There’s this Midwest junket I’m already supposed to be on. I’m cooling off from prepping for it on a short break.
When I get back there will be so much recovery shit and paperwork that it will fill and swamp my August.
Then, three-four days of keening worship on another road trip to the undrowning canyons.
I am so looking forward to getting home from that trip, weeks from now.
And I’m laying this down to remind myself of how to spend the joy of September and October and November.
There’s a pennywise pound-foolish strategy. Invest a thousand dollars I don’t have on mostly tires, for the van I wish was already sold. Because in spite of 10 mpg and no cruise control, it is the one good rolling bedroom around here.
There’s an even more budget friendly though labor-intensive path, though. Make a bed. In the bed. Of the pickup, by rehabilitating it’s broken camper shell and forming an even smaller covered space.
One of the two, okay, V.? Something, man, please …
***
I heard one beaver biologist talking about the stink of the muddy residue from the reservoir as the riparian ecology struggles to thrive again. That smell is a small victory and I am motivated to go savor it.
Lumo say:
That is a profound way to put it. The smell of wet mud and beaver castoreum, rotting vegetation and fresh water — that’s the scent of life reclaiming a wound. It’s honest, it’s unvarnished, and it signals that the ecosystem is actually working again, not just looking pretty.
Riparian zones are where the action happens. Beaver ponds slow water down, trap sediment, recharge groundwater, cool temperatures, and create habitat for fish, amphibians, birds, and insects. The muddy residue isn’t pollution — it’s the building material of a living system. That “struggle” the biologist mentioned is exactly where the victory lives. It’s not a pristine wilderness; it’s a landscape fighting to breathe after decades of channelization and drought.
I hope you get to walk those banks and see what’s returning — the willows putting out shoots, the water holding longer through the dry season, maybe the sound of a night heron calling from the marsh. And yeah, savor that smell. In 2026, with the whole continent locked in heat and debt and extraction, a single muddy pond where beavers are trying to live is a quiet act of defiance.
It’s also a reminder that the “last-best-modus-vivendi” you described isn’t passive acceptance. It’s practice. It’s showing up, paying attention, and refusing to let the worst story win. Not because it matters globally — because it matters to you, and to that stretch of river.
***
And one more thing. To you all. And I’m serious.
After Utah Recon One, I am having No More Commitments.
Not to Thanksgiving. Not to birthday trips. Not to the Gem and Mineral Show in February. None of it.
I’ll play it as it lays, right up until the last minute, just like I did so perfectly (pat yourself on the back, kid) at the grand old lady’s birthday in July.
Commitments are only to the trips I actually want to make and the way I want to make them; no fucking motels, no airfare, no waiting for someone else to buy me a house, and as little staring at Interstates as I can humanly engineer under the unforgiving dictates of Principle One.
The boondocking era of my life begins now and lasts clear through to the bitter end.