forest landowner

one of the items on the venture vermont challenge is to go for a walk "in the woods with a forest landowner, logger, or forester" and while that's not difficult in principle, you have to call up your forest managing friends and ask them to make time.

what a happy coincidence it was, then, that as i was coming out of the woods after a bike ride, i ran into my friend jim on his way back from lunch.

now, i know it says "walk", but jim was on a bike and i was on a bike because that's just the way we roll.

he was on his way back out to the splitter, but he was happy to have me come along and he was happy to talk with me about the management of this particular forest.

state representative jim mccullough and his wife lucy ("be sure you mention lucy, because it's the jim and lucy show") own and manage the forest at the catamount family outdoor center. They harvest wood from the forest to heat the house, which is also the catamount bed and breakfast.

because the property is under current use, the forest has to be managed under a plan made with the chittenden county forester according to sustainable forest practices. They cut only marked trees, but wind storms in recent years have given enough blowdowns that they cut up a lot of what's already down.

As part of their forestry plan, they select mature trees for harvest, which gives trees in the understory opportunity to grow. they also give consideration to where mature trees are sited with relation to trails for what jim calls "social value" because a nice mature forest is pretty to walk and run and bike in. near the trails they'll leave mature trees as they are, but in the large forest areas between trails, they'll thin the basal area  between thirty and fifty percent.

here's a little video of it. i have to apologize for the sound quality; i wan't expecting to meet jim, so i had my camera set up waterproof instead of sound friendly.

morning person

it seems unlikely, but i am apparently a morning person.

although to be fair, i do not do my mornings in the fashion of those who just jump out of bed when the alarm goes off and are bright and shiny.

my morning begins sometime around four or five when i START TO WAKE UP. this doesn't involve an alarm clock. it happens organically, and it's a process that takes somewhere between a half hour and an hour. i move experimentally, thinking a little and dreaming a little the half dreams of the half asleep. maybe i fall asleep again, maybe not.

for a while i just enjoy the comfort of the bed, and when i have moved on from thinking and dreaming to just thinking, it's time to get out of bed. this is usually around five or six.

i pull on clothes, brush my teeth and wash my face and i wander downstairs to get my breakfast beverage.

then i like to sit at my desk and look at emails, play some games, and in general take a slow start.

often between eight and eleven i wander off to make a plate of real food.

i get my best work done between six and ten.

it's lovely.

september afternoon at catamount

it's kind of leisurely riding even for a middle aged lady who can't really be having too much of an elevated heart rate, but here's some footage from some pretty trails on a pretty day.

scavenger hunt update

unless you are a child or are going to an outdoor party attended by a lot of good sports the item "Create your own nature scavenger hunt and photograph your friends completing it." presents rather a challenge.

i figured i had to get creative and i asked my geographically scattered adult friends to play my scavenger hunt and provide photo documentation of their finds, which is as close as i am going to get to photographing them completing it.

the trick about a nature scavenger hunt for adults who are in diverse habitats is that you have to ask for items specific enough to be challenging, yet general enough to be possible in different locations.

my scavenger hunt list can be found here in case you missed it.

flurgh, who lives in texas, and rapunsell, who lives in new york city, were both good enough sports to take the trouble to send in completed entries and will both be receiving fabulous prize packages.

rapunsell is something of an authority on edible wild plants and would have kicked butt on that alone had it not been for the cap on points in that category. it is worth noting that her photo of a feral peach tree was taken in central park.

texas, however, is apparently a wonderland of invasive species, escaped crops, and grazing animals. and besides, flurgh managed to identify some abandoned fishing line as the BRAND NAME fireline, which is pretty darn clever and i awarded full points for that.

flurgh comes out ahead by seven or so points and is therefore declared the champeen of the 2015 flask nature scavenger hunt.

whatever boats float

ok, ok, so while technically seeing that your boat made of natural materials does not float, i think the folks over tat the DFPR maybe had in mind boats that float.

i made a loose weave raft from moosewood branches and pine sticks, and a little canoe of pine.

SS pine

SS Moosewood

the SS Stone

there's a thing on the 2015 venture vermont challenge that reads "Build a boat out of materials you find outside. See if it floats".

so i built this beautiful little boat of PEI sandstone, a sumac mast, and a knotweed sail.

of course i did.

because i am a smartypants.

and i know you are dying to know this: no. it does not float.

message in the sand

disappeared

well, you wouldn't notice, but i took off last friday afternoon to go kayak camping because i liked it so much the first time.

it turns out that you can strap a couple hundred pounds of camping gear to a paddleboard and tow it behind a kayak.

so luxury camping at remote paddle site! yay!

later on there will be pictures and stuff.

goin' for a swim

ok, so i'm fully clothed and wearing a PFD, but it's swimming, sort of.

kind of like lounging in the water, but i'm not fussy.

knots

"Learn to tie three new knots" is on the venture vermont challenge.

i can tie half hitches and bowlines and clove hitches and larksheads, but i got out my knot book and picked three i didn't know.

i learned a proper tautline hitch, and because nearly every source suggests that a much more USEFUL knot for the same purposes would be the midshipman's hitch, i learned that, too, because it seemed like the right thing to do. it is mostly recommended for tying down tent stakes, and because the midshipman's hitch is made up of an awning knot and a half hitch, it is apparently recommended in the case that you fall overboard and just HAPPEN to be able to catch a trailing line.

tautine hitch

midshipman's hitch

i also learned the butterfly loop (also called the lineman's loop), which has practical applications and is a good knot anywhere you need a loop with even load on both sides, and it can be used to isolate a bad section of rope in a pinch.

butterfly loop

butterfly loop (closeup of knot)

and then i learned to tie the good luck knot, which is almost entirely decorative, but i guess you could use it if you needed to start a rope basket or something.

good luck knot

closeup of good luck knot

paddleboard

i think i already mentioned how the venture vermont challenge caused me to be standing on a paddleboard for the first time ever.

i think i may have mentioned that it was a lot of fun.

so the following saturday i got myself up to umiak (where they have a test pond you can try boats in!) and i ended up buying a paddleboard. it was not, alas, the board that i liked the best, but let's face it: mountain biking is my primary sport, and i have a truckload of expensive bikes for that, so i can't just be spending bazillions of dollars on equipment for a secondary or even tertiary sport.

the board i got, though, i a pretty nice board, and it turns out that it is one of the boards favored for stand-up paddlboard YOGA, should i ever get into that.

i do not think i will ever be into that.

i have enough trouble with yoga on something that's NOT moving.

anyway, my new board is AWESOME.

here's some video.

interpretive programs

i have been using vermont state parks since i arrived here in 1973. not once did it occur to me to go to an interpretive program at one until i did last year's venture vermont challenge.

i've still only been to programs at little river state park, because that's the one closest to my house, but i am sufficiently impressed that i have gone a couple of times SPECIFICALLY for the program.

this year barb and i went to the owl prowl and ghost hike (which is a combined nighttime nature and history walk). we planned a weekend around it and arrived at little river state park from our remote campsite via kayak.

and then hiked up from the boat landing to the hike.

and then back.

it was a fantastic no moon dark paddle back to camp after.

and then i went to the saturday morning mushroom walk, because i am interested in mushrooms in general and it is always awesome to go out into the field with someone who knows more than you do.

Brian is the naturalist at little river state park, and although his main area of expertise is ornithology in general and warblers in particular, he has made himself pretty much an expert on all the things that grow or creep in the park.

also, he's studied the history of the old farmsteads up there, so that makes him kind of awesome.

he's good at making his presentation suitable for whoever turns up, because there might be people who know stuff already, or he might be talking to six-year-olds and he has to make it a worthwhile outing for everybody, which is kind of a tall order.

brian at work

goodbye and hello

yesterday i was on my way to pick up barb to take her to the hospital mostly because the regularly scheduled thing required sedation and she needed a driver to take her home, plus anxiety over never having an IV or anesthesia before and you want a friend with you.

my old car (a 2006 subaru forester with 168,000 miles on it) had gotten to the point where every time i brought it in for an oil change or a tire change over, the cost of the repairs was in the hundreds, and also every couple of weeks i had to throw in a quart of oil.

there's a sensor light that goes off when it needs you to do that- you go around a hard corner and the cruise control light starts to flash and the first time it happened i was all afraid but then i learned it's the car's way of saying: "hey, it's been a couple of weeks. how 'bout another quart of oil?"

i was going to stop on my way to barb's house to buy a quart of oil because turning onto bolton notch road the light came on and i was headed down bolton notch road (down being the operative word here, because bolton notch road is steep enough that in the winter if you are smart, it gives you pause) and all of sudden my engine has WAY TOO MANY RPMs and then the car made a noise i have never heard from a car and later the tow truck driver would ask me what kind of noise it was, and all i could say was "i don't know, horrible?" because i was really kind of concentrating on BEING GOING DOWN BOLTON NOTCH ROAD WITH THE KIND OF STEERING AND BRAKES THAT YOU HAVE LEFT WHEN YOUR ENGINE DIES.

you know, because a disabled car at the bottom of the road where you can at least safely pull far enough off to the side is much better than a disabled car in the traveled lane on the steep part of the road.

so then there were a flurry of phone calls: barb, my mom, towing. there was a lot of figuring to do in a big fat hurry. and then an hour or so of waiting next to the car. happily there was a shady spot and i had brought a chair and had a book to read.

when the tow driver arrived, he didn't so much as say good morning. he set to work like a flash, partly because he's a taciturn new england type and partly because to load my car he had to block off traffic and there was a dump truck waiting for him in each direction.

so then there was a long ride to the car place and when i got there i tried to call her but she wasn't picking up the phone so i walked around to the front of the building and she was coming out to meet me.

i swear, this conversation really happened:

"oh, there you are."
"how do you like this one?"
"does it come in other colors?"

it is very disorienting to have this happen in this way.

very.

and also, when you set out in the morning with no intention of buying a car, there are certain things you leave undone, like cleaning your stuff out of the car, or removing all of the bike racks.

you know, and then those things have to be done in the dealer's parking lot on a hot afternoon while you're under some stress.

but i was up there on the ladder working on it and all of a sudden i thought. wow. it is hot out. and i did not bring any water.

and all of a sudden, as if on cue, the salesman came walking out with a big cup of cold water because, he said, "i'm sure you need this by now"

the salesman's name is mike. my family buys a lot of cars from him, because we like subarus and we like mike. of course, like all car salesmen, his career rather depends on how many cars he actually sells.

we like mike, and he takes good care of us as a family, so i'm going to say it here: that's mike, at twin city subaru. go buy a car or three from him.

so anyway, i have a 2016 subaru forester. i like it very much. but the last time i closed the door on my old car, i bent over and kissed it on the hood before turning away with tears in my eyes.

a day on the rez

when we were out camping on waterbury reservoir last week, barb and i saw a lot of people go by on stand up paddleboards, which looked like a LOT of fun to us.

and it's one of the things on the venture vermont challenge, so all the more reason to try, yes?


so we did.

and the awesome thing about the SUP is that you can hop on and off of it a lot easier than you can with a kayak, so easy to flit around, or just slide off into the water and go swimming.

and i can tell you plainly that when you fall off of one, it hurts a lot less than when you capsize a snark sunfish. you just slide off into the water. it's lovely.

anyway, here are some pictures.

a letter in your box

right, so.

i'd always intended to go letterboxing. i had even carved a stamp to use but until last year's venture vermont challenge came along, i just had never gone out to actually DO it.

since then i've been to a number of letterboxes and now letterboxing is on my list of Stuff I Do.

cool, yes?

this year i made you a little video.

seen on the way

letterbox

stone tools

yep. still writing for venture vermont.

this year again, flintknapping is on the list.

now, i learned to do this in college, although i did not apparently learn to talk about it coherently.

anyway, for your striking stone you want something nice and hard and not fracture-y. i've using a granite against this here shale.

shale isn't ideal for it, but you can get it to fracture mostly reliably and it will make nice sharp edges, if not durable ones. you work with what you have.

the bitterest pill

i think that a little ways back i mentioned an ambulance ride.

yeah, well.

so barb and i were doing the bitter pill. you know, like you do. and we were totally kicking butt on the navigation. when we saw that map in the morning and saw where the trek went, we KNEW we weren't going to get any more than 8 checkpoints if we did well, because ALL THOSE MILES OF BUSHWHACKING.

and it also meant we were going to have to spend our day mostly in foot travel, which is not our best thing. i move very slow on foot. biking is what we're good at.

and we were pretty much resigned to not getting to the bike portion of the race in time to ride.

well, them's the breaks.

we were pretty proud of ourselves for our awesome navigation on the trek, too, and our sheer bullheadedness in keeping on keeping on.

but then some time between checkpoints 5 and 6, i experienced some chest pain. later on when people were trying to get me to say what KIND of chest pain (burning? stabbing? aching?) all i could do was describe it as EXTREME SUBSUMING PAIN. and radiating to the elbow and up to my ear on the left side.

the kind of pain that makes you wonder if you are dying NOW.

and also shortness of breath and dizziness and nausea.

but you know, we were way up on the woodard trail and IF you're having a heart attack and you CAN still move, your chances of survival increase if you can get you over THERE where a rescue team can get to you.

you don't move fast, but you keep moving. i required a lot of resting along the way.

eventually we ran into a race volunteer, who called race direction, and together they decided to call a truck.

we kept moving, slowly, toward that extraction point.

eventually we met up with the first wave of responders, some very nice EMTs who did an assessment and decided that we could continue to proceed slowly, but that what we really needed was a paramedic.

so we kept moving. slowly.

and eventually met up with the second team with a paramedic. there was another assessment and it was decided that some more slow careful movement would not be out of place both toward the goal of getting me to the easiest extraction point, and also for some observation.

mostly, the shooty stabby i-need-to-lie-down-now pain was completely absent.

...unless we were walking uphill.

so the paramedic called it quits on the walking and we waited (turns out not too long) for colchester technical rescue to arrive. and they put me on the sled on the big wheel and heaved me out to the trailer and rode me down the mountain to the truck.

the short version of everything else is that while i did not have a heart attack, we are not yet certain that i do not have some blockages. the nice young cardiologist tells me that if i DO have blockages, they are not major blockages, nor are they in any major vessels because, among other things,  of my general level of exercise without pain up to a certain extent.

and while we're waiting to do some more tests, i ought to be just fine if when i get pain, i just back the heck off and slow down. he goes on to say that if i experience pain and it goes away if i back the heck off on a consistent basis, that's also very common symptomology for minor blockages of minor vessels and while it should not be ignored, is not immediately life threatening.


he also advises not doing any athletic stuff alone in remote places.

so there you have it.

camp food

yep, still talking about the venture vermont challenge.

we're going to cover "cook food over a campfire" and "make a camp cooking utensil using found natural items".

foil packets cooking in fire

dinner being served

marshmallow sticks, of course.

kayak camping

back in my youth, i used to backpack.

but in my later years i find that the deterioration of my knees and feet plus the general discomfort of the camping experience puts it out of my reach.

but then as a result of the venture vermont challenge last year, the idea of kayak camping came to my notice. and yeah, i know they list it as "canoe camping", but for the purposes of reching your campsite by paddlecraft, i think a kayak will do just fine.

besides, transporting your camping gear by kayak represents some challenges that loading your gear into a canoe does not. think about the enclosed hull of a kayak and then think about piling your camping gear in there.

'nuff sed?

anyway, barb and i went from the blush hill boat access to a remote site on waterbury reservoir.

it was about nineteen different kinds of awesome and i want to go again soon.

morning on the campsite

midmorning paddle

lazy afternoon

wasp preparing to lay eggs

evening paddle to LRSP

our cove

packed up and going home

you need a hat.

yesterday was MB's birthday.

and of course MB needed a party hat.

of course.

so with a little help from the nice people down at richmond home supply, i made one.