Mudding in the San Andreas Fault
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mudding, san andreas, geology, fault, carrizo plain, national monument, impassable when wet, oyate, usufruct, leave no trace

Tuesday December 23, 2014

<a href="http://www.blm.gov/ca/st/en/fo/bakersfield/Programs/carrizo.html">Carrizo Plain National Monument</a>

Almost got stuck, in mud. Drove down a dirt road crossing the valley, trying to get to the San Andreas fault on the other side. I got most of the way across, then ran into deeper mud. I camped the night before attempting the rougher road ahead in the morning; that's when I got stuck. I pulled out a camp shovel and cleared around the tires, then rocked the car back and forth, till finally I crawled out onto firmer ground beside the road tracks.

The mud smelled like manure. I wonder if it is left over from the ranches that occupied the valley before it was turned into a National Monument (in 2001, as Clinton left office). There are a couple old pens and water troughs along this dirt track.

I'm happy to have got out, and headed back towards the paved Soda Lake road. I cleaned up as much as I could, my feet and sandals.

I was reminded of <a href="http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2014/2/7/21615/32120">this experience</a> in the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, almost a year ago.

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Thanks Presidents Roosevelt, for creating enough of a welfare state that a man with some guts, and luck, can find open spaces to wander through for days, unmolested.

The freedom to wander without being fenced in is an externality the market wants to price out of reach of the poor, who should have easiest exercise of their freedom to wander, and squat, <a href="http://www.blm.gov/ca/st/en/fo/bakersfield/Programs/carrizo/things_to_know_before.html#leave_no_trace">usufructing</a>. The market wants to attach a price to the age-old tradition of nomadism. Government should provide a "public option", an alternative to market signals, to encourage, and provide for, the "General Welfare".

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Sign seen at a gate on one edge of the <a href="http://www.fs.usda.gov/lpnf/">Los Padres National Forest</a>:

<blockquote>
          OYATE
  YOU*ARE*NOW*LEAVING*THE
 UNITED*STATES*OF*AMERICA
ENTERING*OYATE*A*SOVOROIN
    ABORIGINAL*NATION

      MdEWAKONTONWAN DAKOTAH
               OYATE  *SIOUX
</blockquote>

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Dear Oyate:

Why lock your gates to a weary December traveler, looking in the dark for a camp to rest till morning? In the old days, did your people lock access to unused resources? Please consider opening your land to usufruct: let us use your vacant camps, as long as we return them in the same or better condition.

A Wanderer