waste not

when i'm camping i could carry in all my water. i could also filter lake water.

or i could filter the water that melts from the ice in my cooler. it started out as potable, so any contaminants will be less than lake water and contain no marine diesel.

i mean, i good filtering system will do the trick, but no point wasting clean water.

plus it's a pleasing life-maintenance chore.

ten pound of ice yields nearly a gallon and a half of water.

out with no time to spare

the res was a zoo memorial day weekend.


or more specifically,  it was cold and rainy on friday and then the sun came out and the crazy started on saturday and then it got warm on sunday and everyone was out there. waterskiers, powerboaters, tubers, swimmers, canoeists, kayakers, people fishing. they came in waves, first the early fishermen, then the morning boaters, and then the huge undulating wave of rental boats and boards from waterbury center state park. that was particularly interesting on account of the unusually high number of those folks who were first time paddlers combined with higher than usual wake from powerboats and in general wall-to-wall people.

on an off day you might be mistaken for thinking the res is a wilderness.

not this weekend.

the weather forecast said nice weather right through to monday morning, and then days and days of rain. smart thing might have been to pack up sunday and beat it, but way too nice and i'd have had to fight through that sea of people with all my gear.

i decided to play weather roulette and go home monday. every forecast i checked said rain possible at ten , for sure by noon. they kept saying it, other things about the forecast changed but that one thing stayed the same.

now, it takes four hours for me to strike camp properly, load the gear up, and paddle a short distance. it takes another hour to unload the boats and load the car. i woke at six.

the rain started almost the minute i had tied off the last strap and gotten in the car.

it's going to rain mostly for a week.

very specialized sunburn

i was out playing ingress (because of course i was) on a sunny day and you know how you have to hold your phone up to play? no? ok, take my word for it. you have to hold your phone up to play and i got a sunburn.

on my left thumb.

don't laugh, you guys. it hurt. blistered and peeled and everything.

just the thumb.

2017 venture vermont: Find the cardinal directions without a compass

if you have a good awareness of the out of doors it's usually possible to make a pretty good assessment of what direction you are facing and even what time it is. it requires some paying attention to the position of the sun not just today, but every day, because if you want to estimate direction you have to know within a couple hours what time it is and if you want to estimate time you have to have a pretty good idea of where the sun will rise and set.

this means you can't just start paying attention when you want the information. similarly, if you're going to be out all day, you can navigate by the sun, but only if you're paying attention to its movement as you go.

all that said, sometimes you need to know the cardinal directions, say, if you're working with a map and for some reason you lost your compass and your spare compass.

hey, it could happen, i guess.

or maybe you need to know the actual direction so you can make an accurate determination of time.

there are a lot of complicated methods involving drawing circles and intersecting shadows or analog watches or sighting constellations, but the easiest is the stick in the ground trick.

i've never done it before, so it was cool.

you need a day sunny enough to cast a shadow, though, so there's that.

you put a stick into the ground and you mark the end of its shadow with a stone or another stick. then you wait a while. mark the end of its shadow again. if you face away from the sun and line your feet up with your markers, you are facing true north. east will be on your right and west will be on your left. i really, really hope you can figure out where south is placed from there.

also, if you are in the southern hemisphere and you do this, you will be facing south. if you do not know in which hemisphere you are located, you have bigger problems than not being able to find the cardinal directions.

mark one

mark two

line it up and... BOOM. true north.

rampage

ramp season is over by now but yah-boo, i did go crazy with it.

i think i told you about the ramps and pasta, which by the way is delicious leftover in a pan fried up into scrambled eggs. i don't think i told you about the ramps and potatoes (look for a recipe later), the ramp pesto, the teeny little ramp quiches, the ramp omelette, or the twice baked ramp potatoes.

i've told you about teeny little quiches before, but this time i just made them with chiffonaded ramp leaves and can i tell you? delicious. plus it's a good way to preserve ramps into the summer, plus you have a freezer full of delicious teeny little quiches you can eat when convenient.

i don't think i have pics of the other things, but later on i may tell you the recipes, more or less.

everyone's a comedian

i had this conversation with a guy i know:

him: sorry i didn't return your text.
me: you're always apologizing for things that require no apology.
him: sorry about that.

hanging out

the words "hanging out" are appearing more in my vocabulary ever since the advent of the hammock. i used to rise with the sun so i could sit and enjoy the morning around me but now all i have to do to enjoy the morning and the view is open my eyes and maybe roll over.

it's lovely for reading or studying birdsongs or just watching the morning unfold, plus early inthe season it's chilly and you maybe just want to hang out and bask.

later on you can do more ambitious things but for now just hang out.

symphony of frogs

last week sometime there was this big storm with lightning and wind and all that and just as it was getting dark there was the SYMPHONY OF FROGS which, to be totally accurate involved at least one species of toad.

did you know that the standard american toad is a big singer? i did not. apparently the way you can tell the trill of an american toad from that of tree frogs is that a tree frog's trill lasts a few seconds. a toad goes on for half a minute or so. and each guy has his own note.

also, because toads are terrestrial, they are more likely to be ALL AROUND YOU in the forest which leads to some rather stunning surround sound.

it's a nightly thing, if it's warm enough.

bless 'em.

in which flask pisses off the natural world again

so there was this thing where i had to put up a different tarp. a wind gust had blown out the first one from the right side grommets. i couldn't deal with it right then so i just wrapped the tarp over my gear and decided to take care of it later.

the next day when i went to lift that tarp to get at my bags i found that a colony of ants had decided to buil their nursery in my three gear bags, so unpleasant surprise for me but more unpleasant for them, because they spent the whole day trying to move all of the colony's eggs to a safer place IN MY BAGS which was a poor strategy at best.

i guess the benefit to me is that there are fewer ants in general on my campsite now.

open letter to some bees

dear those bees who tried to build a nest in the stuffsack at the foot of my hammock,

i know it looks like a great place to build a home, but it's not. it just isn't. it isn't even about that it's MY hammock and i'm allergic to beesting, although those things are certainly true but really it's about this is not a permanent structure and when i take my hammock down in a few days' time you'll be glad you didn't invest all that energy in building here.

i'm sorry you didn't all get the memo and i regret the inconvenience caused by an entire afternoon slapping the stuffsack with nylon webbing in order to keep you and your sisters from landing comfortably. congratulations on your dedication and persistence. i'm sure that will be an asset to all of the future endeavors of your colony.

good luck to you and all your sisters.

love,
flask.

i have no idea how old they are.

last week i was up on the campus of champlain college (ingress, duh) which is just a block or two out of downtown (ahem) burlington and near the end of the day i saw three young women walking along wearing gown and mortarboard, which made my heart happy, and i told them so.

but since the campus of champlain college is abuts the UVM main campus and there's no shortage of high schools in the area or even other colleges, it's hard to tell where they were going.

plus i can't tell the difference between high school kids and college kids these days. i mean, yeah, i can usually tell the fourteen year olds from the twenty-one year olds, but really it's a crapshoot.

i'm thinking back to that time i nearly asked that new english teacher for her hall pass.

because she looked like she COULD have been one of the juniors and if she was in the hall at that time, she needed a pass.

so anyway, here's this.

december high water

back at thanksgiving there was a lot of rain and the water level on the res came up so hight that i had to keep moving my boats farther up the slope. here's some video from that.






later that morning i paddled over into the state park across the way.

by "into", i mean that the water there was up into the lawn and walkways, so that was fun.

quiet heroes

last week i was playing ingress in dorset park and while i was at the portal by the veterans' memorial, i took a few minutes to read every name on it. some were men i knew, or fathers or brothers or husbands of people i knew. one was the doctor who prescribed my first pair of glasses. i did not know that he was a combat veteran.

this one very quiet brick got my attention, though.

there's an understated monument behind williston town hall that tells very little more:

on March 4 1965, two Vermont

ANG aviators lost their lives

when their F-89 Scorpion crashed

in a field at Tafts corners

these benches are dedicated to

the memory of

Col. Robert P. Goyette

Lt. Jeffrey D. Pollock

both of Burlington, Vermont

what it doesn't say here is that they lost full control of the plane because of an engine fire and rather than eject to safety the men chose to fly the plane directly into the ground in order to keep the plane from crashing into nearby homes.

more from the hammock

here's some POV video from inside the hammock.i think it's all the funnier for how good the video quality isn't. i am not used to shooting inside the hammock yet.

but here.





and of course what i REALLY wanted to tell you is that i updated my previous hammock post because i found some better pictures.

time to go

i'll put my cards on the table. "building a proud tradition" means something to me. i'm a graduate of south burlington high school, and i can't pretend i don't get a little sentimental about the opportunities offered to me as a result of that.

these days south burlington high school is managing to hit national news because of our unfortunate mascot, which some people insist has nothing to do with racism.

oh, wait.

we don't have a mascot anymore because it was dropped decades ago because it was problematic but we still retained the "identifier".

yep.

south burlington rebels.

these days there's a lot of controversy about it because the school board has decided to get rid of it in the name of Not Being Racist and there are a lot of people around who are crying "HERITAGE!" and "PRIDE!" and "TRADITION!" along with a fair amount of "it's totally not racist. never was. shame on you for saying so."

except yanno.

south burlington was created in 1865 when burlington went off and did its own thing. as far as i can tell the rebel signifier was adopted in 1965, about seven years after south burlington high school was established. soooooo.... the end of the civil war, and the centenary of the end of the civil war? i'm sure someone thought that would be a real cute idea, because south and all that.

that TOTALLY has nothing to do with racism. it is pure coincidence that the school colors are blue and grey. i am certain that the widespread use of the CONFEDERATE FLAG in the school's iconography and the confederate soldier mascot had nothing at all to do with the painful era of dixiecrats against civil rights. probably nobody in south burlington in the sixties were even aware the civil rights movement was a thing.

it was not lost on me back in the '70s that this was a somehow inappropriate symbol, and not one worthy of our community allegiance. it occurred to me to wonder why we were playing dixie at homecoming.

it is not lost on me now that the same people who are talking about "heritage" are the same people who will tell you that the civil war had nothing to do with slavery and that the confederate flag had nothing to do with the jim crow south.

to have a high school play innocent with confederate imagery, gradually erasing those confederate histories but keeping the undercurrent is about as appalling as if we'd had the enosburgh anschluss.

but we don't. enosburgh had the good sense not to adopt a racist mascot (they're the hornets). champlain valley union high school decided years ago that "crusaders" was maybe not ok, and they changed to "redhawks". rice high school changed from being the "little indians" to "green knights".

too often when we are caught out in bad behavior, or even just culturally insensitive behavior, we do not react with an apology and an attempt to do better, but an insistence that the thing we were doing was completely fine in the first place and is not only totally ok, but our HERITAGE.

miscellaneous bits

first, they're looking for volunteers to help transcribe phyllis diller's gag file.

and i don't know about you, but a couple of these were actually mind-blowing for me.




basically, i want to learn to do this.




and then there's this.



it's kind of a grab bag.

2017 venture vermont: climb a tree

if you've ever seen me, you are probably aware that i am a dumpy little middle aged lady.  i am over 50, overweight, and although you can't tell it by looking at me, i have bad rotator cuffs and bad knees.

i used to climb trees all the time. in my childhood i spent a lot of time just hanging out in trees. you know how it's always hardest getting up to that first branch?

yeah. i can't pull myself up the way i used to, nor can i throw a leg over and lever myself up because i'm just not that flexible, not that strong, and let's face it: i have a hole in the patellar tendon on the right side and the orthopedist said it's not so much a question of whether it will rupture but WHEN it will rupture, so i try to be careful.

all this is king of a long preamble to the bit where i tell you that "climb a tree" has been on the venture challenge every year that i've done it, and although i have wanted very much to do that, i have not been able to do it.

it has not been for lack of trying.

or lack of searching. because if you have climbed a lot of trees, you know that some trees just have more climbability than others.

anyway, i was out playing ingress last week (because of course i was) and i found myself in the field where i used to play as a child when we ventured waaaaay up into the fields and climbed trees. back then it wasn't greenspace given to community gardens and walking trails between the condos and housing developments. back then the developments just came to a stop a few streets above us, and we referred to that vast tract of land as THE FIELDS, even though much of it was forest.

so i was sitting on a bench beside the bike path, pleased at how much of the fields had been preserved as recreational space and how much of it was still wild-ish and how many of the old climbing trees were still standing and, by the looks of the scuff marks on their trunks, still used for climbing.

a tree that gets climbed has distinctive wear patterns.

so i decided to try.

and try.

and try.

on the third tree i tried, i had some moderate success but i didn't feel like i had really gotten up into the tree, but i was going to call it good enough for the venture challenge because the venture challenge is more about doing things than it is about passing proficiencies.

but i kept trying, because it was a lovely afternoon and because nostalgia is a powerful thing.

in tree number six, voilà! i am off the ground. it is a windy day and i just sit there a long while, feeling the sway of the tree.

some random things i saw

when i am out, i often see things i want to show you just because they're cool. there isn't enough to make a full post about them, so i'm going to just show you some pictures with minimal explanation.

wall in williston

sculpture in front of dog daycare

for some reason there's no inscription on this memorial marker.

marker in eldrige cemetery

at the ben & jerry's mother ship

open letter to governor phil scott

dear governor scott,

while it is a valid concern to wonder why schoolteachers have better healthcare than the average vermonter, perhaps your emphasis should be more properly placed on improving healthcare for the average vermonter rather than decreasing coverage for schoolteachers.

teachers are not the problem. the problem is that there is inadequate coverage for all but the most fortunate of our citizens.

so yes. "WHY DO TEACHERS GET BETTER HEALTHCARE THAN THE AVERAGE PERSON?" is an appropriate question. what are you doing to raise the level of healthcare for all our citizens?

this isn't a cool look for you, governor scott. just sign the budget bill.

love,
flask.

2017 venture vermont: Roll down a grassy hill

i was in winooski the other day (portals) and right there in front of the mill they have that grassy hill and of course i was thinking about my venture challenge, because venture challenge. of course.

and that's right downtown and everything, but there's a grassy hill.

so i went up to the top of it and checked the roll path for sharp things and then laid down on the grass, positioned myself, and rolled down. then at the bottom i stood up and said to no one in particular "well, there's proof of concept. that was a good dry run"

and i went up and did it again, this time recording video.

because of course i was.

2017 venture vermont: learn to set up a tarp or hammock

unless you only just walked in, you know that last season i used a hammock i made over the winter before.

it revolutionized camp lounging for me, and eventually i came to the conclusion that i should be sleeping in a hammock at camp. some of the sites on the res are great for tents but others haven't a decent  dry level place and -boom- if you have a hammock to sleep in that problem is solved, but i need good bug netting for sleeping, so there's that AND i also came to the conclusion that in the fall when the ground freezes you lose a LOT of heat sleeping on the ground plus i'm just getting old and i think i'm mostly done sleeping on the ground, so hammock it is.

and i think i just gave you the reasons why i needed to get a whole hammock system and not a cheapish backyard hammock because let's face it: i live on a campsite somewhere about two and a half months out of a year.

so is is a FORTUITOUS coincidence that "Learn to set up a tarp or hammock" is on this year's venture challenge, because there's a bit of a learning curve to putting one up properly.

fact is, i sort of have to learn how to do the tarp every time i pitch it because every site is different and there are a few basic things, but the best thing about a tarp is that it's variable and you adapt it to your site every time.

anyway, i got a new fancy tarp to go over my new hammock, and it's the kind of tarp that will close on the ends and make a little hothouse for cold weather and because the ends close it will keep out sideways rain.

anyway, i took it out for the first time pitching it for real on 9 april and slept in it. it's pretty toasty even without an underquilt down to about 35 degrees, but down around freezing it gets chilly.

so here's me with my pack. i'm only going one night, so i figure even with the extra pads and stuff, it's a manageable amount of gear.

yes, that is snow on the ground.

this is my hammock and tarp pitched for moderate protection. this is a good setup for chilly nights, or rain without too much wind. there are end flaps that will close and i can tie the thing down more to keep out the elements.

this is the same pitch but with the front raised in a loose lean-to to let in light and so i can enjoy the view. it's not especially taut, but i can lower flaps in a hurry if it gets weather-y.

i haven't got an underquilt (yet) so i'm making do with some HVAC insulation. it's bulky, but it gets the job mostly done.

here i am in the hammock.

and here's the view FROM the hammock.

matching

you're heard about the bone marrow registry, right? it's easy to do, and you could save someone's life.

can i tell you? i celebrated my 17th birthday by giving blood. what i learned from that and subsequent donations is that i need all my blood. every time i did it, i got sick.

every. damn. time.

i don't know if that's linked at all to the lupus i've always had but was undiagnosed until recently.

i used to think one day i would get it in gear and get on the bone marrow registry, but good i didn't, i guess, because having lupus excludes you.

maybe you can do it, though.

bone marrow donation used to be painful, but it isn't anymore.

and if you're really into donating, there's this:

st. patrick's day in winooski

i was standing on a corner in winooski on st. patrick's day and all sudden i hear all these horns blowing and i thought "oh, no. i am now stuck here because apparently there is going to be a parade."

well, yes and no.

apparently what happens in chittenden county is that the entire cement mixer fleet of sd ireland goes on parade. i had never heard of it before, but apparently it's a THING.

here's what it looks like from where i was standing (i only had the presence of mind to video the tail end):




but then writing this i went to look it up and found a good article (includes viedo!) from seven days, and there's even a map of this year's route.

i file this under "stuff that goes on where you live for three decades and you only just now hear about it"

2017 venture vermont: Identify a species of butterfly or moth that you find outside and include a picture

this here is a mourning cloak butterfly (Nymphalis antiopa).

i saw it when i was out walking at the ethan allen tower and actaully what happened is i stood there watching it and it landed right in my outstretched hand.

that is pretty awesome, but the butterfly chose not to hang around long enough to make it a phot session because while it might be ok landing on you to say hello or "i am enjoying your body heat on this chilly morning", it's made uneasy by you fiddling with your camera to get a picture.

so i had to wait until it settled on a sunny patch on the ground to take its picture to come home and identify it.

also, here's a picture of the tower.

and as a bonus, here is a cute little snake i saw that morning.

and here's a pano of the view at the pinnacle outlook.

ice alert

this winter i was at the ben & jerry's in waterbury (because it has ingress portals, ok?) and it was cold out. really, really freakin' cold out. and they have these reflector thingies all over to tell you if it's cold out or not, because i guess people who come from away need reminders that there could be ice on the ground and they should not walk carefree like they do wherever they came from.

it's a real product, and i can see where it might be especially useful in a place where there is moisture and an ambient temperature that hovers around freezing.

still, i got a chuckle.

elemenohpee

this conversation happened:

me: i like that picture.
MB: that makes one of us and it's not the same one.
me: what? if there's only one, how is it same? or different?
MB: you're off by a letter.

2017 venture vermont: play on a jungle gym or park playground structure

if i'm going to be totally candid about this entry, i did less actual playing on the structure than i did laughing uproariously about its questionable design.

i'm not sure who thought THIS would be a good idea.

i know, it's cute to have a bear-shaped thing as part of the structure, but clearly nobody thought about that whole crawling-up-the-bear's-ass part of the design.

it's located in the milton recreational park in case you want to go have some fun with it.

now it can be told

so year before last i was sitting up on my campsite and i was making mb that cute little ball in a cage i told you about and i was talking to her and i said i was making her something and she asked what and instead of just saying it was going to be a surprise, i put on my smartass hat and said "a handcarved artisanal applewood dildo"

and she said "oh, that's nice"

and i was all, like hey. THAT'S not how that conversation was supposed to have gone.

so i was telling my friends about it and they all said "now you HAVE to make her one" and it sort of became a running joke, the handcarved artisanal applewood mystery item.

weirdly, the shape is more complicated than you might think.

and of course because i am who i am, i couldn't just whip off a slapdash one as the punchline to the joke.

oh, no. i had to make a beautiful one, with a waterproof food-grade finish.

so after i carved it, i had to rub oil into it every day for some weeks.


all of this had high comedic value.

recipe: flask's ramps and pasta

because there has been absolutely no demand for this, i am making a separate entry for this recipe:


flask's ramps and pasta

the tricky bit is having ramps. ideally you or someone you know has picked these from the woods in a sustainable fashion. seriously, this is important because ramps are a slow-growing ephemeral and while common, they are on the decline throughout their range because of overharvesting.

got ramps? good. get yourself the best fresh pasta you can find. ramps deserve good pasta.


ok, while your pasta is cooking (i recommend something in the long and thin category; maybe a linguine or fettucini?), hot up some butter in a pan. remember that your pasta water should be salty. i should not have to tell you this, but it is particularly important in a recipe where you are not goign to add other seasonings.

when the butter is hot (maybe even brown it a little), toss in the ramps cut into pieces of the size you would like to eat. then cook them down until they get wilty. is your pasta done yet? good. drain it, but reserve a cup or so of the cooking liquid.

now put some MORE butter in the pan and just let it get melty. put as much of the pasta as you are going to eat in there with the butter and ramps and mix it up. tongs are handy here.

then pour some of the pasta water in the pan and let the sauce thicken up. boom, you're done.

eat a big mess of it as a meal, or maybe serve it as a side to a nice piece of fish or something. it looks festive with salmon.

i have no idea how it does as leftovers, because as hard as i tried, there were none left over.

2017 venture vermont: ride your bike on a rail trail

i ride bikes a lot, but i don't ride on rail trails that often unless it's part of some other activity, like geocaching or letterboxing or -hey! guess what? playing ingress.

so earlier this month i went out on the island line causeway as far as the bike ferry because beautiful day and also ingress portals.

the causeway portion of the island line trail is spectacularly lovely, because you're just on that narrow arc of land flanked by white marble and the lake. the views are fantastic and the riding surface gentle.

playing house

so ok, the other day i was hanging out in montpelier because i had nothing better to do.

ok, i was in montpelier to play ingress because the weather forecast suggested rain and more rain so i decided it wouldn't be a good time to go camping and then it turned out to be three days of lovely warm sunshine but anyway, there i was in montpelier, doing some ingress missions on the statehouse lawn and picking up some unique captures i need to work on my badges.

i love the vermont statehouse. it is a beautiful building and citizens of vermont have an unusual degree of access to it. according to the state constitution, "The doors of the House in which the General Assembly of this Commonwealth shall sit, shall be open for the admission of all persons who behave decently, except only when the welfare of the State may require them to be shut."

now i may dress all in rumpled clothes, but i can behave decently.

plus i figured i should go have a look at laws being made because i can. i follow the news about the legislature and i talk to my legislators, but i haven't gone in to watch in a long time.

there's really no excuse not to do it if you're there.

when i went in they were debating an amendment to an amendment to the house version of a bill the senate passed to fix the school redistricting plan.

it sounds kind of useless, but there's a perennial problem with education funding and school districting and mostly we just keep trying to get all the kids a good education and equitable opportunities without breaking the bank.

it's complicated, and we have to keep going back to try to get it to work right.

anyway, it was cool to see the representatives work on it. there's a lot of procedure they go through that seems a little weird, but i seems to me that a lot of it is designed to keep things civil and professional and also really nail things down with a high degree of specificity.

they never seem to talk to each other, but only to the speaker, as in "madam speaker, i wish to interrogate the member from (town) as to the percentage of the educational fun budget this will represent."

and then the member from (town) rises and tells the speaker the answer to the question.

there was an interesting bit where a member, citing the controversial nature of the law, asked for a roll call vote on the amendment and the speaker asked it this was sustained and several members stood to show that it was.

so then i got to see a roll call vote, which involved a recess "of a few minutes" which appeared to be a pause for people to get their ducks in order and for members who had been elsewhere in the building to come into the chamber.

the speaker then read the motion and gave "an english language translation" for anyone who had not been following for the last ten minutes or so, which i thought was interesting. because it was a procedural thing she boiled it down to "members who are likely to vote no on the larger bill will probably want to vote no on this amendment and members who are likely to vote yes on the larger bill will probably want to vote yes on this amendment"

and the vote was taken. there were 123 yes votes and no no votes, or more accurately, there were 122 "yes" votes, one "aye" vote, and no "no" votes.




the handsome fellow at the center of this frame is jim mccullough of williston, the "aye" voter.