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Some things just continue to defy cerebral processing.

Yes, I know, you've heard this theme before, so what. But a week in which Wolfowitz can say "it's time for foreigners to stop interfering in the affairs of Iraq" without dropping dead on the spot from terminal irony is a week that brings it all back. (Just when I thought it was safe to come out and play again, too.) So at times like these, I comfort (?) myself with the knowledge that although the country is in the grubby, tense hands of rich carnivorous monkeys on crack, Mighty Mouse will soon appear to save the day. What I really did, however, is decide to talk a walk.

Before I go on, however, I should tell everyone that I just decided to write the rest of this column naked. Oh, yes. If you read the GRACK! I posted less than 48 hours ago, the Special Moving Edition, you'll understand why, or at least you might.

It's very simple, really. Here I am in my new (old) house, and I've run through all the clothes I stuffed into my travel bag before the movers came. The rest of my things are crammed inside two dressers still wrapped with that funny green cellophane they put on to keep the drawers from falling out, and I'll be damned if I'm going to stop what I'm doing -- writing this column -- just to find a pair of shorts. I just took a shower, and it's a little too warm for my Polartec bathrobe, so the TiBook is now resting on ... oh, isn't THAT just what everyone wanted to hear!

I like to use a portable for creative writing, you see. That way I can get away from my workstation and have more fun. I also get to sit on the loveseat instead of in my genuine fake leather swiveling "executive" chair that makes my legs go to sleep so I fall down when I get up to answer the phone. [Whoa, this sucker is HOT! Uh, pardon me ...] One of the little games I play is to try to finish whatever I'm writing before the battery runs down, or in the case of the TiBook, before my sperm count is permanently whacked -- as if I needed any.

But back to the walk.

Where I live now, I can just hump out the front door, walk 150 feet, and have all the wide open spaces, arroyos, and mountaintops I want for hiking or spontaneous beer bottle tossing the way the locals do. Nifty, huh? So remembering the monkeys again, I ground my teeth briefly and started off. My equipment consisted of an old ski pole without the round thingie or the pointed tip, a canvas bag for artifact collecting, a bottle of water, and my trusty digital camera. I also took my wallet, not because I expected to encounter an intinerant snow-cone seller, but in case I fell down a hole and coyotes ate my miserable flesh. ("Oh, so that's who he was!") You get the idea.

I soon discovered the difference between real wilderness and all the other stuff. The other stuff, while it might at a glance be mistaken for uncharted territory, is in fact cross-hatched within an inch of its life by ATV tracks. For those of you in foreign lands ["Y'all stay outa Eye-Rack now, you hear?"], ATV stands for "all-terrain-vehicle," those gloriously dangerous and convenient three- or four-wheeled contraptions that make life bearable for ten-year-olds in rural New Mexico and elk hunters everywhere. I will say that I was out there in the boonies for almost two hours and never saw or heard another human being, much less an ATV, so there must be special "wreck the countryside" days set aside for that sort of thing.

All in all, it was still a fascinating hike. Admittedly the major "roads" made climbing up the ridge more of a stroll than a slog, and I soon found that with a little effort, I could make my way into more rugged areas that did indeed appear mostly untouched. I found bear poop and coyote tracks. I found a sofa (honest). I saw a jackrabbit. I climbed higher and higher and enjoyed some stunning views of Taos valley. I even discovered a fabulous cache of bleached cow or horse bones under a dying juniper and filled my bag. Here and there throughout the walk I noticed itty-bitty single gnawed bones of various kinds tucked way back underneath big sagebrushes or ground-hugging trees, as if someone had intentionally placed each relic just so, like a Southwestern conceptual art installation. You can guess what it was, though, just like I did: if you were a runty little scavenging beast, where would you take a delicious rotten rabbit femur so you could chow down undisturbed?

I knew that higher up in the hills, right at the base of the mountains, was an ancient hot springs next to a small community of remarkably isolated familes and voluntary outcasts, a spot I'd been to before via automobile from an entirely different direction. My thought was that if I followed the spine of the ridge I was climbing all the way to the top, I might come across the place from the opposite side, which is in fact exactly what happened. This is a particularly strange locale, the site of prehistoric Indian settlements and saturated with vibes so strong that some people I know won't even go there. The funny thing is that on my way back, I encountered something even more bizarre, at least to me.

Take a look at the picture below: you're looking at a mostly-buried roundish boulder, maybe 18 to 24 inches in diameter, that appears to have split completely and very cleanly in two. There are no other large rocks in the area where I found this, and the effect it had on me was almost religious -- I don't know any other way to put it. The thought occurred to me that this might be a giant geode and I briefly considered trying to dig it up, but then I stopped myself: I wasn't supposed to "do" anything, and besides, the thing was too damn big. In fact, I even made it a point not to mark the location in any way or even try to remember just where it was. The trick would be, I told myself as I walked quietly back to normal time & space, to find the rock again the way I'd done before.

So there you have it, reason enough without the fact of having no clean clothes to sit here naked after midnight with a dangerously glowing titanium PowerBook G4 far too close to the subject of most of the emails I get every day. What's more, I still have 34% (battery power, not sperm). I may do this every week, why not? The rock could be a sign, you know. For every column I write naked with hot metal on my lap, another deranged monkey falls out of its penthouse and dies twitching and steaming on top of a limo like an evil wet witch ...

Voting would be simpler, sure, but not nearly as much fun.

Senior Applelinks editor and columnist John H. Farr invites your emails.

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