On to Albuquerque

All of us signed up to walk across the country to raise awareness and promote action on climate change. None of us knew what would come along with the package.  We all knew we'd have to make specific sacrifices, such as giving up the comforts of our familiar homes, friends, routines and decent coffee, but few if any of us would have anticipated the full package of sacrifice, obligation and chaos that comes with the deal.  I, being of rather impatient and perfectionist bent, haven't adapted to this ever moving dust bowl community as well as others.  My posts have been largely about my discontent and the problems I and the community have encountered.  However, looking at some of my fellow marchers' blogs, one can get a very different picture.  Please visit my good friend Steve Martin's blog, at: http://7millionsteps.com  Steve generally tends to look at the brighter side.

You can find a list of other marchers' blogs at: http://wagn.climatemarch.org/Our_media

For the moment I am at the Route 66 Casino Hotel, about 20 miles west of Albuquerque.  We were to camp in a vacant graveled field on the other side of Interstate 40 last night, but when we arrived the wind was blowing a consistent 30+ MPH with gusts up to 75 MPH.  We all crossed over the overpass and sought shelter in the Dairy Queen or some part of the casino complex.  I met up with friends at the bar, and after a short conference decided to get a room.  Our program coordinator made a deal with the hotel to give us a banquet room, where we could put on the scheduled program (an introduction to the Beehive Design Collective) and the marchers could sleep on the floor, a real treat given the wind and blowing dust outside.  I'll depart soon to intercept the marchers about 6 miles east of here with the break truck.

There is also a strong wind blowing within the marcher community.  There is a group of marchers who are stirred by our dwindling bank balance (which at the current $28,000 will barely get us to the Colorado border) and what they perceive as social inequity within the community. These folks have drafted a proclamation which I hope you can view at: https://docs.google.com/a/cornell.edu/document/d/1ZEkga4yu4FKmJC4bnnRrcWpgVkbRYm2xEOL4VjJ01Cs/
There is a link to the proclamation on our Facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/ClimateMarch and a growing body of comments about it.  Of course, a few members of the community are freaking out much more about the proclamation than the financial or social crises.  Our director has been hoping the whole discontent would blow over if he just walks 2 or 3 miles ahead of the main body of marchers and walks away whenever anybody suggests that there is a problem.  "Trust me" he says, "Everything will be OK."

Today the march will arrive in the western extreme of Albuquerque, and camp in a dingy vacant lot.  However, there will be some sort of house party fund raiser this evening, a rally tomorrow, and we have been welcomed and acknowledged by several organizations there.  Friday, Saturday an Sunday nights we will be hosted by a school with an environmentally focused curriculum.  Also, we'll be able to do laundry.

New Mexico has been very welcoming to us, and we have been generously hosted and provided for by all the Native American tribes whose land we have crossed.  The Indians of New Mexico have welcomed us very generously in comparison to the cowboys of Arizona.

Emptying the EcoCommodes in the forest at Ancient Way, El Moro, NM

The march is grueling. The walking is easy.

The march is grueling. The walking is easy.  Walking is relief from the march.  Oh precious relief.

It was just announced that breakfast will be from 5:30 to 6:00.  If I don't get breakfast and make a sandwich by 6:00 AM, I'm out of luck.  Why so early?  This means that the earliest marchers want to be on the road by 6:30?  Why? The low tonight will be 35 degrees.  The morning will be miserable.

We ran out of water this evening.  We had no warning. We have no ice in any of our ice chests, and the refrigerator, which we've had since Parker, Arizona, has never been plugged into the electricity it requires. Monitoring quantities of food, propane, gasoline, water and ice are explicitly the responsibilities of the Logistics Coordinator, one of our paid staff persons.  I have been an advocate for her and her position.  I wrote her job description and advocated for hiring a person to carry these responsibilities, and now she is falling down on the job.

I'm going to take over some of her responsibilities, make them my own job, and remove those elements from her job description.

We are hosted last night and tonight by a generous couple who have a beautiful home and giant shop on a few acres of land between Snowflake and Concho, AZ.  They are completely off grid, using two wind generators and a solar array to charge a giant battery bank to power their place.  They've asked us to minimize power and water use, but we ran the batteries so low they had to run their gasoline burning generator to recharge the batteries, and then we have to ask them if we can run their pump long enough to pull 380 gallons of water.  They're generous.  They tell us to go ahead, and if necessary they'll fire up the generator again.

We ate dinner with our hands tonight, because the chef decided we should eat with tiny pieces of pita bread rather than with spoons and forks.  We don't have any means of easily washing our hands, so we all dove into the food with whatever we might have handled today in the mix.  I like forks.

There are 40 more issues that frustrate me and drive me up the wall.  There is only one urge more powerful than wanting to disconnect the eco-commode trailer from my truck and drive back to Oregon; that is to walk with Steve tomorrow - the full 21 miles.

Gotta gather up electrical equipment and load my truck tonight so I can start walking at a ridiculously early hour tomorrow.

...but I could be back in Oregon before you read this.

Sycamore Creek

Phoenix to Payson

Tuesday, Apr 8 (5 days ago)
       
Bummer of an evening. Deb left for her home in Silver City, NM. I have a seriously bruised thigh, my truck's tailgate having fallen open smashing the corner into my leg; I've misplaced my clear lens glasses so am walking around in the dark wearing my sunglasses, I'm on dinner cleanup and there is not yet any water heated for washing dishes which means the dirty dishes will be piled mile high before I can begin washing; the prospect of washing dishes in the dark wearing my sunglasses, and the campsite snafu, Ed having changed the rendezvous time, the route disagreement, etc.

The rendezvous:
April 7th was a "Marcher in the Home" night.  Locals organize a group of volunteers to take one or more marchers home for the night.  They have agreed to take somebody home, provide them opportunity for a shower, feed them dinner, provide a place to sleep, a bite of breakfast, and bring them back to rendezvous with the group at 8:30 AM the next morning.  On the evening of the 7th, Ed, with little or no consultation with the group, decided that these families should bring their guest marchers back downtown Phoenix at 06:30, two hours earlier than their original contract.  Of course not all got the word, so we have marchers scattered over two hours of downtown Phoenix. I'm irritated that he should make such a decision without the consensus of the group, for the benefit of who? or what?  This sort of thing is NOT his call, and he seriously impacted the generous host families.

The route:
Our state coordinator and her husband (a marcher) proposed a route from Margaret Hance Park in downtown Phoenix out to the Pima Reservation east of Scottsdale via VanBuren Street, through a run down, dilapidated strip of meth hotels, so that we could march through a bit of Papago Park to get back to McDowell Rd.  Sarah, our Logistics Coordinator suggested we simply take McDowell Rd. (closer to our beginning at Margaret Hance Park and leading directly to our destination).  Brandon, the Arizona State Coordinator's husband threw a fit and insisted on his VanBuren route, thinking it very important to walk a mile through Papago Park.  Sarah compromised with a McDowell route for 5 miles, down to VanBuren and back to McDowell through the Park. Brandon took this to be a personal affront to him and his wife, and continued to make a huge fuss about it.  In the end, the detour to VanBuren was a total waste of time and mileage.  Straight down McDowell would have been the smarter route for several reasons (visibility being one).  Lots of hurt feelings about this.

The no campsite SNAFU
So, we walked out East McDowell Rd. to 92nd St. as prescribed by our Arizona State Coordinator and parked our fleet on an ugly patch of bulldozed desert with no shade or services. Before all the marchers had even joined us we were visited by the Tribal Police and told we were trespassing and would have to move immediately.  After a few moments of pleading, the impolite, aggressive, Marine-like skinhead cops decided to allow us 30-40 minutes to vacate before they would arrest us all and impound our vehicles.  They called their supervisor, a lieutenant, who quickly arrived.  At the same moment Brandon managed to get the Tribal President, or her representative on the phone, who asked to talk with the Lieutenant.  The lieutenant showed us why he is a lieutenant and not the skinhead Marine.  He said to his superior, something akin to "We've got to find somewhere for these people to spend the night."  After a short negotiation, the Tribe invited us to stay at the soccer field a few blocks away.  Two top Tribal officials showed up to welcome us, and offer us use of showers at the school adjacent to the soccer field.
Erica, the Arizona State Coordinator, apologized for the misunderstanding.  She had failed to realize that there are two adjacent reservations and multiple tribes and she had negotiated a site with the McDowell Tribe which she had thought covered two sites on two different nights.

   
Wednesday, Apr 9 (4 days ago)
       
Settled in the shade of a verdant mesquite a few hundred metres from the Verde River, at the Ft. McDowell Res. rodeo grounds, having polished off a couple of Negra Modelos and thrown my Thermarest & sleeping bag on the carpeted floor of the press box adjacent to Kathe. After dinner we'll clink our cups of wine in memory of our departed friend Deb, and celebrate our upcoming reunion with her in northern Arizona or New Mexico.
Good day today, in high 80s w/ nice breeze and slight overcast. Not being ready to walk on my bruised thigh, I chose to drive my newly re-tired truck all 15.5 mi. Unhooked the commode trailer & headed back to Fountain Hills w/ Steve & Lala for essential supplies: beer, wine, ice, chips, salsa, yogurt & sundry items.
Marie cooks, the new doc (Bruce) looks at Miriam's feet, Steve naps, Branden counsels Liz, Luke & NewMary read, Michael wanders around the sun-drenched lot talking to somebody on his phone in Spanish, Ken rakes a tent site, while Lala prepares an agenda on the easel for tonight's meeting and I peck out an inadequate expression of my love for a woman with whom I have shared recent history.
   
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Friday, Apr 11 (2 days ago)
       
Moved the commode trailer to the first break point as soon as the first marchers hit the road, then drove back to a café in Fountain Hills.  Joined Jimmy, Kathe & Rosa sipping a mocha and typing for the first time in too many days on a full size keyboard.  The conversation is top quality; Rosa is excellent, skilled in Dynamic Facilitation and other skills, and I think will be key in bringing some resolution to our leadership crisis.

Soon headed back north to move the commode trailer from 1st break to lunch stop.  Later I will move it to tonight's camp, where we will be trespassing on gawd only knows whose property.  It's not clear why we didn't have a pre-arranged site for us to camp tonight, but Ed, Sarah and I scouted the route yesterday and didn't find a decent place for us to camp.  We picked a sadly deficient site along side a frontage road leading to a number of millionaire estates, where we would park the trucks on highway right-of-way, and camp along side a dry creek bed across a fence.

I will then leave the commode trailer and head back to Phoenix in my truck, to Jim & Kathy's to pick up my package from the Camp Chef stove people.  I hope to stay another night there, so I'm not present if/when the sheriff shows up to throw us out of camp.

I'll also stop at REI in hopes of purchasing a tiny backpack like the one I asked Juliet to send.  I've talked w/ Kathe about the possibility of taking a short break (3 days - 1 week) in the near future, and heading down to Silver City for a few days.  No conclusion.  No plan. yet.

Kelsey and Michael went off-route to hike in the stunning chaparral hills.  A boulder rolled under Kelsey's feet, she fell, the boulder smashed and skinned up her leg.  Her pants were torn, and she suffered various abrasions. I was ready to pack up the break truck and head for the lunch spot when she came limping in w/ Michael.  She insisted on continuing to walk after a brief break, against advice of Michael and me.  However, after getting the trailer turned around and driving out to the highway shoulder, Michael, 100 metres up the road, waved me down with our crossed arms code for "stop I need help."  I called him and he said they were on the way back to the truck.  Michael then continued to walk and Kelsey accepted a ride in the truck.
A few minutes later we were at a shady, cold pool on Sycamore Creek with Doc Bruce administering aid.  She stripped and sat in the cold water.  She rode the remainder of the day, and today is walking with a bicycle as a crutch, her thigh wrapped in an Ace bandage.

Then I discover that because I listed the turn to our dreadful campsite as being at MP216 when it was actually following MP218, the lead marchers took a wrong turn and ended up at a far better site on Forest Service land.  Some mistakes are meant to happen.  After arriving at our new campsite, I unhitched the commode trailer and headed back to Scottsdale. 

Reunion dinner at April's
Went directly to REI, purchased a small backpack, and headed for my niece April's house in Mesa, where I had dinner with my sister & her husband, her daughter and her husband and three daughters, and my sister-in-law Penny.  A spontaneous family reunion.  What a hoot!

Then back to Margaret's, margaritas and a long conversation w/ Penny.  Concluded that driving over to Jim & Kathy's in Phoenix wasn't practical after the first margarita, so settled down in Margaret's living room for a comfortable night's sleep, knowing the house will explode in kid energy way too early in the morning. Penny & I concluded a wonderful reunion and love fest in memory of our favorite deceased human. She is definitely ready to leave her high status w/ Motorola to embrace the next phase of her life.  Nice connection w/ sister Margaret, as well as her only remaining "local" daughter April.  I will run over to Jim & Kathy's, or meet them early for coffee, in the morning, but won't likely make it back to camp before the early marchers depart. I'm so happy that the march has allowed the connections between me & my friends & family, and between Deb and Jim & Kathy

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Saturday, Apr 12 (1 day ago)
       
Breakfast w/ Jim & Kathy in Phoenix, my Camp Chef package, fuel, Home Depot, back to Margaret's for water, and off toward Payson before noon.

Missed the entire march.  Caught up with marchers at tonight's camp, somewhere about 8 miles south of Rye. Decent campsite.  2-hour discussion of little or no value (to me), and then after dinner, while I was washing dishes, two boring stories by a "professional storyteller."  Quite a cold night!

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Sunday, Apr 13 (today)

Walked 8 miles to Rye.  Marchers shuttled to Payson in various vehicles.  Those who want to walk that stretch, will be shuttled back to Rye in the morning.  The rest of us will hang out in Payson.  Payson is a very changed place since I was last here in the late 1960s or early 1970s.  Very sad to see a Walmart.  Very nice coffee shop and café in the Dimi Espresso

Bouse, AZ

Phoenix 169 Mi.

Phoenix 169 Miles

Sunday, March 23rd
There are a number of logistical support requirements for moving 30 people across the desert, or across the country, that might not occur to one cursoraly thinking about it.  The obvious are food, water and a place to sleep.  Finding a place for 30 people to set up tents and to park 6 vehicles for the night is a huge challenge, and is fortunately mostly handled by our state coordinators.  That leaves the food and water to the band of marchers.  But there is also need for refrigeration (or ice), propane, gasoline and diesel.

Water was a primary concern for the previous 100+ miles coming across the Mohave Desert.  A kind supporter in Iowa donated four large plastic water tanks, 2 65-gallon,and 2 75-gallon, but we had no way to carry them.  They have to be used standing vertically like four conventional water heaters, and filled with water are very top heavy. We settled on renting a 14' U-Haul van to carry the water.  We could have easily done with a 10' van but contrary to my own recommendation, that's what we got.  So, we stood them in the front of the van, strapped them to the interior ties, and hauled a few cubic yards of unused space from Twentynine Palms, California to Parker, Arizona.

I'm parked about a mile short of the bridge across the Colorado River and Parker, and the marchers should be along in an hour or so.  We're supposed to turn in our rental truck here, but haven't even yet had a conversation about what we're going to do with the water currently in the tanks (about 160 gallons?), let alone what we're going to do with the tanks continuing easterly, nor assessed our water needs and access to it over the next 2 weeks, between here and Phoenix.

We are facing a few more puzzles.  We ordered a large, very efficient refrigerator which runs on 12 VDC.  We currently have more electrical capacity than we are using, but there isn't a simple way to hook the refrigerator to the exising power source.  The 45 Watt system on my truck is insufficient for its needs, so as we are currently configured we will have to run it from the 300 Watt trailer-mounted system have been pulling behind our gear truck.  If we put the refrigerator into the gear truck, we can string wires between the truck and trailer to power the refrigerator.  This at present looks like our easiest and most likely option.

We have been offered use of a wind generator, which might also produce sufficient power to run the refrigerator, but will have to be hooked up to batteries co-located with the refrigerator.  We have a strangely modified Isuzu truck which is sort of half RV and half flatbed.  However, the RV portion is nicely outfitted to support maybe two people, but is relatively useless in support of 30.

More to come...

Walking (marching) and driving for Climate Action!?

Sitting in my truck in the middle of the Mohave Desert, at the intersection of Calif. Hwy 62 and the California Aquaduct (34°3.616 N 115°16.062 W elev. 1001 ft) establishing a lunch spot for the marchers who will begin showing up in a few minutes.  It's 9:30 in the morning.

The goal this morning was for marchers to be walking by 7:00 (or perhaps earlier) to cover as many miles as possible in the cool of the morning.  I pulled out from last night's campsite at 7:30.

Typical for these hot desert days, I established a break point at 4.3 miles from camp, the lunch spot at 8.3 miles from camp, a second break point at 11 mi, and tonight's camp site will be 15.2 miles from last night's.  The BLM has granted us opportunity to camp anywhere on their paoperty through this stretch of desert, which has made the site determination pretty easy.  Any place where we can park our fleet of vehicles without any getting stuck in the sand is a good site.

We started this march on March 1st in Wilmington, Calif.with about 1,500 people walking away from an inspiring and enthusiastic rally held at Waterfront Park.  We walked in a torrential downpour most of that Saturday and Sunday, and saw gradually drier days across Los Angeles and the eastern suburbs. We stayed in campgrounds with bathroom facilities and water, in people's homes where we had opportunity to bathe and sleep on a bed or couch, and in a parking lot squeezed between the Interstate 10 freeway and the railroad track with a mile-long freight train passing about twice an hour.  In the desert since Joshua Tree and Twentynine Palms we've had full moon and stunning sunrise and sunsets. 

The group shrank to 42 people, and then to about 32.  We loose somebody from time to time  because they could only take a week or two off, or raised only enough money to join us for a short time, or whatever personal reason.  We've also gained a few people, who only recently learned of our adventure, or couldn't get away earlier. Today our staff march director leaves us to get back to his wife and home in Iowa, where he will continue to work for us full-time until entering law school in the fall.  We expect to loose another when we hit the Arizona border a few days from now, and at least two more when we reach Phoenix, about April 8th.

Now 9:45 ad the first of the marchers, whom we call "scouts" have arrived for lunch.

Two marchers signed up to join us in Phoenix, We hope to pick up at least a few more.

Some of the marchers are suffering from a variety of health problems. Mostly blisters and other foot aflictions, but a lingering cough, an aching back, a sprained knee and the like have taken marchers out of the walking for a day to a week. 

We are currently supported by a fleet of 6 vehicles, which means that at least 6 of us are not walking the full distance in any one day.  Today I drove the break/lunch truck, pulling the eco-commode trailer from last night's camp to the lunch spot.  Then another volunteer took it to tonight's campsite and I was able to walk the final 4 miles.

My job for the next three days will be "campscape." I will be one of the last persons out of camp in the morning, whether driving or marching, to insure that nothing is left behind, the site is clear of any sign of our having been there more than foot prints and tire tracks.  Then, I will endeavor to be one of the first on the next night's campsite, to determine positioning of the trucks and trailers to best serve the camp's needs.  The primary gear (luggage) truck set cross to the wind so that the stoves and kitchen are sheltered; the eco-commode trailer safely off the road and easily accessible, the primary water truck parked high enough to draw water by gravity to where we need it, that all the vehicles are safely off the highway and not in danger of becoming stuck in the sand.

Others are cooks, loaders and unloaders, dish washers, etc., all taking care of the every day needs of the camp.

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Today, a coast-to-coast relay run, raising money to benefit the families of the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing passed us.  The primary support vehicle behind the runner was provided and staffed by US Marines from the nearby Twentynine Palms base, and blasting music for her to run by.  Some of the journalists and photographers following the relay stopped and talked with us,, and we hope might make mention of our effort in their coverage of the relay.

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A brother and sister team returning from a family reunion in Joshua Tree to Phoenix stopped by to find out what we were all about.  It turned out she is from Aguila, a town northwest of Phoenix, and by chance, the site of a recently cancelled camping opportunity.  How fortuitous!  She will look into possibilities of our staying in her yard, her neighborhood, or other nearby site.  Ed put her on the phone to our Arizona coordinator to see what they could work out.

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Soon after establishing our camp, just off the highway here in the desert about 55 miles west of the Colorado River, a California Highway Patrol officer stopped by.  I was close by so walked out to greet him.  He greeted me by saying, "I'm curious."  This of course put us at ease.  We had a nice conversation with him about the desert, nearby towns, the strange county lines that make his territory alternately in San Bernardino and Riverside Counties, climate change, and more.  He was born and raised in Needles, Calif., but now resides in Lake Havasu City.  He took Ed's card and went back to work, wishing us well.

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It's 8:00 and time for me to get ready for bed.
I'll try to write again another day, but there's little time or energy for such frivolities.

Love ya all,
Pablo

Heading out for the "Great March for Climate Action"

Friday, February 14th, Valentine's Day, 1st day on the road
Finally left home about 9:00 this morning, and left Eugene about 10:00 after running a last few errands.  Constant rain all the way to Klamath Falls.  Great to see Salt Creek in its rampaging flood stage swollen by warm rains on the last of the remaining snow.  Stopped for the night in Carson City, Nevada under mostly clear sky and full moon.  Warm enough to walk the streets in a flannel shirt.  The truck is loaded to the max!  Couldn't get all of Tom Atlee's books on board.  Climbing the steepest of the hills in 3rd gear.  Very high winds between Reno and Carson City, and expect high winds and steep mountain grades tomorrow morning. 

Me

A few years ago, when new blades were installed in the Cougar powerhouse turbines.

Getting Ready

In November of 2013 I learned of the Great March for Climate Action, a coast-to-coast march being planned for hundreds of people to walk about 15 miles per day, 6 days per week, for about 35 weeks, covering just about 3,000 miles between Los Angeles, Calif. and Washington D.C.  For some reason I didn't simply cast it aside as another rally, petition or financial appeal of which I receive a dozen a week.  It grabbed me in some inexplicable way.  I pondered it, talked with others about the notion, and eventually decided I am going to do it.   I signed up in late November and began getting my shoes, clothing and equipment lined up.  I had been trying to walk between 2 and 6 miles a day, but began increasing my daily mileage up to as much as 13 miles a day.  The difficulty with this is time, not the mileage.  I'm pretty beat at the end of 13 miles, but I've spent about 5 hours of my day doing nothing but walking.  When we take off from Los Angeles, I suppose there won't be much more I want to accomplish in my day, but right now, 10 days before my departure, I've got a lot to get done.

I've offered, and the March has accepted, my truck as a support vehicle.  This means I have another level of preparations to accomplish.  I'm preparing a solar electric system that I have used to light a camp at Burning Man and a booth at the Oregon Country Fair, for a long journey as a phone and computer charging station.

Planning to leave on February 13th.