flask's advice for bugging out

i have a friend who lives in colorado, near a significant and growing wildfire. i offered today to make an evacuation list and she said that would be helpful, so i made one.

i hope you never need to use it, but here it is:

• gather your documents (passports, birth certificates, licenses, insurance documents, etc.), keys, extra glasses, medications, pet registrations, records, and tags and have a small bag handy to put them in so the important stuff is all in one place.
• have your credit cards, checkbook and SOME CASH ready to go.
• make sure your vehicles have full gas tanks.

• have your computer and hard drives in a state where you can pack them in five or ten minutes. get your battery packs charged now, and keep them ready to go.

• do some triage about sentimental items and mentally prepare to take as many as you have space for if you actually evacuate.
• take unnecessary stuff out of your vehicle(s) NOW.

• have each family member who is able pack a bag of changes of clothes: at least one pair of pants, two shirts, three changes of socks and underwear, extra shoes, a hat, glove, and a jacket. pack for if you're going camping.
• include a comfort item, whatever book you're reading, and maybe some small games. you may be stuck somewhere waiting.
• if you're going to have room in your vehicle(s), pack a big bag of extra clothing.

• pack a picnic bag: enough food and snacks to get you through a day or two. bonus if you have unbreakable cups, plates, and utensils. include pet food and dishes.
• pack a bag of toiletries. it saves space if you all have one big bag instead of everybody bringing their own.
• bring at least a gallon of water for each person.
• have a first aid kit.
• if you have an emergency tarp, some space blankets, hand warmers, and cordage, put that in a bag to go.
• pack a sleeping bag or blankets for each person. maybe even a tent. if you can't get a hotel, you're going to be camping.
• bring pet carriers, litterboxes, and bedding for your animals.

• put all these things in your vehicle(s). see how much room you have.
• if you have more than one vehicle, put all the critical items in one car in case you have to leave one car behind.
• in case you have to travel on foot, put your critical items in backpacks if you have them.

• after you've put all the stuff in your car, evaluate how much space you have and fill that space with sentimental or expensive items. make sure you know where those items are and maybe already have them packed to go. 
•  once you've packed and practiced, wait. hope you don't have to go. 
•  if you DO go, remember to shut off the utilities and take out the trash. 
•  if you think you're going to need to evacuate, go sooner rather than later. you will be competing with other evacuees for hotel rooms or campgrounds. also, death defying escapes make compelling TV, but should be avoided.

 

2020 Venture Vermont: wrapping it up

 there are still a couple of things in the can, but the deadline is here, and i have enough points, so i'm just going to report what i have.

it was a successful season, COVID and all- more difficult to get out when i could be away from people, but the activities are always fun and i get to learn and practice skills and have a pretty medallion at the end.

i wish the challenge started earlier in the year, because i do outdoor things in january and february but i guess seven months is still a good long time to do all the necessary activities, even if i do wish the challenge ran ALL YEAR. because i love this thing. it give shape to my year and brings joy to my heart, and those are things i NEEDED this year.

i've made my documentations in blog posts, which i will link here and group by category on the scoresheet.

get moving:

 Go for a walk around your home or community while staying at least six feet away from anyone else. What neat things did you see? 

 Find a tree with leaves you can reach. Give the tree a high five! 

Roll down a grassy hill 

Do a handstand underwater in a lake or pond

Catch a butterfly or dragonfly with a net 

Take a human powered boat on a lake or pond

 Go to Trailfinder.info and find a hike you’ve never done before. Go hike it!

 Play a game outside 

investigate:

 Start a nature journal. Keep track of all the seasonal changes you observe 

Write Haiku or other nature poetry based on things you observe in nature around you

 Sit in a quiet area and observe nature. Write down or draw a picture of what you see

 Photograph and identify five species of wild growing native Vermont plants 

Build an animal habitat for your favorite animal in your home or backyard

Identify a constellation that is new to you. Draw a picture of it and send it to us

Photograph two kinds of mammals in the wild. Identify the full species name and describe its behavior 

make a difference:

Collect rainwater and use it to water your garden - i used this free water all summer for my tomatoes.

Hang your laundry outdoors to dry instead of using a drying machine - since doing this for the challenge i have only used my dryer once!

Cut your own energy use 

outdoor skills:

 Learn to set up a tarp or hammock

Learn to tie 3 new knots besides the ones in this entry, i also learned a marlinspike hitch and a double footrope knot.

Build a fire only using one match

Make a map of your favorite natural area 

Go on an overnight backpacking trip with everything you need in your backpack 

 Learn a new technique to purify water 

create:

Weave a basket using natural materials

Create art out of rocks 

Create a meal cooked on a campfire 

Use recycled materials to create a game 

just for fun:

 Learn a tongue twister and say it as fast as you can. 

Build a solar cooker or oven

Create a scavenger hunt for you and your friends and find everything

Tell your best campfire story! 

explore our parks:

Go to a VT state park you’ve never been to

Camp in a tent or lean-to at a VT state park

Have a picnic in a VT state park

Find a historical fact or story about a Vermont StatePark 

so that wraps it up for me. i also wrote a song about sedges, but i have no recording of it that i can embed, so i'm not claiming points for it. sometime if you ask me, i'll teach it to you.

2020 Venture Vermont: Start a nature journal. Keep track of all the seasonal changes you observe

it is not possible at this point for me to start a nature journal, because i keep one now as a matter of course. but i do track seasons, take notes, make sketches.

for this item on the challenge i decided this year to take photographs to document the changing seasons, so here's a video i made from them, with all the photos appearing in chronological order.

2020 Venture Vermont: Play a game outside

 you guys maybe meant football or frisbee or something, but i was camping at new discovery state park and in my world, what you do on camping trips is hang out and play table games, so i brought a selection of little portable games that could be enjoyed on a fall day in a state park.

and yanno? in the time of COVID, i can't play games indoors, so it's nice to feel kinda normal.

anyway, my friend barb and i kicked back and we played iota, hue, and a round or two of my own game that i made from recycled parts for the venture challenge.

2020 Venture Vermont: Tell your best campfire story!

i'm a big fan of the true story. i used to work as a storyteller and i used to tell folktales, and unless i have been asked specifically to tell a folktale at a campfire, it feels too performative for the venue.

also, i don't like ghost stories at campfires- there are enough noises and beasties out there in the dark and life as it happens is scary enough. but the act of telling stories around a fire is as old as language and human mastery of fire, so if you have people and fire, there will be stories.

so recently out at osmore pond i had the opportunity to tell this story of a time a couple of summers ago:

So i had just arrived on one of the remote sites on the north end of Waterbury Reservoir and it had started out as a beautiful summer day with a cloudless sky but all of a sudden - and you KNOW how you're slotted in tight under the ridge there- this giant mass of black cloud comes up over the mountain and i can see it's got a great deal of rain in it and probably a lot of wind, too so in a hurry i drag all my bags up to the site and pull out a tarp just to get my stuff under cover and by now this monster is ALMOST HERE and i can see it's POURING on the west side and i haven't got but a handful of seconds before that rain gets to me and i did what any sensible person would have done in the circumstances, and i pulled off all of my clothes and stuffed them under the tarp with my gear because i had been planning to wear those clothes later and i wanted them to be dry.

by the time the front of the storm hit me i had all my gear under tarp and i was just tying it off so i could work under there when OH MY GOODNESS it was suddenly gale force winds and i had to redo a lot of my ties and i bent over to secure a line and a giant gust blew a whole bunch of leaves and sticks RIGHT INTO my butt crack at the same time a large brach near me came crashing to the ground and i remember thinking "this is not how i wanted Chad to find my body".

2020 Venture Vermont: Camp in a tent or lean-to at a VT state park

 i love this challenge.

this season i haven't been camping as much because the remote sites are crazy because everyone who would have gone on vacation somewhere else is in the campgrounds and everyone who would have been in a nice quiet campsite wants to be out at the remotes, and those of us who need to be careful about exposure don't have a lot of places to go.

yet it's the end of september and some of the occupancies are down, plus i was able to get reservations for a few days on a remote site so my friends john and liz packed our drybags and headed off for a few days at remote site 2 on osmore pond.

it wasn't the easy weekend it would have been had we been out the weekend before when it was all clear skies and bright sunshine, but the weather was unsettled; by turns windy and rainy and sunny and all the inbetweens.

we're none of us young, and just the business of being comfortable takes up time but it's easy time.

plus i was impressed with the cleaning schedules and the general plague safety of the campground staff, enough so that we've got reservations in a couple weeks INSIDE a park.

here's a picture of osmore pond at dusk on the first night.

2020 Venture Vermont: Build a solar cooker or oven

 i've never done this before! but the other day i woke up and decided i was up for a project.

i looked up some instructions on the interwebs and off i went. i found some boxes to use, one large enough to hold the other with insulation around it, because it's important to keep the heat in.

the idea is that you capture the sun's heat with the reflectors and then trap it in the box under a clear cover.

i got kind of sciencey on it and i recorded the temperature i was able to get it to at various stages of the build.

temperature of the box in the shade: 62.6°F

the box in the sun: 100.9°F

reflectors added: 125.6°F

with clear covering: 173.3°F

when i tell people that i built this thing, they ask me what i made with it.

my answer: a hot thermometer.

it's the little things.

 last week i went down to the town office to pay my taxes, which has always felt to me like a lovely grownup thing to do.

i put "xxooxx" on the memo line of the check, and put it in this envelope:

my town clerk says "Sometimes it's the little things that make your day."

2020 Venture Vermont: Use recycled materials to create a game

 here's my game: a connect five made out of screws and other fasteners on a board cut from an old shirt.

players alternate turns playing pieces on the grid to try to get five in a row in any direction. when players run out of pieces, they continue play, moving one already played piece in a turn until someone makes five in a row.

the whole thing rolls up when you're done.

2020 Venture Vermont: Learn a tongue twister and say it as fast as you can.

 this year's challenge came out during the time when Géraldine was hosting french story time every day and i decided to learn a french tongue twister - or virelangue- to meet this item on the challenge.

botanizing a campsite

 i accidentally went camping. it happened like this: barb called me up and asked if i wanted to go paddleboarding and i was all like "oh, no. i would be sad if i was there but not camping" but the ranger was holding a site he said i could have so there was no reason NOT to be camping.

one night, right? yeah, ok. it turned out to be a week, but i had time to botanize.

so i drew a map of my campsite, and attempted to identify as many of the woody plants as i could.

1) white pine. these are not hard to identify. there were eleven of them in and around the campsite.

2) red maple. these are also not hard. (3)

but then we get to 

3) MYSTERY THING.

it's maybe a sand cherry? i spent most of a day going back and forth about it and sand cherry is the best fit. it looks cherry-like, but it lack the cherry smell and it's maybe too shrubby for sand cherry.  if you guys know what it is, i'll be delighted.

and then there are

4) THE APPLES. this whole area is ancient orchard. there are nine apple trees of at least two varieties in and around the site and dozens more up the outhouse trail and beyond the botanized area.

5) morrow's honeysuckle, one big patch of it, and more patches in a lot of places just outside the campsite.

6) staghorn sumac, young, a few of them, and only at the sandy border where the land drops into the lake.

7) MYSTERY II: belongs to the birch group. maybe musclewood? it doesn't really fit what i know. trunk has lenticels like black birch but is muscle-y. and no birch smell. the trunk shoudl either look more like a musclewood or it should have a birch smell. i hate this.

and then there were

8) american elms, five of them.

there ya go.

one campsite, one week. harder than i thought.

2020 Vermont Venture: Weave a basket using natural materials

 i know it would have qualified if i had just made a basket and INCORPORATED natural materials,  but for me the overarching principle of of the Venture Challenge is to do, practice, learn, observe.

so i decided to try to make a basket out of garlic mustard straw, because that's a material that i had never used, but had noticed that it's strong and maybe bendy enough to weave with, plus garlic mustard is an invasive species and it's not possible to overharvest it.

but then i ALSO decided to experiment with weaving a twill basket, because not only had in never weaved a twill pattern, but i did not even know what the word was. i saw a pretty basket weave and thought: "huh. let me try to see if i can figure that out" and then once i figured out the pattern, i was able to search it up on the interwebs and learn that the name for that is twill.

my first try was a disaster, but i at least learned how to make the pattern. my second try is much better, but i still have a lot to learn. it would be easier, probably, to buy commercial materials, but i'm all about processing what i find.

here's my basket. the bottom view shows the weave best.

2020 venture vermont: Go for a walk around your home or community while staying at least six feet away from anyone else.

 i went for walks in the time of covid, up and down my road in order to get exercise. i sang as i walked, to strengthen my lungs.

here are the songs that i sang:

and then i walked at night in the rain to track amphibian migrations. i did a lot of walking, both alone and distanced with my friend barb, in camel's hump state park, bushwhacking off the honey hollow road, looking at plant life.

then i walked every old where, looking for sedges.

because yanno. walking. outdoors.

2020 Venture Vermont: Find a historical fact or story about a Vermont State Park

 Following the 1903 forest fires, a fire lookout was installed on Camel's Hump in 1911. it consisted of a cement map stand, and later that year, a telephone line.

i maybe don't want to tip my hand about all my sources, but if you're into reading about camel's hump state park, i am really going to recommend THE CULTURAL LANDSCAPE OF THE CAMEL'S HUMP MANAGEMENT UNIT and the Camel’s Hump Management Unit [...] Long Range Management Plan .

2020 Venture Vermont: Find a tree with leaves you can reach. Give the tree a high five!

good job, tree.

 

2020 Venture Vermont: Build an animal habitat for your favorite animal in your home or backyard

 i am choosing to interpret this as build a habitat for my favorite animal that is in my backyard, because that seems like it will do some good.

this summer i noticed some little pickerel frogs hopping around in my backyard, taking shelter under my back steps. and i had some spare plant pots, so i cut some little doors in them to place under the steps to give the little dudes a nice place to hang out and eat bugs.

2020 Venture Vermont: Sit in a quiet area and observe nature. Write down or draw a picture of what you see

 maybe it's careless venturing, but since i do a LOT of observing nature and writing down or drawing what i see, here's a page from my notebook.

this is some of my observations from my sedge class this summer.

because sedges.

in the driveway

I went out to the driveway thinking i would just make some notes on woody plants i already knew and sent some hours having to sort out things i THOUGHT i knew.

Here’s my list:

White birch
Grey birch
An assortment of white ash saplings
Some saplings of some kind of shadbush?
Spirea alba?

white birch. two sizes of teeth, telltale bark.

catkins in groups of three. i did not not know about the catkins

.

grey birch. leaf much pointier, triangular branch scars on trunk

i made a sketch of the grey birch leaves. took me a whole day.

ash sapling

the buds make me think it's white ash

this is a spirea, and checking against newcomb's wildflower guide, i think it is a spirea alba.

2020 Venture Vermont: Learn to set up a tarp or hammock

sometimes with these items i have to get creative, because when it says "learn to..." sometimes i'm running into some difficulties.

for instance, i already know how to pitch a hammock, and i'm pretty good with tarp as dining fly, wind shed, and plow blade.

sometimes i feel i satisfy the requirement for an item like this (and one like this is always on the challenge) by learning a NEW setup, like if i figure out a friend's new setup for them. for instance, this summer my friend barb got a new hammmock setup and i helped her set it up and taught her some knots to use for tarp slinging, and then when another friend with a tarp that needed more knots arrived at our campsite, i helped barb itch that, which was her first time tying a bowline, a clove hitch, and a trucker hitch under application.

but also i like to learn new things. this isn't strictly learning to pitch a tarp, but i did learn how to build a baker tent OUT of hardware store tarps and duct tape and learned to pitch it. only took me seven months.

here it is on the worktable

pitched outside

it's made with silver colored tarps to reflect heat, and the top and back are lined with silver emergency blanket. it has a roll-down clear plastic front, and the idea is that you build a fire in front of it and it traps heat.. so while it makes a handy windshed and shade in summer, it is intended for winter use. it packs up pretty small and will fit well on my sled.

view from inside with the front down

folded up

but also i'm not opposed to learning new tarp piches. they're harder with a rectangular tarp, but i'm learning to do some. this one is not very complex, but is new to me.

this is a very stable pitch and would give very good protection from the elements. the line and front stakes can be left off entirely; with the inside pole you can pull the whole thing taut without the front lines to stabilize it. you'd still want them in a high wind, though.

2020 Vermont Venture: Create a meal cooked on a campfire

 i'm going to admit that i cheated a little on this one, because mostly my friend liz did the cooking while i tended the fire.

Liz says it counts as helping because often she has to cook WHILE building and tending the fire.

i'm counting this meal because it has the best associated photo, but the truth is i go camping, and camping means you're either making food on a camp stove or on a fire. as the weather gets cooler, you're going to have fire anyway, so there you go.

This is a venison stew. Liz is a campfire wizard.

2020 Venture Vermont: Create art out of rocks

 ok, so i colored a rock for my mom.

but also i had to pick up some river rocks for another project and i have some little ones hanging around and i've decided to stack them up from time to time and learn how they balance, and it's kind of a cool meditative experience.

boil water

 i'm under an boil water order here at home now, until further notice. this is because our regular water was shut off and we were placed on a grade level cistern while the nice workmen do their project of replacing the entire water system, which will take  some weeks yet.

i am more put out by the boil water notice than i was about the original "hey, you drinking water is radioactive" notice.

i mean, it's not "leaky nuclear plant on top of your groundwater" radioactive", it's just "you live in new england and there's granite" radioactive.

anyway, i'm using my spiffy camping filter to make my water safe to drink, because that's a thing.

2020 Venture Vermont: Go to a VT state park you’ve never been to

 yesterday i found myself traveling for an errand and i thought: "hey! is there a vermont state park ear here that i can visit and scope out?"

why yes, yes there was. 

so i went to Bomoseen state park and i was going to do this history loop but there were some ugly looking clouds so i thought "i'll just roll up to this spot here near the parking and do a little field study of woody plants" because what's here is unlike what's at home and i was just starting to diagram when the sky opened up and i was soaked before i got back to the car.

but then i didn't ave a nice picture of be at Bomoseen State Park, so i schlepped an umbrella out and went over to the sign near the bathhouse.

how to eat like my mom

 ok, really, it's more how to cook like flask, only i got this recipe from my mom and have translated it into my own style and adjusted it for how i cook. my mom used a ruler on her version.

my mom wrote out the recipe for 4-6 people, but imma tell you how to make it at home for me, because i live alone. i make two servings, because i like it leftover.

BRIE PASTA

ingredients: 

one medium sized tomato per serving. it should be fresh and picked ripe from the vine.

a little olive oil, not important exactly how much, but somewhere around a teaspoon per serving.

somewhere between 4 and six ounces of brie

a half handful of fresh basil leaves, chopped

a pinch of salt

some little red pepper flakes. a few if you're me, a whole bunch if you like pointy food.

approximately one clove of garlic per serving, minced

a serving of pasta. i like something that holds sauce because the sauce is the point.

some parmesan cheese to sprinkle on top.

directions:

peel and chop the tomatoes. this is very important, the peeling.

peel and cut up the brie. also important. you want it without its rind.

toss then together in a bowl with the other sauce ingredients. give it a good stir and leave it be for a couple of hours, stirring occasionally. what will happen is the tomato and the brie will marinate and make a lovely pink velvety soup.

just before you're ready to eat, cook the pasta. 

drain it, and pour it hot into the bowl with the lovely pink sauce.

sprinkle with parmesan.

if you like, go ahead and garnish with more basil.

serve.

struggle mightily to eat a moderate helping.

fail.

2020 Venture Vermont: Learn a new technique to purify water

 there aren't that many practical ways to purify water on the trail.

but i was taking my friend barb for her first backpacking camping (a short one) and i have a sawyer mini i had never used before, so we brought that to try out which is very fortunate because barb has one too that she bought for work in case she needs to go to a place with dubious drinking water.

i have an old pump ceramic filter that i've been using, but this is my first time using one of them newfangled nanotube filtration jobbers.

we collected water from a stream some distance from our campsite and filtered it onsite for our cooking and washing.

2020 Venture Vermont: Go on an overnight backpacking trip with everything you need in your backpack

this one continues to be hard.

but ok.

it's harder to do this one now because as a high risk person in the covid era, trails and camping at trail shelters is not acceptable risk.

but my friend barb just got herself and actual good camping hammock and tarp setup and we headed off into a vermont state forest for some dispersed  primitive camping. a lot of people don't think about dispersed camping, but it's a thing you can do if you have the appropriate skills and gear, and it's legal if you follow the guidelines.

so we did that.

2020 Venture Vermont: Write Haiku or other nature poetry based on things you observe in nature around you

 a couple weeks ago i was doing a thing with some kids and one of our activities was to write a haiku, but we rolled a die to determine some of the required elements. we did this twice, so here are my haikus.

I)  theme: flowers

    character: snake

    required word: green

everywhere are blooms

green grass, riot of flowers

follow the snake.

II) theme: wind

    character: horse

    required word: green

as if galloping

he blows the grasses over

green and flexible

and then because i had a few minutes left, i wrote a double dactyl on the same foundation:

hurchison murchison, galloping overland

blowing green grass on an incoming breeze

pounding and sounding the

incontrovertible

signs that there's pollen to make you to sneeze

    

2020 Venture Vermont: Create a scavenger hunt for you and your friends and find everything

 i went for a walk with my friend barb in a state forest, and i asked her if i could make her a scavenger hunt, and good sport that she is, she said sure. i had to teach her some things for her to be able to find all the items, but it helps here learn her plants and teaching helps me retain my knowledge.

so here was our list:

• three kinds of maples
• an amphibian
• a sedge
• a grass
• a compound leaf
• two kinds of pine trees
• a vine
• the footprint of a mammal
• an animal scat
• a birch tree
• a beech tree
• a polypore
• a gilled mushroom
• something in the rubus genus
• a feather

and good for us, we found everything, too.

2020 Venture Vermont: Hang your laundry outdoors to dry instead of using a drying machine

this is a hard one for me because i do't have a place to put an outdoor line, and although i can put racks on the patio, it's got to be a really warm and dry day with a breeze, and  leaving it to evening's no good, and an afternoon storm's no good, so that's unreliable at best.

but i figured that the spirit of this item is served just fine if i put the racks inside the house and it's a bit of a PITA to walk around them in the living room, but the clothes smell as good as if i'd done them outside and i save energy. it's also easier on the clothes.

i'm trying to do this regularly now. 

weathering the storm

 last week we got the tail of a tropical storm coming through here, which meant a lot or wind and a LOT OF RAIN. i have two tomato plants, one of whom (yes, i am granting them personhood) has been having a hard time. initially i was overwatering it, and then you can't just stop watering a thing entirely so i was trying to figure that out and then there was ALL THIS RAIN and the poor thing just had a fit.

there was literally a moment when it went from looking like a distressed plant to one that had given up and was dying.

and i could not just let it drown. one of the problems is that the container, large as it is, does not drain., which is fine i guess if you haven't overwatered at all. there was nothing to do besides go out into the storm armed with a power drill, gently tip it sideways and drill some holes.

and a LOT of water came out. 

but it was still raining.

so i dragged this thing over to my door and up one step and then onto a big plastic tarp and right into my living room on MY TAN CARPET.

and then i brought in all the other containered plants to join it and good thing too, because that's about when the WIND started.

they all seemed to enjoy their little sojourn as indoor plants and my poor little overwatered friend has recovered sufficiently that it now has brand new foliage and is starting a second set of blooms.

i am enjoying roughly one fresh ripe tomato every day.

and my carpet looks fine.