Happy New Year

The thing that I've discovered about blogging in my year-plus of doing it is that it's a lot like working out. When you're doing it, it becomes a habit and it's easy to keep it going. When you take a few days off, you start to get used to being sedentary and it can be awfully hard to get back in the habit. Essentially it follows Newton's laws: Objects in motion (i.e. blogging) tend to remain in motion, while objects at rest (i.e. not blogging) tend to remain at rest. I'm not really big into New Year's Resolutions, but I'm going to try to start posting on a more regular basis in the coming weeks.

Scratch One Christmas Party

Saturday evening Reno got it's first real snowfall of the season. As it so happened my boss was also hosting a Christmas party at his home in the south meadows that night, and Melissa and I had been invited to attend.

We set out from our home in the north valleys a little after four p.m., just as the sun was going down and the roads were starting to freeze over. Cars were sliding on Highway 395 like it was a skating rink and by the time we got to Parr Boulevard traffic had slowed to a crawl. Actually, the word "crawl" implies too much vigor. The sides of the road were littered with spun-out and stranded vehicles, and the flashing lights of police and tow trucks gave the gloaming an especially eerie look. It quickly became obvious--there was no way we were going to make it to the south meadows, much less home again at a much later hour when conditions might be even more hazardous. So we called my boss to let him know we couldn't make it, turned around and went home. We ended up spending the night cooking pasta and watching the snow fall onto our backyard.

Some good news: I am happy to report that our seven-month old Lab-Border Collie mix, Keela, absolutely loves the snow. This was her first real experience with the stuff, and after just a few seconds of confusion she took to it like a duck to water. When we got up this morning the sun had come out, and so we took the dog to one of her favorite places, the long open valley that stretches off into the Great Basin just to the east of our neighborhood. There's nothing up there but miles and miles of sage-covered mountains, peppered with the occasional stand of pinon pine. In the fresh snow the tracks of jackrabbits were visible everywhere, and our already hyperactive puppy was absolutely beside herself with excitement.

I have to admit that the clean air of the desert makes me pretty excited too, although I don't have the energy of an seven-month old puppy to express it with. Days like today make me realize what a rare and wonderful privilege it is to live in a place like this. People often ask me why I am so taken with the mountains and the open spaces of the West, and while it's the sort of thing that a person can (and that I probably will) spend a lifetime trying to put into words, I usually tell people that I love living in a place where the land is still bigger than the people. One day developers will no doubt clear the valley east of my neighborhood out to build yet more houses and more of the attendant residue of suburbia, but for today it is still raw desert, the way God intended it. For one day least, that fact made one man, one woman, and one little black dog very happy. Keela wasn't able to catch a jackrabbit today (and she probably never will--they're very wary and much too fast for her), but it's certainly nice to have space in which to chase them.

Virginia Open For Now

It may have taken me a day or two to catch on, but I noticed yesterday that Virginia Street is now open again downtown. I don't have any inside info on this, but I suspect that this is sort of akin to shoving the dirty clothes under the bed when company comes over, because while portions of the newly refurbished road look great, parts of it also look like they need to be repaved. Enjoy it for now, because I expect the road to be shut down again as soon as the League of Cities leaves town.

Good On Ya, Brazil

Earlier this year they became the first nation in America's weight class to become completely energy independent. While we spend precious blood and treasure fighting apparently endless wars over the oil-rich Middle East, Brazil, a third-world nation roughly the size of the continental U.S. and populated by close to 200 million people, meets all it's energy needs without importing a drop of oil. They can do this thanks in great part to the home grown and produced sugar cane ethanol powering millions of their vehicles. Why don't we do this in the U.S.? Sugar cane won't grow in Iowa, but that doesn't mean we don't have options. It's a more expensive process, but we could probably accomplish much the same thing in this country with corn ethanol and other renewable energy sources, and as a bonus it would be a great boon to long-suffering midwestern farmers. There are countless ways we, like our neighbors to the south, could work to throw off the yoke of foreign oil addiction. Or we can continue to sacrifice our security and the future health of the planet (not to mention billions of tax dollars and the lives of our military men and women) by remaining utterly dependant on foreign sources of energy for the foreseeable future.

But as if that weren't enough, today Brazil has made another bold move to preserve its Amazon Rainforest by placing a chunk the size of my home state of Alabama into protected status. I don't have all the details, but apparently parts of the new preserve would be open only to research, while other portions would allow for some closely managed logging and for sustainable use by local communities. This move won't stop deforestation in Brazil; that mostly goes on in the southern Amazon, which continues to be hacked up at an alarming rate despite the fact that "Saving the Rainforest" was something of a cause celebre a few years ago. But this is definitely a step in the right direction, plus it gives treehuggers like me a sense of optimism. Maybe one day we here in the first world will catch on that developing renewable, domestic energy sources and valuing environmental preservation are not only compatible concepts, they're both pretty good ideas.

Since we're on the subject of the Amazon and men who championed conservation, if you're looking for a great read check out The River of Doubt by Candice Millard. When one of our greatest Presidents, Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt, lost the 1912 election he took the defeat very personally and decided to deal with his depression by leading an expedition into an unexplored region of the Amazon jungle and down a previously uncharted river, the eponymous River of Doubt. They just don't make men like TR anymore--these days most guys deal with that innevitable mid-life sense of fading relevance by buying a sportscar and dating a much younger woman. Roosevelt chose to risk his life (and that of his son Kermit--yes, that really was his name) on a months-long trek through a region of South America that at the time was populated only by dangerous animals, semi-hostile Indian tribes, and ungodly numbers of bitings and stinging insects. The book is not only a fantastic adventure but it's also an excellent history lesson, telling the story of the expedition from the point of view of both American and Brazillian members and brining to life the early 20th Century, a time when the last blank spots on the map were finally filled in. In the modern era of GPS navigation and satellite communication there may not be any unexplored rivers left in the world, but as long as foreward thinking nations have the political will to do the right thing, then at least the Rainforest itself will survive to benefit future generations.