I spent the day on Monday with my buddies, Mac and Lloyd, hiking in the Grand Canyon Parashant National Monument.
We hike over in that area from time to time because it is only about an hour’s drive up over the Virgin Mountains to get there. The poorly-maintained road that climbs the 4,000 foot pass is nasty in spots, so we take Lloyd’s Toyota 4×4 Land Cruiser. Once we get to the Parashant, the graded road improves quite a bit and it’s a beautiful drive.
We found a great place to hike after a 5-mile drive in the National Monument. There are no trails up there; you make your own in the desert hills. We followed some creek beds around a mountain and walked about 5 miles in.
It was very pretty in there with lots of huge Joshua Trees, native Yucca, Fire Barrel cacti, and giant Cholla cacti.
This may be the largest Joshua Tree that I’ve ever seen.
Many of the hills were rimmed with mesas made of volcanic lava and basalt.
A huge basalt rock that fell down a 1,000 foot slope seemed to have been stopped by a sturdy tree.
We found something that looked like a huge, prehistoric Stegosaurus turd.
(Or, it could have just been an odd-looking rock!)
Lloyd, while walking away from Mac and I, claimed to have found an Indian mortar stone, but he failed to take a photo of it. So, as with a lot of stuff he claims, we just take it with a grain of salt.
After the 5-mile hike back to the car, we ate lunch and enjoyed the scenery. As we headed away in the car, we noticed a sign that informed 4×4 motorists, “St. George – 61 miles”. For some reason, Lloyd and Mac wanted to check it out, so we spent a couple of hours driving east and north on crappy dirt roads, through miles of sagebrush and small Juniper trees until we reached the outskirts of St. George, Utah.
We can now check that stupid trip off of our Bucket List!
At least Mac and I learned a lot about the coronavirus. Lloyd spent a good portion of the day catching us up to date on all of the rumors and conspiracy theories that he’s heard about the epidemic on Fox News.
We must have heard him originate one hundred factoids about the dreaded virus with the dreaded line, “They say…”!
I consider Lloyd to be a very good friend who happens to be fairly intelligent, but he’s got quite a few crackpot ideas and racist memes that he’s not embarrassed to share with his buddies. Typically he blames most of the world’s ills on Democrats, Liberals, people of color, Jews, ex-President Obama, and failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
And, of course, the Chinese.
Lloyd is pretty sure, I think, that the coronavirus epidemic was caused by a purposeful or accidental release of a weaponized virus by Chinese biological warfare agents. His proof that this is so comes from the ubiquitous “they” who claim to know so much.
“They” are the same people who inform Fox viewers that the moon landing was faked, that Obama was born in Kenya, that vaccinations are the Devil’s work, that Jon Benet was murdered by her parents, that the Holocaust never happened, and that Hungarian billionaire/philanthropist/Jew George Soros is the mastermind behind all manner of Far Left plots against decent, Christian, salt-of-the-earth Americans.
On my weekly hikes with Lloyd, we typically can’t go more than a mile or two before he starts a sentence with, “They say that George Soros…”.
Lloyd has something in common with President Donald Trump: the both of them have a compunction to repeat, as soon as possible after hearing it, whatever inflammatory crap “They say” on the latest Fox News talk show that they’ve listened to.
It turns out that “they” may include Conservative talk show host/blowhard Rush Limbaugh, who said on his February 24th podcast (which Lloyd presumably heard) that the virus was created in a Chinese laboratory and “is being weaponized as yet another element to bring down Donald Trump”.
There it is: the God’s honest truth from Saint Limbaugh!
I hope “they” are wrong about the coronavirus.
Certainly, we don’t need state actors flipping the switch on bio-terror. Guns, bombs, and missiles are bad enough. But, at least one can aim them. Viruses spread in all directions, to friend and foe alike.
The highest rate of infection and death thus far is in China. Hopefully, that statistic holds. And, large industrial plants in that country have been closed because of the epidemic, causing a disruption of the world economy. If the Chinese intentionally started this, they have certainly shot themselves in the foot.
I don’t know for sure, but I believe that this viral epidemic is simply another outbreak that happens every once in a while, typically starting in Asia, Australia or Africa.
Since I’ve been alive, we’ve seen a number of viruses originating there, like the Hong Kong Flu, the Asian Flu, AIDS, the A-Victorian Flu, Ebola Virus Disease, Viral Hemorraghic Fever, etc. There’s no evidence that any of them were man-made or intentionally spread.
As the saying goes, “Shit happens”. These things naturally occur and run their course. Hopefully, with disease control measures in place, the suffering and death will be kept as low as possible.
Wash your hands and stay out of crowds, if possible.
That’s what “They” recommend.