This weekend we came full-circle, in a sense.  It was while camping at Cape Flattery on New Year's day, 2006 (or to be more specific, while hiking the Cape Flattery trail) that we discovered we were expecting Liam.  We'd been trying to get pregnant, and we had the pregnancy test in our backpack, and we got impatient- meaning Erin took a pregnancy test out in the woods, and we sat under a beautiful old-growth cedar tree, at the top of a lookout over the ocean, contemplating the meaning of two distinct lines in the view window.  We were delighted then, and we were delighted now to return, lo these 29 months later, to the scene of the crime- and bearing the principal result along with us.

The view from our campsite overlooking Hobuck Beach. You can see all the pictures full-size in the gallery.

Now to be absolutely clear, this wasn't 'roughing it' camping.  We drove up to our campsite, set up a tent 10 feet from the car, then laid down a couple therm-a-rests, a feather-mattress, a couple of sleeping bags, a big wool blanket, a down comforter, pillows... this was full-on nesting, with candle-lanterns hanging above and rain vestibules to keep our shoes dry.  Most regular beds I've slept in aren't as cush as what we set up there, and that's just the bedding: Erin and I know how to enjoy ourselves camping.  We cooked with my little dual-burner gas stove, ate olives and cheese and sliced meats and good bread, drank wine and shared our campfire that evening with a surfer named Tucker who showed up just after we did. 

Liam, diggin' the sand, as it were.

Liam loved the sand on the Washington Coast with just about the same passion as his aversion to Hawaiian sand- the latter, it seems, was coarse and painful, while the Washingtonian variety is extra-fine and friendly to the tootsies.   We walked along the beach, climbed on massive old trees the tide had deposited upon the beach.

While driving, I can reach behind me and tickle him.  This seems to make the otherwise-interminable drive time tolerable.  Erin captured this shot from the passenger's seat.

Liam has been primed for this camping trip all week.  One of his favorite books is Curious George goes Camping, and he's made me (and Erin, too) read it to him every day at least twice.  ...and every time I read it, I asked him if he'd like to go camping- and each time his eyes would get extra bright and he'd say "Yeah!!".    Of course, it turns out that wind and rain and cold and bugs and all that are a bit less romantic than what you see in a Curious George book, but when you can snuggle in a wumfy nest of warm goodness with your parents, even those details are tolerable.

The car is just what it takes to take a sleepy boy and drive him over the edge into full-on boneless slumber.  You'll note, I've been growing my beard out in anticipation of going camping. 

The hike out to the cape is about 20 minutes at an adult's waking pace, but a little rough for Liam- slippery roots and mud and boardwalks and steep bits are on the challenging side for him, so we strapped Liam to our backs for the majority of the walk.  This place is gorgeous.  The photos may not show it very well, but the weather was what city folks might refer to as 'salad mister'- the sort of fine rain that occurs over the produce in the supermarket.

This shot sums up our trip: a little damp, a little chilly, but all the love in the world.  I did have to tickle his leg behind my back to get him to come out of that chillin' zone he goes to when being carried on my back, but there you have it: proud papa with is pride-and-joy son. 

1. The commodity won't be used efficiently, and
2. The signal sent to the market is that this isn't a problem worth solving. 

1. Historically, our policy toward fuel prices has been to subsidize producers, with the intention of making fuel artificially inexpensive.  This has signaled to the market that solving the problem of energy dependence is not worth much, so long as government keeps its thumb on the scale.  This has been great for the fuel companies, but (like Vietnam with its rice) has suppressed the market for alternative energy production and development.  The US, like Vietnam was with rice in the 1980s, is today a massive net importer of energy, despite its massive resources and technical capacity.
2. Historically, our policy toward food crops has been to subsidize producers, with the intention of making food artificially inexpensive.  This has signaled to the world market that solving the problem of food independence is not worth any money, so long as the US (and other wealthy countries) enables its farmers to sell food for less than it cost to produce it (a practice that may not be legal under WTO rules).  Predictably, developing countries take a dim view of this, and rightly so.

Today, the news is all about the recent price spikes in fuel and food prices.  Our politicians want to appear to suppress the signals that will correct the real problem (that demand is exceeding supply).  Unfortunately, their policies don't appear to be designed to ease anything but themselves into office.

McCain's plan, for example, is to have a 'tax holiday' by temporarily repealing the federal gas tax, and appears intended to artificially reduce the price of gas.  Of course, demand elasticity for fuel, which is low, will drive the price righ back up again, meaning the federal government will forego that tax revenue, which will accrue instead to the producers.  Clinton's plan is to have the same tax holiday, but to pay for it by taxing the producers heavily on their profits.  This appeals to the punitive crowd who thinks prices are a function of profiteering, but sends the same wrong signal: that government's job is to make gas cheap and give us something for nothing (or at least, something that somebody else is paying for).  Alone among the candidates, Obama isn't telling you he'll anesthetize you from the pain of fuel, but even his proposal is designed to make hybrid cars artificially cheaper- a different version of the same game.

Allowing prices to naturally signal (and moderate) demand is the right thing to do.  This seems to fly in the face of all intuition and common sense, but so did deregulating the price of rice in Vietnam.  All common sense at the time said that if they allowed the price of rice to increase by tenfold, that the very poor would succomb to the depredations of evil capitalists and starve.  Fortunately, they were wrong.  And fortunately, we have their example to learn from- and a good number of reasons to do it.