Wednesday, March 23, 2011 - BLM Campground, El Malpais National Conservation Area, Grants NM
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Road Runner, Bosque Birdwatchers RV Park, San Antonio NM, March 10, 2011
It's time to hit the road
The saga of the dead refrigerator has finally played itself out and it's time to hit the road.
Night camp
Site ? - BLM Campground, El Malpais National Conservation Area, Grants NM
- This is a new, small, quiet BLM campground with shelters and fire rings at each site and vault toilets - no water, power, or dump station available.
- Good Verizon cell phone service
- Good Verizon EVDO service
- Locate this campground on my Night Camps Map
- Go to BLM El Malpais National Conservation Area website
- Get a BLM map
- Check the weather here
Writing From the Inside Out
A young writer, if he is unknown, can be at a party and watch what everyone is doing. If he has a marveluos ear for dialog, he can wake up the next morning and remember all that was said and how it was said. He is a bird on a branch. Sees like a bird and writes books that are extraordinarily well observed. But once he is successful, especially if that happens quickly, it's as if the bird were now an emu. It cannot fly. It grows haunches and foreshoulders and a mane: lo and behold, it is a lion. And everyone is looking at the lion, including the birds. But it is a lion with the heart of a bird and the mind of a bird. So there is a terrible period when the transmogrified emu is trying to live like a lion and has little talent for it. Then the beast begins to experiment. When it runs, it now sees other animals scamper. It takes a while - often years - for the writer to get to appreaciate his effect on others, and even longer to begin to understand human beings again. In the old days, he could write about friends, enemies, and strangers by intuition, by induction; now he puts it together by deduction. Of course, he does have more material on which to work his deductions.