where sheep are nervous

WHERE SHEEP ARE NERVOUS
Okay, perhaps by now you are tired of hearing about desert living. After all, you comfortably live where there are trees. And I’m not talking about Nevada “trees”, which technically might be a tree like a tomato is a fruit, literally true but common sense calls it an overgrown bush and a nasty vegetable, respectively, but rather about real trees which rise above the knee caps of an Australian midget and actually provide shade. If you ever see a tree in a picture of Nevada, it was most likely taken in perhaps three locations. And at an altitude that sees it clear of snow one month out of the year. However, one minion in the comment section made a hasty remark about stretching the water article out to three desert living articles and I felt compelled to give that the old college try. We got a nasty snow storm at the beginning of the week and are now trying for a new record for temperature low. Minus twenty one last night ( not forecasted, of course ). I would act all macho and strut around and crow about peddling to work at that temp, but honestly it didn’t feel a whole lot different than zero or five above. It just took a bit longer for my toes to thaw. My point is that I’ve been getting to work later which has cut into my Net time. Home later too, so no reading. My inflow of ideas is thus hampered a bit. So you get this slop today. Thank you, also, for the huge response on the C. Wolf story. You guys are awesome. Gals too, I wouldn’t want to be accused of being a chauvinistic pig.
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Like most of my ramblings, I’ve covered this before. But the only thing better than beating a dead horse to death is beating it down to the bone, flesh and blood flying, entrails slithering, organs exploding. The desert has a few problems. First, you can’t grow much of anything. Despite my ragging on all the asparagus swillers, I miss the opportunity to garden. Gardening is used too often as a talisman, the perils ignored. But it does present at least a Better Than Nothing solution to the coming famines. Here, there is only herding. Now, it does give a different set of challenges, one few of us are familiar with. But, realistically, how many of us are truly ready for an honest to By Gum collapse? We are all muddling through and hoping for the best. Either by planning on growing our own food ( if Gore Warming or Lack Of Sun Spot New Ice Age come to pass, your current crop friendly area might turn for the worse ) or by being a nomadic herder ( by necessity giving up most manufacturing and relying exclusively on trade ). No plan is ideal. But wherever you are and however you plan on relocalizing, you can easily enough hope to turn disadvantages around. I’m by no means an optimist, as you may or may not have gathered by now, but any area has its strengths and weaknesses. In a farming area, you have high population. If you can organize your home boys quick enough and manage the transition downward in your arms industry, you become the new warlords ruling over the sea of peons. In the desert, you can use the huge tracks of wasteland as a defensive moat.
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Most people look at the desert and see huge areas of sand and scrub and little else. I see ( through the history teachers eyes ) a large feed lot for cattle and sheep ( steaks and wool ) and an arid land few dare cross. Now, we laugh mirthfully as we zoom across Death Valley, the air conditioner turned up on high to temper the 125 degree day, but it didn’t get its name out of a sense of sarcasm. Before cars, you died in there if you were stupid enough to venture in inadequately provisioned. PODA, it will once again be a place to avoid. Granted, that is low desert and here we focus on high desert, but the high desert, after the first waves of California refugees end up in our stew pots, will once again earn a reputation as a place to avoid. First, if we can stay mobile ( by we, I refer to the herders of the future- I’m sure I’ll be dead by then as my scalp will too much of a temptation ) we can swoop down from the hills to the river valley and slaughter any travelers silly enough to trespass. Any reprisal expeditions will be unable to locate us and we can ambush them also. In time, scalps on sticks will mark the Great Basin boundaries. Admit it, doesn’t that sound like a lot more fun than hoeing a row of turnips? Second, we have hundreds of miles of rivers to water herds at, and hundreds of thousands of acres of weeds to feed the animals. No fodder to raise, although the winters will need to see migrations to warmer areas and the toughening of stock to get away from the present pampered immobile herds. It takes a culture dedicated to herding to live in that environment, not an area casually ruled from outside.
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It won’t take many troops to secure the whole basin. The abandoned cities of Reno, Vegas and SLC will provide trade ( scavenged material for warm clothing and meat ). And the fertile regions of Idaho will be a source of trade for grain ( we can leave the present occupants to fight it out over the spoils and trade with the victors ). Kind of like I started to explore in my 20k fiction piece I posted daily for a month. I wanted to touch on the perils of staying stationary, but I don’t know how well I did that as I lost interest and stopped writing. One of these days I’ll start back at it, but this time with a solid outline and more character exploration.
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