Paxson Lodge

That's what the sign said but, on the map, it was just called "Paxson", which might lead one to believe it was a town which, as I said, it wasn't.  I don't remember any cabins there, just a trailer park where the highway workers stayed.  Maybe the trailers were replaced by cabins at a later date.  The lodge was right at the junction of the Richardson and Denali highways.  Richardson was paved, but the road to Denali was all gravel, which required a lot of maintenance because it washed out a lot.  I think most of the highway crew was seasonal, although they must have kept a few of them around to plow snow in the winter.  I'm surprised that the gas station has been closed because it was the only one on the Denali and the next one on the Richardson was at least 50 miles away.  

The park was about 60 or 80 down the Denali Road, and there wasn't much on that road except a wildlife research station, housed in a trailer.  It was near there that my buddy, Young Bill, shot the moose that ultimately put the law on his trail.  He had deserted from the navy in New Jersey and, if he hadn't shot that moose, I doubt that they ever would have caught up with him.  Actually, I don't know if they ever did catch up with him.  They came looking for him a few days after he had left the scene and I never heard what happened after that.

I skipped over some stuff in my post about the economic history of the human species.  In between the hunters-gatherers and the farmers there were the nomadic herdsmen.  They were nomadic because they were always seeking greener pastures for their livestock.  They must have settled down at some point, which was the beginning of agriculture.  I think humans have always been somewhat nasty, but they may have gotten nastier after they had something worth stealing or defending.  

It's been awhile since I read this, but I seem to remember that Hobbes was the antithesis of Rousseau, who believed that people were better off in the "state of nature" before they became civilized.  I don't think that Rousseau had any direct experience with the primitive tribal people of his day, so his idyllic view of them was kind of naïve.  Hobbes had seen people at their worst behavior, I think it was after the English Revolution before an effective government had been re-established.  From this he concluded that people needed to be kept on a short leash for their own  good.  As with a lot of issues, the truth is probably somewhere between those two extremes.