junior ranger

it is indeed late in the year for me to just be finishing up my venture challenge scoresheet, but i wanted to become a vermont state parks junior ranger.

it's on the challenge every year and i have been curious, so this year after i did a hitch as the substitute interpreter at little river (did i even TELL you about that yet?) i thought this would be a good year to do it, so i got myself the booklet (printed on handsome stock) and set to work.

it's INTENDED for children, but the regular interpreter tells me that adults do it sometimes. children under nine do the slamander pages, children over nine do the beaver pages, and adults do the whole honkin' book.

it took me three weeks.

you can download your copy here.

so anyway, i did all the activities and then i went over to the park o a sunday morning for the wrapup and brain administered the OATH and now i am officially an vermont state parks junior ranger.

brian gave me one of the old style badges along with my current one because he had leftovers, i guess. the new one is very handsome and i am proud of it.

it's little NOW...

i found this little dude hiding out under my boat.

it makes me wonder how many really BIG snapping turtles are in the res.

...where i swim.

out.

oh, yeah. i went camping.

i'll tell you about it later, probably.

butter me up

here's a flask life hack: are you ever hesitant to melt better in the microwave because of the godawful way it splatters and you're too lazy to put a paper towel over it or something?

two videos about driving

that third verse

in the wake of the kaepernick firestorm (look it up yourself if you need to) a lot of people are talking about that third verse of the star-spangled banner.

imma save you some trouble.

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore, 
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion 
A home and a Country should leave us no more? 
Their blood has wash'd out their foul footstep's pollution. 
No refuge could save the hireling and slave 
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave, 
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave 
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave. 

ok, so let's talk about this. teh twittrz was all upset about this "they glorify slavery RIGHT IN THE NATIONAL ANTHEM!"

no.

they do not.

it IS racist, but not for the reasons you're seeing on the internet.

this is a lyric that was famously penned during the war of 1812, when it was common for  white men of the ruling class to complain bitterly about their treatment first under british colonial rule and then in the early days of the nation to complain about treatment by the former colonizers in language that compared them to slaves, and compared the loyalists and soldiers to the king to "hirelings and slaves".

this is WHITE MEN outraged at their treatment BY OTHER WHITE MEN. they are complaining in terms that compare themselves to actual slaves. they are outraged to be treated AS SLAVES (which they are, by the way, not.) and they also make the comparison that white men still loyal to the king ARE SLAVES. it is meant as an insult. it is a taunt built on the concept that the worst thing you could say about a WHITE MAN OF PRIVILEGE is to liken him to the everyday status of slaves, who are at this time in this place, black people.

if you look at the lists of grievances that led to the war of 1812, many of the documents include the problem of respect, in which our founding fathers likened their treatment by england to that of slaves.

that they could apply this comparison to themselves and not give a second thought to their systematic ownership of black people is deeply, offensively racist, but no. the national anthem does not have a hidden verse that glorifies slavery.

it has a little-known third verse that shows the founding fathers to be whinypants complainy everyday racists elevating themselves in their perceived Natural Order Of Things.

a very polite wrapper

i'm not sure why this is worth a post; i thought it was funny.



"please", it says. your coffee cup is all about WARNINGS but this says "please".

i officially hate this day.

i decided to make some chickpea blondies.

they are delicious and have a can of chickpeas in the, so added protein, so you can call them halfway healthy.

typically when i use the food processor, i take the opportunity to clean behind it and make a good scrubbing of the counter. so i had just cleaned all that when i reached up in the overhead cabinet for something and you know how the can of hershey's cocoa powder has gotten flimsier over the past few years, so that it doesn't really hold its shape once the seal is broken and you're just using the lid which now doesn't really stay on?

yeah. i officially hate this day.

when i work

the sanders campaign made good use of a lot of free apps and services out there to organize its YUGE volunteer army. one of the services used by the dialer monitor team was When I Work, which was a pretty handy little doohickey.

not long ago they asked me if i would participate in a survey.

i didn't have much going on that day, so i said sure.

here, paraphrased, is the whole conversation:

WIW: how likely are you to recommend wheniwork to a future employer?

ME: not at all.

WIW: why not?

ME: meh. retired.

WIW: thank you for your feedback. we would like to send you a free t-shirt.

ok, so i like free stuff. free clothing is free clothing.

burkini

i am against religious clothing because i'm against religion.

however, bans on religious clothing like france's appalling ban are less about secularity than they are about discriminating against SOME religions. because really, when you decide that it's not ok for women to cover their faces, you're not just making a declaration about women's faces. you already know WHICH women wish to keep their faces covered.

and fuck you, france.

and anyone else who wants to police women's dress. because let's make no mistake about it: this is much less about religion than it is about policing what women wear.

it's none of your damn business, ok?

personally, i tend to the modest side. i prefer to go about in all seasons in long sleeves and sometimes a hat. it has nothing to do with god (whom i believe simply doesn't exist) and nothing to do with body shame. i'm just more comfortable covered up.

also, i sunburn through clothing sometimes, so there's that.

i had a look at this little bathing costume that's causing such an international fuss.

really? that is totally something i would wear, especially the 3/4 length sun protecting model.

because when i go to the beach, i already go wearing tights and a long sleeve shirt. and often a HAT.

philosophically, i don't approve of religion. any religion, so i take a dim view of clothing that people feel they need to wear to fulfill their obligations under religion.

but i think it's more important for people to be able to go out into their world and interact with it dressed as they choose. i mean really? practically? you're not making the world more secular by forcing religious people to either abandon their clothing preferences or stay home. if you want a more secular society, you should really let people pass freely and dress however the hell they want and maybe it just won't be such a big deal.

laundry basket.

this happened last night.

at some point during the day i dumped the laundry basket out onto the bed with the intention of putting the clean laundry away. i did not finish this task, and went to put the laundry back in the basket, only i had apparently taken it downstairs to get the rest of the clean laundry so i was attempting to stuff the clean laundry in a duffel but then just decided to go ALL THE WAY DOWNSTAIRS to get the basket but then before i got out of the bedroom i tripped.

...over the empty laundry basket.

small scavenger hunt

no, not THE SCAVENGER HUNT, but a small scavenger hunt as part of the vermont state parks junior ranger program. i have seen this thing on the venture challenge every year and since i did a short volunteer hitch at little river this season -did i even tell you that? i'm going to havet to tell you about that.

anyway, i thought it would be a good time to earn my junior ranger badge. i will talk to you more about that later (really), but right now i just want to toss up the pics i used for the scavenger hunt.

two different types of leaves

this picture has in it two kinds of ferns, both with pinnate leaves (as ferns are wont to have), but the fern on the left has bipinnate leaves, which means the leaf is twice-cut, or divided pinnately a second time.










three brown things

 here we have a symphony of browns: brown leaf, brown board, brown rock, brown mud.













something crunchy

these two sounds underfoot: gravel, and dry leaves.


















two pieces of litter

i looked really hard inside the park (little river) for this, but did not find any trash. i found some right outside the gate near the boat launch, though.

i'm assuming we're supposed to pick this up and dispose of it? i did, but it's not clear in the directions.







something old

 if you're at little river state park and you do not choose the dam roller or maybe the dam, you are maybe missing the best part. by the way? the ranger house and the park signage are also brown things.

the color is specifically "bradley brown".








two green things

seriously? this one is like the free square in bingo. we're in a honkin' forest.

anyway. here is some moss and some beech leaves. (this is also another kind of leaf, see item #1.)









something fuzzy

the mold on this mushroom is fuzzy. also moist, which is kind of impressive.













the inside of this bird nest is fuzzy, too. i found it  on the road near the contact station, so i carried it to the nature center.











two rough things

this birch bark is rough.


















so is this lichen-covered rock.

three knots

a staple on the venture challenge is Learn to tie three new knots (10 pts). well, there's never and shortage of knots to learn, especially if you have a copy of the ashley book of knots. i have one, because mb is awesome.

this year my big thing was making a whole honkin' hammock, but that only counts as learning one knot, the chain sinnet (ABOK 2869



i know. seems like that ought to count for three knots, but like i said, there's no shortage of knots to learn.

i made a lovely chain sinnet pouch (still only that one knot, but you link the chains, so slightly different) and i decided to tie off the ends with a nice looking two strand diamond knot (ABOK 782), which is different than the diamond knot on a carrick bend that i learned to tie earlier in the year.

for a time while i was figuring out how to tie the hammock, i experimented with the idea of using a single strand  (twist) braid. i didn't even know you could make a braid from a single strand. (ABOK 2950)

so that's my three, but this season i also went and learned the trucker's hitch, which i had only sorta learned a while back. ABOK covers the fixed loop and sheepshank versions (2124, 2126) but you can do it with a slipknot, too. here's a good explainer:

millbrook WMA

if you have been here more than ten minutes, you probably know that i like process. and that i like pictures taken from the same spot at different times. heck, i even have a whole gallery of photos taken from my desk.

so when i saw Take a photo of the same natural area, from the same spot, in each of these months: April, May, June, July & August (15 pts) on the challenge, i was all over that.

one of the interesting things about this photo series is that these pictures were all taken with the same focus from the exact same spot with relation to the sign that marks the WMA access, so i am assuming a litle ground movement around the sign, which is only about a year old.

these are views of this spot from april to september of 2016.

breakins

the other day i went down to my car and found the glovebox open. that was weird, because i never open it. i'd had the car open for packing or unpacking or something. it smells better in there if i don't leave my gear in a closed car.

anyway, there's been a lot of packing an unpacking.

some of it from the front seat, so i just figured i had accidentally pulled the latch when i was moving stuff.

yanno, because none of my gear was missing. or my wallet and checkbook.

my HOA sent out a notice that we should all be careful to lock our cars overnight because the local urchins have been breaking into cars and taking what's in gloveboxes.

mine contains my owner's manual, registration and insurance card.

so they left the glovebox open, but didn't take anything else.

ok, fine.

watching the sky

i often check for the position of the ISS or when there will be iridium flares, or other cool things, because it's just cool.

i was delighted to see this on the venture challenge: Find out when the International Space Station will be overhead and watch it (10 pts)

you can use this site for just the ISS, and this site for a buncha things.

it's hard to get pictures of, though. i have a lot of early am risings and a lot of pretty pictures of the sky near my house, but none that show the space station, which would have been cool.

morning

evening

one square foot

i am always tempted to do stuff like this just because i think it's cool.  the thing about it, though, is i often don't get off my butt to do it until it ends up on the venture challenge or something.

Section off a square foot of forest, with string. How many plant & animal species do you find? (10 pts)

ok, i decided in my usual fashion to do it really thoroughly and i got myself all gloved up and trowelled out and i went off into the woods.

this is where i went:




so first i chose a place, oriented it properly to the compass (you know, like you do) and roped it off.

here is a picture looking upward from my patch.

and then i got down to cataloguing everything in it.

some of the stuff was not particularly identifiable.

i cleared down about a half inch.

and kept taking inventory. there was nothing much.

my chosen spot, though forested, had been an outcrop surrounded by farm fields. the soil is thing and not all that fertile, i guess. my rather exhaustive inventory revealed surprisingly few species, and perhaps because of the weather (not and humid) and time of day (midday) there were no bird or insect species in the airspace above.

so. for my square foot, we have live specimens and / or evidence of oaks (probably red or one of its hybridizers or variants), white pine, unidentified grasses (specimens too young to identify) and some old flower clusters from birch trees. these have blown in from elsewhere, because birch trees are absent from the immediate area.

the forest itself is more diverse because there are maples nearby and farther off there are birches and apple trees and further still there are blackberries and ferns and in spring there are trout lillies, but today and in this one spot there is not much to see.

why there is birdshit in my car

so i'm upstairs reading a book and there's knocking at my door. my neighbor has come to tell me that there's a bird in my car.




chipping sparrow, in case you care.

stepped out again

i as posting pretty good for a while, and then i went camping for the weekend with my mom and ALL HER FRIENDS.

then i rested for a day.

i'm going to write you some posts now.

i knew you were clamoring for news.

both of you.

wrapping paper

it's my mom's birthday.

i already made her a camping-themed present, and we are going camping.

i wasn't going to do the venture challenge item Make your own wrapping paper using stenci ls of items you f ind outside (10 pts), but i have a present to wrap, so why not?

this is my first attempt:



and my second:

the corn store

i was telling mb that i had to go to the corn store, and she was all, like "you have a corn store?"

yes, there is s corn store.
it sells corn.
very little besides.

they pick it first thing in the morning and they pick only as much as they think they're going to sell, and when they run out, they're out. this is why it's such good corn.


mb was momentarily hung up on the idea of a store stocked entirely with corn, so i sent her a picture.



the corn store is actually conant's. their website is worth a visit, especially if you life somewhere citified.

world's biggest asshole.

go ahead, watch.

 

forced displays

are you following the flap around colin kaepernick's failure to stand for the national anthem at a football game to take a stand on civil rights?

first of all, there's a disturbing trend toward enforced patriotic gestures.

in my teaching days, just following 9/11 when schools went into frenzies of mass patriotic display, it was a very difficult time for children of families who for one reason or another do not stand for the national anthem and do not recite the pledge. there are a lot of reasons why perfectly functional citizens of a country may for religious or philosophical reasons decide not to take part in patriotic rituals, which, by the way, are not a condition of citizenship.

it's hard to imagine the social pressure to conform here. just try to be an eight year old sitting quietly while all around you are very POINTEDLY reciting the pledge while staring at YOU as if you have broken some law of the universe.

let's start with this: reciting the pledge is optional. STANDING for the national anthem is optional. we have procedure and standards for those who with to express patriotism in this way, but also  we have lesser known protocols for those who OPT OUT.

because it is your RIGHT not to participate.

i am going to suggest that if you are not saluting or standing or pledging, you ought to be doing it for a reason and not out of laziness.

look, i'm moderately patriotic. i believe that proper use and honor of national flags is a good way to show respect at certain moments in a ceremonial way.

but what if you object to the pledge on the grounds that it is a thing created in reinforce obedience in schoolchildren and had the words "under god" added to it later to satisfy christian nutjobs?

what if you think nationalism is bad? what if you wish to engage in civil protest over national conduct?

here's my personal procedure.  if i am at a patriotic ceremony, like a memorial day observance, in which the flag is an integral part, i will come to attention and salute (properly, as a citizen and not a veteran or serviceman. go ahead, look it up. we have a flag code.)

if i am in a church and there are prayers, i will sit respectfully. i have come into their space voluntarily and it's polite. if i am at a public meeting and there are prayers, i will ignore them. no head bowing, no standing. i just pretend there's nothing going on. i may read a book.

if the pledge of allegiance is being recited, i won't say it. i may or may not stand, depending on circumstance. i will usually stand for the national anthem of any country (and sometimes state) being played ceremonially.

usually.

but none of us are obliged to. and protest in this fashion is our RIGHT.

and let's go back to those children of families who did not observe the pledge in the painful days after 9/11. i knew those children and i knew where they would be and i quietly went to one of their classrooms every day at pledge time to quietly sit and not recite the pledge in solidarity. let the questions from the other children fall on me.

children who were just curious did indeed ask me.

i told them, if asked, that  there are a lot of reasons why perfectly good citizens of this country may not for one reason or another choose to say the pledge. for some families it is because they won't pledge allegiance to any country but the kingdom of god. yes, it's perfectly legal. no, it doesn't make them bad citizens. and we live in a country where you CAN make choices like that and we ought to celebrate that.

race in this country is complicated. colin kaepernick has the right to protest national conduct  and good for him for doing so. i am following the #veteransforkaepernick hashtag and i am seeing a lot of tweets from service men and women who have a better understanding of these issues than most of the people who are ranting about how terrible is its that a black man sat one out.

promotion

so they took the guy who was the most surly, lazy, shifty stock boy at the grocery store and decided to make him a cashier.

...at which job he is competent and polite.

some things cannot be explained.

cordage

ok, so on the venture challenge it says Make a rope out of natural plant fiber (10 pts), but of course i couldn't just make a little cordage and call it a day.

because if it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing.

so i had to learn all about natural fiber cordage. i gathered daylilly leaved. i gathered stringy bark. i gathered milkweed. just for the record, your bathtub is not the ideal location for retting milkweed. or anything, really.

i made cord from daylilly, from milkweed, from corn silk, from corn husk, and tried to make it out of knotweed.

daylilly makes a lovely strong cord that is easy to work with. corn silk (i only did this casually) makes a soft stringy cord that dries to a loose rope. you could maybe turn it into something with a little effort. corn HUSKS are difficult to work with, but the cord they make is strong and pliable. milkweed makes a nice fuzzy grey cord, and actually maybe i am going to learn to make and use a drop spindle to work with those fibers.

knotweed is not well-suited for cordage, i don't think.






and only tangentially related, check this out:

tour of site seven

i stayed for two weeks on remote site seven, which is lovely.

here's your tour.

tarp clips

here's a gear review. in the spirit of full disclosure, i will say that i was not given any of these, and nobody requested me to do a review.

i bought these things because they were pretty cheap and had the potential to be useful.

i love them.

these things.

view at amazon. sure.

sometimes when i put up two tarps to make one big tarp the grommets don't line up exactly where i need them to to make the whole thing trim. ok, not sometimes. every damn time. and i considered it just the cost of doing business. but then i saw these things in a sidebar while i was looking for some other camping supplies and they weren't expensive so i said "what the heck?" and bought some.

they worked pretty well under moderately high winds just clipped on regular, but after about ten days with high gusts, the tarp pulled out, a situation that was easily remedied by making a little roll in the tarp. you could put a little stick in there if you wanted.

or you could just put it back up again. whatever.

anyway, they are cheap, durable, and very handy. and your anchor point is never in the wrong place again.

yeah, yeah, i know you can sort of do the same thing with a marble and some cord, but i like these things.

food cooked on a campfire

i'm kind of lazy when it comes to camp cooking. i am not so much in love with sitting by a fire unless it's necessary to stay warm and it gets dark early, and i really need only an hour or so of cooking time if i'm going to bake a potato, but that involves an hour or so of building a fire, so if you want to eat a baked potato at five, you'd best stop whatever else it was you were doing and start building your fire around three, and that can be a hassle.

by the same token, roast sweet corn is one of the chief pleasures of life, but you have to have good coals for your five minutes of actual cooking.

recently i discovered fire roasted eggplant. the articles i was seeing on the interwebs all involved eggplant on your grill at home, but i didn't see any reason you couldn't toss a whole eggplant next to a fire and turn it occasionally until the outer skin was charred, which turns out is the traditional way to do it because SO easy.

fire roasted eggplant is delicious. you cut open the charred shell and scoop out the lovely smoky cooked insides. i ate mine plain and i ate the leftovers mixed with some salt and cider vinegar. you could bring tahini and make baba ganoush.

anyway, delicious. and easy. that's what i like.

little boat

on the venture challenge it says Build a boat out of materials you find outside. See if it floats (10 pts). last year i built more than one.

this year i built a thing designed to really float. i wove a cattail mat for the decking, and used dried knotweed lashed together with cordage i made from corn husks as the frame. i caulked the ends of the knotweed with pine pitch.




i made it a twitter account, in case people who found it afloat were inclined to report its sighting.

then i went up and released it from the place where i said i would.





what followed was more or less three days of heavy storms and high winds, so i do not believe it survived long, but clearly, it does float.

eight days later, i found floating on the res the remains of a little boat, made of knotweed. the lashing was different than mine.

the cord did not appear to be handmade corn husk, and none of the ends had pine caulking.



not my boat, but similar fate, probably. and yes, still floating.

this conversation happened, more or less

me: ok, now tell me that you are especially attracted to women who have unloaded the boats from their cars.
MB: I am especially attracted to YOU
me: that's all fine and dandy, but it doesn't give me any incentive to go unload my boats.
MB: oh, well then Ooooh! I love women who unload their boats... so sexy

me: is it espectially attractive if i put a bike rack on and load a bike?
MB: YES!!!!!
me: ok! maybe later you can tell me about your newly discovered fetish for clean camping gear and folded laundry.

i stepped out.

yeah, i was posting pretty regularly.

and then alla sudden i decided to go camping for a couple of weeks.

my campsite is very, very beautiful.

here is a view from it yesterday morning.

unsolicited advice

yesterday i was on my way into the waterman building and i saw a young woman struggling up a few small stairs on crutches.

"are you new to those things?"
"it shows, doesn't it?", she said.


i told her that as a kid i had spent a lot of time on crutches and i showed her how to hold them in one hand and use the handrail to make stairs easier.

"wow." she said. "thanks."

exoskeleton

a couple of weeks ago apparently it was motling season for some spiders out on the res.

the first one i noticed was up at the outhouse.

"wow, that's a big spider", i said to myself.

then "a big dead spider.."

then "wow. it's just the molted exoskeleton!" so i picked it up to look at it.

originally i assumed it was some kind of wolf spider, but then when i was trying to identify it, i learned that the first thing you do identifying spiders (aside from safety considerations like "is it dangerous?" because all spiders are venomous to a degree, but few are deadly to humans)

uh, anyway..

i learned that the first thing you check for is eye configuration, and this spider could not have been any of the wold spiders based on that, but it might have been a nursery spider of some sort.

i learn things all the time.

xylophone

the listing on the venture challenge is Build your own musical instrument and play it outside. a rubber band tissue box guitar like we used to make when i was a kid would have done just fine, i guess. but the best way to do the challenge, i think, is to do things in a new way, and maybe learn something.

i had every intention of making a little whistle from willow twigs or knotweed stems or something while i was out camping, because camping represents for me an excellent  way to practice crafts that only leave a mess in my living room.

but then i was cutting up some firewood and i had a maple sapling i found down and dried and when i clunked pieces together i noticed they had a pleasing timbre.

so i thought maybe i could make a few pitched bars and maybe make a woodchime to hang in some trees and that would be nice.

and then while i was doing THAT i noticed that i could pitch the bars pretty accurately so then i thought i might make some kind of hangin xylophone with a pentatonic scale. why not? it's only five bars, right?

so THEN while i was working on pitching those bars (which i had to learn how to do by trial and error) i started getting notes that were NOT in my pentatonic scale, but they were in the diatonic major scale, so the next thing i knew i was only a bar or two short of a full octave and a sixth, which is the standard range of the classroom instruments used in the orff-schulwerk.

and then i noticed that placed on the ground they were more resonant than hanging, so i revised my plan and found a half hollow log that i could cut and modify to make a resonating chamber for the bars.

by the time two weeks was up and i had to go home, it was pretty decent, although i had not yet solved the problem of how to hold the bars in place and not dampen their resonance.

anyway, here are some pictures. i am disappointed with the video, because for reasons i cannot explain the the sound quality strips all the nice resonance from the sound of the bars and all you get it the clicking. this may be because of the positioning of the camera, or that the stool i had it propped on had a dampening effect, but either way i do not have a satisfactory recording of how this thing sounded.

i left it in the woods, of course i did.

hoover and beelzebub

at my last campsite, my first visitors were chipmunks. i thought that was maybe going to be a problem.

and then the red squirrels showed up.

red squirrels are little assholes.

here is my conversation with the chipmunk:

hi! whatcha doin'? 
i'm carving.
is that food? do you have food? OMG you know how much i like food. 
no, it is not food.
are ya sure you're not having food? 
pretty sure, yep.
do ya mind if i just check? 
help yourself.
i'll just hop up here and look if that's ok with you. 
not in my lap, ok, that's weird.
ok, NOW do ya have food? 
no. i am reading.
are ya sure? 
yep, reading. no food.
imma just hang out with you here for a while, ok? 
ok.
in case there's gonna be food. 
(later)
that is food.
yes it is. it is MY food.
hey, wait! just because YOU'RE done eating that corncob doesn't mean all the food is gone. 
you are welcome to it.
okok. 

and here is the red squirrel:

I KNOW YOU HAVE FOOD AND I AM GOING THROUGH YOUR THINGS UNTIL I FIND IT. SCREW YOU AND YOUR BAGS. I CAN MAKE HOLES.
ha, you little  SOB, i moved the food and hung it up.
WATCH ME WHILE I SHIT ON YOUR TABLE.

this conversation was truncated because suddenly the squirrel heard another squirrel a hundred feet away or so and had to run off and fight it. while it was gone, the chipmunk came back and ate whatever crumbs had been dropped.


so clearly, the chipmunk is the animal you WANT cleaning up your dropped bits, because the chipmunk just politely takes what there is and doesn't chew through your bags.

so by day three the chipmunks and i had a partnership. i timed my food prep (which usually involved some spilled oatmeal flakes or food fragments left on foil) to coincide with when the squirrels were off trying to kill each other. the chipmunk would come in like a little vacuum and clean up the site so nothing was left for the squirrel, whom i had named beelzebub.

hoover

should have looked there first

i am learning to juggle. of course becuase "juggle three pinecones" is on the list.

sure. i'll spend four months learning to juggle.

i can almost do it, too, except juggling pinecones presents its own set of difficulties, and i was practicing doing that when i dropped my cones.

no biggie, right? you pick them up.

only sometimes they bounce in directions you don't expect and are behind things, or they roll under furniture.

so i spent a half hour looking for this one pinecone and it had apparently vanished. i looked in the closet, under the sofa, behind the desk, and a few places it would have been nearly impossible for the pinecone to have gone.

and then i found it.

yep.

notes

it wouldn't be the first time i wrote a note to a park ranger, so i feel a little ambivalent about writing a thank-you note to a park ranger because it happens to be on the list.

but ok. so i wrote to the park manager at niquette bay state park, which is one of our lovelier and lesser-known state parks because i have very much enjoyed her work in that park.

then, just because, i wrote to chad the floating ranger out of little river state park. "floating ranger" is not meant as it often does that he floats from park to park or job to job, but that he is the ranger ON THE WATER, in a boat. floating.

he helps keep the reservoir safe and clean.

so.

there you have it.

this conversation happened, more or less.

mb: are you seriously judging my fashion choices?

me: yes.

mb: I am impressed with your moxie

me:

detailed camp menu

there is a real difference between your detailed camp menu and what you actually eat at camp, especially if you are camping alone and doubly so if you are staying more than a day or so.

because "oh, is it raining too hard to bother with a fire?" means no baked potato tonight.

anyway, there's an item on the challenge to Prepare a detailed camp menu for your camping (10 pts), so i thought i'd give it a go.

day 1:

(2 meals)

graze only (sandwich meat, assorted fruits, vegetables, cheeses, and crackers)

day 2:

breakfast: breakfast beverage
2d breakfast: overnight oatmeal
lunch: graze
dinner: stuffed mushroom caps, baked potato, roasted corn

day 3:

breakfast: breakfast beverage
2d breakfast: oatmeal
lunch: graze
dinner: lasagna (foil packets), baked potato, corn

day 4:

(original plan)
breakfast: beverage
2d breakfast: oatmeal
lunch: graze, with avocado halves and italian dressing
dinner: stuffed mushroom caps, corn, potato

(what actually happened)
breakfast: beverage
2d breakfast: oatmeal
lunch: your friend arrives with box sushi and chips.  woohoo!
dinner: too tired to think about it. stuff two slices of salami and some cheese in your mouth and call it good.

days 5 -12:

some meals get cooked, but maybe you have roasted corn at three in the afternoon and a baked potato at six. maybe you forget to eat second breakfast until early afternoon. maybe you've just lost the discipline of mealtimes and eat whatever you have the energy for  if you happen to feel hungry. nobody's waiting for you for dinner. relax, dude. you're not starving, not by a long shot.

one quiet morning

on the venture challenge it says Sit outside for thirty minutes and write down every sound you hear (10 pts).

i did this one one of the other years, and the hardest part about it was finding a relatively bug-free time to do that.

but when i am out camping on the res, i find myself just sitting and listening a LOT, if not writing lists. it's like, the thing i do every morning.

so one fine day i was sitting in my chair in the morning and my paper for writing was nearby, so i figured it would be a good time to so this.

now, often on the res there are a lot of things to listen to; there are water noises and wind noises and the noises of boaters and campers but this particular morning was unusually still, and maybe because of atmospheric conditions sound was dampened, because there were things i could see (for instance a passing paddler) whose paddle strokes i would have been able to hear on most days, but on this day were silent and so are not on the list.

bit of a surprise, really.

so,

waterbury reservoir
0700 friday 22 july 2016

00:00 assorted unidentified bird noises that continue
00:59 blue jay
01:22 hummingbird
02:04 red squirrel rustling leaves
03:16 chickadee call
04:20 chickadee song
04:46 red squirrel call / boat put in across lake
05:14 chickadee song
05:45 chickadee call
08:11 plane overhead (high)
08:38 chickadee call
10:58 pine needles falling
12:26 red squirrel call
12:43 red squirrel climbing tree
15:55 distant traffic
20:41 bullfrog
21:14 distant truck traffic
22:11 creak of my shoe
24:15 distant road noise
25:41 pine needles falling on tarp
26:14 overhead aircraft
27:35 red eyed vireo
29:46 red squirrel call (mid-distance)

hammock weaving

so last fall i decided that this winter i should make a paracord hammock, because that would be really sweet on a campsite.

so i had to learn how to do it.

i looked at a lot of youtube videos, but i settled on this method because i liked the idea of a weave instead of knotting, which has less flexibility and involves more cord cutting.

that thing about cutting is really, really important because if you don't really know how to do this, you may have to make several tries (i needed five) and the less you cut up your cord the more you can reuse it.





first i had to learn to make decent chain sinnet, which is that border chain the guy uses. so that took a while. probably on another post?) THEN i had to figure out how to make a jig in my basement, and instead of this guy's fancy setup, i went with nails in a half-finished wall.

also duct tape.

no matter how much you watch this guy's video, it take a while to understand HOW to turn the rows and how the whole thing is supposed to come together.

i got the hang of it, though.

sinnet hanging on wall

closeup of sinnet

first row getting laced in

there was a lot of this.

mesh

about to come off the jig

this is how it hangs

one match fire

ok, ok, last year making a fire with no matches was on the list. i don't remember if i did that one or not, but i remember i did the year before, with a hand lens.

and the last fall i found some spiffy magnesium strikers and stuff and i was all set, but this year the item on the list (you all KNOW what list) reads Build a fire only using one match (10 pts).

so i did that. it meant i had to find some matches, and you know what? a lot of those little suckers break right off, so the hard part is NOT getting your fire to light with the one match (which is easy if you lay it right) but not breaking the match off or wearing off the burny part before you get it struck.

anyway, i did it.

bad year for sumacs

it's a bad year for staghorn sumac in my neighborhood.

or rather, it was a good year and they produced lots and lots of pretty red berries but it was also a good year for cedar waxwings, who like to eat those berries, so in the aggregate total the sumacs got left with NONE.