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Boy are you lucky
The reason for that is, I'm not going to say a thing about hard drives or browsers or operating systems. I might find a way to work in something about usurpation of power by de facto military coup, but then again I think I just did and that's plenty for now. No, I'm going to talk about the Circle A Ranch, chickens, turkeys, and metaphors thereof & therefrom, plus maybe iPhoto and a few other things. Okay, here we go, but first a taste (ulp) of something special:

The Circle A Ranch calls itself a hostel or a retreat, but it's really rather undefinable. It's just a few miles north and east of Cuba, New Mexico. It was and is an actual mountain ranch. The main building, hacienda, ranchhouse, or whatever it should be called is probably 80 years old and shows it: rotten vigas, cracked walls, gaps around the window frames, doors that blow open, oh, on and on. But my wife and I flat-out loved it. We spent Friday night in the "Meadow Room" and never slept better. It was before the season opens, so we had the whole huge building all to ourselves. This also meant it was freezing-ass cold inside until we got the wood stoves and the giant fireplace going ($15 extra for the pre-season wood), but --have I said this already? -- we loved it.

Normally you'd have to share a bathroom. The place is laid out to accommodate groups of people and used to function as a summer camp for girls (maybe it still does, I'm not clear on that). The point is, this joint is rustic with a capital "R" and there isn't a thing fake or restored about it. The pictures below should make that obvious. There's a red-painted piano, an old mountain lion skin on the wall, at least three or four antique woodstoves, and a big institutional/communal kitchen. You're on your own here! I especially liked all the handwritten signs like, "The dishes aren't DONE until they're dried and put away." Warms the cockles of my heart, it does.

Peaceable kingdom
We weren't alone at this this place. There's a great guy named John who got a job there as a ranch hand after literally walking in the door from the top of the mountains above the place. John had been hiking in the national forest, actually coming down the Continental Divide trail, when he came upon the ranch at the same time that they needed someone. He has his own trailer to live in, takes care of the chickens, dogs, cats, and guests, and even gets paid. I envy the hell out of him. That's the kind of life I thought I would have for myself before I was brainwashed by things like graduate degrees, teaching jobs, wives, and the need to own crap like silverware and towel sets. (Mark my words!)

When we went for a hike, John said "the dogs always go along" and go they did, all five of 'em! No way you'll be surprised by wild animals with that gang running interference. I kind of liked it, actually, until two of them got to carousing and knocked me down as I was crossing a snowfield. They hit me harder than I ever remember being hit before, but then I never played "real" football. Still, it was great fun. And we hadn't gotten half a mile from the ranch house before I found the biggest, most obvious & incontrovertible bear paw print hat I have ever seen, right there frozen in the mud. Yow!

John gave us a present of fresh eggs as soon as we got there: brown, blue, yellow, white, you never saw such a rainbow of chicken (and duck) eggs. We decided to eat those along with the bagels we had brought and cooked the whole mess up in the kitchen with all the warning signs. What a hoot. I built a fire in an old fireplace big enough to hide half a dozen Enron executives AND their golf bags. It turned out there really wasn't any light (or even much electricity) to speak of, so we turned a big sofa around to face the fire and ate mostly by firelight. The eggs were already cooked of course, but by the time we finished them, we were too. The BEST THING about this place, however, was that I didn't see a phone jack anywhere and wasn't planning to use it if I did. No Internet for this boy! I did find a 3-year-old Road and Track magazine in our room upstairs and enjoyed that, along with half a dozen chocolate-covered cherries from a box I found sitting on a table downstairs.

Finally the turkey story
At one point the next morning I walked over the the chicken coop and stood by the fence. One by one every hen and rooster in the joint came up to where I was standing, like they expected me to toss them some cracked corn or something, you understand. Silly birds. Oh yeah, I always have a pocketful of corn with me, hah. But that collective behavior phenomenon reminded me of something I used to do way back when I lived in the Ozarks in the middle of the woods. Can you spell "drop out"? Anyway, along the road to what we called Yellowhammer Farm were some neighbors who raised maybe half a million domestic turkeys. OK, there weren't that many, but there sure were a lot. You never SAW so many big white turkeys. One day as we were driving by in Larry's pickup (I was in the back), I pounded on the roof of the cab and said "Stop! I wanna see the turkeys!"

He did, and I did, and that was the start of a long and rewarding relationship. When I stood up in the back of the pickup to get a better view, turkeys from every corner of the field came running to the fence! In maybe thirty seconds there a vast, gobbling SEA of silly white birds bobbing and milling in front of me. I was afraid they'd push the fence down and then we'd have to run like hell.

Every time thereafter I rode or drove down that road, I stopped to play Lord of the Turkeys. Sometimes I walked past. It made no difference: every turkey in creation would come running, not walking, over to the fence. What a din, too! And I always wondered what they expected. Liberation, maybe.

Epilogue
What on earth is this all about? Well, just this: Blow up your TV, tear up your diplomas, and stay as far away from this thing in front of you as you can get. I can't say blow up your computer because John the ranch hand has one in his trailer (we first got in touch with him via email). My wife pointed out that Friday was the first night away from home in five years that I hadn't tried to do Internet work and that really floored me. So if I can't tell you to toss that laptop out the window on your next trip, I can at least advise you very strongly to not even THINK about plugging the damn thing in when you get to your hotel. I know whereof I speak, children. Now go forth and do no harm.

And finally, Photo. Someone whose name you'd recognize wrote to me and said he was "blown away" by the gorgeous photo album he ordered from Apple after organizing his shots in iPhoto. I can hardly wait, myself.Over a million downloads so far of the free OS X software, folks. This is gonna be a winner.

Senior Applelinks editor and columnist John H. Farr knows that some of you just made more money in the time it took you to read this than he gets for writing it, so he tried to post this really, really fast. (Any typos are the fault of your computer.)

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Mar. 3: "The Heart of the Matter" Feb. 25: "New Stuff: Browsers, Servers, etc." Feb. 18: "Mascot Lore & More" Feb. 11: "Killer Email & Wiccan PotLuck" Feb. 4: "Meanies, Guerillas, & Subscription Copycats" Jan. 28: "Full Moon Frenzy, w/ PowerMacs" Jan. 21: "iMacs & Webmaster Schadenfreude" Jan. 14: "Was It Only a Week Ago?" Jan. 7: "Useless Column" Dec. 31, '01: "I Want a Refund"

AUDIO CREDIT: embedded 44k file, European Birds -- Sounds and Sonograms.

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