YAKIMA BOONIES Dispersed Camping / See semi arid desert differently / Music video

This video was first published on the IN ANY DIRECTION: Backroads, Hikes, Camps & Paddles channel in 2021.

You can't camp here. Yakima Boonies was a listing on Hipcamp in September of 2018, but is listed no more. We did a 3 -day camp at Yakima Boonies on the 9th, 10th, and 11th that month. Only a handful of people had stayed there before us, and my impression is that not many stayed there after us. Yakima Boonies was a slope of undeveloped piece of land on Lamb Lane looking over the U.S. Army's Yakima Training Center immediately to the north. We are grateful to have camped here, that the owner of this property allowed us the experience.

Why feature a site that no longer exists for the public to enjoy? Because it illustrates the beauty and wonder of camping in an open space with no trees but only the sky and the vistas of the four directions to take in instead. Yes, there is evidence of wildlife. Coyotes count. Yes, there is fauna -- grasses, shrubs, flowers galore. There are no hiking trails per se, but who needs them? There is the road you come in on. There are some other tracks and ditches made by a bulldozer at some time. You explore the open space.

But where do you situate your tent? On any piece of reasonably flat ground you can find. There is no water, so bring your own. There is no firepit -- so dig your own, and when you are done camping, but the spot back to the way you found it. And for God sakes, be careful about fire. (I vlog about this here.) It's late summer, fire-season. Take all the precautions.

This video is complex. It took about a week to put together working in my free time. Maybe its my best work, although don't we always think that the last thing we ever did is our best work? (Everybody is a videographer today; everybody can have the pleasure, if they so choose. I am in that crowd.) I intend to put together more new videos with old photos and video clips taken over the years like this one. There are a lot of videos already up of our travels on my NATURE & COMMUNITY / Washington Secret Places channel, hundreds upon hundreds, short and long, of varying quality. But I would like to think that my skills are improving.

The niche I am attempting to fill are videos which introduce to the viewer the backroads to explore, the hikes to take, the sites to camp, and the places to put a hand-powered boat in the water, with all the shakiness that comes with lots of hand-held video, but with music matched to the experience of the moment that is integral to the entire work -- and that smooths out the viewing experience. Call them music videos. I have been DJ-ing non-professionally for more than 20 years. Music is powerful, can give coherence, add another layer of meaning to a film. Music adds emotion like nothing else can. So music is in the foreground for me, not the background. The music editing, the choice of songs to include, and the music mixing, the integration of the music track into the video -- these get my greatest attention. Life can be put to music. I have honed my skills recently by putting music to -- no lie -- video of football practices and games. What a joy that has been! But this exercise is more complex.

There are themes in this particular video. It is a love story; it is about relationship. It's about not letting anxiety put a stop to getting out in nature. It's a vlog within a camping video. It is a video treatise on dispersed camping. It is a paean to diverse musical tastes. It is a homage to the Washington desert.