If you have spent any time camping here around the Kern River Valley you know it can get very cold in the higher elevations during May. One time I was camped up at Bull Run Creek during this month only to awaken with frost on my sleeping bag. This reminds me of a time some years ago I had taken a friend who had never been there before to Bull Run Creek to go fishing. It was in May.

    The weather was absolutely beautiful. The sun was shining brightly and in no time we were in our shirtsleeves. The warmth of mid-day made a swim in the creek really inviting. There are several deep pools in Bull Run. You can stand at the top of some granite rocks and dive from ten feet or more into these magnificent pools.

    Bull Run is a native trout stream and runs year-round. Why? Because it is spring-fed and does not depend on snowmelt alone. So trout thrive; and the water from the springs is naturally very cold. Also, in May there is snowmelt feeding into the stream and the snowmelt water adds considerably to the frigid temp of the stream. In short, during the month of May and at its high elevation Bull Run is very cold. Really more like ice water lacking only ice cubes.

    On this particular trip with my buddy the outside air temperature was about 76 degrees. The water was about 39 degrees. I knew this but my friend didn't; and as he expressed the thought of peeling his clothes and taking a dip in the frigid waters, I thought to myself “Why should I tell him?”

    How often I've wished I had been able to make a video of what transpired. He had no sooner dived into the ice cold water than he popped up like a cork. Instantly! His arms hugging himself and his mouth working like a guppy, his silent scream unable to find articulation his departure from the pool came the closest I've ever witnessed to running on water.

Bill Cosby has a skit where this occurred with his wife. But that was at some sophisticated place with a swimming pool; and while funny I prefer this story about my buddy.

Yes, I’ve been to Burney Falls and other environs where the overwhelming beauty transfixes the eyes with wonder at the magnificence of such natural splendor of Creation. I have fished our streams in my native state where that nearly fabled golden trout are found. But the rugged beauty of Bull Run Creek remains unsurpassed to my eyes.

In my travels throughout America I have visited all the National Parks, but in my travels throughout the southern states there was no escaping what Faulkner so well called the “gloom of green.” You can’t escape it, and for a Westerner like me longing for the wide open vistas of the great deserts, and the rugged beauty of the brown and gray tones of granite splendor found only here in the West while I would never disparage the natural beauty to be found elsewhere in America there is no other place to compare with the West. “Don’t Fence Me In” was my heart’s desire and creed before it became a popular song.

However, like my soul brother Henry Thoreau there have been times when this longing for “wildness” and refusing to be tamed has led to some difficulties, particularly with the distaff side.

    Due to some calumny directed at me I wish to make it clear that my belief concerning the doctrine of hell has absolutely nothing to do with my ex-wives. Of course, I won't presume to speak for them regarding similar beliefs on their part due to me in the relationships.

    This leads to some thoughts about a recent accomplishment by some British scientists who have created a headless frog. Why? you may ask. Well, tasteless jokes about the perfect wife or husband aside, in order to clone body parts without ethical or moral considerations, lacking a brain or central nervous system, headless bodies may be the right direction. Want a spare heart, liver or kidney? Just have a headless clone on standby. “But Doc, will I be able to play the piano after the operation?”

    Let's hear it for the South American frog that was recently discovered to have a substance (epibatidine which resembles nicotine) with all the pain-killing power of morphine without the side effects.

    But speaking of headless frogs and Frankensteinian science at its best, some time ago scientists at the University of Basel in Switzerland succeeded in putting the gene for the eyes of fruit flies on different parts of its body and producing flies with eyes on their legs, wings and antenna. One fly had fourteen separate eyes on its body. Parents of small children and teachers are particularly interested in this.

    A disturbing factor that may trouble people is that John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley didn't know where their discovery of the transistor would lead. One result, as per Moore's Law, the doubling rate of electronics and computer advancement every 18 months, is another factor. What will the advancements of molecular engineering and cloning lead to? As with the transistor, no one has a crystal ball.

    The brain is another matter when it comes to cloning. If the result of genetic engineering is a beautiful face and body but a creature with all the wit, grace and charm of a sea slug, or one with a voice like a hard rock singer that shatters glass and makes beavers impotent at a distance of a football field away, what real improvement?

    The brain remains a mystery in many ways. For example, William Safire had some fun a while back by calling attention to the syntaxical faux pas linguis of then president-elect of Brown University E. Gordon Gee's usage of the word faculty instead of the proper faculties in the context and a mixed metaphor in Gee's solecisms.

    I commiserate with poor Dr. Gee. No, I haven't joined those who hear voices and wear aluminum foil underwear. Though when I make such an outrageous blunder as using the word gorilla instead of guerrilla I know there must be alien influences at work. After all, did I intend to make it look like Planet of the Apes or the opening scenes in 2001 had some supporting evidence or that Indians in this country had simian allies? Such a thing makes me take another look at the possible efficacy of aluminum foil underwear. To compound matters, what do you do with a spellchecker that insists on both subtile and subtle?

    You have to know that Gordon Gee certainly knows the proper usage of the word faculty. Just as I know the difference between gorilla and guerrilla. What's going on in the wild waves of the brain when you make seemingly silly mistakes?

    This all reminds me of a Christmas letter sent out by the Superintendent of Schools in the Antelope Valley when I was a teacher in the district. The letter left all the teachers in the district asking “What the hell is he saying?” Other comments such as “What the hell was he smoking when he wrote that?” were less charitable. It was such a masterpiece of obfuscation that I still have the thing in my enormous file titled “Really stupid things by experts in education.” Of course, the Super was an Ed. D. so his vain and failed attempt at intellectualism was understandable. I can't help feeling in my bones that the creator of Dilbert had to have spent some time as a teacher in the public schools.

    Not being given to pedantry, I'm not among those who find fault with people who don't speak German wanting to pronounce the J in Junker as Yh. But I'll never forget a history professor climbing all over a student for doing this and embarrassing her in front of the whole class. Now that's a true pedant. Where do you draw the line in such academia? The attempt is made on what is called common usage. If a foreign term or phrase finds itself in common usage, then it is permissible even if you don't speak the language. So academics might forgive the use of faux pas by a non-French speaker and decry an Anglicized fox pass, Laurel and Hardy notwithstanding. Ah, the things people miss without a university education.

As though to purposely expose the pedantry of so many academics and prick the balloons of pompous asses I have Weedpatch University and The Weedpatch Gazette as forums. And one of my passions in this forum is frogs.

    Be a frog.

    I love it! For the non-cognizanti, the chorus (what else for frogs):

    Be a frog, be a frog

    If you try, yes you can, yes you can

    Now granted being a frog may fall short of the ambition of some (poor benighted souls, they) who do not aspire to such lofty status. Still, long before “It isn’t easy being green” became a catch-phrase frogs didn't get their just due. How can anyone minimize the importance of frogs? From Aristophanes' satire of Euripides alone, how could anyone not want to go right out and set up a ranarium and devote themselves to amphibiology? And what of Calaveras County? And how many crime novels would suffer unless someone croaked? Where would we be without the ennobling of the English language by expressions like frog in the throat and fine as frog hair?  Why, without the frog the loss to literature and language alone would be staggering! Consider the Epicure or the witch and conjuror without frogs (we must disdain pretenders, toads, frogs that never made it)!

    Think of the space shuttle Columbia taking off with 1,500 crickets and an assortment of other bugs, 18 mice, 135 snails, 152 rats and 223 fish. Just where, ah, ha! were the frogs? Nowhere! Not so much as a tadpole! Oh, I know, you're thinking those crickets would have been history with frogs on board. But where is the sense of proportion and equity in excluding these noble amphibians that have already made such outstanding contributions to science? Why should the noble frog be treated as déclassé? Ah, gentle reader, there is more at work here than the vagaries and caprices of human nature leading to mere oversight. It is sheer and blatant discrimination if you ask me! And just where, I ask further, is the Thurgood Marshall who will gallantly, courageously, stand up for frogs? Alas, nowhere in sight.

    And speaking of frogs, a yet unidentified heat-sensitive protein in Western lizards cleanses ticks of Lyme disease. Researchers are trying to find out how. I hope they are successful. Now why weren't lizards represented on Columbia? Another case of blatant discrimination? The whole world wonders? Well, maybe not the whole world, but close, undoubtedly.

    My scheme for bronzed bullfrogs may yet come to fruition. Inquiries are invited.

    The foregoing just to prove the poet and intellectual involves himself in more than ethereal esoterica. A good education is a marvelous thing. A mind is, indeed, a terrible thing to waste as this example proves.