2019 venture vermont: attend a state park you've never been to

i know this seems improbable, but i had never actually been to Branbury State Park.

and i needed to go see a cave and attend an interpretive program and there wasn't going to be a program near the smugglers' cave (which i've been to a lot), so i decided to make a whole day adventure out of it.


here's the view of lake dunmore from the lower cliff trail.

honors

they gave me the honor pin, which is kind of a big deal.

i dunno, it sort of felt like too much. i'll be the first one to tell you that my work is good and that i do a lot of it, but it doesn't seem that, uh, -elevated- to me?

still, it's gratifying to be noticed for my work, and a little terrifying to feel i have to live up to the honor. i sort of like flying under the radar better. maybe i can turn it into opportunity. if people have heard of your program, they're more likely to sign up for it.

that's the thing, you know- i've been honored for basically playing around and doing the stuff i wanted to do, not because anybody said they needed it but because it pleased me and it just happened to be useful.

right place, right time.

in related news, they also made me a torchbearer, which is an honor i had hoped to someday qualify for, and i'm surprised to be given it this soon. it is an award for adults who are instrumental in providing outdoor education and that is a thing about which i am passionate.

funny story: somebody way higher on the food chain was also honored with this award (which comes with an actual honkin' TORCH), and they'd tasked her with the job of getting me to the ceremony, because i'm way too likely to skip an evening session to go to bed early, and they called her name and she said "what, ME?" which earned delighted chuckles from the assembled crowd.

when they called my name, i let out an involuntary yelp and may have cried a little.

2019 venture vermont: Find a cave and take a picture with it

the venture vermont scorcard helpfully mentions that there are caves to be found at both smuggler's notch state park and branbury state park, and i've been to the smuggler's cave, so we headed off to lake dunmore to visit branbury state park.

CPR

this summer more than once i had to stop children from playing pretend CPR. while i applaud the intention of children playing at lifesaving, that's a thing you really have to step in and stop.

kids have a hard time grasping the concept that doing CPR on a beating heart may damage or actually stop it. they also do not get the part where if you're doing CPR on a person, it's going to hurt. it's probably going to break ribs.

but then WHY DO WE DO IT? is a reasonable question.

equally reasonable but not necessarily evident is that if your heart has stopped beating, some broken ribs are way better than dying.

that's why we practice on dummies, kids.

2019 venture vermont: ID 2 different types of caterpillars

caterpillars can be hard, because there are so may variations and here's a thing you maybe did not know about them: many species of caterpillar molt five times before they pupate, and each instar (that state between molts) can look very, very different.

i got a couple of good ones this year, though.

this is an abbott's sphinx, which will become an abbott's sphinx moth (sphecodina abbottii). when i saw it, it was a little green guy but in a later instar it will have become some fantastic yellow and brown with more or less triangular dazzle camo.

this is a pine imperial moth (eacles imperialis, spp. pini). it has reached its fifth instar and has now climbed down out of the trees to find a suitable burrow in which to pupate. in this stage of life it's known as a prepupa, and this unfortunate fellow appeared to have been in the process of being eaten by wasps.

2019 venture vermont: Create a secret handshake

here's my secret handshake: it's for people who have done the secret work of forest fairies, which is a pretty broad definition.

it is executed in this fashion: both people make the letter "f" (for both fairies and forests) and you interlock them, flying them up.

2019 venture vermont: Attend a state park interpretive program

TIME SENSITIVE!!!

if you leave your venture vermonting go all summer and wait until labor day weekend to get serious, you're going to have to go to heroic measures in order to do the Vermont State Park thingies, like going to an interpretive program, because not all parks have interpretive programs, and by labor day most of the programs are shutting down.

my local park (little river state park) has interpretive programs still running, but i needed to go to a park i've never been to before (tell you later), so i had to find one that wasn't too far away from a park i'd never been to before.

anyway, we ended up at Button Bay State Park for the flora and fauna hike led by Stefan who is a very nice young man who has a nice way of leading a nature walk for a mixed audience.

2019 venture vermont: identify a painted turtle and a snapping turtle

booyah!

sometimes i go more than a year without a bona fide photographable turltle sighting, let alone one each of painted turtle and snapping turtle in one season. but i saw them this year.

actually i saw two snappers and a painted turtle, but one of each is good enough.

and here they are:

common snapping turtle
chelydra serpentina

painted turtle
chrysemys picta

2019 venture vermont: catch a butterfly or dragfonfly with a net

ok, technically this one is neither a butterfly nor a dragonfly. it is a damselfly, which ought to count for the purposes of the challenge because most people don't make the distinction.

i found this one on lake abenaki in thetford. it was my first time using my BRAND NEW PROFESSIONAL GRADE BUTTERFLY NET.

anyway, it's an eastern forktail (ischnura verticalis).

2019 venture vermont: make a recording of a toad or frog's call

i kept trying to get a recording of some wood frogs i know, because that's a SOUND but for some reason every time i approached them with a recording device, they fell oddly silent.

i was able to get a recording of some peepers (psueudacris crucifer) and in the background are some grey tree frogs (hyla versicolor) if you listen closely. 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/gqnta6hksf7y2gy/frogs.m4a?dl=0

just for funsies imma tell you that i do a pretty good impression of green frogs (lithobates clamitans) and that any conversation is pepped up a little by the addition of frog songs.

you can get away with this if you're a naturalist, i guess.

2019 Venture Vermont: sleep under the stars without a tent

oh, my. it's already nearly september and i have not written one single venture vermont entry and my excuse is i was BUSY.

like, i don't know if i will be able to complete the challenge busy. my ingress sojourner badge broke the weekend of my lifeguard training and i've barely played that since. because busy.

busy doing outdoor things, teaching outdoor things.

but let me try.

anyway, weekend of june 7-9 my girl scout troop camped at Little River State Park and of course there are no pictures of that i can share with you, but there are pictures and i could probably scare up a receipt if i had to.

the naturalist at little river will remember we were there, because as campers there were were the sunset adventure paddle and boy, wasn't that a time.

the weather was very nice, so for the first time ever i pitched my hammock and left the tarp off, and imma have to say that counts as sleeping under the stars; at least it counts as lying awake half the night under a blanket of "it's so pretty".

last time i checked sleeping under the stars had no requirement about sleeping on the ground. i'm not into that anymore. stars = A-OK.  ground = nope.

since that first night (which i did because of this item on the challenge), i have enjoyed several other nights under the stars, a thing i had not done since maybe the late '70's?

i'm calling that one thing checked off on my list.

a conversation with MB

flask
i dropped some food on the floor.
i went to pick it up and pop it in my mouth.
the thing i picked up and tossed in my mouth wasn't food.
it's time to vacuum the closet.
carpet. it's time to vacuum the carpet.
the closets are all pretty clean.

MB
Yeah, or you could stop eating food off the floor. That might be easier
But at least vacuum

flask
it was food-adjacent!

MB
NOT GOOD ENOUGH

flask
why you no like food adjacency?

MB
Because adjacent to food isn't the same as BEING FOOD

flask
but still good enough to TRY.

MB
No

echolocation

i have known for a while that some people can echolocate effectively.

here's a youtube video that helps explain how.

fairy houses

children at girl scout camps have a fondness for building fairy houses. one time we had very many notes to the fairies and we needed to close camp and get business done, so i wrote a letter. i signed it with the glitch name of a real person, so i can't take credit for that, nor can i take credit for using the glitch calendar system to date the letter. i just thought it would lend a lovely not-quite-of-this-world quality to it and quite frankly, i do not think i could have invented a better name for the purpose.

so here's the letter:


Hairday, 29th of Fever
Year 66
Wye Pond Hill
Eventide

Dear Children,

Your eyes cannot read our Fae language, but I and some of the others have some learning in your letters.

Wee are very fond of Girl Scouts ever since they named Brownie Scouts for our cousins, the Brownies.

Wee have enjoyed so very much your gifts, and when wee are small wee love living in the houses you build. It has been so much fun trading notes and surprises with you that wee will be a little sad to get back on out tour bus after our convention is over.

Wee have stayed perhaps too long in the houses of our sisters and brothers on Wye Pond Hill but they will enjoy quiet again soon.

Remember that wherever there is a spirit of kindness, a playful spirit or merrie magic, wee are near. Take care of yourselves and take care of each other. Be kind to the land and the water and the air and care for all the creatures that walk, crawl, slither, swim, or fly.

Thank you for your kindness, and look for us again in green forests where there is laughter and delight.

Yours Truly
With Love and Respect,
Voluptua Sneezelips
Corresponding Seretary
Jethimadh Chapter
International Guild of Traveling Fairies

festival of pernicious odors

two weeks. four different camps. a limited number of showers. no shortage of opportunities to get dirty and sweaty.

clothes for paddling, clothes for swimming, camping gear, naturalist equipment, nine pairs of shoes.

in short, my car smells terrible.

things go to hell

facsism is on the rise. nationalism is on the rise. racism is on the rise.

sometimes i just have a difficult time coping with all the shootings and the poverty and the fear.

what helps me is to go to camp.

yeah, going camping is nice, but i'm talkin' 'bout summer camp. with children.

for the girl scouts in particular, but it would work with any camp, i guess.

because when things are going to hell in the adult world, i like to retreat to a small enclave where i can talk to children about Being Good People and what that looks like.

it looks like taking turns. it looks like settling arguments fairly, with as little adult intervention as possible. it means not calling people nicknames they don't like. it means giving everyone a chance to try things and not criticizing them if they're not good at everything yet, or if they don't know things.

i get to work with girls especially and teach them how to use sharp tools and do experiments that require safety glasses and i get to take their concerns and their lives seriously. i get to help them negotiate practicing adult skills because, i tell them, one day you will be an adult and you will be glad you practiced this.

i'm a nicer person when i'm helping young people do things. i don't have as much time to ride my bike or go camping myself or read novels, but i can feel a little better about one little corner of the world.

i'm sure my neighbors love this

because it is camp season, i do some bugling.

it's nice to have some snazzy bugle calls to help people know it's time to move. mostly i just play assembly when it's time for everyone to meet and Go To A Thing and i play taps for close of camp, which is at variance to military usage, but it's how girl scouts ceremonially close a day.

yeah, i CAN play retreat, but it's kind of arcane for the purpose.

anyway, if you're going to bugle, you have to PRACTICE bugling.  i try to keep the exercises to a minimum and in the mid-morning, but in the evenings at home i blow tattoo and then an hour later i blow taps.

funny, but any loud parties going on in the neighborhood become mellow gatherings after tattoo and i don't care if they stay up after taps.

in a couple months i have gotten pretty decent at it, and i think it sounds pretty.

too stupid to live

today i saw a young man about whom, i am sure, people will say "such a tragedy" and "couldn't have been prevented"-

he was riding a skateboard downhill on the main road from jericho into richmond, which is a road on which a person on a bicycle can easily coast up to 45 MPH, and he was going fast. taking up a whole lane (as he should, moving at the speed of traffic), and not wearing a helmet.

WHILE LOOKING AT HIS PHONE.

rotifers

rotifers are an ancient species. they have their own phylum. in some of their species whether or not they reproduce sexually is a heritable trait. one species has not been known to have any males in it for millions of years.

and here is a little video i made of some i found in my backyard.

because these days you can do this on your phone.

excuse me, young people, while i get all amazed at the speed of technological advances in my lifetime.

uh, anyway:

nationalism is bad

i'm from vermont.

i love my town and my mountains, because i am of this place.

your town is probably pretty cool too.

also your mountains. or your lake. or your seashore.

go, local sports team.

people by and large are awesome.

but look around. fascism is on the rise. nationalism is on the rise. wherever there is an in-group trying to keep everyone else out, somebody is making money off of that. somebody is consolidating their own power by making others fear outsiders. somebody is exploiting you.


if somebody is selling you an agenda that doesn't include dignity for all, don't buy it. if your country doesn't define itself by its care for the least among you, your country is shitty. you have a duty to act.

i write to my congressman.

presented without comment is my recent letter to peter welch (D-VT):

representative welch,

at this point i have to question the soundness of your judgement because you have not yet gone on record as being in favor of impeaching the president.

really, how many laws does he have to break? how many women does he have to assault? how many people need to die in concentration camps?

oh, mercy.

i never in my life expected to be in a position where i could be writing those words without even a hint of hyperbole.     

nothing is going to get better in this world while we are still on an inexorable march toward fascism. impeaching the president would be a nice start.

good luck to you and please stop allowing us to come to harm.

viola sororia

violets are up all over, bless them, coming up in lawns and woodlots and forests.

i got it into my head that for some event later on in the year i should have some lovely violet simple syrup from which to make soft drinks, so that meant getting down and funky with the back-breaking labor of harvesting thousands of the little blossoms. a friend of mine and her grandson helped me with some of that, but still. it was a lot.



so then after you get a big wad of violets you steep them in freshly boiled water. but you don't BOIL them because you will lose the color.

and what you get is a fantastic teal liquid. fantastic. only for violet syrup you kind of want it to be purple, and you change it back from teal to purple through adding drops of lemon juice because apparently the color is a function of pH.

who knew?

anyway, then you add the sugar until you have simple syrup and you probably want to skip the step where you spill a half cup of it in your kitchen thereby kicking off two days of mopping.

then MB said that id i was going to do all THAT for a tea party i may as well make violet ice cubes wherein a single violet blossom is placed inside an ice cube at its maximum freshness and beauty and as usual MB is right.

there are no pictures of that, though. you have the internet. you can google it if you want to see what the precious little darlings looks like.

yeah, that.

don't panic, i'm a naturalist

i'm all gradumated and stuff, which means i have a shiny new certificate and a fancy new hat.

and the girl scout council is wasting no time making hay, because if you thumb through the program guide the words "with a Vermont Master Naturalist" are sprinkled liberally throughout, which makes me both proud and a little terrified.

i'm having fun preparing for events that are still five or six months away. f'rinstance there is a wildflower tea party coming up in october, which will be the end of goldenrod season, but i have made garlic mustard pesto (in my freezer) to serve along with other spring delicacies like knotweed pie and violet sodas.

i hope to make touches like that be the difference between "that was cool" and "WOW that was cool."
it isn't hard to do if you put some things by, like the violet syrup or the knotweed purée.

i guess i should tell you some things

i think i mentioned that i am studying in the Vermont Master Naturalist Program?

yeah, i am. our last class is next saturday and i will be a bona fide Vermont Master Naturalist.

really you don't pass until your project is complete, but you only need 20 hours of project work and my project is kind of just a down payment on a never ending multi year plan and i'm over 50 hours on that so far, sooooo.

last weekend i went to a training at a girl scout camp, as an instructor.

before the training proper i played chef flask and whipped up some ramps 'n' taters and wildflower fritters with birch syrup for the other instructors.

i also field tested my new homemade hammock stand rig, which only settled the question for me if i need the storeboughten one.

answer: yes. the one i made hangs the hammock just fine but it's hard to put up a full sized tarp and also my rack is eight feet long to transport, which is Not Convenient.

also i seem to have gotten caught up with the town conservation commission, because when you start to do outreach in the community to support your project for the girl scouts, you start needing favors or at least goodwill from the community, so now i'm helping to monitor the health of one forest and i'm on the hook for a written report for a historical society.

it's all turning out fine though since i'm still a volunteer and can pick and choose both my work and my hours and because i don't get paid, everyone is happy to have me do the work i want.

i am able to turn hours and hours of labor into free camping trips...

...on which i perform more labor.

but it's all good. i'm having fun.

inter-library loan

i am currently working my way through all the books of seanan mcguire, but since my library doesn't have a lot of them, they have to come through inter-library loan.

...which is kind of fascinating to me.

so of course i'm making a map of where all the books are coming from.

because of course i am.

here.

the screaming stump

i'm sorry; i do not update y'all as often as i should. i'm still reading about your cat and your crazy clients and your kids.

let's just say that i've been busy studying. and stuff.

anyway, today i was out at my study location having a good luck at this stump...

no wait, backup, backup.

this winter on many occasions i saw the tracks of a little cottontail rabbit. and the rabbit was browsing the brambles around the stump and then i noticed a lot of poop outside some holes in the snow and it was clear that the little cottontail lived there and then one day there was one perfect wingprint in the snow and a great deal of fur, but no blood, so it was unclear to me whether or not the little cottontail survived the raptor attack, but i didn't see new tracks or new poop, so i sort of thought not.

but that was more or less where i lost my glasses, so i keep looking around there and as the snow melts (we had fresh yesterday!) i can see more and more where the fur is scattered about and i was looking at that today and some diggings around the base of the stump when i heard (or more like felt) a vibration and then a scream and i thought maybe a bird?

but the noise seemed to be coming from awfully low to the ground and then i heard it again and i was just coming around to the other side of the stump to look in the hole and i saw...

AN EYE.

at least i thought it was an eye. i was kind of standing there thinking "did this hole have a thing in it that looks sort of like an eye before? was it always so dark in there?"

and then the eye BLINKED.

and the thing screamed. loud. and the vibration buzzed in the hollow under the stump.

and i said "hi, neighbor. didn't mean to upset you" and i'm sure i looked legit startled and i wandered away, letting the little cottontail believe i had been scared away.

i don't know if it's the original little cottontail, but it is A cottontail.

i didn't use to think of rabbits as animals with fearsome screams, but there it is.

and now that stump will forever be the screaming stump to me.

speech!

i have an interest in diction, because singer. when you're a voice major in college, you have to learn stuff about diction and how words are formed.

so there's this:

phonetic map of the human mouth

and do not miss the link at the bottom to the pink trombone.

then if you're done with that and you're brave, there's this.

pin

MB got me this thing, which is super cute, and my new de facto nametag.

it glows in the dark!!

daily routine

i dunno. maybe i could work blogging back into my daily routine.

this is my Year of Naturalist Studies, so that's top shelf.

so more or less is my daily routine, barring appointments, which are their Own Thing on the calendar.

i wake up in the morning more or less nine hours from when i went to sleep. note that i do not wake up nine hours from when i went to bed, because those things are different. if the day before was especially difficult in any way, i may wake up ten or eleven hours after i went to sleep. this is essential to allow my body to heal overnight.

first thing i do is check the weather and then my emails. i answer important ones. if my body feels ok and the weather is good, skiing moves onto my list of things to do for the day and i get up.

otherwise, i play a few rounds of toon blast and then practice morse code, because i'm learning that.

then it's time to read. first i read books related to my studies. then when my thinky bits are tired, i read a chapter or so of whatever book i'm reading for pleasure.

only then do i get out of my hammock for the day.

then i work on research or projects that need doing from my desk and early in the day when i am fresh and the light is good. i may intersperse this with life maintenance adulting, or gear maintenance.

at lunch time i eat at my desk, usually watching a video that pertains to my studies.

in the afternoon i go out. this trip may include shopping or errands, but it often involves a trip to my study location for research or observation. in warm weather i may take practice on the archery range as well. i always stop to tag an ingress portal because that's a thing i do every day.

then it's home to eat an early dinner, talk to MB, and that's followed by either evening project work/ research, or if needed, a quick circuit playing ingress to tidy up anything in my area that needs to be made blue.

then i sleep.

i love this woman so much right now.

https://www.wthr.com/article/waitress-confronts-customer-who-wrote-gay-slur-receipt-viral-video

go on, click through.

this here is just one reason why we need to have minimum wage that eliminates employer subsidies for tipped workers.

or better yet, eliminate tipping and institute livable wage for everyone.

awesome. let's go look.

i think i have done something right in this life when i am the adult to whom groups of girls run when they have found a bug. or a dead thing.

this happens to me all the time.

a group of girls finds a bug or a dead thing or a pile of poop and the come running to me. "hey, flask! we found a (thing)!"

"awesome.", i say. "let's go look."

this reaction is pretty much why this cycle repeats. i am the adult in the room most likely to drop everything to go look at the thing. sometimes i am not delighted to drop everything and go look at whatever it is, but i want children, particularly girls, to be interested in natural science. i want them to be excited by the things they find, and i want them to think about how to interpret what they find.

we think this is part of a deer.

there's a trail of it leading from the far shore of the pond to the road.

maybe it's a hunter dragging a kill, maybe critters dragging dressed bits.

either way it's under the ice. it may have been ON the ice until a thaw.

and my heart swelled with pride when the girls came to find me to go look at it.

camping equipment: crêpe pan

in october my girl scout troop went fall camping. it was colder than normal, and it snowed. you never know what you're going to get in october.

anyway, there's this kid in my troop who had her heart set on BRINGING A CRÊPE PAN so she could make crêpes for everybody for breakfast. i asked her if she was prepared to get up before everyone else to cook breakfast, to stand in the cold cooking while others were eating. 

yes and yes.

carry on, i said.

so she showed up with her crêpe pan and a big jug of batter (because everyone knows that crêpe batter is best when left to rest at least an hour and overnight does not hurt it one bit) and she stood out in the field with snow coming down all around her and she made crêpes.

afterward she said it was a dream of hers. 

and she changed her username in our troop chat to Crêpe Master.

yeah she did.

we are right now planning our menu for our winter camping this month and the other leaders were thinking breakfast should be instant oatmeal and muffins and such but this kid is all like "can i make crêpes?"

i do not understand this child's need to make thin tasty pancakes on camping trips but i sure as heck support this initiative.

it turns out one of the other girls ALSO has a crêpe pan.

this is going to be epic.

snohaus 2019

i mentioned that there was snow, right?

there's a lot of it. and i have been working hard moving it from the plow piles my plowman thoughtfully leaves at my driveway to the MOUND.

so far it's just a huge mound of snow with some steps, because once you start digging inside, you're done walking on top.

or at least you should be.

some people aren't that prudent, but i'm not into stupid risks.

i am averaging three loads of snow a day, with the average weight of a load being 150 pounds of snow. it maybe doesn't sound like a lot, but it has to be gathered or chopped, shoveled into the boxes or onto the sled, pulled to the structure, carried to the place i want it, and unloaded.

rinse, lather, repeat.

promotion

you may have noticed it; i mentioned it once in my last post and it seems huge to me.

i got a promotion.

let's back up and i'll remind you that last summer i went up to the camp for a ten minute meeting and accidentally stayed to work for an ENTIRE SEASON at the girl scout camp, essentially functioning as a junior naturalist / camp life resource person.

and my Vermont Master Naturalist studies focus specifically on the town in which the camp is located, with specific regard to how i might function providing outdoor education and natural history program to the camp in the future.

it got to the point that when having conversations with people that it was just going to be a lot easier to say i'm the naturalist at the camp and it puts a handle on a lot of the things i'm doing without having to take too much time 'splainin' so i wrote to the nice lady in charge of things like that at the council and asked if i could just give myself the title.

she said that's perfect, sure. i said "great! i'll tell MB it comes with a 15% raise" and we all had a laugh.

volunteer jokes.

3-2-1- contacts

last week we had a storm. week before that we had a storm. we keep having storms. happily they keep mostly being snow.

as part of my studies and as the naturalist at the local girl scout camp i like to go out after a storm to take pictures at my study location.

last week that meant breaking track in snow that was still over my knees with me on snowshoes.

so i was looking at a cute little rabbit hole and then i was looking at some cute little squirrel holes and i was on my way back down to the car when i realized that i had lost my glasses somewhere between rabbit and starting down the hill.

now the temperature was just above zero even in mid afternoon and while i was dressed for cold, i was dressed for keeping MOVING in cold but even though it was REALLY TIME TO RETURN TO THE CAR i had to go back all the way to rabbit hole, only moving slowly and kicking up snow with the front of my shoes, hoping to kick up my glasses, because although i had dropped them directly in my track, there was still a chance that if i had not stepped on them i might kick them up and find them.

no.

so in all probability i have now stepped on them THREE times. i'm sure i'll find them in the spring, but they're not going to be in good shape, especially since i am not the only person to occasionally snowshoe up there and if you're part of a group renting that cabin, do you break track in hip deep snow, or do you use that handy-looking trail?

mmhm.

so time to buy new glasses. also, i was overdue to get new contacts, so while they couldn't send me home with my new glasses, they COULD send me home in a pair of trial contacts so at least i'm not a menace on the roads.

and you know? i can see much better with those than i could with my glasses, so maybe it was time anyway.

crickets

flourish farm had a table at the s'morestice. they were giving out free samples. the dj announced there were crickets and i said i was all about the crickets. i would have BOUGHT some, but they were free. because samples.

this was not my first time at the cricket rodeo and they were the best crickets i've ever eaten. the thai chili was a little too spicy for my tame palate, but the garlic and sea salt was just about perfect, plus it's a sustainable efficient protein.

but you love crunchy snack foods, right? so go ahead, eat your crickets. they're not just for your weird neighbor's frog anymore.

i kept telling people they were the going to be the best crickets they'd ever eaten, but really for most people that's not a high bar to get over.

they had four flavors. i tried the garlic and sea salt and the thai lime. i loved the first one, but the second was too spicy and the nutty flavor of the crickets was just overwhelmed.

still, delicious. and nutritious.

s'morestice

some saturdays ago i went out with barb to play a little ingress and we were headed through middlesex and barb said "ooh. what's going on there?" as we passed camp meade. i'd heard about the s'morestice festival and thought i might could go, but it fell right out of my head until we were passing by.

so we blew up some things and linked some things (we're the RESISTANCE, boys and girls!) and headed back to middlesex to catch the party.

it's hard to explain. people try, but the news items really fall short. this account has the best video of the s'more being served, i think, but it's really hard to capture the vibe of all these people casually milling around and enjoying the assorted fires and the dj's playlist, which included ALL THE FIRE SONGS, plus flourish farm was there with free samples.

cirque de fuego was also there. it was the second time i've seen them and they're an amazing show.



there was this huge hut like thing that they described as a maze, but it was more like a spiral path, in and out. it smelled fresh and was beautiful inside. people brought little notes or trinkets to represent wishes for the new year or things they wanted burned away.

here's a view from the inside, through a porthole:

and here is the thing on fire:

how to cook like flask: pot of slop

we went camping this weekend in the northeast kingdom. for dinner i made a pot of slop.

i know, that sounds totally delicious, so i will tell you how to make it.

ingredients:

several slices of bacon
a large onion, chopped
carrots? are there carrots in your fridge? great. chop them.
some soaked beans. or canned. doesn't really matter what kind. beans. i used black eyed peas.
some kind of stock, or water and bouillon cubes.
diced potato
cut vegetables. i just tossed in some frozen veg mix i had in the freezer. doesn't matter.
fresh spinach
cheese. any kind will do.

to prepare:

you've remembered to soak the beans, right? ok, good.

cut up the bacon. you can leave it whole, but it's easier to cook down in your pot if the pieces are small. cook it until the fat is rendered and the bacon is cripsy. then fish the bacon out with a slotted spoon and set it aside.

toss your onion and the fresh carrots into the pot to cook down in the bacon grease. now is also a good time to put in some spices. i used a little slat and pepper (more pepper than salt) and whatever was left in an old packet of fajita mix that was half used up.

when the onions are soft and just beginning to brown, put in a bunch of water and some bouillon cubes, or if you have it, some kind of stock. also add the beans. if you're starting with large chunks of raw potato, add those now. if like me, you're using frozen cut potatoes (because camping. i'm in a hurry here) let the beans cook a while (until just a little harder than you want them to be when you're done) and then add the potatoes and frozen vegetables.

cook them until everything is hot again and the potatoes have your desired amount of doneness. if you overdo the potatoes nobody will really care because it's for camping and it will still be nutritious and delicious and filling. it will just be like wallpaper paste.

toss in some spinach leaves and let them wilt in there. then remove the pot and either stir in the cheese and let it melt, or (my preference) sprinkle grated cheese liberally over the top.

there ya go.

works great if you put a bunch of slop in a heavy duty ziploc and pack it. add the spinach and cheese at camp.

we're fancy now.

i'll fold

a few days ago i went to my mom's house to fold my map, because i don't have a room in my house with enough floor space. it took me an hour or so, but i got it done.

you want me to back up?

ok.

so you know i like studying things and i think i've posted geology things here before, but the problem for me has always been trying to READ the USGS maps online, because they are such huge files and the print is very teeny.

it's hard to learn how to read all that and understand it if you can't get a good look at the map.

and with my vermont master naturalist studies, i have an excellent excuse to really LEARN all that, plus an excuse to have the paper maps that i can use for study and for instruction, which is a thing.

did i even explain all that about the course work? if i have to back up THAT far, it's going in a new post.

anyway, santa brought me the map. my mom hands me this present, a five foot long cylinder and i have NO idea what it is because i don't remember this was on my list, but i'm not really prepared for how huge it's going to be.

folded, the three sheets fit in a two gallon ziploc, so i can take it out in the field.

lists

things on my to-do list today:

wrap presents


things i did today:

make additional presents
watch youtube videos
read some chapters of a book
play games
sharpen knives
do laundry
wash and put away dishes
rinse fish ('nother story)
grocery shop
prepare and eat two meals
bake a clafoutis
walk to the mailbox

notice what's missing?

light returning

today is the shortest day of the year.

may the light grow within you as well as around you.

here's a picture of a flower i took when it was summer.

there was this girl.

i met a girl last summer. she was in the uncertain time of her life following the death of one parent in which she was about to go and live with the other parent, in a faraway state.

that had to have been a time of tremendous emotional uprooting, a time of anxiety.

in that in between time, she kept making little crafts; knotted strings and necklaces and giving them to people.

i may see her again some time. i may not.

but if i could day one thing to her across the darkness, it would be "i have a small mess of knots on the dash of my car. i remember you, and i hope you are ok."

messy bessy

i used to have a dressy bessy doll. it was a long time ago.

then last week i was out doing things and all sudden i was starving and needed a reasonably priced sammidge for lunch and there's a place at the top of church street that has a sammidge called the "good time sally" which is a breakfast sammidge with a hash brown on it. i had something called the "murphy's slaw" because they were out of hash browns.

...which is only tangentially related to what i wanted to say, which was something about my dinner.

yesterday i decided to cook and lightly mash some potatoes that i had in the house doing nothing but getting old. tonight for dinner i put some 'o that in a pan and fried it until brown on both sides, fried a couple of eggs next to it, and then layered things in my bowl: spicy black bean burger with a smidge of taco sauce, fried mashed potatoes, slice of cheese, eggs.

i called it the messy bessy.

no reason why, other than it's a mess.

gooey and delicious and easy to make.

you are not sad there are no pictures.

flaugnarde

ok, so backup, backup, backup.

i had some good apples and cider leftover from thanksgiving and i wanted to cook a little something with them and i was thinking something in a pan from the family of slumps and cobblers, but i didn't want a crumb topping and i didn't want it to be to hard (read: i am lazy) and my friend rapunsell suggested i bake a clafoutis.

so i cooked down the cut up apples a little and went from there.

and then it was so delicious plus i still had apples and cider so i made another. and then i was thinking i could make a savory one and THEN i was doing research on that and learned that properly a clafoutis is only made with black cherries, and that if you put any other fruit in it, it is properly called a flaugnarde.

so before i go off telling you how to bake these two bad boys, imma tell you the basic recipe i was working from and give you an ingredient list.

basic batter:

3 eggs
about a cup of milk (i am told alternate milks work just fine)
about a half cup flour (i am told alternate flours work fine too)
about a half cup of sugar (brown or white- whatever, and less or none for a savory batter)
2 tbps melted butter (or less. i one recipe i used none. it was just fine)
a pinch of salt. (two pinches for a savory batter)
optional vanilla, almond extract, spices, whatever you like.

basic procedure: for already soft fruits, take enough to mostly cover the bottom of your greased pan. pour the batter over the fruit and bake at 325 for about forty minutes. serve immediately (puffy) or later (dense and compact). if you undercook this slightly, you get a nice custardy center. overcook it slightly, and you get something more spongy and firm. it is really not a critical value.

there are so few critical values that i am not particularly specifying amounts of things, but i am tossing in some ballpark figures of what i used.

APPLE FLAUNGARDE

while you're cutting up your apples, begin to reduce cider in a pan (two cups?). this will take a while, but it does require supervision so it doesn't burn when it gets to the end. essentially you're boiling off the water and at the end you'll stir pretty constantly until you have a just barely thickening apple caramel. for right now, though, you have a pan of boiling cider.

turn your attention now to peeling your apples (for me, four medium sized apples). that done, take a couple tablespoons of butter and brown it in your pan (i'm using a dutch oven here) toss in yer apples and cook them down a little until they're a little browned and only a little softened. i like mine on the soft side, but some people prefer them crunchy. you do you.

mix up your batter so it's free of lumps. i used vanilla and almond extract in mine.

by now your cider caramel will be almost done. when the water is boiled of and the syrup starts to thicken, scrape it in to your pan with the browned-butter half cooked apples. pour the batter over it and pop it in the oven. about forty minutes later it should be golden and puffy and perfect.

DRIED TOMATO AND GOAT CHEESE FLAUGNARDE

start by soaking your dried tomatoes (about 1.5 ounces dried). i used homemade vegetable stock (a cup and a half) and a sprig of rosemary, but you can use water. you can cut the tomatoes before soaking with scissors if you like, or after with a knife. a little salt in the soaking solution will help them absorb better.

if you soaked these ahead of time and you want a flavorful glaze on the bottom (fancy!), you can just start here with taking the soaking liquid and tossing it in a pan with some balsamic vinegar (enough that the whole thing looks black?) and begin to reduce it until it just starts to thicken.

now's a good time to make your batter. i seasoned mine with a little black pepper and just a little ground sage.

turning your attention to the tomatoes, brown a tablespoon or two of butter in your pan (again, i'm using a dutch oven). the browned butter adds a nutty sweet flavor that i like. here i tossed that sprig of rosemary in to squeeze out a little more rosemary flavor before i fished the sprig out and threw it away.

your balsamic reduction is probably finishing up right about now. set it aside for a few moments.

toss yer tomatoes in the pan and let them just toast up a little until they darken. this deepens the flavor of them and brings out some caramelized sugars. spread them out in the bottom of the pan, and then scrape the balsamic tomato reduction into the bottom of the pan. scatter the crumbled goat cheese (about 2 ounces) around among the tomatoes, pour the batter in, and pop the whole thing in the oven for about forty minutes or until it's nicely golden on the top.

the balsamic reduction will look like you burned the dish, but it makes oh so lovely a sauce on the bottom.

river of light

i keep meaning to write to you when things are still news, but let's face it; neither of you lives near here so i guess it's all news.

a couple of weeks ago barb called me up to ask if i wanted to go to the waterbury river of light.

of course i did.

it's kind of an amazing community festival. it is beautiful, brief, and has no ideological underpinnings besides "yay, waterbury!" and "the winter is too damn dark".

they always pick a general theme for the lanterns, but anybody who has a lanterns or some lights can just step into the parade and be a part of it. as the parade passes where you are, you usually step off the curb and process down the street to the rec field where there are bonfires and fire twirlers.

this year the general theme was farm to table, and because i was on the street above the klezmer band (which only marched half the parade and picked up the procession at the corner of main and stowe streets) everyone who joined the procession before that corner got swept up INSIDE the parade instead of after it, which was cool.

goal!

unless you just walked in ten minutes ago, you know that i like challenges.

some of the challenges i do are set for me, like the venture vermont challenge.

others are things i challenge myself to do.

this year i decided that i would like to camp in every month of the year. i guess it was because i was talking to someone about cold weather camping and i realized i hadn't actually camped in every month of a year, or something like that. i don't recall fully. it was last january when i decided to do it.

i figured the hard part would be getting january, february and march, since the other months seem to take care of themselves, but the ultra cold extra snowy thanksgiving followed by the gigantic snow dump that left my power out for the better part of three days cut short my november/ deember outing, meaning that to complete the challenge i had to make a special trip in december.

complicating the planning is that the easiest place to camp, little river state park, is really only super easy to camp in until december ninth, when they close the gate at the conclusion of muzzleloader season and you have to hike in just like anywhere else.

so i looked at my calendar and the forecast and my package tracking.

that's right. package tracking. because i order myself some spiffy new down camping quilts and i wanted to go with those, yah-boo.

anyway, they arrived saturday.

satuday was nice and warm, but then... rain. but there was a break in the rain for about an hour so i went out there. this morning i woke up out there in rain, but no biggie. i had my toasty quilts and a good book and even a thermos of hot tea, so at around ten o'clock this morning when there was a break in the rain for about an hour, i struck camp and made a run for it.

challenge complete.

here is the view from my bed:

and here is the view of my campsite:

things you won't often hear me say

so yesterday i was going to write you but then i noticed that my blog was still on its summer colors and i changed that over to the winter colors because somewhere along the way autumn seems to have disappeared completely and i was JUST about to begin writing something about thanksgiving camp or something...

...when the power went out.

and then it came back in the afternoon...

and then out again this morning.

because it's been pretty much snowing nonstop for some days and really HARD this last two days and you know i am not likely to say this but at this point even *i* would enjoy a break in the snow.

too cold

traditionally i go camping for thanksgiving.

and this year i had planned to go today with a friend and then have another friend join us thursday night and another on friday so PARTY but the weather forecast for tonight has the temperatures dropping into the LOW single digits with steady winds of fifteen miles an hour. the temperatures are not expected to rise above twelve degrees and the wind isn't supposed to be less than 13 mph until midmorning friday and i hope i do not need to tell you that this represents a dangerous situation, beyond what you ought to do on purpose.

so i'm going to sit on my ass for an extra two days and we'll go camping, all of us, on friday.

i've been driving in and out of the park every couple of days to pack down the snow and keep it accessible (important because the one friend has a broken foot and just had a plate and pins installed and while i'm happy to sled my gear in, it's really important to be able to drive right to camp this time), and while i'm there i drop off firewood at our site.

and for the record because i know peg will ask, yes, being in the woods is lovely and relaxing if you are comfortable. especially in winter when it is deserted.

you just wear proper gear, and if it's cold at night you have proper insulation.

i have proper clothing and a crapton of gear (i partially outfit my friends as well) and there's something very satisfying about being outside at 20 degrees and being toasty warm. you just build a hot fire and keep drinking hot beverages and when it's bedtime you burrow in.

without any particular modifications my regular setup is good down to 15 degrees. with modifications it will be good down to five. after friday morning temps will not be below ten again for a week or so, and that should get me to the end of my trip.

absolute zero

i can't seem to get it together for blogging, so i'm going to tell you a story from a really long time ago.

like my junior year of high school. the two biggest fuckups in my chemistry class, dave and i were dumped together as lab partners because nobody else wanted us. if you had a chemistry lab, we could get it significantly wrong.

so there was this experiment to extrapolate the value of absolute zero because it's a thing you do in high school chem.

dave and i set to work cautiously but steadily, as if we tried hard and never got anything right.

and at the end of the lab we're drawing our line graph and ours looks NOTHING LIKE anybody else's, but we had a pretty straight line that came out at -274 celsius and we shrugged our shoulders and decided to turn it in anyway, because what the hell, we had tried out best and if our results were terribly wrong and different than everyone else's, it wouldn't be the first time it had happened. we were immune to the disapproving eyerolls of debbie and dickie and peggy and the other kids who didn't fail every chem lab. we looked at each other and said "well, if your'e going to fail, fail big."

so the chemistry teacher looks at our paper and calls us up to talk to him. and he's getting all ready to drop cheating on us and we were all like "if we were going to cheat, why would we have picked a result SO TERRIBLY WRONG?"

it turns out that dave and i have no actual clue what the value of absolute zero is in celsius. we have in our minds some OTHER number that to this day i don't know what it was, but it was not anywhere near -273.15

i'm not sure what else that teacher did that day when he was out of class, but i'm pretty sure laughing was a part of it.

bad, bad blogger

i have been a very bad blogger.

because to be a good blogger you need to be writing things.

i've been camping, and doing girl scout things, and learnings. OH SO MANY LEARNINGS.

also playing ingress a little crazily and also reading books.

oh. and since the day before halloween i've been playing the google doodle game.

https://www.google.com/doodles/halloween-2018

hot flash

yeah, it's time for TMI!

i recently heard hot flashes described as a "personal tropical vacation".

i'm currently taking a break from my busy morning because suddenly it is ninety-eight bazillion degrees in here even though my thermostat is set to 60 and it's cold outside and i am nearly naked.

i am really looking forward to thanksgiving, when i will be able to call myself done with the whole business of having an active reproductive system, and it is a thing i have been looking forward to ever since i heard that periods were a thing and i was going to start getting them.

i'm not into it.

sing along if you know the words.

boomwhackers!

this week i saw a post in laughing squid about boomwhackers. more specifically, it was a post about the students of THUD performing don't stop believin' on boomwhackers.

go ahead. i'll wait.





a lot of people are amazed because they did not know boomwhackers were even a thing.

i am amazed because i bought a couple of sets of boomwhackers for my classroom when they were a NEW thing and although i understood that they had this potential, performing with them like this takes a LOT of skill. have you ever seen a really good handbell choir? yeah, that's the basic principle.

and if you can't figure out what the black things are they keep putting on and off, those are endcaps.

a boomwhaker is an open pipe, and the endcap makes it a closed pipe, which drops the pitch an octave because effectively the vibrating air column is now twice the length. physics is fun.

word garden

out behind the waterbury public library they have a word garden.

it's sort of like magnetic refrigerator poetry, only with very satisfying stone pieces on gravel. i was there with my friend rsr (ingress, boys and girls! we're the BLUE team!) and we wrote this poem:

i was out camping.

um, yeah, so...

neither of you are going to be surprised that i took off and went camping, because of course i did.

i don't know if i told you or not, but i made a goal for myself of camping in every month this year.

and now october is complete.

later on, (yes, i always promise later ons) there are going to be some pictures and stories. right now i'm concerned with unpacking and airing out gear so it will be nice for the next camping, doing the laundry, and maybe cleaning the house.

oh, and studying for the VMN class upcoming. and preparing girl scout things.

adulting, both basic and advanced levels.

wayward children

some months ago somebody posted something in one of my slack chats from seanan mcguire's tumblr feed. i liked what she had to say on her tumblr feed, so i started following it.

and then i realized that seanan mcguire is not just an awesome human being, but also a bestselling author.

only her books are in some genres that are usually too scary for me. but i love her so much from things she says i want to read her books. but i don't want to have nightmares. but i want to read her books. but afraid.

well, one awesome thing about her is that she actually talks to random people who write in to her tumblr. many people write in to say "whoa! i only just heard of you! where should i start?" and she points them to this page.

the wayward children series. it appeared to be gentle enough even for me, but i was still on the fence.

and then i decided to pull on my big girl pants and went down to my local library to get every heart a doorway and while i loved it, i felt it was ... incomplete. i wanted to learn more about these worlds and these characters.

but wait! there are more!

so now until the fourth book comes out, i'm having to start one of her other series, and i am hoping they are not too scary.

i now have a bona fide author crush.

returning property

have you guys seen this story?

https://boingboing.net/2018/10/04/why-you-should-never-return-lo.html

are you seeing the major flaw with the police position?

they're saying the guys should have turned it in immediately to a nearby BUSINESS.

as if businesses are institutions of safekeeping. as if a subway is not full of people being paid minimum wage who might steal something.

i'm not saying they're inherently dishonest, but seriously? a business is not better guarantee of getting lost property back to a person than any honest citizen.


in the last year i have returned hundreds of dollars worth of things to people who had lost them or even just left them behind in remote parking lots.

that stuff goes in my car until somebody calls to identify it. i am more confident that i will get it back to the proper owner than some random person working in a nearby store.

this story is one where the police have an overconfidence in businesses as entities that are somehow better than citizens. that officer didn't say the man should have turned it in to a police department or government agency. he's saying the man is being charged because he did not turn it in AT A SUBWAY RESTAURANT.

CHARGED.

this is part of an increasing trend to criminalize people for just being people.

2018 venture vermont: identify two kinds of drgaonflies

this is hard, because they don't love to be caught.

and it's hard to photograph them clearly enough if they're not caught.

i'm going to hope for the purposes of this challenge that we're including damselflies in this category, because  a lot of people don't rally distinguish the two.

plus they're easier to catch.

anyway, here's a variable dancer:


















and this is a stream bluet:

two of them, actually. i do not know how they fly like that.

2018 venture vermont: practice skipping stones

it's hard for me to get the spin on the throw, but the challenge isn't to be awesome at skipping stones.

it's to practice.

and practice i did, on and off, all summer. i am not often in a place where the stones are built for it (rounded,  flat,  light) which would help a lot, but a skilled stone skipper can skip nearly any stone, even on choppy water.

last week i managed to skip one stone nine times, in a long, curving arc.

2018 venture vermont: create your own state park song or poem

274 raymond road

you might miss the turn 

even if you were looking for it, 

and end up somewhere better-known

but less desired.

you might miss the opportunity, slotted into your day

between this and that, packing a lunch,

making an appointment,

unable to escape.

but let's say you find your way 

and find yourself slotted in 

between the ledge and the sandbank;

you have to choose early.

but once you do choose

(and maybe you do go up on the bank or over the rock ledges,

but this isn't about that, not today, not this path)

once you do choose to go down the center slot

every other way becomes less likely

every other choice is uphill

i won't tell you there's no escape

but why would you make the bushwhack?

why would you try to get out of this slot,

this wide road down

that when it opens

it opens

on wide lake and sky

2018 venture vermont: identify three habitat types by your house

i guess i could just call them forest, field, and grassland, but i just got a copy of wetland, woodland, wildland so i think i can do a little better.

this here is the verge of a section of northern hardwood forest.

it may be a mesic red oak variant,but it is an area that has undergone considerable disturbance and being sure requires more study than i have time for this week.

soon, though.

here's a beaver meadow,  most likely a shallow emergent marsh.

this grassland used to be mowed, but isn't anymore.

2018 venture vermont: donate to your local food bank

it's really easy.

you tear off the coupon at the store and pay a little extra on your bill.

they have these at the richmond market.

2018 vermont venture: play disc golf

usually when i play disc golf, i play at center chains in waterbury.

but i was looking up disc golf courses for the venture challenge and i saw there's a course behind williston central school that's open to the public.

so saturday i went there.

i still suck at disc golf, so i have to be ok with my horrible play being visible to others, but it's a very nice little 12 holes packed into a pretty small space and someone designed it to be very pleasant and playable. maybe with a course closer to my daily activities, i will play more often and maybe suck less.

2018 venture vermont: make a weaving using natural materials

i have an interest in primitive basket making and cordage, so yeah. this one is always on my list.

i started off thinking about just weaving something basket shaped from grasses, but i did not figure a way to keep my weavers separate or how to manage splices and avoid tangles, and i ended up with a vaguely bowl-shaped matted thing.

it will bear more research, because i'm sure over the millennia people have made baskets from grass.

after than i just decided to make something in a soft sided basket with daylilly leaves.

i whipped up some two strand cordage for my spokes and used regular leaves as weavers, and off i went. it's a little basket, and i am not sure how i would go about a future one, but it's an experiment.

2018 venture vermont: one square foot

the direction is to use a string to rope off a square foot of forest and count species.

i cheated just a little and used a place where a small meadow borders a forest, because last time i did this i worked in a dry oak forest and there just wasn't that much i found.

so here's my little parcel. i did my best to identify what's in it. which took a stack of field guides, and some internet searching.

white pine (cone)
delicate fern moss
sheepsorrel
grass
strawberry
white clover
greater plantain
common yarrow
cinquefoil
wood sorrel
new york fern
teeny little unidentified brown insect

it turns out that grasses are hard to identify unless you really know grasses AND watch your specimens for a WHOLE SEASON. ok, then. it's like watching grass grow.