Failing Retirement

My 9th grade Intro to Algebra teacher lied to me. I was given the impression that in my life there would be numerous occasions when I would be required to determine exactly when the blue train would meet the green train, both of them having left different stations at different times and traveling toward each other at different rates of speed. This has yet to happen to me. And it's a good thing, because I had no idea how to figure out when the trains would cross paths, and I still have no idea how to figure this out. If the occasion did suddenly arise, I would have to call my friend Rick, who knows all of this stuff. (I'm trying to figure out what could possibly happen that would cause this issue to arise; perhaps if I were tied to the tracks, it would become a matter of some import to me. I'm working very hard at avoiding such a situation.)

See? Working. Work, work, work.
That's all I do on these trips. (Photo
by Lesley Scher.)

But all of this is just to say that life never quite works out as we expect. I had planned to be a psychologist. I really loved all the psychology classes I took—and also the related coursework in sociology, anthropology… You know. All of those -ologies. But then it turned out that psych majors had to take a statistics course. This is when I became an English major. (But the joke was on me. When I went to graduate school as an Education major, it turned out that I still had to take a statistics course!)

So, here I am many years later, retired. Sort of. It turns out that I apparently don't know how to be retired. I had the best of intentions. I was going to fish. A lot. I bought new fishing gear, some for freshwater fishing on lakes and rivers, and some much larger, more intimidatingly manly gear for surfcasting. The latter I have never used. The former I've used once, in a muddy river seemingly bereft of fish. (Though I did catch a very nice branch, which I had planned to take home and mount on the wall, until Lesley unplanned that for me.)

We even bought a beautiful little travel trailer; we take it all over and love camping in the beautiful state parks in Oregon and Washington. The private RV parks are a little pricier, but they often have amenities that are lacking in some of the parks. (Boondocking sites—places to park your RV for free or almost free—are often very beautiful, but generally lack all amenities, including showers, dump stations, or bathrooms. Since one cannot dump one's tanks at most such sites, the longest we can stay at a boondocking site is 3-4 days; after that it's time to dump our tanks and take a very long hot shower.) And we do take the trailer out as often as we can. In fact, we're currently planning a 3-week trip, which means that a new editing job will show up in my inbox exactly 6 hours before we leave.

 

There. See? Working. Slaving away while everyone
else is out hiking, sweating, mired in the mud, being
chased by bears and cougars and angry moose...
Actually, you know what? Never mind. I'm good.
(Photo by Lesley Scher.)

See, even though I do a lot of camping, and in spite of this theoretical "retirement," I'm still working. Even when I'm "camping" I'm often working. All I need, after all, is a cell signal. (Actual Wi-Fi is rare, but it does happen.) So, I've spent many an hour with our trailer nestled in the beauty of a forest of pines, blue skies overhead, the sounds of a rushing river in the background, the smell of fresh elk poop wafting all around—and there I am, hunched over our little dinette table, working away on my laptop, editing a book or writing an article.

In fact, I had planned to start my own little company (doing some very secret, cybersecurity-related stuff), but every time I get a few minutes to think about that project, in comes another editing gig. I'd really like to have another source of income, but I'm too busy working to figure out how to work.

And here's our cute little trailer, stopped for lunch
somewhere on the road. (Photo by Lesley. Or Rod.
Or possibly some passer-by, I'm not sure.)

I can't complain, really. I mean, the money is needed to help pay for Lesley's health insurance and to buy camping equipment and computer gear. And possibly a fully restored 1963 Austin-Healey 3000 convertible. (I just snuck that in there to see if Lesley was actually reading these blog entries. My plan, if she doesn’t read this, is to just buy the car and when she says, "Where—and WHY—did you buy that car, dammit?!" I can simply respond, "But Honey, I told you I was going to buy it! It was right there in blog post #37!" This is a foolproof plan, I can tell already.)

Still, I had always thought retirement would involve more fishing.

The Power of Media Compels You

I don't care much for sports bars. They’re usually loud and filled with obnoxious people who've had a few too many beers, and everyone's yelling at each other and at various television monitors mounted all over the room as their favorite (or least favorite) teams cavort onscreen, running around on a field doing various . . . uh, sports things.

Of course, I have (and almost always exercise) the option of simply avoiding sports bars; that way I can have a nice peaceful lunch or dinner, and the sports fanatics among us can scream spittle-flecked invective at the television, eat wings, and smear various sauces all over themselves while watching the Falcons, Penguins, Cardinals, Orioles, Seahawks or other such avian-themed sports teams. (In America, there seems to be a weird association between ornithology and sports teams. I suppose there's a Master's thesis in there someplace. Or maybe the Audubon Society would sponsor a grant.)

Now, this is a bar. This is the Table Bluff hotel and saloon in Table
Bluff, CA. The photo was taken in 1889, so it may have been
spruced up some since. But see? Not a television in sight! Image
courtesy of the Sonoma County Library.

But I'm not immune to the allure of sports, just sports bars. Why, only yesterday, I watched the Super Bowl. I don't remember which Super Bowl it was, maybe Super Bowl MMMMCMXCIX. But the Patriots and the Eagles (see?!) "gave it everything they had," "brought their A game," "played to win," and all of them "gave 110 percent." And to be honest, it was a good game, especially since I didn't really care who won. Also, we had enchiladas and beer.

But even when I go out to eat at a restaurant that's NOT a sports bar, I can't escape the television on the wall. These days, most restaurants have a television or two or twelve scattered about. Given that I am a child of the 60s, my eyes are unavoidably drawn to any flickering image in a box. (Perhaps students today would pay more attention to teachers if we found a way to flicker.) This is unfortunate when eating dinner with my wife and/or a group of friends. I may be paying close, even rapt attention to what is no doubt a very important discussion about . . . uh, something, but then out of the corner of my eye I can see that flickering, blue-tinged image beckoning. I always turn to look. I must turn to look. I've been conditioned to do so. The power of media compels me. And when Lesley draws my attention by coughing gently and touching me on the hand (perhaps with the business end of a fork), I have to pretend that I was not absent during the last 30 seconds or so of the conversation. I usually just smile and nod and try to look intrigued and amenable to whatever has just been said. (Sometimes this results in me accidentally agreeing to go hiking. I don't really see the point of hiking. I spent a lot of money on a very nice truck. It has air conditioning, soft leather seats, and XM radio. Hiking does not have those things.)

But it's not just television; non-electric media also compels us. Lesley and her mother enjoy putting together jigsaw puzzles. (God knows why. Perhaps it's some Episcopalian form of penance. Like flagellation, but more painful.) These puzzles are usually laid out on the dining room table, because it's the most convenient large, flat surface in the house. But I have to watch Mom and Lesley very closely during dinner. We'll be enjoying our food and talking, and I can see their eyes beginning to steal away, glancing surreptitiously at the puzzle, just a few inches from our plates. Eventually they desert our meal (and me) and enter into a full-fledged puzzle-solving frenzy. Like me watching a television image, they can't not do it. At first, they were sheepish about it, but now they don't even bother pretending that they think it's weird to work on a puzzle during dinner.

Media, it turns out, is media, and none of us (well, few of us) are immune.

You've all seen this photo of commuters ignoring one another in order
to concentrate on their newspapers. It's supposed to make the ironic
point that it's not only modern media that has distanced us from one
another. Which it does, of course, but keep in mind that these folks
may well have finished their papers on the way and then spoken with
one another about what they had just read. Image in the public domain.

I don't think that the kids we berate for spending their lives with their faces in Facebook or Instagram or Snapchat (or whatever is big these days—I may be a few weeks out of date) are really any different than any of the rest of us; they too are compelled by media, but I suppose it's a matter of degree. They are all about being connected, all the time. It's very difficult for them to disconnect. I saw this during the college classes I taught; asking students to put their phones away for an hour was almost physically painful for them. The thing about other forms of media is that they're there and then gone. We read the newspaper (remember those?) and then we were finished and perhaps we even (God forbid!) spoke to people about what we'd just read. We would connect intermittently to television (perhaps after school or in the evening), we might read a book or listen to the radio, but then we were finished, at least for the time being. These days, though, people (not all of them kids) are connected to other people all the time. It must be exhausting! Who would want to be connected to everyone 24/7?! I don't even like people that much! (But I love dogs. If we could connect to dogs, now, that would be different. I could definitely connect with dogs all day. I would most certainly sign up for DogBook or InstaPaw or PupChat or something.)

My granddaughter is going on a medical mission trip to Guatemala this summer, during which she and other scientifically-minded students will teach basic hygiene, measure villagers' blood pressure and glucose levels, and do other science-y things for a couple of weeks. (All of this will be covered in greater detail in my upcoming book, entitled My Grandchild is Smarter than Your Grandchild and All of Your Entire Family Put Together—and Better-Looking, Too.) But on this trip, she has to disconnect for an entire 10 days! No phone. No texting. No Instagram. No computer. For almost two weeks, she will be in a foreign country, forced to interact with actual people in real-time. I shudder to think what this might do to her. What if she accidentally reads a newspaper?

Right again, dammit.

Sometimes I hate being right. (I am informed by my wife that this doesn't happen often enough for it to be a real concern, so…) Nonetheless, I knew that this would happen.

If you've read my book—and of course you have!—you may recall that I spent some time talking about the dark, dangerous side of the Internet. I love the Internet, but along with all of the wonderful things it has brought us, there's also quite a lot of ugliness.

An FBI SWAT team training in New York. Image used
under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0
Generic license.

I refer, for example, to various forms of bullying: name-calling, vituperative attacks, and malicious threats delivered mostly by folks who revel in their ability to deliver messages of hate while cloaked in the anonymity provided by the Internet. Often this hate is directed at women, of course, but we're all vulnerable; and much more frightening still, our children are vulnerable. (Bullying used to be restricted mainly to schools, but now that kids are pretty much connected 24/7, they're even bullied at home or while out and about. These kids—and some adults—must feel as if there is simply no escape from their assailants.)

In chapter 6 of Leveling the Playing Field, I recounted an interview with two of the Gamergate principals, Zoe Quinn and Alex Lifschitz. You may recall the Gamergate incident: It began as a reasonable argument amongst gamers about ethics in game-related journalism, but quickly escalated into vicious attacks, name-calling, doxing, and death threats, all delivered (mostly anonymously) via the Web. Zoe and Alex were two of the favored (if that's the right word) targets, and the two of them essentially had to go on the run, afraid to stay at their own homes or to be seen in public with their friends and colleagues.

 

Zoe Quinn is one of the Gamergate
folks targeted by folks who attacked
her, released her personal information
(called "doxing":), and threatened to
"swat" her and her friends.

Perhaps worst of all, said Zoe, was the threat of swatting, in which an attacker calls the police and reports a fake emergency at the target's address. The caller might tell the police that he had heard gunshots at the target's address or that he knows someone is holed up there with firearms and/or explosives. You get the idea. The goal is to get the cops to deploy a SWAT team to that address; the attacker's presumed goal is to get someone at that address hurt or possibly even killed. This is why Zoe Quinn and others have called swatting "attempted murder by proxy."

It's incredibly dangerous. You have heavily armed, nervous, excited (and sometimes frightened) police officers breaking open a door and entering the premises of someone who has no idea what is happening, why these assault weapons are suddenly pointed at him, or why these people are breaking into his house. (I suppose that the smart thing for the victim to do would be to drop to the floor with his hands behind his head, but in those circumstances, who would have the presence of mind to do the smart thing? Then again, what if, when you drop, the cop thinks that you're diving for a weapon? And how is he or she supposed to know that you're not?!)

Swatting has been going on for several years now (the FBI estimates that some 400 cases occur each year), and it finally resulted—as we knew it eventually would—in someone's death. On December 28th, Andrew Finch was killed in Wichita, KS when he came to the front door in response to police officers who had been sent there by a swatting "prank." (Ironically, the address the attacker had wasn't even the correct address; Finch was not a party to the argument that caused the swatting call, and was therefore unaware that there was a problem, making the whole nightmare doubly tragic.)

Representative Katherine Clark
(D - Mass.) sponsored the Interstate
Swatting Hoax Act of 2015 and almost
immediately became  the victim of a
swatting attack herself. Image in the
public domain.

A few years ago, Democratic congressperson Katherine Clark introduced a bill that would impose serious penalties for such online attacks and hoax calls, especially ones that result in death. (Naturally, Clark herself became the target of swatting attacks and other online threats.) The bill is still in committee, and people who know about such things say that it has little chance of passing.

Some argue that we don't need laws specifically aimed at swatting, in any case. The L.A. Times Editorial Board, for example, argues that existing laws cover such situations: there are, for instance, already laws against making threats and against filing false police reports. However, most of these laws are local in nature, and each state determines how to file charges. In most cases, callers are charged with misdemeanors, but even if a felony charge is brought, the punishment may vary wildly.

Zoe Quinn is right: a swatting call is attempted murder by proxy. If apprehended, the "prankster" should be charged with attempted murder or another serious felony. If someone dies as a result of a swatting call, the caller should be charged with, at minimum, manslaughter.

And if it takes a federal law to ensure that this happens, then so be it.

Bows and Arrows, Sticks and Stones

I've been reading about primitive bow-making. Not the kind of bow one might use on a gift box (though my efforts in that area are certainly primitive enough), but bows that one might use to shoot arrows while hunting or for target practice. You know, bows of the sort that archers use.

Bows and arrows have been around for many thousands of years, of course, and with the introduction of fiberglass, and then the addition of pulleys, sighting mechanisms, carbon laminates, stabilizers, and other such paraphernalia, the technology of bows has advanced such that some modern compound bows look only vaguely like the bows carried by Native American and early European and Asian archers. To my eye, they don't look like bows at all.

This is Albina Nikolayevna Loginova, a Russian compound
archer. She is the current world archery champion in women's
compound archery. Her modern compound bow, simpler than
some, nonetheless looks pretty complicated. Image licensed
under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
Unported license.

I'm much more interested in traditional bows, generally made of wood—though they can also be made of horn—and sometimes adorned or enhanced with backings of sinew, silk, or rawhide. They seem simple, and somehow pure. (Primitive is, of course, the wrong word for it, laden as that term is with both ambiguity and potentially negative connotations. Traditional is the favored term, one that works well, since a given tradition can be pinpointed somewhat accurately in both time and place; thus, one can pattern a bow after those of the Klamath, Kiowa, Siletz, or Comanche tribes, and we can also classify a bow shape or construction according to when it was made.)

As a technologist of sorts, I've wondered what attracts me to these seemingly less technical endeavors; why, for instance, do I get such pleasure out of seeing a straightforward, simple design? It's not that I don't appreciate the complexity of a modern compound bow, I do—and in much the same way that I appreciate any other sophisticated design, whether in a motorcycle, a computer, a building, or a piece of software. Basically, I'm a sucker for good engineering of any sort. Sometimes that engineering is pretty complicated, but often—as in the case of a so-called primitive bow—it's quite simple, at least on the surface. (A good bowyer—for that is what we call someone who makes bows—can explain the many ways in which traditional bows are actually quite sophisticated. But, at least at first glance, they look to the eye disarmingly simple, even rudimentary.)

Simple can nonetheless be beautiful. This is a yew longbow.
It’s a selfbow, i.e., a bow carved from one piece of wood.
A medieval longbow had a range approaching 400 yards.
Image placed in the public domain by the photographer,
James Cram.

As with most of forms of engineering, a traditional bow results from the melding of art and craft and science; as with any good woodworker, a seasoned bowyer puts his skill and knowledge and sense of aesthetics to work creating something new, building something beautiful with his hands and his heart and his brain. It's hard not to like something like that.

And yet, there's an irony here, one that I thoroughly enjoy. I'm reading and learning about primitive archery and bowyery, but I'm doing it in a modern home; when my coffee cools as I read, I walk over to a microwave oven to reheat it. I sit in front of a flat-panel TV, streaming an Amazon movie (which I'm mostly ignoring) and read a book about “primitive” bow-making, but the book I’m reading is being displayed on my iPad; as my eyes tire (which they do, because I am old), I can enlarge the font or change the background color. If I run across a particularly interesting illustration, I click a few buttons and—thanks to Wi-Fi—the illustration prints out on a printer upstairs near my desk. Later on, I may take some notes in the Kindle app I'm using to read this book and drop them, along with snippets of the associated text from the book, into a OneNote or Evernote notebook. Come to think of it, if I ever decide to try my hand at this, I may begin by using a CAD/CAM program to lay out a basic design.

I wonder if there's a word or phrase that describes the use of sophisticated technology to create primitive artifacts. Can't think of the term right now, but the most obvious example that comes to mind is nuclear war. 

Enjoy Every Sandwich

Back when I was the editor of Smart Computing Magazine, it was my pleasure to work with a talented tech writer named Alan Luber. Alan wrote columns, feature articles, hardware reviews.... You name it, and Alan could write it. And he wrote on word-count and on deadline. He was an editor's dream; we knew that if we had assigned Alan an article, it would be in on time and that it would be very, very clean.

Not everyone knew it, but Alan was fighting what would turn out to be a losing battle with cancer. And yet, in the last year of his life, he worked harder than ever, churning out quality copy for me and for other magazines; he wanted to leave a legacy, he said. And I suspect that work was something of an escape for him.

When he passed away on November 23rd, 2004, I was struck dumb; even though I knew by then that his death was inevitable, I was in shock. I had lost a respected colleague and a dear friend, and I ached for his family, his wife and his children especially.

Now, 13 years later, one of those children—the youngest, Mallory—has completed a labor of love in honor of her father. The Cancer Chronicles: A Story of Transformation and Triumph is an eBook collection of Alan's thoughts about his journey toward death and his reflections on a life well-lived. You should get this book. It's sad, but somehow uplifting, and flashes of Alan's dry humor stand out against the stark reality of his pain and his sure decline.

At the time, I wrote a column about Alan's death, which—with the kind permission of Sandhills Publishing—I will include in this post. Don't forget to check out The Cancer Chronicles; it'll be $5 well spent. (As I write this, in fact, the book is actually free, but I don't know how long that'll last.) We don't often get to see this clearly inside the heart and soul of someone about to die. When you read the book, you'll see that Alan faced death with a heart more peaceful than that with which most of us face life.

Low-Tech Coffee

As a tech writer and a recovering software developer, I am naturally something of a technophile. I've already mentioned some of my favorite tools for writing (computer, OneNote, word processor, Skype, email, etc.) and also for camping (GPS, RV campsite apps, Wi-Fi and cellular boosters, etc.), and I have to admit that I'm a bit of a gadget hound. If it's shiny and has buttons and lights, I like it.

Now this is a phone. It only did one thing, and it did it well. And
it made a very satisfying noise when you slammed it down into
the cradle. Image used under the GNU Free Documentation
License.

On top of that, I'm old—and getting older all the time! I'd like to think of myself as middle-aged, but I suppose that would mean that I'd have to assume I could live to be 120 or 130 . . .  Not very likely to happen. But the thing about being a techie "of a certain age" is that I can remember what it was like before we all had computers and smart phones and GPS and The Facebooks and all like that. When I started writing news articles, we had to call people on the telephone to interview them! (And not on a smartphone, either; I'm talking clunky, corded phones with rotary dials.) If we wanted to check a date or a quote, we had to go to the library or local newspaper office. I mean, we had to physically go there! It was awful. All that moving around, speaking with actual people. Ugh. Very unsanitary.

Since I'm old enough to remember all of this, I'm still a bit awestruck by what the tech revolution has wrought. The idea that I can carry so much computing power in my pocket, that I can instant message someone on the other side of the country (or even the other side of the world), that my granddaughter can Facetime me to show me her newly painted room, that the little box on my dashboard (or the phone in my pocket) can tell me how to get to an exact location from 5 or 50 or 500 miles way . . . I'm still kind of shocked by all of this. I use all of these technologies daily—in fact, I'm rather knowledgeable about many of them—but they still sometimes astound me. I mean, our daughter Amy makes a living as an online fashion maven! That wasn't even a thing a few years ago.

So, yes, I do love technology: using it, writing about it, building it. And yet . . . 

Sometimes I find that the low-tech approach works better. It's simpler. Often faster. Almost always less expensive. For instance, I tend to make a lot of notes. I tell my wife that it's because my brain is always whirring away, coming up with brilliant ideas for articles, books, programs, and the like—but mainly it's just that if I don't jot an idea (or name or task) down within about 15 seconds, I'll lose it. I'll remember that I had an important idea, but it'll be gone; I'll have no idea what that idea was. I can hear the Whooosh! sound it makes as it leaves my addled brain. So, lots of notes; it's the only way I can survive. And in spite of the fact that I've tried many note-taking apps, I keep coming back to . . . I'm a little ashamed to admit this . . . a pencil and a pocket-sized spiralbound notebook. Yep. Pencil and paper. (Preferably lined paper, and preferably a #2 soft pencil.) It just works better, and it's faster. With an app, I have to tap the icon to open the app, then open a page (or start a new one), then attempt to use the tiny onscreen keyboard with my fat, clumsy fingers, then I have to save the note and quit the app. Honestly, for me, a pencil and paper is better, faster, and easier.

My favorite analog note-taking app. Complete with "stylus."

And note-taking isn't the only task for which I prefer a low-tech approach. As an avid RVer, I'm very much into all the gadgets and gizmos people use with campers, trailers, and motorhomes. In much the same way that editors argue about placement of semicolons or the use of the Oxford comma (now, don't get me started), RVers argue about the best way to do . . . well, anything. Whether it's making coffee, sealing a leaking windowframe, using solar panels, or traveling with full or empty tanks, those of us in the RV fraternity are happy to argue about all of it. (BTW, everyone at least agrees that it's best to avoid traveling with half-full tanks; too much sloshing around. That might be 150 lbs. or more of water surging fore and aft, enough to throw your rig seriously off-balance.)

But let's just concentrate on coffee for a moment. (I say "just," but that word does a serious disservice to possibly the most important liquid ever. More important even than bourbon. And that's not something I say lightly. I don't know why the inventor of coffee hasn't been canonized. Oh, wait . . .  yes, I do . . .  He was almost certainly an Ethiopian Muslim . . .   At any rate, all I can do before my first cup of coffee is grunt, and it's generally a nasty, spiteful grunt, at that.) There are dozens of ways that RVers make coffee on the road, many of them pretty high-tech. There are French presses, AeroPresses, and full-blown Braun- or Mr. Coffee-type coffee-makers. Some people take their Keurigs camping with them! (That's just . . . wrong. Those Philistines! Not that I would judge.) Not surprisingly, Coleman (a company that’s been in the camping biz for over 100 years) makes a $70 propane-powered coffeemaker; this seems to me an over-engineered solution, but again . . . no judging. Some people like to use the old-fashioned stovetop percolator. I like that. It makes sounds that remind me of the way that my mother's kitchen sounded in 1958, and it smells wonderful. And really, there's nothing very complicated or high-tech about how a percolator works. (It's just physics. My friend Rick Brown could explain it to you, if you have a few hours.) This is an almost perfect way to make coffee while camping.

Our little Melita, filter, and teapot, in our trailer, ready for business.
Photo by Lesley Scher.

But notice that I said "almost." When camping, there is usually a need to conserve water. Even if you have a ready supply of fresh water, your waste water is going to go into a holding tank, and once that tank fills up, you may have to break camp and find an RV dump station; there may be one nearby, or it may be a few miles down the road. Either way, it's a pain. No matter which approach you take, you're going to use water to make your coffee. But then you're going to use even more water cleaning up the grounds, washing out the percolator (remember trying to clean the grounds out of a percolator?), and cleaning the press or decanter or whatever you're using.

Lesley and I take the easy way out: We use a small Melita cone filter coffeemaker. You can get them in various sizes, but we just use the 1-cup size. Heat up some water on the propane stove, drop a filter in the Melita, add a scoop or two of ground coffee. Then place the funnel-shaped coffeemaker on your mug, pour the water in, and wait about one minute. Done. Decent coffee, no mess, nothing to wash (even the mug and coffeemaker can just be wiped clean), and no wasted water.

It's low-tech, simple, cheap, and fast. Although I'm sure that any day now, Melita will release a Wi-Fi-enabled cone brewer, and then I won't know what to do, especially if it has flashing lights. I can only be so strong.

Work "Camping"

Lesley and I just got back from two wonderful weeks "camping" on the Olympic Peninsula. I saw some beautiful scenery and had a chance to observe a couple of things I've never seen in the wild: I saw a herd of elk, peacefully bedded down in the middle of a campground in a beautiful park (Dosewallips State Park, for those who are interested; it's near Brinnon, WA.). They were stately and calm, as befits massive creatures who are secure in their grandeur, and who for some reason have decided to tolerate us puny humans. (Though they sometimes like to toy with us by surrounding some poor soul's trailer, motorhome, or tent, and then daring the camper to try and make it to his door—or flap, if it's a tent. As this is going on, one can hear in the background the quiet laughter of mischievous elk.) In any case, it's their park; we're just visiting, and it's best to keep that in mind.

This man left his trailer and came back to find it surrounded by elk.
After 30 or so minutes of grazing and snickering at him, the elk
departed and the man was able to re-enter his trailer.

The second thing I saw struck me as unaccountably sad. I've read of salmon swimming upstream to spawn, and I must have seen video of the process on Wild Kingdom or some similar show. But I've never stood on the bank of a river and actually watched these magnificent fish, battered by rocks and current as they fight their way upstream back to the very place they were born so that they could continue the cycle of life. And then . . . they die. They fought for days to get back to a very specific spot upstream in a freshwater river, they lay their eggs (or, in the case of males, fertilize a female's eggs), and then—having left their saltwater home, and having fasted throughout their upstream journey and battled heroically to revisit the place of their birth—they simply fade away and die, their mission accomplished. The banks and shallows of the river were covered with dead and dying salmon, some flailing weakly as if in protest.

This bull was bugling when Lesley shot this awesome photo. We stayed
well out of his way.

This has been going on for eons, of course, and it's part of nature. But it seems a cruel and relentless part.

As luck and commerce would have it, I didn't get to spend all that much time hiking and enjoying nature. I spent a lot of time in our trailer, editing a U.S. history book. (Occasionally I'd sit outside at a picnic table with my computer and do my work out there, at least until I was harassed by mosquitoes, bees, flies, or some other pesky nature-thing. Then I would head for the trailer and set up at our little dinette table, possibly with a cold beer to help settle my rattled nerves.)

You may have notice that I put "camping" in quotes up above. That's because it's hard to reconcile what I'm doing with the actual camping I did as a (much) younger man. In those days, a tent was a luxury; most often we'd simply hike until we were tired (which took a long time, 40-50 years ago, but which doesn't seem to take nearly as long these days), and then put down our packs, lay out our sleeping bags, and start a fire so that we could have something hot for supper. (This was very often a dehydrated meal in a vacuum-packed foil pouch into which one could mix hot water; the result was something vaguely food-like, and I recall actually being fond of a few of the meals. The mac-and-beef wasn't at all bad, and neither were the beef stroganoff or the chicken and rice. Not surprisingly, the food got to tasting better and better the longer you were on the trail. Sadly, I cannot recommend the dehydrated peanut butter.) These were the days when I learned from my friend George that all one really needed in the way of utensils and tools was a Sierra cup and a good sheath knife.

Lesley made shrimp and grits one
night. This is a far cry from dehyd-
rated mac-and-beef,

These days, though, I am old and soft, and I no longer look forward to sleeping on the ground and waking up to powdered eggs and sausage-like, patty-shaped objects of dubious origin. Instead, Lesley and I "camp" in a 19' Escape trailer that includes a 6 cubic foot refrigerator with a freezer, a two-burner stovetop, a queen-sized bed, a dinette table (removable to make another bed, should we ever persuade my granddaughter to accompany us, which is increasingly unlikely, as she now seems to have discovered boys and cars, either of which I'm sure must be much more interesting than grandparents), a sink, a small furnace, a hot water heater, and—THANK ALL THAT IS HOLY—a bathroom.

So, yes, it's hard to call this camping. Some, in fact, have called it "glamping," which is apparently a portmanteau of "glamor" and camping." We will continue to call it "camping," though, simply because I refuse to be associated with such a silly word as "glamping."

This is our trailer parked at the marina at Port Townsend, WA.
Note the antennae at upper right.

I mentioned that I spent a great deal of time working during this last trip, which brings me to a few other things I have now that I didn't have when camping back in the day. If you were to look carefully at the roof of our trailer, you would see a small collection of antennae, a pair of them, plus a single one some inches away from the pair. These are for, respectively, a Wi-Fi booster and a cellular booster. Because after all, what is camping without Internet access? In both cases, these find a weak signal and then amplify it so that it's usable. My excuse is that I use such tools to work—and it's true that during our last two trips, I spent a lot of time sending and receiving files, connecting to the online version of the Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS, as we lovingly call it), looking up facts relevant to the books I was editing, and otherwise engaged in various forms of digital communication as a way of allowing me to freelance from pretty well anywhere we happen to be. (One can find oneself completely without either a cell or Wi-Fi signal, but it's fairly rare, and it's usually possible to at least drive into a nearby town in order to mooch a few GBs of connectivity. At any rate, I found that I could connect most of the time, one way or the other, with some sort of usable signal.)

See?! I worked! I have to admit that a state park is a nice place to
office. It must have been casual day...

So, I no longer own a Sierra cup OR a good sheath knife (I really wish I'd kept the one I had in the Boy Scouts), and I no longer sleep on the ground beneath the stars, listening to what I sincerely hoped at the time was the wind whistling through the pines, as opposed to, say, a bear or a mountain lion stealthily creeping up to where I lay, shivering in my cheap sleeping bag. Now I'm warm and cozy and secure in my nice bed, with the soft glow of the various LEDs in the trailer reminding me that my phone is charging, the fridge is running, the microwave clock (did I forget to mention the microwave?) is set, and the cellular booster is turned on. Now, this is not just because I'm old and soft, but because I have work to do, and these tools allow me to do it no matter where I happen to be. And I also happen to be old and soft.