lizardtracks

[lizardtracks]

The Hero's Journey

I don't get to share many of my projects. Most are other's intellectual property. And nearly all are conglomerations of steel shapes and plates that would elicit a yawn from anybody not enthused by industrial fabrication. But this one is different. It is a public project—a sign for a police training facility. That means I can share a photo. Even better, I designed this one from scratch. Most stuff comes to me in the form of engineering drawings. I just work out the methods and details. This one came in the form of “We need a sign. What can you do?” It was a fun project. I’m pretty stoked that I get to share it.

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The Anti-cat

All of our pets, like all of our children, are special. Face it, even that non-descript chunk of a bully breed dog curled up on your floor right now is special. Sure, you couldn’t pick that misshapen face out of a lineup. But you love it just the same, don’t you?

But some pets are truly special. I say this by way of introducing Riley. Yep, Riley has the clipped ear of a cat that was living on the streets. Correction. A kitten that was living on the streets. Riley can’t be much more than four months old. That four months was long enough for this little sweetie to end up on the streets. And Riley was on the streets long enough to be picked up, processed at Animal Control and returned to fend for himself. Did he actually have a home? Maybe. Some folks think it is perfectly okay for cats to be “outdoors” cats. They have a warped idea that “cats can fend for themselves.”

Riley had other ideas. One day my SO found herself in my daughter’s neighborhood and made contact with Riley. Rather, he made contact with her. He ran across the street to greet her, jumped into the open Subaru hatch, and commenced purring. But that wasn’t the amazing part.

The amazing part was that back here at the ranch Riley was having none of being separated for a gradual introduction to the four dogs and two other cats. He insisted on being dumped into the middle of the menagerie. And he immediately started making friends and trying to play.

Later, worn out from the fun, Riley dozed off in my lap. When I picked him up to lay him on the sofa he never so much as flexed. He stayed completely relaxed in transport and went right back to sleep.

From where I stand this is the anti-cat. Cats can be engaging loving animals. But they can also be aloof, serene and cautious to a fault. Not Riley. He plays. He explores everything. (He jumped into the kitchen sink this morning during my coffee routine just to see what was in it.) Pick him up and he is an instant purr machine. Sit down and he appears in your lap. Nap and he’ll nap with you. Crawl behind the TV to rearrange wires and he will offer his help.

I suppose if we were ethical, moral, empathetic people we would go back to that neighborhood with posters and try to find Riley’s home. But no. There are bad dogs. There are bad cats. Hell, there are bad snapping turtles. Then there are amazing dog, cats and snapping turtles. If you can’t tell the difference you are probably on the sociopathy spectrum. So we have your cat. Continue not giving him a second thought. He is just fine here with us. We think he is special.

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The Magic Recliner

My recliner—pictured above—contains zero magical components. Zero. It’s not even powered. Like many recliners in many working-class American homes, you have to push back to recline. My father-in-law was an Average Joe. His recliner, though, was magic. After he pushed back, simply turning his right palm upward would cause a bottle of beer or dinner plate to appear in his hand. It was astonishing. I wanted to inherit that recliner. But to everyone else it must have appeared to have been a standard issue, 80s-style, BarcaLounger. When he passed on, it disappeared along with decades of other accumulation.

It is now my turn to spend long winter evenings and lazy Sunday afternoons in a recliner. Selecting a recliner for this is serious business. After all, lots of men slip their mortal coil from the comfort of their favorite chair. My SO understands this. So when she saw this collection of wood and leather her mind tripped back through the decades to when I hankered for a Mission-style chair.

We never bought one. Solid wood and leather has never been the stuff of affordable furniture. Our solid wood furniture in the Old Pueblo started with the dining table and sling chairs I built from dimensioned lumber in Jim Jones’ garage. That was the summer we arrived. Later with three kids and pets we tacked on This End Up sofa and chairs. That was it for solid wood. Leather was not even on the radar. Leather was a fabric for other folk’s dens and living rooms.

So my La-Z-Boy is not magical. I’m sure I could sit in it for hours with my palm up and no beer would appear. No dinner plate either. But it is solid wood and leather. So it smells good. And it is a gentle nudge, reminding me that my SO remembers things I once considered important. Oh, yes, it also holds out hope that—someday in the future—some Sunday afternoon might be spent with my feet up. And that might be magic enough.

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That Little Spot in the Chiricahuas

This building along Pine Creek survived a fire and a flood. What else is part of its story? We may never know.

Every large Ponderosa pine in Pinery Canyon carries the scars of a fire. The fire occurred in 2011. It burned for a month. It consumed a quarter-million acres. It cost $50 million to control. If you call the destruction of almost an entire mountain range control.

But that was not the end of the beating Pinery Canyon would take. Arid lands recover slowly. In fact, the Chiricahuas will not be the same again in my lifetime. Or my children’s lifetime. So when monumental monsoon storms hit the range in 2021 very little dense vegetation was available. And the soil was not readily able to percolate. I wasn’t there to see the trickle of water in Pine Creek become a river. But I saw the aftermath. Again in 2022 a series of Noachian storms pounded the mountain. What 2021 started 2022 finished. Our favorite little camp barely survived. In fact, the road to it may yet completely collapse.

And yet we keep going back. Why? The trees may be scarred but they are still standing. The creek bed may be a jumbled pile of rocks, but water—even if only a trickle—still flows. The largest run of turkeys I’ve ever seen practically strolled through our camp once. Slow quiet steps reveal Coues whitetail deer among the trees. Stellar jays sometimes fly among the branches. Those things make Pinery Canyon beautiful. But they also tell a story. And there is more of a story. Remnants of Methodist Camp still exist. And, further along both ends of the three-mile stretch we love, there are artifacts of other stories. The stories, and the bits of them we continue to discover, make the canyon interesting.

Finally, it is just a tiny bit more remote. The dirt road over Downing Pass is just long enough, and just rough enough to deter some of the thundering crowd. I like that because, with a little care and forethought, I can let The Monsters run loose. In April no one was camped there. This October I had neighbors. But you hardly heard a peep from them.

Beautiful. Quiet. Almost on the edge of remote. And with a story waiting to be teased together. Those things keep us going back to that little spot in the Chiricahuas.

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New School Communicator

The Garmin InReach Messenger (with optional mud and scratches added in Utah)

I love my Garmin InReach Messenger. But it has an image problem. It’s missing a bulge.

As a young person I never gave a moment’s thought to getting hurt in remote areas. But add a few years—and a few close calls—and now it’s a different tune. Six years ago in Grand Canyon I carried a PLB. It’s been outdoors with me ever since. But this year for Stillwater I decided to upgrade. What I wanted was a satellite communicator. What I wanted was Garmin’s InReach Mini 2. While I was researching that I kept stumbling over their Messenger.

The Mini 2 is an example of form follows function. It comes in you-can’t-lose-me orange. And it has a bulge where the antenna goes. Clipped to a backpack strap it looks like, well, a communicator. The Messenger is a gray lump. Worse, the Messenger is $100 cheaper—a clearly an inferior device.

But a hundred bucks is a hundred bucks and I’ll read for 10 minutes to save that wad of cash. Per the blurb, the Messenger had a better antenna—even sans lump. It had a longer battery life. Much longer. And. . . I could type messages on my phone but send them through the communicator. How could it be the less expensive device? Hmmm. The fog was not lifting. I slogged back through the specifications and product description. Then once more.

Ah. The fog started clearing. The Messenger was exactly that: a messenger. It had minimal tracking features. It was not a navigation device. My subconscious paused waiting for my brain to catch up. Wait! I use my phone to navigate. I don’t need a navigation device. I need a messaging device! The fog cleared. My subconscious patted my brain on the back. “Nice going, kid,”

So I gave the friendly people at REI $300 and pocketed the money I’d just saved myself. Then I spent a month completely vetting the device ahead of my Stillwater trip. After all, this isn’t something you throw in your kit and figure out when you get there. And how did it work in the remote Utah wilderness? Flawlessly.

At the end of each day with the sun down and the stars out I’d text my SO my status. Sometimes it was a “free” check-in message. Sometimes it was a carefully crafted 148-character report. And she would answer back. It was very soothing.

A PLB does one thing. When your wilderness world has gone sideways it calls in the cavalry. The Messenger has nuances. A button on the side will summon SAR, just like the PLB. But I can let people know just what is wrong. I can let them know I’m okay but not okay. Or, when nothing’s wrong, I can message “I just called to say I love you.” Either way, even without the land-a-helicopter orange case or an antenna bulge, Messenger gets the job done.

I love my weird looking Garmin InReach Messenger.

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Old School Cat

In June—at the beginning of our endless summer—we acquired an old school cat. Once only witches had cats like these. But the witches are all gone now—victims of our superstitions. Black cats remain. But these are also victims of our superstitions. Black cats sometimes end up in shelters for years—sometimes their entire lives. Because? Because people still associate them with evil. We saw this sweetie and, bracing ourselves to be sucked into Hell’s vortex, agreed to give her a home.

This beautiful baby is far from evil. In fact she is Little Miss Personality. Natasha is barely out of her kitten phase, so we delight in seeing her explore and play with balls of paper.

Cat #1, Sadie, was pretty miffed for a few months that we dared bring in another feline. But Natasha now has her reluctant acceptance.

And why so long getting a photo? Well, cats are cats. They accept you in their good time. So it was just this past weekend that I received enough trust to be able to point a camera at her. Even at that I had to be happy with this quick blurry shot. But, hey, just in time for Halloween.

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Reflections on Meandering

Photo by Lance Belhumeur. Copyright 2023

My Stillwater Journey

What does it mean to meander? Does it mean that we have lost our way? Or does it mean that we have found ourselves? I thought about this while we wandered through Stillwater Canyon for a biblical seven days.

Stillwater is a place of grand vistas and small wonders. Of mud and vibrant colors. In the day we paddled in pinpoint sunlight through a canyon of ever-changing, never-changing rock. In the evening we gazed at unfiltered stars. In the night we slept with Mother Moon's full light filtered through cottonwood leaves. We disconnected from our known world to explore old things. And still older things.

But whatever else Stillwater was about, it was about meandering. We’d sometimes paddle an oxbow for miles only to end up a football field away from where we started. And this was the way of it since before the Triassic. At Anderson Bottom one of our party climbed a fin of bedrock left behind from when, in a time out of mind, the river cut a longer, narrower loop. At any one moment, I could not have told you our cardinal direction.

So did I find any answers? No. Like all great desert places Stillwater Canyon has no meaning but its own existence. I meandered but was never really lost. I embarked on a different way but never really found myself.

That ancient world did change time though. The river meandered. We followed. We were footloose and carefree, satisfied to drift through the changing light and unfolding rock. Our camps were wherever we found them. The river carried us to our future at its own speed. Somewhere ahead we had a jetboat to meet. But for a memorable span of time it was not here and not today.

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Please stop!

I am alarmed at the upward trend of Sonoran desert tortoises needing adoption. The number doubles every few years. Some are legit wild individuals that, for whatever reason, lost their natural home. Most, now, have come to us through captive breeding. In fact, all four of mine came to me from people who allowed males and females to get together in their backyard.

Listen! That hatchling that popped out of the ground this year is going to outlive you. It is going to become someone else’s responsibility. There is no reason to be captive breeding desert tortoises. Stop. Separate your tortoises by gender. There are more tortoises looking for homes than homes looking for tortoises.

I try to suck it up a bit when dogs and cats end up languishing in a shelter. It’s tough to see. But dogs and cats threw in their lot with humans millenniums ago to their net benefit. Turtles did not. They were minding their own business when we scooped them up to turn them into “pets.” We need to do better. We need to stop adding to a growing population of tortoises that will spend the next 90 years dying in a shelter.

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Unlike Any Salt On Earth

If you find yourself in Bluff, Utah eat at the Twin Rocks Cafe. I have stopped in maybe a dozen times in the past twenty years. They never disappoint. After you order make sure to read the salt shaker label. Twin Rocks uses Redmond Real Salt. Redmond says this about their salt:

“Long before the Earth knew pollution, volcanic eruptions sealed an ancient pristine ocean beneath a layer of protective ash in what is now North America. Real Salt is the only brand of sea salt harvested from this ancient deposit near Redmond, Utah. We bring it to you exactly as nature created it—an unrefined, ancient sea salt with a subtle sweet flavor unlike any salt on earth.”

Ah, yes. Pure salt, mined by unicorn horn and crushed on the thighs of virgins. You can’t say no to that. But seriously, this is just one of the many delights to be found in small town Utah. I just got back from a week in Stillwater Canyon. I’ll tell you about that soon. For now I just wanted to mention the salt.

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Mourning a Mouse

We had a little brown mouse sharing the red-footed tortoise enclosure this summer. It was living in the cavity we dug out for the water bowl. When I emptied the bowl to change the water, little brown mouse would scamper off into the den. Even when I dug out the cavity for a larger bowl little brown mouse seemed nonplussed.

I was alarmed one day to find little brown mouse in the bowl. It was paddling desperately, seemingly exhausted in efforts to keep its nose above the surface. I scooped it out. A few hours later it seemed no worse for the wear.

In the dim recesses of my brain I knew that something had changed for little brown mouse. It had never tried to get water from the turtle bowl before. A little switch clicked, noting the need to set out a water dish. But life is a shit storm. I forgot. And the next time I saw little brown mouse it didn’t matter. It had gotten in the dish again. Only this time no one was around to see its struggle.

These are our days now. We need to get things done just to get other things done. Stress piles up on top of anxiety. Among it all a mouse gets ignored or forgotten. So it slips over the edge and drowns. It’s just a mouse. That’s what I keep telling myself. It’s just a mouse.

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Tyranny in Purple Pumps

People of New Mexico: Your governor is not coming to save you!

I don’t know much about Albuquerque. I pass through there only occasionally on my way to other places. I can tell you that Albuquerque is the only place I’ve ever slept wanting a gun underneath my pillow.**

Having only a small number of friends in its remote towns, and traveling through the state only occasionally, New Mexico isn’t really on my radar. So I was surprised when a Hillary Clinton clone popped up as its governor. And Hillary Lite popped up in the worst way possible: as a tyrannist.

In little more than half a year we will observe the 250th anniversary of American resistance to British disarmament. That resistance sparked the Revolutionary War. And one product of that conflict was our Declaration of Independence. Then with victory in Yorktown, the colonists didn’t just stow their weapons of war above their mantles again. They set about drafting a government more aligned with the will of a free people.

Fast forward a few years and the fledgling United Sates ratified its Constitution, a document that had as its living, beating heart a Bill of Rights. 

You don’t need to be much of a scholar to read through the “long train of abuses” in our Declaration and the articles in our Bill of Rights to see the corollary. You need to be only slightly better—but more patient—to read through John Locke’s works and see his influence. At the core of our Bill of Rights is the oft-cited inalienable rights of “life, liberty and property.”

The governor of New Mexico clearly scores low in both scholarship and patience. Oh, and history. Her recent actions suggest that she has never read a Revolutionary War history. Or that she would recognize our Constitution were it laid in front of her. She might, however, like her pantsuit clad predecessor, score remarkably high on being a self-serving politician. Ms. Practical Pumps for all practical purposes left a pro-abortion rally—where she declared that “the government can keep its hands off my body”—to go to her desk and, in an authoritarian stroke of her pen, annul New Mexico citizen’s Second Amendment rights.

This is cognitive dissonance at a level that suggests a clinical issue. But let’s ignore that and see where this gets weird.

First let me say that a cruise through the documents and history noted above clarifies the ham-fisted wording of our Second Amendment. In my own weak attempt at originalism, I will suggest that this is why readings of the second amendment limiting weaponry to government-run militias fall short. This is why readings limiting weaponry to 18th century firearms fall short. This is why readings that never allow guns outside home defense fall short.

You, my friend, live in a country that recognizes your inalienable right to defend your life, liberty and property. And since your life goes with you everywhere you go, that right to self defense applies everywhere.

This is heady stuff. But one wag noted that “Fools rush in where wise men fear to tread.” In the same vein Edward Abbey noted, “To the intelligent man or woman life appears infinitely mysterious, but the stupid have an answer for every question.” So here we have Governor Grisham tripping headlong into a place no one before her would go, providing answers that are profoundly stupid.

So what’s the story? Hillary Lite has declared a “public health emergency” for, basically, Bernalillo County. The emergency is directed specifically at gun related deaths. The rate of death by gunshot is high in New Mexico. The state ranks 36th in population, but 13th in gun related death. Those are not good numbers. I’d agree that they indicate a few problems. One problem relates to the fact that New Mexico is a High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area. As Don Henley noted, drug dealers “always carry weapons ‘cause they always carry cash.” New Mexico, at least in its urban areas, also has higher per capita mental health issues.

But here is where it gets weird. The governor doesn’t see New Mexico as having a drug violence problem. And despite the fact that half of all gunshot deaths in her state are suicides she doesn’t see a mental health crisis. She sees a “gun violence” problem.

Why is violence, and indeed a violent society, okay so long as it’s not “gun violence.” Rape is okay? There are 325,000 sexual assaults in the USA each year. This is an order of magnitude more than the number of incidents involving being shot by another human. Most of you know someone who has been raped. Far, far fewer of you know anyone shot by another human. Yet this as a societal problem is rarely termed sexual violence. How about violence involving alcohol? The USA sees 1.4 million acts of violence involving alcohol annually. Yet we never hear the phrase alcohol violence. 

Should we even count people who die by strangulation? Hanging? Beatings with fists? Beatings with bricks? Clubbing? Stabbing? Homicide by vehicle? Being lit on fire? Abduction and torture? Poisoning? Maybe these don’t count. There is domestic violence, gang violence and gun violence. The rest—violence in general—we can ignore.

So the governor doesn’t want to end sexual violence, drug violence or alcohol violence. She wants to end gun violence. And, in fact, her campaign platform promised to address criminal use of guns. Noble goals. But the proof is in the pudding. Let’s take a look at her “bold” action.

Her response is to isolate law-abiding citizens and violate only their rights under both federal and state constitutions. Her idea seems to be that stopping law-abiding citizens from carrying firearms in public will have a knock-on effect among criminals and other felonious firearms carriers. If you stop, they’ll stop. Monkey see, monkey do. This is dizzying in its stupidity. I feel dumber for even trying to worm through her logic.

If that is not dizzying enough she admitted in the very same news conference that her divine fiat will “not have an impact on criminals” and that law-abiding gun owners “have never been a problem.”

Let’s seek some oxygen at a lower altitude. Here’s bold for you. Announce that you are taking constitutional rights away from criminals. Announce Operation Clean Sweep. Announce that anyone with prior convictions for drug trafficking and weapons violations, and their associates, will be picked up without a warrant and held in jail until gun deaths drop to an acceptable level. The sheriff and police chief know who the bad actors are. Probably by name. Why is it not considered bold to let criminals bear the burden of their criminality?.

The immediate counter-argument would be that you cannot do that. They have rights. For sure. And “we the people” seem to know what rights criminals have. Most of us would probably get at least part of the Miranda phrase correct. And I think we all agree that protecting those rights is an important part of our democracy.

But do “we the people” know what rights law-abiding citizens have? And will we agree that protecting those rights is an important part of our democracy? We are on less certain ground there. Particularly among progressive politicians. Our president, the man who bears the responsibility of standing at the world’s loudest bully pulpit, called law-abiding gun owners “sick.” (As a reference this same man sent cluster bombs and radioactive anti-tank shells to Ukraine.) New Mexico’s governor, Hillary II, is simply aping her leader. 

So what is she really up to? The David Hoggs, Shannon Watts, Josh Sugarmanns, Michael Bloombergs and Whoopi Goldbergs of the country have a shared myopic goal: disarm our country’s citizens. Grisham’s calculus is that by “boldly” joining those ranks she can cement her place in the party structure. Everytown, or similar organizations these folks run or support, seek every crack they might later drive a wedge into to achieve that disarmament.

One of those cracks would be declaring public health emergencies. Sars-COV-2 proved that governments can exercise wide latitude during health “emergencies.” So, the question is how else can these “emergencies” be manipulated?

I don’t believe that direct success is a hoped for outcome. So far her annulment has encountered exactly the response you’d expect. The Bernalillo County sheriff is staying with his oath to the Constitution. The state district attorney is not offering a path to prosecute violators. And a judge has already issued a temporary injunction based—it should be noted—on a summary judgment.

What is hoped for, and will probably bear fruit, is the second tier effect which is two-fold. The first is posturing Democrats as the only ones who care about gun violence. Advantage Grisham. After all they made up the term gun violence to the exclusion of all other violence and criminality. With that misdirection they have your focus. This to the point of convincing you that my even going to an FFL to get my universal background check and buy a gun is indicative of criminal intent. And I have never gotten even so much as a jay walking ticket. 

The second is convincing the public that guns are a health problem. For that I’d also say “Advantage, Grisham.” They already have the CDC in their camp. And the CDC would love nothing better than to draw your focus away from America’s state of health. After all, despite the astounding numbers, rape is not a public health crisis. Drugs are not a public health crisis. Alcohol is not a public health crisis. Addling pre-pubescent brains with psychotropic drugs is not a public health crisis. Poverty is not a public health crisis. Social isolation is not a public health crisis. Obesity is not a public health crisis. Nope. But legal gun ownership is a public health crisis. 

This message is as relentless as it is successful. Success is not overturning the Second Amendment. What will happen is that it will be hollowed out by legislation, taxation, regulation, litigation, prosecution, and public opinion.

I implore you to consider this before we get further down that road. Give pause to consider what dominoes fall after this one. The Bill of Rights is stitched together by your three core inalienable rights. Which of the three do you want the government to control? Your life? Your liberty? Your property? And if they control one don’t they control the rest?

So I get it. You don’t like guns. Yes, they are loud and dangerous. And yes, defending yourself with one is a horrific thought. You will never do it. (Frankly, if you feel that way you may have given this more thought than many Second Amendment advocates.) So the Second Amendment has no role in your life. But surely other articles in the Bill of Rights do. Are there any of those you would like to keep? Can we really slowly dissolve one without showing the powerful and tyrannical how to dissolve the rest?

Crime has endured throughout humanity. So has violence. Entire police forces, or entire governments have become authoritarian or tyrannical. Power or wealth cyclically concentrates into two-tiered societies. In short, someone or something is always after your life, liberty or property. The Founding Fathers offered ways to keep the barbarians from our gates and the wolves from our doors. We can recognize their wisdom and our rights. As Voltaire suggested, we should tend that garden. If not we may someday find it has gone to seed.

I’ll finish the way I began. People of New Mexico: Your governor is not coming to save you. She is nothing, just infantile tyranny in purple pumps. But her tiny chip erodes the Second Amendment. When it is hollowed out, then come the hobnail boots.

**NEVER DO THIS! This phrase is meant only to convey a fear of immediate threat or harm. Sleeping with a gun under your pillow is stupid and breaks several rules of gun safety.

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Yaoyorozu

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Aw, c’mon…

Aw, c’mon. I can’t be the only person who wants to hear Elmer Fudd sing White Rabbit.

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Ferocious Torti

Pictured is Summer Project #3. One of our tortoises needed more space. Captive adult desert tortoises (gopherus agassizii) prefer to roam your entire yard. Confined, it’s best to give each at least 100 square feet of space. The enclosure above is a smidge larger than that.

What they probably don’t need is the height of the one I made. Eighteen or nineteen inches is plenty. Desert tortoises are better diggers than climbers. So when I shared the photo with a friend he quipped, “Wow… Must be ferocious torti.”

Of course the tortoise is not ferocious. But the little monsters in the schoolyard next door are. Hopefully between the enclosure’s tall walls, the school’s prison fence, and the overhanging mesquite tree, they have little wiggle room for landing their soccer balls in the enclosure. After all, they’re probably pretty bad at math.

Anyway, yay me! With this finished before Labor Day, I officially completed my three summer projects as summer projects. It doesn’t always happen that way. Thelonius is now freer to roam. Miley takes over his old space. And Miley’s old enclosure is sitting by the curb awaiting bulky trash pick-up. (Miley’s enclosure started life sixteen years ago as a sandbox. It’s seen better days.)

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Purple Sage

Each summer here in our dry corner of the continent purple sage blooms to a theme. Some years it is fecundity, or lushness, or brilliance. Other years it is scarcity, or timidity, or dullness. This year it is reluctance. By mid-August I was sure it would not bloom at all. Now, as late in the season as it may be, it is putting out a few blossoms. A test, maybe, to see if there is any point in going on. There may not be a point. The isobars and high pressure domes and jet steam flow all predict more heat and dryness.

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Get off the X

Apparently there is some lukewarm maudlin revolt to Elon Musk’s renaming of Twitter to X. Some fix brings back the little bluebird of happiness. Posts become tweets again. Hmm.

There is a phase used when people are being taught to deal with risk. “Get off the X.” X is you being behind the reactive power curve. You are relinquishing your tactical initiative. You are becoming a target.

Musk didn’t buy X because it is the prime voice of democracy. He didn’t buy it because it is a useful public forum. He did because it will help him cement power. You, the X user, are just a tool. Get off the X.

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New School Power

If a tree falls in the desert and your chainsaw won’t start does it make a sound?

Some weeks back I decided to fire up the string trimmer and knock down some weeds. Yep, weeds. We don’t have lush green grass. Fine trimmed laws here in the sweltering southwest are a fool’s errand. I wrestled the string trimmer from the shed and yanked the start cord. Nothing. Hmmm. I ran carefully through the start procedure again. Nothing. As Count Basie would say, “Once more. With feeling.” Nothing. Grr. I set the crippled machine aside and spent my afternoon stuffing notes in the neighbor’s mailboxes. “Sorry for deflating your property values. —Love, Gerry.”

Fast forwarding to not long afterward, a mighty wind downed a mesquite tree limb. Not to be outdone by the younger weed whacker, my chain saw also refused to start. I kept squeezing bulbs, turning dials, and flipping switches until I felt like the Wizard of Oz. I tugged that cord until my fingers blistered. But the engine offered not a cough or a sputter. It was like trying to squeeze tears out of Chuck Norris.

A tougher hombre would have grabbed this chance to tinker. What could be more fun than plopping a small engine on the workbench and making it run again? Fun, sure. But I don’t have time for that kind of fun. I decided instead that I was done with any engine that still needed a carburetor. I went shopping for electric power.

For a chain saw I wanted something that plugged in. I wanted amps. I wanted torque. I wanted power. I wanted a 16” bar. I went at it like Tim ‘The Tool Man’ Taylor. Did I need any of that? Probably not. I’d probably get by just fine with a battery powered chain saw and avoid the ignominy of dragging an extension cord behind like a long yellow tail. But in the end the price point, and 20 amp motor, in the Oregon brand won the day. Onward.

The string trimmer was trickier. It had to be battery power. But, as mentioned, I’m not using a string trimmer to edge the paths in my English garden. I am mowing down clumps of weeds with stems thicker than your thumb. I am eating into bunches of grass that two weeks ago didn’t exist, but now are knee high. I am trimming off Lilliputian thickets of mesquite that sprout every August. And that’s why I wound up with a 40 volt Ryobi. Everyone else claimed to be “tough” or “powerful.” Ryobi was the only one who dared compare their 40V model to a 26cc gas trimmer. Here in the hardscrabble desert 26cc with .095 string gets the job done. And my fourth favorite big box store had it on a stout discount. Sold!

So the mesquite limb has been reduced to cooking wood. The yard is cleared of weeds, grass clumps and itty-bitty, teeny-weeny mesquite saplings. All done very quietly. And with motors that started at the press of a button. Long live the internal combustion engine! But sometimes you need new school power.