WEBVTT

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It's even worse now
as you all know.

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There are some completely
finished developments

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down in the valley West
of me, 35 miles away down

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on the flats that used
to be agricultural land.

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Home developments of
two-storey, finished

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houses that are all vacant.

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They're all vacant.

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The recession hit just
as they were going

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to put those on the market.

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And none of them
has been occupied.

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In fact, they even had a
sign at one place I drove

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by that said, house to live in.

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Free.

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This poem I'm going
to read right now

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is, I'm going to dedicate
it to Gary INAUDIBLE It's

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called "Siberian Outpost."

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I borrowed one of
the lines from him,

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but I'm going to have to ask you
where he got the line from when

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I get a chance.

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"Siberian Outpost" does not
refer to a place of Siberia.

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It is a remote
trail intersection

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at the southern end
of the High Sierra.

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One of the trails is
the Pacific Crest Trail.

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And the other trail is
the Siberian Meadow trail,

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which is an old trail for
bringing herds of chicken

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in earlier times to turn
loose by the thousands

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to graze probably
back in the 1890s

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and in the 1910s, before it
became a National Park anyway.

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"Siberian Outpost"

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"What are these deserts?

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Sheep overgrazed them years ago?

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A sweeping, gallery forest and
a gentle 5-mile ridge of foxtail

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pine.

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Tom, my artist conspirator.

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Tom and I walked
up the arid slope

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caught in lightning crashes.

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Siberian outpost meadow, munched
grass tufts and gopher holes

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shelter in the space
beneath a huge old edge

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zone foxtail pine.

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Hailstorm in heavy
showers, big ripped trees ,

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red bark chunks stay barely dry.

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Lifetimes ago.

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Lifetimes ago, this
same tree sheltered me

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on thornapple pine.

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I was a junior bodhisattva that
they named "No More Tricks."

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[LAUGHTER]

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And was set to sit
with the boulders here,

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an aeon or two Till the soil
came right up to my eyes,

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I shook and yank
and stood and said,

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OK, Tom, let's
head back to camp.

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The desert smells like rain."

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[LAUGHTER]

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