The road trip at the end of week 5 took us across the bay to celebrate the wedding of an old friend and teacher. I didn't know what to expect, but it was delightfully well done. Congratulations to the couple.

The kids had a blast playing with the other kids. Mine brought out our whole arsenal of wooden swords and spears. Many battles were had. I will have to make more, because they are getting a little worse for wear, and are in high demand. If we visit anybody with a wood shop, I'll do a production run.

Meanwhile in Election Drama, someone tried to assassinate Trump. When he wins he should form a new elite honor guard with splendid gold-trimmed uniforms to replace the drab and failing secret service. But I'd prefer to keep demogogic politics offtopic here so I'll say no more about that.

That came at the end of an uneventful week in San Francisco as we settled our affairs to leave and not look back. The real fun started in week 6. We finally got out of town and headed for Nevada.

Guerilla car camping in the Sierra Nevada was surprisingly difficult. Road closures everywhere, everything private property. We tried to visit a few lakes but they all seem to be inaccessible or closed to the public. Even rural California seems overpopulated with small-minded cage chickens driven by paranoia and greed. The concept seems to be that nothing can be shared or public, and we should all cower in our little private fortresses, content to have only a few acres of living space, and only at cost. For all California's reputation as an invasively socialist society, the virtues of that are simply not present.

The very little public space we saw that was both accessible and pleasant was totally overrun. It makes sense: there is great demand for escape from the coop. But is this part of why nothing is made public? Too many people show up and perhaps the wrong kind of people show up, and it is easier to charge a toll or just avoid the liability altogether by closing it, than to profit from public traffic by actual commerce and reciprocity. We all gain a lot, in ways that can't be easily measured in taxable money flows, from having access to more public un-owned space that isn't gatekept and bean-counted. But this social achievement seems to involve costs American society is unwilling or unable to pay: public order, and discrimination.

They tell me this whole situation dates from the civil rights era, when America decided that excluding antisocial people, or enforcing laws against them, was an unacceptable human rights violation. America simply has too many people unwilling or incapable of public civilization, and to overcome them would remind us too uncomfortably of the societies our grandfathers fought to destroy. So instead of prosecuting litterers, vagrants, and others who disproportionately impose the costs of public space, we retreat into this private un-society. Our human rights are somehow optimized by having no public rights and no real society.

The open road is pleasant, and prominent in America's moral mythos, partially because it is one of the only spaces where one can simply exist without question as a member of the public. Of course there are ongoing costs to pay and stringent rules to follow, but that's the solution, not the problem. We should have stringent rules of conduct elsewhere, too, in exchange for existing without question. But the road too is a reflection of un-society: everyone else is just in the way.

Nevada is the open road radicalized and extended into a whole state. This actually makes it quite pleasant. Almost everything is public land, and underpopulated enough that you can do whatever you want. You can just drive off into the bush and camp, and even the BLM campsites for various landmarks are free.

Maybe we just caught the good weather (cloudy, occasional light rain), but Nevada's great basin region feels like a well-kept secret, like the southern reaches of Arrakis that are secretly semi-forested. Some of the valleys and foothills in Nevada aren't just semi-forested but downright lush, in a way that isn't visible in satellite photos. The big caveat is that there is no surface water. According to certain maps there are springs hidden here and there, but we didn't investigate any.

The whole place feels mysterious and inviting, like an open frontier waiting for you to try your hand at settling it despite the water issue. Miles away across the open valleys you can see a few such settlements marked by clusters of buildings, equipment, and trees. If one had a cult or wanted to put up a monastery settlement somewhere to carve civilization out of raw inhospitable nature, Nevada would be a great place. It's an untapped alien planet that happens to have a breathable atmosphere a couple days drive from San Francisco.

If one went in with a scientific terraforming attitude rather than just trying to profit or escape, what could be done? Nevada feels like prime territory for America's equivalent of Pleistocene park. A few well placed artificial springs, some tree planting, and introduced megafauna might make a serious difference. There are already wild horses. Why not buffalo, wolves, lions, antelope, etc? Could a different and wetter equilibrium be possible? It was ten thousand years ago.

But there doesn't seem to be any other reason for being there. Outside the cities the people are lonely leftovers or hidden away in private ranches. If you're not running a mine or ranch, you really would need a cult. Maybe that's why Utah worked.

We camped guerilla style in the forest up a random road. It was great until the sun came out. If you had a good shade system, some solar panels, and starlink, and didn't have somewhere to be, you could just disappear into those woods on a motorbike or 4x4 van and never come out again. But we broke camp heading for Utah, and left no trace.