bliss picture

Fly Hot Springs and Geyser … sigh, arguably the most beautiful, man-made, drilling-snafu-birthed hot springs on Earth lies within binocular sight of the Not-Dome’s border, but not within reach … no trespassing anyway, as it’s on private land.

award-winning photo by Rodney Lough

Friday, a few intrepid polar bears ventured out to Trego — the sulfur-bubbly hot spring by the train tracks — to freeze their asses off and go for a dip in the boiling, sulfur-smelly water in the snow. The rest of us took a much-needed day off, and then Saturday and Sunday, we all tried to ignore our growing anxiety by engaging in a familial-bond-strengthening group activity. As usual, we found a strange amount of comfort in crash-course learning and/or laboring like indentured servants together.

Leaving off our individual daily projects, we spent a couple days catching the flatbed to the Ranch and dividing into three large “work weekend” crews: 1) brainstorming about space-saving, Mittleider-method community gardens for the cul-de-sacs; 2) tearing engines and cars apart and exploring various alternative fuels; and 3) assembling the new greenhouses and kwonset huts … inside one of kwonset huts (there’s a joke in there somewhere).

Of course I picked the gardening one, not only because it’s my new dilettante-ish field of interest, but also because I could sit in a chair and warm my cold, cold fingers under my big fur blanket all weekend and take notes. Then we had a kickass barbecue. (vegetarian, sigh)

To whom it may concern: Enough with this eco-friendly negative carbon footprint horseshit. It’s colder than Ann Coulter’s heart out here. Send firewood.