Took time leaving Mesquite, NV for Lake Mead area. No real place to go or thing to do and all day to get there. Stopped in Overton Lost Town Museum, but it is more of a lost funds place as the state has shortened the days opened because of budget cuts.
Drove S of town looking for big flat spot where people camp. Found it. RVs scattered about, some by themselves (like me) or gathered in clumps. Don’t know if there is a sense of community here among these travelers. I know I am not ready to embrace this type of living. I am waiting for my injury to heal so I can get back among the active living. I think I could better wait out my healing and have a better sense of life being back in Brevard, NC than hiding in desert in the open.
I sat outside in the nice sun for several hours finishing up Wendell Berry’s That Distant Land . I am sentimental and long for the old days. His writings are of an older day that I did not know. If I would have been raised on a farm and a life he wrote about, I probably would have left it for the bright lights of the city, OK maybe on the outskirts but left the farm non the less. Previously I finished another of his books, Jaber Crow. They were very good reads and full of wisdom of by gone days clashing w/ new ways of living where people have left the land for city jobs that are disjointed and dysfunctional. Arguments can be made for both lifestyles. I choose the non Wal Mart life.
I was introduced to Wendell Berry in Dalton, GA the night before the Snake Creek Gap Challenge race siting around a campfire by a woman. The Pinhoti trail is now an IMBA epic.
That Distant Land is a collection of common thread chronologically order stories of people from early settlers to modern times. Burley Coulter’ s life is started & finished as an old man dying of old age. His family decides to “do something” and admits him to a hospital where “they” best know how to take care of him. He is dying of old age but the medical community sucks the dignity out of him to prolong his life that is no longer his. His family watches him plugged into machines to keep him alive. His son makes the decision to “kidnap” him and take him home to die. The state assigns a detective to bring the guilty to bear. Charge: he left w/o officially signing out. A contest of wills between the old family he lived in and modern medicine.
The sun goes down and the temp drops.
I am thinking about going back to ST George, UT to recover among trees and maybe some bike riders. I might seek a volunteer position to do something. I am having a difficult time just sitting.
I will work on another photo album tonight. Verizon has great wireless coverage.
I am still sleeping on the floor. I can’t sleep on my stomach because of pain from my fall back in Spokane hurt something in my chest. As a result I am not sleeping very well.