Young Hikers Missing in Joshua Tree Since Thursday [7/27/17]

[zippetydude]

Probably good advice. Can't say I never did, can't say I never will, but right now the wilderness experience is more than enough. Still, I wish that hiking and running gave me the prescient skills to find these two...well, if they are meant to be found. Perhaps the fates have decided that their escape is to be indiscernible to us immortals?

z

[cynthia23]

It's striking how often the attempt to commercialize a vision--i.e. buy some drugs and get high in some stereotypically 'mystic' place like the desert--leads to unpleasant consequences. Transcendence can't be purchased, and the Muse can't be forced. Indeed it seems that she becomes vengeful when we try.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch--the KESQ and Desert Sun reporters have just docilely accepted whatever someone official tells them. When will someone in the reporting business actually do their damn job, and ask NPS what the @#$% is going on with all this??

[Wildhorse]

I am with you. Z and Cynthia. I love the wilderness, but I will leave the mushrooms and drugs to others, and the visions to prophets. I do have an old prayer rug made by a desert nomad. I rest on it from time to time and let my mind wander, grateful to the weaver and to the generations who used it and saved it for me.

I had the good fortune to study ancient Hebrew at UCSD with some of the best scholars. They do not know what manna was, if anything at all, historically or linguistically. Nor do they know whether the prophets had chemicals. No historical or linguistic evidence says they did. But they do know that prophets played a significant political role in ancient Israel and are likely to have been geniuses one way or another. And so much in the west has come from their words, and still does, making such a difference in our lives, religious or not. I marvel at this, and at the wear and subtle dark colors in my rug that only fully reveal themselves in the bright light of the desert.

[Perry]

Zip, did you go search over the weekend? I had thought about going since the weather has cooled off significantly, but the involvement of U.S. Marshalls makes me think that it's unlikely I would find anything out there.

[zippetydude]

Hi Perry. Actually the mundane intervened. I spent the weekend getting ready to move. Hoping to finish the process soon so I can actually see a trail again! Let's see, Skyline is kinda uphill for a while, then you begin to see some trees after a while, right? JT being flat will actually help me get some distance in. I did San G 4 weeks ago and it was so nice to be up in the thin air again!

z

[Perry]

Maybe I guessed wrong about anybody finding anything:
http://www.kesq.com/news/breaking-sungl ... /626067507

Sounds like the park has some issues.

[cynthia23]

Good grief! 'Mailbox full"??? What a comedy of terrors. Probably the sunglasses will not turn out to be significant, but it really calls into question the competency of the search, or specifically, those running it. What a story. Thanks for posting, Perry.

[zippetydude]

I don't understand either. Not a lot of investigating going on if they don't even have normal channels of communication available for new clues. Cynthia, I kind of have the opposite impression about the sunglasses. They appear to have an asymmetrical design, with a small white oval on the top corner of one side and a small white rectangle on the other corner. At first I thought that they were not an exact match, but then I realized that the picture may have been inverted somehow during transmission or processing, which would then make the sunglasses an exact match. In any case, it's odd that they didn't release where the hiker had found the glasses. That seems to have been omitted, even though it would of course make sense to intensify searching near that area.

z

[cynthia23]

You may well be right about the sunglasses, Zip--I didn't examine the picture closely and was just making a general remark. But we're in total agreement that it's hard to imagine any investigation succeeding when you can't even get through to the tip line or investigators!! As for not releasing the location, I assumed it was because they don't want non-professionals showing up to muddle the scene? btw, I noted that the hiker said he'd found the glasses 'up top' which obviously suggests a peak.

Actually, though, in a way this clue, if it is one, suggests more puzzles--why would Orbeso leave his sunglasses behind? If you're wearing them, you generally keep them on. As clues go, it's a little too perfect and perhaps has a staged quality. On the other hand, I have while hiking found other people's lost sunglasses, so it does happen 'naturally', too.

More strange puzzles.

[Wildhorse]

Again, the NPS looks shady, just as it did in the blurry press release. I don't know how this discovery tints things. I wish the government agents would take off their dark glasses.