Former Obsessions

Here, for example, is a file folder containing various handouts and xerox copies of geological information about the mine south of Bingham, New Mexico, out in the Jornada del Muerto. Keep? Toss? If ever I go again to the Blanchard/Hansonburg mine, will I suddenly regret no longer having a copy of "Mississippi Valley-Type Lead-Fluorite-Barite Deposits of the Hansonburg Mining District", published in 1983?

Mind you, there are some rocks from there on the porch of my new digs, waiting for the landlady to finish her landscaping so I can figure out where in the yard to put them. But will I ever go there again? Do I need a Lincoln National Forest Travel Map from 1988? How about a 3/4"-thick pile of papers about the the Gallina culture and Nogales Cliff House (1)? Do I remember how to find it? Well, no. But I could just keep Hiking Ruins Seldom Seen and let everything else related go...

A 45-year old Sierra Nevada natural history book? A 2-inch-thick file of Sierra geological papers and maps?

I'm thinking about Philip as I do this, who arrived in New Mexico with Cascade Mountains books and maps that dated from his time on Sourdough Mountain thirty years before. Emblematic for him, but geeze, as information all too old. But I'm no different. "Wallrocks of the Central Sierra Nevada Batholith, California: A Collage of Accreted Tectono-Stratigraphic Terranes (1983)"? Vanish it. But there's a map! No. Keep only topo maps? Keep them even for places I'll not go again?