Our 15 minutes of fame in the New York Times

A few weeks ago the Times had an article about a search in Joshua Tree National Park for a man who had gone missing several years ago.  The search did not prove fruitful, unfortunately.

The article, in our opinion, made hiking in the desert seem much more dangerous and treacherous than we have found it to be, so wrote a comment to the article to that effect.

Later the editor of the Times Magazine asked if we would allow him to change it to a Letter to the Editor, and we said "sure!"  Looking back on it, if we had known that was to happen we would have done a better job of composing the comment, as it is a bit awkward in places.  Of course, at the time, we didn't know this would happen.

Anyway, it's fun.  And we did get to share our views on hiking in the desert.  We feel it is very safe, if one takes only a reasonable amount of preparation.  We feel safer hiking off-trail in the desert than we do driving to the places where we camp and hike.

p.s.  Interesting that the ad that was present when we looked at the Letter was focused on us in this way.  It is from Amazon, advertising a wood splitter that we had already purchased.  Wish we knew someone who worked at Amazon who we could tell about this.