Diary 131109 – Holly Trucker

“Now the view was obscured by clouds and sleet, but on the usual day Chee knew the (window) glass overlooked immense space – across the Laguna and Acoma Indian reservations to the south and east, southward across the forty-mile sea of cooled lava called the Malpais toward the Zuni mountains, and eastward toward the Canoncito reservation to the great blue hump of the Sandia mountains behind Albuquerque.”

Tony Hillerman published that in 1980, in People of Darkness.  I remember then; Iused to love driving these roads.

All that’s behind me today, but I spent most of yesterday driving along from Albuquerque, just slightly south of the area he described.  On a normal day in 2013.  There were no clouds, no dust storm, no wind, visibility only about five miles, mostly obscured by a yellow chemical haze.  The sun shines through it at lunchtime with the amber glow of  late afternoon, and the glowing health that my body grew breathing the clean air of the canyon is melting around me like a the muddy air itself.  My ears are ringing, sinuses filled up, the floaters are back in my eyes and I’m working up to a nosebleed for the first time since leaving Bryan.  But worst for driving, is the difficulty of focusing on what I’m doing.  The contrast, from two days ago, is enough to inform a large number of decisions.

Anyhow – this time the brakes are really fixed.

And it was fun meeting Holly, who actually believes she is personally in charge of this monster semi.

Most likely tomorrow I’ll make it to California.

Chama River about Double Overnight

Now we need to get home. The first big test of the fire-engine red four-wheel-drive.

We woke up to a fresh elk footprint in the front yard, and headed out for Denver, during which drive we went from 7000 feet more or less to 12000+, a view that will be gorgeous in the autumn colors and is nothing to sneeze at now. Then we descended back to about 7000 and beyond and headed into some of the worst of the American metropolitan ambience, including 75 mph bumper to bumper traffic. For the first time, during all these many hours, I noticed that Bitsy has outy dimples when she smiles.

Bitsy in Santa Fe – 130605

Bitsy is snoring fl at out on the fl oor of our little travel trailer, taking up the entire space. She has been bored stiff for the past four days while I, first, slept for two days more or less, and then worked for two days to produce the current blog/podcast, and so today she rejoiced in a whole afternoon of social interactions.

We arrived a bit early at the end of the rail line in Santa Fe, because we like watching trains come in, and so chose the opportunity for a bit of restful meditation while waiting for the event. Or at least I meditated. She watched and waited for something more interesting to happen. Which it surely did. What fun to meet my cousin Nancy, whom I have not seen since I was more or less about 6 or 8 years old. We had at least two lifetimes to talk about, while Bitsy flirted with every passing dog lover, and finally tried to make friends with the entire trainload of people heading back to Albuquerque.

Now here I am sitting up late at night, feeling quite hyper, making pictures while Bitsy snores.

Compassionate Earth Walk

Check it out! A smallish group of Americans and I think Canadians and Native North Americans is walking this summer, in protest and with an educational goal, along the northern part of the route of the Tar Sands Pipeline. I’m posting the route here, but be sure to go to the web site of the Compassionate Earth Walk at:
http://www.compassionateearthwalk.org/blog/

Bitsy can’t wait!

We Are Home

Paying Bills

Bare Bones Biology 134 – Community and Ego

I had a dream last night about human ego, whatever that is, I will not try to define. In the dream, some guy was driving the bus and I was picking up the pieces. Literally, I mean, I was picking the pieces of newspaper and trash, old egg shells, gum and plastic wrappings — out from under the gas pedal — as they kept rolling back in there — while two other people sat behind, telling me what I was doing wrong, and the trash kept piling higher and deeper.

You will never guess what this dream was trying to tell me, because I didn’t until I started to write it down, and immediately came to mind my persistent question: “Why did The Creator give us our ego in the first place?” The thing causes so much pain and suffering to us and our communities, convincing us that our own belief system, our own need to be more right, is more real than reality. It isn’t, you know. Nobody is “right,” because nobody understands everything. And if we believe that our mind, emotions, intellect (reference), or our world view (reference), are more powerful than the biological reality. Well, that’s a pretty good definition of pain and suffering, now or later.

Pain is life enhancing. It guides our choice of behaviors so that we avoid drowning in the river when its currents are swirling in flood, or burning our little hands on the stove. Because we were formed within the biological community – our response to pain is biologically life enhancing.

To understand why we were given an ego is more difficult. What good is the blasted thing, if the use of it causes us emotional pain and suffering, but it doesn’t tell us what the danger is? Well, of course, that’s one function of community – to help us avoid emotional suffering by passing down the wisdom teachings of the ages. The harm caused by our ego-trips is well and often explained in all the wisdom teachings, and better behaviors described.

Maybe that’s what the ego is meant to do. Maybe our ego suffering is meant to enhance the welfare of the community by passing on some wisdom from now to benefit the future. I hope so, because our age is growing new problems faster than any before, and with these new problems, we must learn new lessons (or apply the old ones) about what not to do if we don’t want to suffer.

Our origins designed us genetically and behaviorally to live in a biosystem that functions to support life, but our human culture now has grown an artificial corposystem that functions to make money. And the power of this corposystem seems to lie mostly in our human ego needs.

So many people so filled with the fear of not being better than other people. Is that our ego? Why do we feel that we must be better than someone else? We can’t discuss the important issues, because someone might go into a one-up or one-down tizzy, or just turn their backs and walk away for fear that we might know something they don’t know. But isn’t that the point of discussion, that everyone knows more than only one? Don’t we WANT to deal with the problems? We keep saying that we do, and then the next thing you know we are debating irrelevant questions for no better reason than to satisfy our never-ending need to win. Even though the floods of climate change (climate change series Bare Bones Biology 092 through 100) are already tickling our toes – even though everyone really does know the end result of these ego trips, in our modern times, will be disaster.

So now my question is: how can we be aware of our ego, and all the negative, painful behaviors that it generates — how can we use that knowledge to grow a more positive, life-supporting human community?

Lynn Lamoreux
Photos by Lynn

This blog is an expanded version of Bare Bones Biology radio program that will play next week on KEOS Radio, 98.1 FM, Bryan, Texas. Bare Bones Biology is a completely nonprofit project. The podcast can be downloaded at

Recommended Action/Question for Discussion: I’m tempted to suggest that you start an argument and consider what methods you use to win. And what are the results. But in fact I doubt that you need to know more about how to argue. So instead I suggest you find a person with whom to discuss an issue and see how long you can keep it going without either of you having an obvious emotional reaction (because this will be a serious subject.) Maybe you could try this one – http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/11/26/why_birth_control_is_still_a_big_idea
“In the United States, especially this year, any occasion when contraceptives and public policy overlap seems to be an excuse to fight about other issues.”

It’s Worth a Try