two steel beams under the floor.  These beams are supported by jack placed on concrete pads. After that we had the crawlspace insulated and a dehumidifier put in.  Oh yes, we also found out that the chimney was separating from the house and needed to be jacked back up against the house.  Fun, fun!

We got bids from two companies and finally work started in August (I briefly mentioned it <here>).  We left on our road trip four days after the work was completed.  The plan was to start when we got back.   The work in August had gutted the entire powder room and we decided to upgrade it.  We needed new floor tile and vanity.  I wanted to put in a rustic wood wall behind the toilet and vanity.  While shopping around for tile we saw this tile product that looked like wood and we were sold.  A few days before we had decided on a vanity and it all seemed to match.  We ordered the materials and it was a waiting game.

All the sudden it appeared that our stove was broken.  The glass in the oven had cracked and we needed to do something about that.  I detailed some of the issues with purchasing a new stove <here>.   If you are a regular reader, you have seen some of the crawl space/powder room discussions there as well, but I could finally make a real start at the renovations around the beginning of December.  This was after I returned from my strange trip to the bonsai show in North Carolina, which I also detailed in that post.

It took me two months to finish the project, but I am somewhat done.  We still need to decide about the toilet paper roll hanger, install a dimmer, and replace a cover to our light switch.  A few minor details and that's it.  However, we are happy and it looks great.

A quick shout out to all the suppliers etc.  Of course we frequented Lowes; the crawlspace work was done by American Foundation Solutions; the vanity was ordered a Ferguson; and the tile came through Morris Tile.  Oh yes we got a Bidet toilet seat and light fixture through Amazon.  We are happy with the result and the number of trips that I make to the trees in our back yard have diminished.

The finished product!