Moab: Part II

Why do men like to pee outside?

We've got an IT guy at work whose originally from a small town in Texas. He's handsome in that rugged, educated Texas redneck sort of way. I was surprised when I learned he was in IT, and even more so when I learned he specialized in Macs. We hit it off right away.

Today he was in my office installing some software and, as usual, he wanted to talk trucks. I've got a big one, and he likes that. We also talked a little about growing up, and our similar desires for expansive property with room for horses, views of mountains, and plenty of peace and quiet. He was telling me with a twinkle in his eye about the cabin he's renting up in the mountains and the eight acres it sits on, when he says, "Man I've never peed outside so much in my life, not even in Texas!"

Yeah, that was my reaction too. Except then I remembered that I always prefer the outdoors to plumbing myself. Why is that? Come to think of it, I've known a lot of guys who seem to lean that way as well, though I can't say I've ever had a specific conversation about it. Well, maybe once or twice.

At any rate, this is a perfect lead into another Moab topic I wanted to touch on. Not peeing outdoors, but living for a time almost completely disconnected from the modern world. I long for this. I need this even if I can only get it in the form of short camping trips throughout the year. Moab was such a trip. And even though it rained every single night, it was perfect. Even Gerard, who is prone to frequent insomnia, slept like a baby every night we camped. There's something about being in the unspoiled wilderness, disconnected from city lights, pollution, the noise of traffic and people.

The first night we camped near Canyonlands National Park. We set up camp on a flat rocky surface just a few hundred yards from thousand-foot precipice. The view was spectacular, but I can't describe how good it felt to get naked under the wide open sky and splash the day's dust off with some cool water. Or the joy of sitting around a flickering camp fire eating a hot meal. Or the soothing sensation of being in a warm, dry sleeping bag while rain patters on the tent throughout the night. Or waking up to the smell of bacon drifting in the damp morning air and then watching the sun come up on an endless landscape. It was heaven.

Several times while hiking we came across ruins left behind from the Anasazi. Some were dwellings, and some were granaries, small stone storage rooms built along rocky overhangs for storing seeds and food. Some still contained long dried squashes and seeds which these farmers/hunters/gatherers put away for leaner times. All were at least 800 years old. We'd look at them, then sit by them in silence looking out across the canyons. What were these people like? I tried to imagine the hands that put those stones in place almost a millennium ago. I tried to imagine what they talked about, what their lives were like, how they scratched a living out of this beautiful but merciless environment.

Experts say there is more food in a desert like this than there is in an alpine forest like we have in the higher elevations here in Colorado. You just have to know where to look. I pondered the fact that I could tell you how to use a computer to figure out the best place to put a wind turbine, but I had no idea how to find food and water though it was all around me. It bugged me. Technology can be brought down by a single terrorist act or natural "disaster" but we still have to eat. It bugs me to be so dependent on "the system" for my most basic needs, though I must say I think I'm doing better than most.

I'm not trying to say that a stone age life is necessarily superior. I realize the problems they must have faced. I don't live with the reality that any day my food stores for the year could be plundered by a passing nomadic tribe of spear wielding hostiles, and that there's no Whole Foods from which to restock. Civilization has its benefits. But I can't help yearning for some of the simpler aspects of a life uncomplicated by all the stuff and all the people we have today.