random scenes from camp 20

bright sun, snowy morning

you wouldn't see it until the leaves fall

camel's hump from open reservoir

morning from my beach. mind the duck hunter.

up by the boat launch

high chair

duck, duck, goose

you've seen the pictures of camp 20, but maybe it hasn't really sunk in for you that it is a high spit of land with water on three sides. what you maybe do not know about his is that it is about the right height that birds low-flying over the water are just about level with the ground on the campsite.

one morning i woke up to the sound of a large flock of geese flying south right about at ear level before they wheeled about JUST OFFSHORE FROM MY TENT to fly north up the other side of my site before they winged up and away for the day.

THAT was quite a wake up call.

in the mornings and the evenings, you'd hear a few rifle shots, because it was duck season. one morning i saw this gentleman come by my point:

he was so stealthy that at first i wasn't sure he was even there.

love letter from camp 20

comforts of home

you realize, don't you, that by the time i get done posting about everything i wanted to show you from my last camping trip, that i will probably be out on my next one?


yeah, well.

i spent some time this year on campsites with outhouses and campsites without. and the state-issue composting toilets are very pleasant, as far as outhouses go. they are sturdily build and protect you from the elements while you enjoy using an actual toilet seat. oh, my, that is the very lap of luxury.

...which is what prompted me to send this picture via text to various friends:

...which prompted one of them to write "you did NOT just send me a pic of you in the outhouse, did you?"

no, not at all. i most certainly did not do that.

flask's camping protips

Q: which water jug should i pour from?

A: the one that is least frozen.

also, later in the day when (if) the sun comes out, you can put all your water on the silver blanket and maybe thaw them a little.

lumberjane

ok, so i'm STILL not done telling you about my october camping trip, and at this rate, i will not be done until i leave for my november camping trip.

anyway, i get weird about the woodpile.

i like to leave a site with more firewood than i found on it. that amount is usually "any", but sometimes you get lucky. also, if when you are camping it has the potential of being cold out and you have the potential of NEEDING that fire to sty warm, you want enough wood to last you through a number of hours incase a storm rolls in or some other thing happens and for some reason you have to go a day without cutting new wood.

also, i sometimes do not know how many days i will be on a site, so i want to be prepared.

this leads me to be almost obsessive about my wood cutting.

plus when it's chillly out, cutting wood is a good way to stay warm. it's also satisfying in a kind of primal way.

on vermont state lands unless you hold a lumbering lease you amy not cut live or standing wood, but you're welcome to all the deadfall you can get for purposes of camping. i get weird about it. when i see a big piece of deadfall with saw or axe marls on it that suggest that some other people tried to take this and then gave up because it was too hard, i sort of interpret that as a challenge TO do it.

so anyway. some pictures.

it's a challenge, right?

yep, woodpile.

hey, let's talk about kevin macleod.

the other day i was in a skype conversation with MB and she was playing a cute little game and even through her phone i thought i could identify the music as by kevin macleod. if you've been watching my videos, you have heard his work. i really wish my own music suited the purpose as well, but it doesn't. sad for me.

the good news is that kevin macleod has a huge archive of music suited to scoring projects which he makes available FOR FREE on the internet. you should go there and look.

"but flask", i hear you say. "i do not need music to score projects with." i don't care. kevin macleod is both very talented and very funny, and you should go listen to some of his music and read his descriptions which are both useful and entertaining.

"Action-y intense like percussion based piece. Need to defuse a bomb while riding in a pedi-cab? This should work well for that. Or anything where tension needs to be maintained."

"Lots of little sections ending with soaring horns. Who doesn't like that?"

"This piece is actively painful. It is ugly and nasty and dirty - about as much as you can be using exactly one orchestra. Seriously, there are occasional bits where there are notes - but mostly, it is just... uhh..."

and besides, some of the numbers have available sheet music and some have cute little youtube flicks of the sequencing animations, which are cool to look at.

plus graph paper.

seriously. this dude has a lot going for him.

as for identifying the piece from MB's phone over skype while she was playing a game on her desktop? i am very proud of that, because kevin's catalog (can i call him kevin?) is kind of diverse. he has a lot of sounds.

what tipped me off?  cheap little game. rich scoring. anytime you're looking at a low budget project that has really good music, you check the credits.

--

oh, in case you are wondering: no, this is not a paid endorsement. even if i had the kind of readership that would support paid endorsements, i'm not about that. i'm not above giving honest reviews of gear just in case some bicycle company wants to know my opinion on the latest, but we get back to my readership just doesn't support that kind of thing. you're both very kind, but not really commercially viable.

also, i have never met kevin macleod.

i may, however, send him a link to this because now i've gone on kind of at length about how awesome his work is.

augh. fangirl.

PUSH

on the fifteenth of october i went paddleboarding. it was a beautiful day, but not so warm i didn't need longjohns, or neoprene booties.

i'm doing a thing i only discovered by accident one day in the summer, which is to paddle up into a headwind and then turn and sail back, being pushed by the wind and steering with my paddle in the wind. it doesn't work against the rudder in the air as effectively as it does in the water, but it does work and you can steer it, with some planning and some patience.

i did this three times that afternoon, paddling up and sailing back to camp. you will notice how low the sun is in the sky, even though it's only three o'clock in the afternoon. i am coming to the end of light in the day. i am coming to the end of my time at camp 20. i am coming to the ends of things i cannot fathom but feel in my bones.

we are all of us parting ways.

paddle up, sail home.

the chair

if you're following the story, you know that i've been building camp tables and such at remote campsites on the res. i'd like to stress to you that these are remote sites and not primitive sites, because on primitive sites, it is poor manners to build stuff.

on the remote sites on the waterbury reservoir, people build a wide variety of structures intended to make camp more comfortable. there are steps, benches, tables, fixed ridgepoles that can be used for tarps, and shelves to keep gear off the ground. one site even has a pretty functional little lean-to.

anyway, camp 20 has a lot of table, benches, and table like things, so i kind of thought i would like to build something in a chair, maybe something adjustable.

i know how to build basic things, but past the odd tripod and such, it's all kind of experimental for me. one day i'll be good at it. not yet, but one day.

meanwhile, i am learning a lot about how pieces fit together and one day i'll be a right bushcraft queen.

here are some little movies from my chair building on camp 20.

coal bowl

paleolithic handicrafts, coal bowl edition:

full tour of camp 20

of course i do not know right from left.

open letter to hillary clinton

dear secretary clinton,

i know this is hard for you to understand, but as a likely democratic voter, i am not voting for you. i am not voting for you even if you are the democratic nominee.

it isn't about senator sanders. it's no secret that i love senator sanders, but if you were an acceptable candidate, you would have my vote if sanders failed to win the nomination.

but you don't have my vote, so in the event that you are the democratic nominee, i will have to choose between voting for the republican nominee or not voting. maybe a write in? i don't know. that feels a lot like not voting.

either way, you don't have my vote.

let's look at at why.

clearly you have the chops to be president. you're a democrat, and democrats scare me slightly less than the republicans. several election cycles ago when it became apparent that one day YOU might be an actual viable presidential candidate, i was really excited. i thought you were going to be a candidate i could really believe in.

but then i looked at your record.

sure, you support civil rights for gay people NOW, and i'll give you the benefit of the doubt that maybe your views DID mature and change with the times, even though i am more likely to think that your views changed and matured along with the focus grouping.

basically, you are a shape shifter. you appear to be whatever the large donors want, and you say whatever you think you need to say to get votes but when it comes right down to it, you leave a trail of acrimonious power politicking everywhere you go, and at the end of the day, you are still in the pockets of the investment bankers and corporate leeches who are stripping the wealth of the united states and the world.

you are not an agent for change, and you are not the ally of regular people. i trust you about as much as i trust chris christie. heck, even ted cruz must occasionally do something that benefits his constituency every now and again.

in short, you are not the solution to the problem. you are not even a warrior in the cause. you are the problem.

love,
flask

cc: DNC

forest light

i wanted you guys to see this.

return to camp

here's a video of my return to camp after my night at home.





i was kind of worried that someone might have come in the night and stolen my boat, but it was right where i left it.

the snowy day

snow on tent

on the 18th of october i woke up to snow in my campsite. it was not a surprise to me, because a) it had been snowing on and off the entire previous day and b) i had heard the forecast.

i needed to go home and get some cold weather gear because although i had some, when i'd left the house it was late summer and i had needed to bring warm weather clothes and so didn't have all the cold weather stuff i would have liked.

plus that ONE PAIR OF  jeans i own that fits well over tights, midweight longjohns and fleece longjohns really, really needed to be laundered.

and i needed to buy groceries.

i could have done it saturday, and i could have done it monday, but why NOT do it on the most cold miserable day, if i'm going to leave camp for a few hours?

so i made a bottle of tea and a bowl of oatmeal in the leisurely way you can if you know you're not going to have to sit out all day and i gathered up the laundry, warm weather clothes i wasn't going to be needing anymore, and i got in my boat.

if was a pretty paddle, with a little bit of sunshine breaking out.

i got home, had some food, did some laundry, packed some things.

camp with snow 

i watched the afternoon storms roll in. snow and snow, wind and more wind, grey, heavy skies.

and those jeans were taking forever to dry. sometimes you can wear them damp, but you really shouldn't when you are out in the cold and you depend on them to keep you warm.

so waiting.

and at some point, jeans not dry yet (soon!) i looked at a clock and realized that if i left the house NOW (nevermind jeans or gathering the things i had packed) i was arriving back at the boat landing around 4:30 in the afternoon.

view from camp. pretty.

that maybe does not sound very late to you, but up there, even before the clocks changed, even in the middle of october, 4:30 was the time that the sun disappeared behind the mountain and the long cold twilight of the day began.

and i looked at the snow, and the wind, and the clock, and the fact that my jeans STILL weren't out of the dryer and i decided to sleep indoors for a night.

paddle out

first snowy morning

yah- boo, it was COLD out there a couple of them days, i tell you whut.

here's video from the first snowy morning.

fixed for ya.

i got this email:

now, i've asked to unsubscribe, but they keep making me watch political ads and THEN throwing up an "unable to process your request at this time" message, which totally does not surprise me.

but i'm in a pretty good mood this morning, so i decided to play along and check NO.

this is what happens:

seriously?

ok...

fixed for ya.

you're welcome.

early scenes

here are some pictures rom the first part of my time at camp 20.

morning from my beach

don't tell me these don't look like weird boobs.

just before rain

when the morning sun clears the mountain

cloudy paddle

returning from milk run (note pizza box)

i got other eggs to fry.

you know how hard it can be to fry an egg?

i mean, even if you have skills and you know how to fry it just how you like it, there's rather a wide margin between "how you like it" and "oh, my goodness, this is perfect." there are a lot of variables.

and then you also want to time your toast right so your toast is done but warm, and then there's the whole other sport of timing the consumption of the eggs with the consumption of the toast so that you run out of toast right about as the plate comes clean.

MB says she likes a little extra toast because that's what lovely jam is for, but i can't be arsed to carry jam to and fro in case i don't get my egg mopping right.

anyway, on friday i nailed it on both counts.

little pleasures.

at this point it gets all chronologically messed up

i've been trying to show you things from the camping trip in some kind of chronological order, i have no idea why. let's just say i spent approximately five weeks out of september and october and i went camping.

stuff happened, and i took pictures to show you.

here's a little video from the day the first snow of the season fell.

field trip

earlier this week i was on my way to the grocery store by sort of the long way so i could buy eggs at the farmstand, and at the bottom of my road there were two festively parked vans with official looking designations, even though one was white and one was red.

now, here's a tip for you: usually when you are near a big roadcut and you see two or three 18 passenger vans with some kind of official crest on the door, it will turn out to be a collegiate geology department field trip.

and what's there not to love about that? so i did what i typically do in this situation, when i can see the group and i'm not in a hurry: i parked my car and marched right over there and started asking what we were looking at. i have never once done this and had the professor or TA or whatever not be happy that a passerby wants to learn about this here roadcut.

and sure, i've read some papers about these rocks, but if you're anything like me when you read geology papers, you end up having to look a lot of stuff up because for some reason geology papers seem to be written for geologists and not your average joes who happen to like rocks.

so it's super educational to be out on this huge rock with a nice young geologist who is trying to explain all this stuff to entry level undergrads.

true story: i pull up and i'm looking at the rocks with these kids and one of them says "are you a geologist?"

"no, just a rock fan."

open letter to internet advertisers

dear internet advertisers,

internet advertising, for some reason, is a big topic these days.

i love the internet. i love to read on it, chat on it, play games on it, shop on it.

and advertising on the internet is big business.

and so is adblocking.

look, you NEED advertising to pay the bills, or else people consuming content need to pay for it. some sites give you a choice. some sites try to play both sides of that, though, and if you pay them for ad-free content, they try to give you ads.

no, no, no.

you get what you pay for.

and advertisers? if you are paying for spurious botnet fake eyeballs on your ads, how is that helping anybody but the brokers of fake views?

so ok, advertisers. let's talk about my consumption of advertising and how maybe you can develop a model that will work for you and not be obnoxious.

i'm not opposed to ads. they keep the lights on at my favorite content providers. i do not like cheesy no-escape ads for dubious products, or ads that are offensive to me.

here's the thing: if the ad is for a product i am interested in, i will happily watch it all the way to the end, and not just the five seconds i have to wait to escape. if the ad is compelling or beautiful in some way, i will watch it simply because it's interesting, even if i have no intention of buying this product. if your ad is interesting enough, i will click right to your website.

and that's what you want, right?

you don't really want to annoy me and have me make a mental note to skip every ad for every product you make, ever, and not buy anything of yours just because your behavior is annoying? you probably don't even want to make me sit through thirty seconds of ad time for, say a pickup truck i'm never going to buy (i've never owned a car that wasn't a subaru wagon, and i don't really need to watch subaru ads, either, because i'm already buying subarus.) i don't care about shampoo (have you seen my hair?), and i find weight-loss product ads downright offensive.

i would like you to consider my attempts to escape your ad to be a declaration that this ad does not interest me. if you make it hard for me to close your ad, i assume that you and your product are not just bad company and bad product, but that your business practices are probably fraudulent as well.

so here's what i want: i want the ability to look at the ad or not. i actually do read and sometimes click sidebar ads and banner ads that don't stand between me and content. it helps me find goods and services i actually need and want.

failing that, i don't mind a popup that asks me to watch a few seconds of that ad before i close it or not. if i don't want to see the latest action movie (i have not seen a movie in theaters in YEARS, nor do i buy or rent movies, and rarely do i watch them on tv), i'm not really your target audience anyway and i don't need to keep seeing that trailer.

you might, i don't know, use your awesome data collection to discover which products and kinds of ads i am REALLY NOT INTERESTED IN and maybe don't try to ram those into my eyeballs.

also, if your ad is interesting and i didn't mind seeing it the first four or five times i watched it, at some point my attention is taxed and i don't want to keep seeing it anymore.

i also do not mind if i answer a couple of questions about products because clearly a marketing firm is paying some of your bills. i don't mind telling you which brands off that (short) list i've heard of or have a favorable impression of in order to support content i want to see.

i do not mind at all allowing you to make contact with me at my convenience about stuff i might buy.

in short, instead of finding ways to force me to consume your commercial messages, i would like you to do your jobs better. you have the data collection going already. i am an actual money-paying, ad-watching consumer. when you give me that chance to say "no, thank you, this ad does not interest me", you earn goodwill from me and you gain valuable information about how you should better target your advertising.

so how 'bout it? let me have control over what i want to see. i promise to keep buying stuff.

love,
flask

visitations

campsite 20 is one of two remote campsites on waterbury reservoir that are accessible by land.

and by "accessible by land", i mean there's a trail that goes right to it. and by "trail", i mean that if you look at the historical map of the area surrounding little river state park,  you can see that these campsites essentially sit right on historical roads that are now considered to be cross country ski-trails. they're just a hop and a skip off of the multi-use trails, and they're one of the loveliest ways to go down to the water, so if you're going to camp there, you're going to have visitors.

the thing about it is that if you start off with your dog on the trail and you decide to go down to the lake by that route, you have to already be there before you learn that the campsites are occupied and let's face it, in cold weather those campsites are less likely to be occupied, so you're rather a surprise to the visitors.

most people are polite when they come through your campsite. most people, when they realize you're there, call their dogs back to them and they holler a greeting or come respectfully through and make pleasantries because they're aware that they are walking with their dogs (and they nearly always have dogs) through your current living space.

these polite ones, i like. i always ask them if they will stay for tea and cake. they never do, and i don't know what i would do if they did since even though i have plenty of cake and plenty of water and a good selection of teas, i only have the one cup. two, if you count the one in the rain bucket.

the couple from connecticut, they were nice. they were also a little lost and did not really know how to get back. i couldn't help them much, because i have never been to the site by trail. it's pretty straightforward if you go by boat.

but the man, he was from here.

not like i'm from here. i have only lived here since 1973, which makes me most definitely from AWAY. but even though he lives away, he is FROM here. his grandfather's old farm was one of the ones bought out when they built the dam, and lies under the lake. his father worked on the crews that built the dam.

the reason they would not stop for cake, they said, was because the purpose of the walk in the first place had been to exercise off some of the cake they had already been eating and maybe feel less bloated.

fair enough.

but boneheads visit, too, although out of all the people who came through my camp with varying degrees of politeness, only one pair were real boneheads.

they were preceded by their three large and completely uncontrolled dogs, after which, when they saw they were in my campsite, they could only be bothered to holler "they're friendly!" this was followed up with "we're just going to the beach."

then they threw my collected driftwood into the water, which the dogs declined to return. "GOOD BOY!!!" they yelled. "who's a good boy? who's a good boy?"

i simply went ahead with my in-progress activity, which was washing up and changing shirts. you HAVE to do that in the window of the day that's warm and dry, else you're miserable later. plus get bent. if you charge into my living space like that, you are damn well going to be aware that it's my living space.

so then when they were done throwing my collected wood into the water and in general making themselves obnoxious on the/my beach, all three dogs came charging up into my site, unaccompanied, with trailing cries of "GOOD BOY! GOOD BOY!"

and then one of the good boys came under my tarp to pee on my gear.

the woman tried to call him back.

"oh," she said, delicately holding up the edge of my garbage bag as if she did not want to get near to dog pee, "he peed on your garbage".

yes, he had, and that's bad enough, because even if he peed on my garbage, he still peed on the outside of my garbage bag, in my tarp area, where i live. you know, right next to my food.

but she was too dainty to touch it.

i had to, though, because i still had to live there and i had to get it out and rinse it off so i could keep using it without getting her dog's piss on MY hands, and they weren't even gone from my site before i discovered that he had also peed on my lifejacket, my boots, and my spray skirt.

the man acted like it was a terrible imposition on HIM when i called this to their attention.

you know that gesture people make where they put their hands up near their ears like they're going to cover them? yeah, he made that gesture. and he turned and walked away, saying "i'm sorry. i'm SORRY. i'm SORRY." until they were all out of sight.

he did not sound sorry to me. he sounded like i'd had a lot of nerve putting my stuff where his dog could pee on it.

i fished my gear out from where i had stowed it to be protected and dry, and i rinsed it off and hung it all up to dry.

boneheads.

my things, up to dry

critterpated

so maybe you're paying enough attention to my ramblings to know that i came home from my stay at casa quince, cleaned and repacked my gear, and headed back out to the res to live on site 20.

site 20 it kind of a primo site with a lot of amenities, including that it is a spectacular location. it also has the drawback of being accessible by foot or bike, and it is a popular destination for people who want a nice view of the lake.

more about that later.

anyway, for the first half of my stay i had a neighbor at site 19: tom from connecticut, which is not at all like tom of finland. google it yourself. i'm not linking it not because i don't approve, but NSFW.

anyway. tom was a good neighbor. i like having neighbors (which i define as people occupying campsites close enough that i can see their lights at night), but not too close. tom was the kind of neighbor that you might stop by his site on the way into town to buy ice to ask if he needed anything and he'd come down with a short grocery list and some cash and then later on when you come by with his stuff he meets you at the boat landing with a tasty apple and a freshly made thermos of hot chocolate.

the morning he packed up to go i helped him move, which seemed to me to be the neighborly thing to do.

and i got a lovely picture of his dog.

and while i was having him hand stuff downslope so i could pack it in his boat (i was already wearing water shoes), i saw this little lady swimming by and we harassed her long enough to put her on tom's paddle and get a picture of her.

i won't bother to label which picture is which. i hope you can sort that out for yourself.

rain bucket

my brother in law has a knack for buying me gifts that when i open them i feel lukewarm about because i cannot imagine how such a thing will be useful, but then later on it turns out to be just the thing i needed and when i say to myself "i wish i had a ...", it turns out i already have one.

such was the case with this bucket. the first time i used it, in august, i figured you needed something to hold it up by its handles. you know, because it has handles.

but no. you can just fill it up and it just sits there and holds ten liters of water for you. the surface you put it on doesn't even need to be all that level or smooth.

when i was living on casa quince i filled it every day with stream water for washing with, which is nicer than lake water, especially if it hasn't rained in a while.

more recently i was staying on site 20, which has no conveniently situated brook at the back of it. i wondered if the bucket only works if you fill it and then schlepp it to where you're going (the convenient carry handles let you carry it like a briefcase), or if you can just leave it empty to catch rainwater.

luckily i had an opportunity to test this on my second full day in camp, when the sky opened up and rained buckets and buckets of rain, so i stuck the bucket underneath the downspout of my tarps and in twenty minutes i had ten liters of nice fresh rainwater.

it's kind of magical the way it just fills up and plumps itself into shape. i sort of want to know what genius mechanical engineer figured out what shape to make this thing.

empty

fifteen minutes later

meet the smiths

here are some people i met on a sunny afternoon while paddling the res.

i stopped to talk with them because of their beautiful little boat. it's quite an eye-catcher. turns out it's a 2009 aristocraft torpedo, which is hand built in the style of the 1956 aristocraft torpedo, on the same jigs and everything.

sweet, yeah?

and they have a vintage '56 mercury outboard on it, too.

we were drifting along talking about this and that and life on the res and the rangers pulled up and joined the conversation about wild times and bad behavior and we laughed and drifted and then eventually went along our ways.

nice people. very pretty boat.

political differences

a lot of our political process seems to be about image and focus grouping and marketing these days.

i am going to tell you right up front that senator sanders is my favorite candidate in every race he enters ever since i became a convert. senator sanders is my senator. i didn't like him in the early years of his political career, but the more i hear him talk, the more upright i realize he is. he does his own shopping. he flies coach. he answers his mail thoughtfully, and he tells you what he thinks, instead of what he thinks you want to hear.

how do you want your candidate to appear? hillary will appear that way in your district. she will shape shift faster than you can focus group. (and i don't mean to pick on hillary. most major candidates will do this.) she'll disavow her voting record, tell you she was taken out of context, and you very much get the idea she wants to be elected and will say anything, do anything, be anything until she gets your vote and then it's back to bizzness as usual, which is lining her pockets and the pockets of the rest of the wealthy lawless class.

senator sanders doesn't care about what you think of his hair. he never once made an attack ad. not once. he doesn't believe in them. he's been saying the SAME STUFF his whole career: income inequality hurts us all. opportunity inequality hurts us all. sustainable profits are much better than stripping companies and land and people of all its value and letting the wealthy amoral few walk away with everything. quality of life is important. fair treatment of prisoners benefits you whether or not you are in prison or someone you love has ever been incarcerated. the obscene unjustified war is too damn expensive and why aren't the wealthy paying for it if they want it so much? why are the poor paying in money and blood?

some candidates want to be president and will say anything to get to be president. senator sanders keeps saying the same things because he believes them and he wants a better life for us, regular people. he wants you to understand what's at stake and why it's important. he hopes enough people will agree to get things done.

ask your candidate. ask very hard, in a lot of ways. ask and keep asking: what change do you want to bring? show us what work you've done. how do we know you mean what you say?  why do you want to be elected?

if their answer is glory or strategy or party politics, toss them right out.

and yeah, i know y'all call him bernie. and i know he doesn't stand on ceremony. but bernard sanders is my senator. he answers my letters and my calls. he's earned my respect. we're not on a first name basis.

i'm actually not wild about him being president, because i'm worried about losing his effective advocacy in the senate.

but he's a good man, a regular guy. listen to what he says. don't think about his image. he doesn't care about hillary's email. why should you care about his image?

old and new

are you sick to death of hearing about the venture vermont outdoor challenge? i sort of hope not, because i'm not done talking about it yet.

i will  tell you, however, that i have completed this year's challenge and am already wearing my shiny new medallion. i got it last week on a day that i came home to check my mail and while i was here have a hot shower and probably later i'll talk about that, but meantime, here are the two medallions , one having just come off my lanyard, and one about to go on.

i love pretty shinies.

rain configuration

early on in my stay at site 20 there was a day of rain.  a lot of rain.for now i'll just give you the video.

i have things to tell you.

really, i promise. i have pictures and everything. it's just that i'm out camping rather longer than expected.

it's cold out.

why yes, i did send this to a state office.

department of forests, parks, and recreation DOES rock.

flask and DFPR sittin' in a tree
K-I-S-S-I-N-G
first comes love
then comes a clustertangle the secretary of state just doesn't even want to hear about...

cake

flask's camping protip:

make cake ahead of time and freeze it. it should be a sturdy cake, like this. once it is frozen, cut it into slices and wrap it in single portions which you can eat frozen, defrosted, or toasted on your campfire.

you're welcome.


also,

 

i've eaten off worse

this is the pavement or the parking structure at the hospital.

why yes, it IS shiny and clean. it has some kind of resin coating which i imagine can be hosed down with disinfectants in cast of some kind of spill.

and who doesn't love a sparkly clean parking garage?

assorted views from casa quince

generic view from site

evening on the res

fire hole

morning fog

roughing it

workin' on my huck finn look

rolling home

the problem with my dish receiver

recently i had to get and updated receiver for my tv. it has a really super feature: it decides that i have not fiddled with the remote enough and turns itself off because of inactivity, which doesn't take into account my television watching style, which is to check the listings, see which channel i can tolerably set it to for the rest of the day, and not mess with it.

which means usually it turns itself off right at that one critical bit of dialogue that i have not heard in this episode of that show i've seen nineteen times but still don't get that ONE thing.

so yeah, by the time i find my remote (which apparently i'm supposed to keep in my hand for convenient channel flipping), the show has cut to commercial.

i do not seem to be the target demographic for anything.

lumberjane

i spent twelve days on casa quince.

the evenings were cold, and cookings required fire. of course i brought a bundle of firewood with me, and there was a little firewood onsite when i got there.

it's a rule, though, to leave a site better than you found it, so if you found wood, you leave more than was there when you got there.

it's not legal on vermont state lands to cut standing trees, but you're welcome to saw up all the deadfall or driftwood that you like. and the farther you get fro any campsite into the woods, the more really excellent deadfall you find.

only you have to saw it into manageable logs and then use your straps to haul them into camp where you spent a good amount of your time sawing them up into decent firewood.

so i reorganized the woodpile, put it up on rails, sawed up logs and cut kindling.

yay me.

table, woodpile, fire

well, see, there's your problem.

last week sometime i heard a congressional asshat say an outrageous thing and nobody called him on it.

i am not telling you which asshat or which party because demmicans and republicrats alike are guilty of this same piece of trash thinking.

when asked what he thought congress should do about (insert important governmental issue), he said that the entire party needed to drop everything else and concentrate on what is really important: winning the white house in 2016.


oh, are you KIDDING me? this is not a football game. your job is not to win the white house, nor any other election. your JOB is to take care of the governance of the country whether or not you and your friends have total control (which is less control than you think it is) and whether or not all the actions taken are ones you approve of for ideological reasons.

your JOB, asshat, is to run the country best you can and if you think your job is most importantly about winning an election that's STILL OVER A YEAR AWAY you really do not understand your job, or your obligations under it.

the trip to camp

i was on my way back to camp after a milk run and i was thinking of flurgh, so i made this video.

it's slow like a norwegian documentary.

fattie

at the end of the bike racing season, i was looking for a fat bike. they used to call them snow bikes, because they were invented for rising in snow, but it turns out they're good for a lot more than that, so they just call them fat bikes now.

the reason i was looking for one is because on days when i don't ski and don't build snohaus, it would be nice to have the opportunity to go biking, and where i live they actually maintain winter trails for that, but you need a fat bike because snow.

the idea is that its very wide (4.5 inches) and low pressure tires function like snowshoes and just go through everything.

so cool.

a guy i know sold me a nice second hand one, low mileage, good price.

circle of life

last summer i was having some leg cramps, so i bought a few bananas.

i have not yet figured out how NOT to have a fruit fly infestation if i have fresh fruit on my counters, and you KNOW you can't stick banananananas in the fridge.

you can either get all upset about sharing you space with the drosophilae, or you can enjoy observing their life cycles.

you just know which attitude i took.

of course you do.

because science.

maggots!

no, they don't eat much. yes, i put out traps. yes, they're gone now.

you're welcome.

dark of moon

did you see the lunar eclipse at the end of last month?

it was kind of a big deal for me. i was living out at casa quince. from home it would have been a simple thing. go out the door and look.

but it was different out at casa quince.

first of all, it gets dark early this time of year, and when it gets dark, i want to wind down and go to bed. casa quince faces west and has a hillside behind it, so to even look at the moon at all, i had to get in a boat and leave camp.

and it was COLD out.

there wasn't going to be any sitting in my little boat just off of my cove. i was going to have to paddle to keep warm.

but i was alone out there. usually there are other people on the sites and i can see their lights.

i'm a diurnal creature. and i feel pretty secure on my campsite alone in the dark as long as i can see it in the daylight. intellectually i know that it's not safer before the sun sets than after, but something back in my lizard brain needs to survey camp, settle in, and hunker down until morning.

from my site i could see that i was the only person in my immediate neighborhood, but out on the water i could see a long way up and down the res and the feeling of lonely nearly swallowed me up. places that are usually devoid of people never seem lonely to me, but places that have recently held people and lights seem very, very empty when they are dark and i am alone.

once i was clear of my cove the light of the moon fell on me so brightly i almost heard the click of it being turned on. the water was still and black and my boat is a pale grey, so that was quite a contrast.

it was too cold to just sit and watch, so nothing to do but paddle. south, around the point, toward the state park. less scary than paddling into narrower nothings and shallower water with snags.

owls hooted. coyotes yodeled. i whistled in the dark.

yeah, i know that's an expression, but i did it. literally.

and then THE NOISE.

it was loud. it seemed to whirl around me.

what? geese? don't they settle DOWN at night? i had not heard geese all day, and here was a huge invisible flock wheeling over my head.

holy. honk.

so i kept paddling. after a while i could see tiny friendly lights at the state park. a fire here, a headlamp there. still some miles off, but friendly feeling.

way down at the state park there was nobody down on the shore and i watched the moon enter the shadow of the earth.

and then i realized: i will be paddling home into the dark of the deserted north end by less and less moonlight as the eclipse enters totality. i know from experience that i will not be able to see my friendly little camp lights until i am around the point, almost at my cove.

darkness. still water. and a disappearing moon.

i know why this happens. i understand about the shadow and the orbits.

but a primal awe and fear overtakes me: the moon should not be doing that. it is getting darker and i am not at home.

away from the tiny friendly lights of the sate park, up into the narrowing dark, racing the decreasing moonlight.

home. home. i am going home.

at last i see my tiny little lights. i pause in my cove and watch the last of the moon be swallowed by the shadow. i beach my boats and go up to sit by my fire.

goodnight, goodnight.

a box!

ok, so way back in APRIL i received in the mail a very exciting box. it had some things in it, but the most exciting was this thing: