The roads are continually clogged with tourist traffic and every weekday begins promptly at 7:30 am when a cacophony of beeps echo between the buttes as heavy duty machines of all sorts shift into reverse.  This could mean a lot of things depending on one’s perspective.  Here’s mine…

Construction destroys as much as it creates.  Development displaces the wild with the weird and wasteful.  Dirt pimps see dollar signs.  Wealthy tourists see tax sheltering investment opportunities.  Ski bums see eviction notices.   Some of us seek solitude and salvation deep down bumpy backroads where free streams of thought flow.

Lonely valleys where neither tourists, nor born-heres, nor  90-day-wonders, nor tax-grubbing government agents go.  The spots only accessible to those with the will and in the know.

The short summers are long here and exhausting oneself entirely everyday may be the best way to get through them.   Many locals do so with booze: a good beer buzz makes the endless twilight more manageable and nursing a hangover eclipses the pain of watching this sacred valley utterly overrun and slowly slipping away.

There is, of course, another way, but that’s a tale for another day.  The chems are fat, the traffic’s bad, but I am going out to play.

Picnic 2014?  This Month, Full Moon, 2 am.  Look forward to it.