So what are the compensations, Joel?

I started this blog to talk about my adventures as a desert hermit, and so far all I've done is bitch about the weather and the infrastructure. That wasn't what I wanted to say at all.

This morning I claimed there are compensations. So I should probably enumerate some. Let's see:

1: Neighbors! That's a weird one for a hermit to start with, but I'm gonna go with it. I have five neighbors or sets of neighbors within five miles, and I've formed good, mutually-beneficial friendships with three of them. (One other guy's a cop, and even though he seems a perfectly nice person I don't associate with people who have more power to hassle me than I would ever consider reciprocating. The fifth neighbor is a lady who makes me look like a social butterfly. She doesn't want visitors, and everybody respects that.) In the city, I had thousands of neighbors in the same physical radius, but not as many friends.

2: Gunz! In the city, if I decided to take a stroll with an open-holster .45 and a slung M1A with a pouch of magazines, fifty thousand upstanding citizens would simultaneously lose sphincter control and SWAT teams would be mobilized from as far away as Oahu. Here, people would say, "Oh! Here comes Joel!" True story: Last Sunday my landlady and I hiked over to visit our weekender neighbors. I didn't happen to be wearing a holster when she suggested this, so rather than put one on (and because it's still a new toy) I slung my new carbine. Now, this carbine is ... not exactly commercially produced. It is in fact the most aggressively ugly, simply the most evil looking firearm I've ever seen, and I'm proud to be its papa. We walk to the neighbors' house, Nice City Lady opens the door, and ... gives me a big hug. Try that in Peoria.

3: The terrain & the scenery. OMFG. There are no words.

4: The quiet. Be still and listen to the sounds around you, right now. I'll bet I can guess what you hear. Underlying everything there's a surf noise, generated by hundreds of engines and thousands of tires. Probably a jet or two. Sirens. Strangers' voices. In the city it's never never quiet. Right now - I stopped typing for a second so the keyboard stopped clicking - I hear wind. I hear Magnus digging mud out from between his toes. Between wind gusts I can hear the second hand on the clock above my head. If I hear an auto engine, I go investigate. Sometimes a jet flies high overhead. Sometimes there are coyotes. But if there are loud noises, chances are I'm making them. You can hear yourself think.

5: The chance to ... I don't know, be yourself. There are no dress codes. Nobody cares if I dress at all. (I know a guy who wears a dress - don't ask.) A few miles away there's a very nice gay couple, I meet them sometimes when there's a building project going on, and everybody treats them with as much respect and consideration as anybody else gets. It just doesn't matter. I know another lady who used to be a guy, and it shows. Weirdest human being I've ever encountered. She's pagan, and into S&M. I don't know anybody who dates her, but otherwise it just doesn't matter. Treat people with respect here, and you get respect. And that's all that matters.

6: The chance to follow a thought. The last real novel I wrote took me two years to write and edit. The last one, I finished in three months. Do the math.

Yeah, the weather can get on my nerves. But this is a great place to live.