Author: Bob Hagan

The site has been moribund for a month but help is on the way. I was traveling most of September and often off the grid beyond even cell phone range. Now my old computer has crashed and I’m trying to retrieve data and learn my way around a new Windows system.

I still watch VHS tapes and have trouble operating an ATM machine. For a long time I prided myself on being a 20th, or even 19th Century kind of guy, and I was comfortable with that. But it’s clear I need to up my tech game. Much as we’d like to, none of us now can avoid the 21st Century.

Fortunately, I have a computer expert flying in . Which reminds me of my days in cubicle land, when we used to “call the IT guy” in much the same spirit our ancestors summoned a priest or shaman, hoping he could sprinkle corn pollen on the problem and make it go away. I’m not sure we’ve advanced so much today. Probably not one person in a thousand among us could explain what radio waves are, or why we use AC/DC current. I know how an internal combustion engine works, and I might even be able to fix one at need. But to me a computer is a magic box; when I recite the proper incantations, it does what I want it to do.

Maybe it’s an inescapable part of the human condition: the more we learn, the more we don’t understand.

This day 140 years ago, Sept 4 1886, Geronimo surrendered for the fourth and last time. Nana had come in seven-and-a-half months earlier with nine women and children, acting as hostages for a surrender Geronimo had negotiated with Gen. Crook but later reneged on.

I try to keep these postings on track following  Nana’s Raid, but I often allow my other interests to distract me from that quest. One of those sidelines is in collecting what I classify as “Lost in the Woods” stories, as here and here. The latest of these to catch my eye is the curious tale of a young lady recently the subject of an extensive search in Wyoming. Although initial reports almost always get the facts wrong, it appears possible the girl was not in fact lost but may instead have taken French leave from a crew of teens working on a “trail project” in Grand Teton National Park.

I wonder what might have motivated her to go over the hill, as they used to say in the Army? If I were still a reporter,  I’d want to take a closer look at Groundwork USA. My first thought was that it is one of those outfits despairing parents contract with to straighten out their troubled sons (or daughters) with a combination of tough love, hard work and healthy living in isolated and Spartan rural surroundings. A couple of those operations have surfaced in New Mexico over the years, usually amid allegations of mistreatment and abuse. From its website it’s not easy to guess exactly how Groundwork’s “Green Teams” go about providing “vehicles for young people to develop their abilities to lead and work with a team, hone their financial and emotional literacy, and strengthen their awareness of the intersection of local and global issues in our communities.” It could be young Fauna simply got fed up with listening to this kind of blather while raising blisters wielding a shovel in the back country and decided she’d rather take her chances with the grizzlies.