"Right, that's becoming more apparent." I said, "I mean, isn't it obvious that if we find life on Mars, it comes from the same source as life on Earth?"

"Absolutely, unless we find the DNA makeup to totally different. But we just completed some tests on a satellite that was in space for ten years. The bacteria on the exterior survived! Also, we've concluded that a rock cast from Mars could maintain room temperature. Since Mars has a thin atmosphere, it would be more likely that life would exist underground."

"So life on Earth may come from Mars?"

"Or vice-versa. Bacteria can be dormant for thousands of years." At the barbecue, I asked the weather man what we thought of the movie, 'Contact." He said it is an accurate description of the scientific community. The passion, the politics, the fights for grant money. The egos.

The weather man is a meteorologist. He predicts weather on Mars. In the morning, I walked up the winding creek, jumping the boiling water until I made it to the source, a parched spot with a strong sulfurous smell and blowholes of steam. After that, our caravan drove south, then up, into the Eastern Sierras. On the way, we passed a river below us. Every 100 yards or so, maybe there were 10 of them, a flyfisherman was casting his line, alone. It was a strange sight. I said, "You know my problem with fly-fishing, there's just something about it where they are trying a little too hard to have that�thing�about themselves." "Well, actually, flyfishing was a quarter what it was before that movie (A River Runs Through It)."

"Makes sense. Bonefishing is the last fishing sport with some integrity to it."

"The worst is deep-sea fishing. All those power engines and on-board uniforms�automated lines."

"I agree one hundred percent. What kind of a sport is trying to kill the biggest fish when all the big ones have already been killed?"

We began our hike at the base of a giant lake and a towering snowy peak. We followed the group for a short while, our workweek legs weren't ready for that. We parted, and soon, we were driving to Los Angeles, through the hot Mojave.