great plan

if you've been following along, you already know that i have some phobias: i am afraid of closed spaces, vomit, heights, and the dark. i am also afraid of submerged pipes and large machines that use pipes and that fear extends to any submerged thing that MIGHT be a pipe or a chain or a machine part and that includes power substations.

my friend david tells me that this is not a phobia, but a trauma reaction to an actual event.

anyway, i was on my way to millinocket (i just like to say it: millinocket. millinocket. it's like candy in your mouth.)

uh, anyway, i was on my way to millinocket, or the area just north of millinocket because i had decided that it would be a really good idea for me to visit the debsconeag ice caves.

you know, and go down in them. alone.

the thought of it scared the pants off me and gave me nightmares, so, yeah, that's an awesome plan.

so i was on my way to check out the trailhead and then to the campsite and on my way i stopped to a) scramble around in a steep talus field and b) hike down along the west edge of ripogenus gorge.

tremendous fun.

being on the edge of ripogenous gorge is fun, because as you come down the trail you hear the thundering of the water and then suddenly your brain tunes in to the terrible noise of the generating station.

it is an uneasy transition from pastoral sounds to industrial sounds and yes, my fear does extend to power generating stations and penstocks.

it's not a surprise to me because last year i had been on the other side of the gorge and had been just above the blockhouse, but even knowing it was there it scared me.

and then i did a little light bushwacking along the edge of the gorge and stood right out on the edge, trying to estimate the height of the drop and i am a bad estimator of height (although a very accurate estimator of horizontal distance, provided the distance being estimated is somewhere around 500 feet), but the one thing i knew for sure is that the height of the drop was maybe five or six deadlies, in which a deadly is the height from which you would not survive if your foot slipped and you went over the edge.