From 84abb974c8fc4cf74e929d8497b29771e7d9c84a Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: luxagraf Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2024 15:18:00 -0500 Subject: deleted some old cruft --- bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/crystal-lake.html | 434 ---------------- bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/crystal-lake.txt | 41 -- bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/house-lake.html | 561 --------------------- bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/house-lake.txt | 62 --- bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/lakeside-park.html | 480 ------------------ bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/lakeside-park.txt | 62 --- bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/shipwrecks.html | 503 ------------------ bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/shipwrecks.txt | 63 --- bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/six.html | 472 ----------------- bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/six.txt | 50 -- bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/trees.html | 559 -------------------- bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/trees.txt | 93 ---- 12 files changed, 3380 deletions(-) delete mode 100644 bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/crystal-lake.html delete mode 100644 bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/crystal-lake.txt delete mode 100644 bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/house-lake.html delete mode 100644 bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/house-lake.txt delete mode 100644 bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/lakeside-park.html delete mode 100644 bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/lakeside-park.txt delete mode 100644 bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/shipwrecks.html delete mode 100644 bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/shipwrecks.txt delete mode 100644 bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/six.html delete mode 100644 bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/six.txt delete mode 100644 bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/trees.html delete mode 100644 bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/trees.txt (limited to 'bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07') diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/crystal-lake.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/crystal-lake.html deleted file mode 100644 index 6d93ed9..0000000 --- a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/crystal-lake.html +++ /dev/null @@ -1,434 +0,0 @@ - - - - - The Crystal Lake - by Scott Gilbertson - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

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The Crystal Lake

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Washburn, Wisconsin, U.S.

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- July 30, 2018 - -

After we said goodbye to my parents, we packed up and pointed the bus west, tracing the Lake Michigan side of the Upper Peninsula. The first night we stopped at a place we’d intended to go after Wisconsin, but skipped in favor of Pictured Rocks. And I’m glad we did. It was all right for a night, but there was nothing much to make us linger for longer than that.

There are three basic things our kids can find pretty much anywhere: 1) water the swim in, 2) things to jump off, 3) mud to dig in. Little Bay de Noc had all three.

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little bay de noc photographed by luxagraf

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little bay de noc. MI photographed by luxagraf

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jumping, little bay de noc, MI photographed by luxagraf

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It also had something of a rarity in our limited experience up here — west facing beaches with sunsets.

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beach, little bay de noc, MI photographed by luxagraf

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The next day we headed north again, toward Lake Superior, but also west, back into Wisconsin. We had another one-night stopover at a place called Imp Lake, which is notable for having a nesting colony of Loons on the island in the middle of it. We were serenaded all afternoon and into the evening, if serenade is the right word for loon calls. I really wanted some of the deeper howls to be wolves, but they weren’t.

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Quite a few people have asked if the mosquitoes are bad up here. In general no. At Imp Lake, yes. Bad enough that we didn’t really go out much that night. Which was fine since we got up early and hit the road again the next morning.

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We pulled into Memorial Park in Washburn WI around 2 in the afternoon and grabbed spot. It was something of a change for us. After having been in the woods, largely alone for the better part of six weeks it was odd to be in a campground with neighbors a short distance from our door and downtown Washburn a mere five minute walk away. Luckily this part of Wisconsin is full of friendly people and we enjoyed ourselves in spite of the more crowded campground.

The campground dated from at least the 1930s from what I read on some of the signs scattered around. It had a feel to it that you don’t find much anymore. It still had an old lunch counter stand with these ingenious folding tables and chairs. No one knows who built it, the source of ingenuity is lost to the fog of time, but the lunch stand is still there, though, disappointingly, not in use anymore.

memorial park, washburn, WI photographed by luxagraf

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The campground also had the kids of old school playground that was made of metal and tires and wasn’t padded everywhere like some kind of outdoor asylum, which is what the modern plastic playgrounds always remind me of, the sort of you’d find outside Bedlam. Thank you Washburn for resisting, in however small a way, the notion that children should be coddled in padded plastic playgrounds.

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Playground, memorial park, washburn, WI photographed by luxagraf

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We came mainly because it was the closest campground to the Madeline Island ferry, but we were also glad to be back on the shores of Lake Superior. I’ve never seen a shoreline I didn’t like, but, that said, there are certain bodies of water that seem to draw us in more than others and Lake Superior is one of them. Perhaps it’s the clarity, though it’s not nearly as clear over here, or the cold, though it’s not nearly as cold here, or maybe some more vague, impossible to define quality. Whatever the case, the shores of Lake Superior is our favorite place to be up here.

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Thoughts?

Please leave a reply:

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All comments are moderated, so you won’t see it right away. And please remember Kurt Vonnegut's rule: “god damn it, you’ve got to be kind.” You can use Markdown or HTML to format your comments. The allowed tags are <b>, <i>, <em>, <strong>, <a>. To create a new paragraph hit return twice.

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- - - - - - - diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/crystal-lake.txt b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/crystal-lake.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 099d14c..0000000 --- a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/crystal-lake.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,41 +0,0 @@ -The Crystal Lake -================ - - by Scott Gilbertson - - Monday, 30 July 2018 - -After we said goodbye to my parents, we packed up and pointed the bus west, tracing the Lake Michigan side of the Upper Peninsula. The first night we stopped at a place we'd intended to go after Wisconsin, but skipped in favor of Pictured Rocks. And I'm glad we did. It was all right for a night, but there was nothing much to make us linger for longer than that. - -There are three basic things our kids can find pretty much anywhere: 1) water the swim in, 2) things to jump off, 3) mud to dig in. Little Bay de Noc had all three. - -

- -It also had something of a rarity in our limited experience up here -- west facing beaches with sunsets. - -

- -The next day we headed north again, toward Lake Superior, but also west, back into Wisconsin. We had another one-night stopover at a place called Imp Lake, which is notable for having a nesting colony of Loons on the island in the middle of it. We were serenaded all afternoon and into the evening, if serenade is the right word for loon calls. I really wanted some of the deeper howls to be wolves, but they weren't. - -

- -Quite a few people have asked if the mosquitoes are bad up here. In general no. At Imp Lake, yes. Bad enough that we didn't really go out much that night. Which was fine since we got up early and hit the road again the next morning. - -

- -We pulled into Memorial Park in Washburn WI around 2 in the afternoon and grabbed spot. It was something of a change for us. After having been in the woods, largely alone for the better part of six weeks it was odd to be in a campground with neighbors a short distance from our door and downtown Washburn a mere five minute walk away. Luckily this part of Wisconsin is full of friendly people and we enjoyed ourselves in spite of the more crowded campground. - -The campground dated from at least the 1930s from what I read on some of the signs scattered around. It had a feel to it that you don't find much anymore. It still had an old lunch counter stand with these ingenious folding tables and chairs. No one knows who built it, the source of ingenuity is lost to the fog of time, but the lunch stand is still there, though, disappointingly, not in use anymore. - -

- -The campground also had the kids of old school playground that was made of metal and tires and wasn't padded everywhere like some kind of outdoor asylum, which is what the modern plastic playgrounds always remind me of, the sort of you'd find outside Bedlam. Thank you Washburn for resisting, in however small a way, the notion that children should be coddled in padded plastic playgrounds. - -

- -We came mainly because it was the closest campground to the Madeline Island ferry, but we were also glad to be back on the shores of Lake Superior. I've never seen a shoreline I didn't like, but, that said, there are certain bodies of water that seem to draw us in more than others and Lake Superior is one of them. Perhaps it's the clarity, though it's not nearly as clear over here, or the cold, though it's not nearly as cold here, or maybe some more vague, impossible to define quality. Whatever the case, the shores of Lake Superior is our favorite place to be up here. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/house-lake.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/house-lake.html deleted file mode 100644 index 77641eb..0000000 --- a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/house-lake.html +++ /dev/null @@ -1,561 +0,0 @@ - - - - - House By The Lake - by Scott Gilbertson - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

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House by the Lake

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Carp River Campground, Michigan, U.S.

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- July 23, 2018 - -

On our way southeast to Lake Huron we first went northwest. Because that’s how we roll. We wanted to see Whitefish point, which had a lighthouse and shipwreck museum we wanted to see. When we got there no one was into it, so we ended up skipping the indoor stuff to spend some time on the beach.

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Whitefish point, MI photographed by luxagraf

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Corrinne wandered off in search of rocks, I stayed to keep and eye on the kids, who were amusing themselves climbing up a rock retaining wall, or embankment really, not a wall, then they’d run over to edge and jump or slide down the sandy embankment next to it. The wall was adjacent to a little boardwalk area that you could get a view of the beach without getting any sand on you, something I’ve never really understood, but whatever.

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At one point a family with a couple of kids came out onto the viewing platform and I overheard one of the kids ask their mom what my kids were doing. “It looks like they’re climbing,” she said. But the way she said it, there was such disdain in her voice that made it sound like climbing was the worst thing in the world.

Naturally the little boy instantly said, “I want to climb.” I was thinking, cool, maybe the kids can make a friend. And then the mom said, no, you can’t climb up that you’d hurt yourself. I felt bad for the kid, but what can you do? I wanted to say, let him climb, let him find out what he can and can’t do, let him hurt himself if he needs to, but I didn’t. I sat there and felt bad for the kid. Then his mom added, “you’ll get all dirty.”

That got me to stand up and turn around to see what sort of monster was near me. I have as much patience, and love, for these so-called helicopter parents as I do mosquitoes. Alas you cannot swat the former, so I glanced up and tried to focus on giving them my friendliest smile. It’s not their fault really, this culture handed them a bum deal, made them afraid of everything. But I hate to see them passing it on to the next generation. Sorry kid, better luck next time.

I sat back down and watched my kids climbing, getting dirty and possibly even hurting themselves. Such is life. It got me thinking about an even sadder possibility though. Possibly that parent knew their kids limitations quite well, knew they didn’t have experience climbing sharp, quarried granite rocks, and knew they really would hurt themselves badly. Maybe those parents know their kids aren’t capable of it. That’s even sadder though. Get your kids outside, let them explore and learn for themselves. Let them fall down and get scraped up, that’s how they learn. Pain tells you where the edges are so to speak, that’s where you learn the edge of your current abilities and how to get even better. You fall down, and fall down, and fall down, until eventually you stop falling down.

After we’d had our fill of Whitefish Point we finally headed south toward Huron. It wasn’t a long drive, a little over an hour and we were setting up camp at Carp River, which alas, did not have easy swimming access.

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Carp river campground, MI photographed by luxagraf

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Instead we headed over to the cottage on the marsh that my parents had rented for the week. The first thing the kids noticed, aside from their grandparents was the spiral staircase. I shudder to think what that lady would have done when confronted with a narrow all metal staircase perfect for climbing. And climb our kids did. Up and down, up and down, up and down.

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Pine river mouth, MI photographed by luxagraf

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I retreated to the porch and watched the red winged blackbirds diving in and out of the reeds and cattails. Whenever I see cattail fluff now I always think about how it’s perfect for lining a babies diaper, that was the go-to material for nearly any tribe who had access to it. I grew up by a marsh full of cattails and I’d never even thought of that before. Necessity is the engine of ingenuity.

We spent most of the week playing in and around the house my parents rented. It came, as most everything up here does, with a couple of canoes and kayaks, which we used to explore the river a little bit. Lilah even wanted to paddle on her own, so I dropped off the other kids and let her take me on a little canoe ride. All I did was steer, and even that I only had to do because of the wind. It reminded me of the unfortunate truth of parenting, in a few years they won’t need me around much anymore.

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paddling canoes, pine river, MI photographed by luxagraf

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I finally gave in and went full tourist and picked up some smoked whitefish and lake trout, all of which turned out to be really damn good. I think we plowed through about four pounds in as many days. It took several more before the smell of smoked fish was completely gone from my fingers.

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I took advantage of the grassy field surrounding the rental house to give our solar panels a full day’s sun, something they had not had in nearly a month. I took care of a few bus tasks as well, pulled my spark plugs and check them out, tightened some hose clamps, a few bolts and even pulled apart the wiring to the temperature gauge, which I’d still like to get working.

I figure the gauge consists of three basic parts, the sensor and sending unit, which I can’t get to, if that’s the problem I’m screwed, the wiring, which is horrid and needs to be re-run, and gauge in the dash. Any one, or several of them could be the problem. The easiest place to start is the wiring, so I pulled out a ton of electrical tape (why do people use that stuff?) traced the wire, and realized the metal inside the little covered end that fits onto the sensor is cracked, not connected and may well be the solution to the problem. I made a note to stop in the next auto parts store I see and pick up something similar and see if that fixes the problem. Right when I figured that out though the kids needed me to do something and I went off and promptly forgot all about it until now, when I was looking over my notes and remembered. So still no working gauge, but the next auto parts store I see, I’m going to get that wire, I swear.

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None photographed by luxagraf — The closest thing the world has to *Birchbark House* dolls.

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There wasn’t much of a swimming beach at the rental house so one day we loaded everyone in the car and headed down the coast to Hessel, which had a little marina and swimming beach (and a wooden boat festival we’d just miss, damn it). We couldn’t leave the shores of Lake Huron without going for a swim. It turned out to be like the middle lake it is — warmer than Superior, colder than Michigan.

Fauna and Flora

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Birds
- American Black Duck
- American Redstart
- Barn Swallow
- Blackburnian Warbler
- Brown Creeper
- Cliff Swallow
- Common Tern
- Hermit Thrush
- Osprey
- Pine Warbler
- Red-breasted Nuthatch
- Red-winged Blackbird
- Ring-billed Gull
- Song Sparrow
- Yellow Warbler
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3 Comments

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- Patsy Wall - August 02, 2018 at 9:27 p.m. -

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Love the pictures of the kids playing, and yes climbing and getting dirty. Darn good parenting if ask me. Get them outside let them be little!

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- Andre Herrera - August 31, 2018 at 9:04 p.m. -

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Your family is so lovely.. and you’re a great story teller! We were your neighbors for a couple of nights while boondocking in the badlands. I wish we would have approached you guys earlier, so we could have shared some stories… Maybe next time we meet along the way. Take care and keep enjoying your journey.

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- Scott - September 01, 2018 at 8:17 p.m. -

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Patsy-

Thanks, we try to get em out as much as we can.

Andre-

Wish we could have spent more time with you and your family, I followed you on Instagram, we’ll be in Mexico for 6 months, but we’ll be back on the road in March, perhaps our paths will cross again at some point. Happy travels.

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Thoughts?

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- - - - - - - diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/house-lake.txt b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/house-lake.txt deleted file mode 100644 index a3b1f52..0000000 --- a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/house-lake.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,62 +0,0 @@ -House by the Lake -================= - - by Scott Gilbertson - - Monday, 23 July 2018 - -On our way southeast to Lake Huron we first went northwest. Because that's how we roll. We wanted to see Whitefish point, which had a lighthouse and shipwreck museum we wanted to see. When we got there no one was into it, so we ended up skipping the indoor stuff to spend some time on the beach. - -

- -Corrinne wandered off in search of rocks, I stayed to keep and eye on the kids, who were amusing themselves climbing up a rock retaining wall, or embankment really, not a wall, then they'd run over to edge and jump or slide down the sandy embankment next to it. The wall was adjacent to a little boardwalk area that you could get a view of the beach without getting any sand on you, something I've never really understood, but whatever. - -

- -At one point a family with a couple of kids came out onto the viewing platform and I overheard one of the kids ask their mom what my kids were doing. "It looks like they're climbing," she said. But the way she said it, there was such disdain in her voice that made it sound like climbing was the worst thing in the world. - -Naturally the little boy instantly said, "I want to climb." I was thinking, cool, maybe the kids can make a friend. And then the mom said, no, you can't climb up that you'd hurt yourself. I felt bad for the kid, but what can you do? I wanted to say, let him climb, let him find out what he can and can't do, let him hurt himself if he needs to, but I didn't. I sat there and felt bad for the kid. Then his mom added, "you'll get all dirty." - -That got me to stand up and turn around to see what sort of monster was near me. I have as much patience, and love, for these so-called helicopter parents as I do mosquitoes. Alas you cannot swat the former, so I glanced up and tried to focus on giving them my friendliest smile. It's not their fault really, this culture handed them a bum deal, made them afraid of everything. But I hate to see them passing it on to the next generation. Sorry kid, better luck next time. - -I sat back down and watched my kids climbing, getting dirty and possibly even hurting themselves. Such is life. It got me thinking about an even sadder possibility though. Possibly that parent knew their kids limitations quite well, knew they didn't have experience climbing sharp, quarried granite rocks, and knew they really would hurt themselves badly. Maybe those parents know their kids aren't capable of it. That's even sadder though. Get your kids outside, let them explore and learn for themselves. Let them fall down and get scraped up, that's how they learn. Pain tells you where the edges are so to speak, that's where you learn the edge of your current abilities and how to get even better. You fall down, and fall down, and fall down, until eventually you stop falling down. - -After we'd had our fill of Whitefish Point we finally headed south toward Huron. It wasn't a long drive, a little over an hour and we were setting up camp at Carp River, which alas, did not have easy swimming access. - -

- -Instead we headed over to the cottage on the marsh that my parents had rented for the week. The first thing the kids noticed, aside from their grandparents was the spiral staircase. I shudder to think what that lady would have done when confronted with a narrow all metal staircase perfect for climbing. And climb our kids did. Up and down, up and down, up and down. - -

- -I retreated to the porch and watched the red winged blackbirds diving in and out of the reeds and cattails. Whenever I see cattail fluff now I always think about how it's perfect for lining a babies diaper, that was the go-to material for nearly any tribe who had access to it. I grew up by a marsh full of cattails and I'd never even thought of that before. Necessity is the engine of ingenuity. - -We spent most of the week playing in and around the house my parents rented. It came, as most everything up here does, with a couple of canoes and kayaks, which we used to explore the river a little bit. Lilah even wanted to paddle on her own, so I dropped off the other kids and let her take me on a little canoe ride. All I did was steer, and even that I only had to do because of the wind. It reminded me of the unfortunate truth of parenting, in a few years they won't need me around much anymore. - -

- - -I finally gave in and went full tourist and picked up some smoked whitefish and lake trout, all of which turned out to be really damn good. I think we plowed through about four pounds in as many days. It took several more before the smell of smoked fish was completely gone from my fingers. - -

- -I took advantage of the grassy field surrounding the rental house to give our solar panels a full day's sun, something they had not had in nearly a month. I took care of a few bus tasks as well, pulled my spark plugs and check them out, tightened some hose clamps, a few bolts and even pulled apart the wiring to the temperature gauge, which I'd still like to get working. - -I figure the gauge consists of three basic parts, the sensor and sending unit, which I can't get to, if that's the problem I'm screwed, the wiring, which is horrid and needs to be re-run, and gauge in the dash. Any one, or several of them could be the problem. The easiest place to start is the wiring, so I pulled out a ton of electrical tape (why do people use that stuff?) traced the wire, and realized the metal inside the little covered end that fits onto the sensor is cracked, not connected and may well be the solution to the problem. I made a note to stop in the next auto parts store I see and pick up something similar and see if that fixes the problem. Right when I figured that out though the kids needed me to do something and I went off and promptly forgot all about it until now, when I was looking over my notes and remembered. So still no working gauge, but the next auto parts store I see, I'm going to get that wire, I swear. - -

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- -There wasn't much of a swimming beach at the rental house so one day we loaded everyone in the car and headed down the coast to Hessel, which had a little marina and swimming beach (and a wooden boat festival we'd just miss, damn it). We couldn't leave the shores of Lake Huron without going for a swim. It turned out to be like the middle lake it is -- warmer than Superior, colder than Michigan. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/lakeside-park.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/lakeside-park.html deleted file mode 100644 index 45622f0..0000000 --- a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/lakeside-park.html +++ /dev/null @@ -1,480 +0,0 @@ - - - - - Lakeside Park - by Scott Gilbertson - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

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Lakeside Park

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Andrus Lake, Michigan, U.S.

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- July 19, 2018 - -

After the girls’ birthday we had a few extra days before we needed to head south to meet up with my parents. We decided to stick around Andrus Lake a while longer. Who can say no to your own personal beach?

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We spent most of the time enjoying the warm lake water (relative to Superior). It’s not a big lake, it’s not a deep lake, but what it lacks in size it makes up for in character. I don’t think I ever looked out at it and saw the same lake twice.

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Over the course of a full week we saw it choppy, red and frothy in the wind, glassy and mirrored, with morning fog softening the edges, silent and blue in the evenings, and completely obscured in a gray blanket of fog on our one rainy day.

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lakeside camping, andrus lake, MI photographed by luxagraf

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fog, Andrus Lake, MI photographed by luxagraf

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Most days though, it was sunny and warm, making out little private beach just about perfect.

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swimming at Andrus Lake, MI photographed by luxagraf

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There was also plenty of time for breaking in the new bikes.

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camping, Andrus Lake, MI photographed by luxagraf

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tiny frogs, Andrus Lake, MI photographed by luxagraf — All along the shore at our campsite there were tons of tiny little baby frogs.

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There were a few reasons we came up this way in the first place, one of them was to see a couple sets of friends who’d moved up this way in the past year or so. Another was reason was a book series I’d read to the kids. We picked up a copy of Louise Erdrich’s The Birchbark House for the kids for Christmas, and they loved it. They obsess over it with the kind of enthusiasm and depth that only children and Shakespearean stage actors have.

The Birchbark House takes place on Madeline Island and is the story of a young Ojibwe¹ girl living through the changes that happened in this part of the world between roughly 1840-1870. It’s part one of a five book series and we’ve read them all and, by popular demand, are re-reading them currently. So when Corrinne noticed there was an small Ojibwe powwow and re-enactment happening in nearby St. Ignace, we had to go.

The Ojibwa Cultural Center in St Ignace turned out to be a really nice museum, complete with replica birchbark buildings, and the powwow had a bunch of stuff for kids. Ours got to make some necklaces out of beads and sinew and could have done something I couldn’t parse out with porcupine quills. They also got the best face painting they’ve had on this trip.

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ojibwe festival, st ignace, mi photographed by luxagraf

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The fascinating part for me was realizing that in the course of reading the five books to the kids I’d picked up about the same amount of Ojibwe as I ever did Thai, Laos or even French. Which is to say that when Ojibwe speakers greeted each other, said thank you, good morning, afternoon, and all the other sorts of small greetings and polite interactions you pick up when you travel in another language, I understood them. It was sort of odd since until that day I’d never knowing met any Ojibwe before in my life.

The re-enactment portion of the festival was less captivating to the kids, but I picked up a bottle of real maple syrup that’s so dark you can’t see through it and tastes like pouring a tree on your pancakes. It has a wonderfully smokey flavor to it and is by far the best maple syrup I’ve ever had (sorry Vermont, previous home of the best maple syrup I’ve ever had). The only problem with it is that it has made all store bought syrup seem like bland sugar water. This bottle isn’t going to last forever and I have no way to get anymore like it. Always buy two.

The Ojibwe powwow itself didn’t get going until midday. We saw what I would call the opening ceremony and then our friends from Traverse City got there and we headed out to walk the streets of St Ignace. It can get pretty warm up here if you don’t have shade — the temperature difference between the sunny and shady side of the street is striking up here. We ducked in an antique store to cool off for a bit, (our friend also collects 78 records and I’m never against looking for used camera lenses. One of these days I’ll find that dusty Leica Noctilux 50mm f/1.2 for $50).

After that we decided that we needed to just sit outside in the shade and enjoy the beautiful afternoon, maybe drink a couple of beers while we’re at it. Michigan is noted for its plethora of local of breweries; we’ve been in towns with fewer than a 1000 residents that nevertheless had its own brewery. But in St Ignace the best place we could come up was a restaurant which, if it would throw a few shrimp shell buckets in the center of its table, could easily pass for a Florida seafood shack. Fortunately it had a decent selection of Michigan beers.

It’s strange to sit around “all afternoon” up here, because at 5 o’clock it still looks and feels like it’s about 2 in the afternoon. But it’s not. And we all had about an hour and half of driving to do, so we said our goodbyes, they gave us a basket of what turned out to be the best cherries we’ve ever had, and we all hit the road.

sign, st ignace, mi photographed by luxagraf — The whole upper peninsula is full of great old signs.

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There’s some variation in the spelling of Ojibwe. Louise Erdrich spells it with an e, the Ojibwa cultural center spells it with an a. I went with the e. ↩
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- - - - - - - diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/lakeside-park.txt b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/lakeside-park.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 256e003..0000000 --- a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/lakeside-park.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,62 +0,0 @@ -Lakeside Park -============= - - by Scott Gilbertson - - Thursday, 19 July 2018 - -

After the girls' birthday we had a few extra days before we needed to head south to meet up with my parents. We decided to stick around Andrus Lake a while longer. Who can say no to your own personal beach?

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We spent most of the time enjoying the warm lake water (relative to Superior). It's not a big lake, it's not a deep lake, but what it lacks in size it makes up for in character. I don't think I ever looked out at it and saw the same lake twice.

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- -Most days though, it was sunny and warm, making out little private beach just about perfect. - -

- -There was also plenty of time for breaking in the new bikes. - -

- -There were a few reasons we came up this way in the first place, one of them was to see a couple sets of friends who'd moved up this way in the past year or so. Another was reason was a book series I'd read to the kids. We picked up a copy of Louise Erdrich's [The Birchbark House](https://birchbarkbooks.com/louise-erdrich/the-birchbark-house) for the kids for Christmas, and they loved it. They obsess over it with the kind of enthusiasm and depth that only children and Shakespearean stage actors have. - -The Birchbark House takes place on Madeline Island and is the story of a young Ojibwe[^1] girl living through the changes that happened in this part of the world between roughly 1840-1870. It's part one of a five book series and we've read them all and, by popular demand, are re-reading them currently. So when Corrinne noticed there was an small Ojibwe powwow and re-enactment happening in nearby St. Ignace, we had to go. - -The Ojibwa Cultural Center in St Ignace turned out to be a really nice museum, complete with replica birchbark buildings, and the powwow had a bunch of stuff for kids. Ours got to make some necklaces out of beads and sinew and could have done something I couldn't parse out with porcupine quills. They also got the best face painting they've had on this trip. - -

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- -The fascinating part for me was realizing that in the course of reading the five books to the kids I'd picked up about the same amount of Ojibwe as I ever did Thai, Laos or even French. Which is to say that when Ojibwe speakers greeted each other, said thank you, good morning, afternoon, and all the other sorts of small greetings and polite interactions you pick up when you travel in another language, I understood them. It was sort of odd since until that day I'd never knowing met any Ojibwe before in my life. - -The re-enactment portion of the festival was less captivating to the kids, but I picked up a bottle of real maple syrup that's so dark you can't see through it and tastes like pouring a tree on your pancakes. It has a wonderfully smokey flavor to it and is by far the best maple syrup I've ever had (sorry Vermont, previous home of the best maple syrup I've ever had). The only problem with it is that it has made all store bought syrup seem like bland sugar water. This bottle isn't going to last forever and I have no way to get anymore like it. Always buy two. - -The Ojibwe powwow itself didn't get going until midday. We saw what I would call the opening ceremony and then our friends from Traverse City got there and we headed out to walk the streets of St Ignace. It can get pretty warm up here if you don't have shade -- the temperature difference between the sunny and shady side of the street is striking up here. We ducked in an antique store to cool off for a bit, (our friend also collects 78 records and I'm never against looking for used camera lenses. One of these days I'll find that dusty Leica Noctilux 50mm f/1.2 for $50). - -After that we decided that we needed to just sit outside in the shade and enjoy the beautiful afternoon, maybe drink a couple of beers while we're at it. Michigan is noted for its plethora of local of breweries; we've been in towns with fewer than a 1000 residents that nevertheless had its own brewery. But in St Ignace the best place we could come up was a restaurant which, if it would throw a few shrimp shell buckets in the center of its table, could easily pass for a Florida seafood shack. Fortunately it had a decent selection of Michigan beers. - -It's strange to sit around "all afternoon" up here, because at 5 o'clock it still looks and feels like it's about 2 in the afternoon. But it's not. And we all had about an hour and half of driving to do, so we said our goodbyes, they gave us a basket of what turned out to be the best cherries we've ever had, and we all hit the road. - -

- -[^1]: There's some variation in the spelling of Ojibwe. Louise Erdrich spells it with an e, the Ojibwa cultural center spells it with an a. I went with the e. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/shipwrecks.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/shipwrecks.html deleted file mode 100644 index 70dbd8b..0000000 --- a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/shipwrecks.html +++ /dev/null @@ -1,503 +0,0 @@ - - - - - Shipwrecks - by Scott Gilbertson - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

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Shipwrecks

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Picture Rocks National Lakeshore, Michigan, U.S.

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- July 7, 2018 - -

We were looking for something cool to do for the girls’ birthday, something along the lines of last year’s train ride, when we stumbled across a billboard for a glass bottom boat shipwreck tour. Perfect. We checked the weather and made reservations for the next warm sunny day.

Shipwreck tour, near pictured rocks national seashore photographed by luxagraf — There is no reason for that line behind Corrinne. She just projects that former schoolteacher kind of authority that most people have been conditioned to respond to. So when she stood there, people queued up. Got us the best seats on the boat anyway.

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Somewhat surprisingly the weather was actually correct and we had sun, blue skies and just enough breeze to keep things from getting too hot.

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As I’ve written before, I generally eschew guided tours because most of them suck. In this case, however, it did not suck at all. The tour guide knew her stuff and we learned a ton of stuff about Lake Superior navigation and some of its less successful practitioners. The details are mostly unimportant if you’re not actually here, but there’s one important detail that makes this place unique, perhaps in the world — the water temperature.

On average Lake Superior is 42 degrees, the day we were there it was about 55. That makes for cold swims, but it also means that most of the organisms that eat wood don’t live in Superior. That has two major side effects — the water is insanely clear, and wood lasts a really, really long time underwater because there are no organisms the eat. Lake Superior is, I’d guess, one of the very few places in the world in intact wrecks of wooden ships from the mid 19th century.

The first wreck we floated over in the glass bottom boat sunk in 1870 and was almost completely intact until a couple of years ago when one of the harshest winters on record froze the water all the way down to the wreck (7 feet of ice) and snapped off the stern railing.

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Glass bottom boat, Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, MI photographed by luxagraf

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Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, MI photographed by luxagraf

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I found the first wreck to be the most interesting because it was a canal boat, a little reminder reaching across time to remind us that the only renewable kinds of energy on the planet are wind, water and animals. All three would have been used to moved this boat from Superior down to Lake Erie, across that, and then down the Erie canal to New York. Before interstate highways and fossil fuels good moved by water. After interstate highways and fossil fuels are gone I suspect the waterways will return to their former glory and boatmen will once again be able to make a living. We happen to be living in a brief span of history in which we don’t have to navigate rivers.

We didn’t do the tour out to the cliffs that give Pictured Rocks its name, but we did come up alongside some smaller ones that line the coast of Grand Island.

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Lighthouse, Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, MI photographed by luxagraf

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One afternoon I took the kids on a hike up through the Sable Dunes, a large dune area that’s about half way to being not dune. Come back in a couple thousand, maybe even a few hundred years and you won’t even notice there are dunes here. Like almost no one notices that the entire midwest is a giant dune, temporary held down by about ten feet of soil. At the moment though there’s still a good bit of sand.

The trail was closed in some fashion, though the only clue at to which parts were closed were some tiny, faded pieces of paper printed out and nailed to trees inside plastic baggies. Apparently, that’s a real thing in Michigan. But closing an area by typing out a physical description is, well, hell if I know where they were talking about. Possibly we walked right through the closed area, possibly we did not. It was a nice hike anyway, and took us about as high above Lake Superior as you can get.

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Sand dunes, Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, MI photographed by luxagraf

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hiking, Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, MI photographed by luxagraf

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The last few days we spent down by the lake, where the river comes in. I’ve noticed an increasing number of rock stacks in the world. Up here they’re everywhere, including in the middle of the river where the kids were playing. Apparently people like to stack rocks. We like to knock down stacks of rocks. Win-win.

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Fauna and Flora

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Birds
- American Redstart
- American Robin
- Black-and-white Warbler
- Blackburnian Warbler
- Black-throated Green Warbler
- Cedar Waxwing
- Common Raven
- Golden-crowned Kinglet
- House Wren
- Red-eyed Vireo
- Sandhill Crane
- Yellow-rumped Warbler
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- - - - - - - diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/shipwrecks.txt b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/shipwrecks.txt deleted file mode 100644 index f85c923..0000000 --- a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/shipwrecks.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,63 +0,0 @@ -Shipwrecks -========== - - by Scott Gilbertson - - Saturday, 07 July 2018 - -We were looking for something cool to do for the girls' birthday, something along the lines of [last year's train ride][1], when we stumbled across a billboard for a glass bottom boat shipwreck tour. Perfect. We checked the weather and made reservations for the next warm sunny day. - -

- -Somewhat surprisingly the weather was actually correct and we had sun, blue skies and just enough breeze to keep things from getting too hot. - -

- -As I've written before, I generally eschew guided tours because most of them suck. In this case, however, it did not suck at all. The tour guide knew her stuff and we learned a ton of stuff about Lake Superior navigation and some of its less successful practitioners. The details are mostly unimportant if you're not actually here, but there's one important detail that makes this place unique, perhaps in the world -- the water temperature. - -On average Lake Superior is 42 degrees, the day we were there it was about 55. That makes for cold swims, but it also means that most of the organisms that eat wood don't live in Superior. That has two major side effects -- the water is insanely clear, and wood lasts a really, really long time underwater because there are no organisms the eat. Lake Superior is, I'd guess, one of the very few places in the world in intact wrecks of wooden ships from the mid 19th century. - -The first wreck we floated over in the glass bottom boat sunk in 1870 and was almost completely intact until a couple of years ago when one of the harshest winters on record froze the water all the way down to the wreck (7 feet of ice) and snapped off the stern railing. - -

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- -I found the first wreck to be the most interesting because it was a canal boat, a little reminder reaching across time to remind us that the only renewable kinds of energy on the planet are wind, water and animals. All three would have been used to moved this boat from Superior down to Lake Erie, across that, and then down the Erie canal to New York. Before interstate highways and fossil fuels good moved by water. After interstate highways and fossil fuels are gone I suspect the waterways will return to their former glory and boatmen will once again be able to make a living. We happen to be living in a brief span of history in which we don't have to navigate rivers. - -We didn't do the tour out to the cliffs that give Pictured Rocks its name, but we did come up alongside some smaller ones that line the coast of Grand Island. - - -

- - -One afternoon I took the kids on a hike up through the Sable Dunes, a large dune area that's about half way to being not dune. Come back in a couple thousand, maybe even a few hundred years and you won't even notice there are dunes here. Like almost no one notices that the entire midwest is a giant dune, temporary held down by about ten feet of soil. At the moment though there's still a good bit of sand. - -The trail was closed in some fashion, though the only clue at to which parts were closed were some tiny, faded pieces of paper printed out and nailed to trees inside plastic baggies. Apparently, that's a real thing in Michigan. But closing an area by typing out a physical description is, well, hell if I know where they were talking about. Possibly we walked right through the closed area, possibly we did not. It was a nice hike anyway, and took us about as high above Lake Superior as you can get. - -

- -The last few days we spent down by the lake, where the river comes in. I've noticed an increasing number of rock stacks in the world. Up here they're everywhere, including in the middle of the river where the kids were playing. Apparently people [like to stack rocks][2]. We like to knock down stacks of rocks. Win-win. - -

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- - -[1]: /jrnl/2017/07/happy-5th-birthday -[2]: https://www.hcn.org/articles/a-call-for-an-end-to-cairns-leave-the-stones-alone diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/six.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/six.html deleted file mode 100644 index 6405e05..0000000 --- a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/six.html +++ /dev/null @@ -1,472 +0,0 @@ - - - - - Six - by Scott Gilbertson - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

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Six

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Andrus Lake, Michigan, U.S.

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- July 13, 2018 - -

We gambled a bit for the girls’ birthday this year. We couldn’t stay in Pictured Rocks anymore, we’d hit our two week limit the day before their birthday. We considered trying to stay anyway, bribe the camp hosts or something. In the end we rolled the dice and drove on east, out to the edge of the upper peninsula hoping that the campground we’d found on the map would have a nice enough spot.

It worked out perfectly. We ended up with a spot off to ourselves, beside a smallish lake, with our own private beach — the perfect place for a sixth birthday party.

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The kids tend to be up by 6AM these days, but on their birthday it was about 5. Don’t let the light fool you, it’s early. It’s only truly dark up here for about five hours a day.

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Birthday at Andrus Lake, MI photographed by luxagraf

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One of the upper peninsula’s endearing charms is its decided lack of consumer stuff. There’s not much in the way of stores. I had to drive almost two hours and very nearly into Canada to find the girls their new bikes.

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Elliott is still at the age where it’s really hard to accept that there’s a birthday and it’s not his. We tried to cheer him up by pointing out that we’ll be in Mexico for his birthday and that in Mexico they have exciting things like piñatas. Of course the minute that came out of my mouth the girls had to have a piñatas. You think it’s hard to find bike in the UP, try finding a piñata. Somehow though Corrinne managed to come up with the perfect tiny piñata for our tiny home.

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Pinata, Birthday at Andrus Lake, MI photographed by luxagraf

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Pinata, 6th Birthday photographed by luxagraf

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We have still never fixed our oven. It can probably be done, but at this point we’ve already adapted. I’m going to be buying a waffle iron in Mexico because Elliott won’t hear of not having waffle cake for his birthday. See what you started Taylor and Beth? Thanks for that.

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- - - - - - - diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/six.txt b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/six.txt deleted file mode 100644 index fc6a280..0000000 --- a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/six.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,50 +0,0 @@ -Six -=== - - by Scott Gilbertson - - Friday, 13 July 2018 - -We gambled a bit for the girls' birthday this year. We couldn't stay in Pictured Rocks anymore, we'd hit our two week limit the day before their birthday. We considered trying to stay anyway, bribe the camp hosts or something. In the end we rolled the dice and drove on east, out to the edge of the upper peninsula hoping that the campground we'd found on the map would have a nice enough spot. - -It worked out perfectly. We ended up with a spot off to ourselves, beside a smallish lake, with our own private beach -- the perfect place for a sixth birthday party. - -

- -The kids tend to be up by 6AM these days, but on their birthday it was about 5. Don't let the light fool you, it's early. It's only truly dark up here for about five hours a day. - -

- -One of the upper peninsula's endearing charms is its decided lack of consumer stuff. There's not much in the way of stores. I had to drive almost two hours and very nearly into Canada to find the girls their new bikes. - -

- -Elliott is still at the age where it's really hard to accept that there's a birthday and it's not his. We tried to cheer him up by pointing out that we'll be in Mexico for his birthday and that in Mexico they have exciting things like piñatas. Of course the minute that came out of my mouth the girls had to have a piñatas. You think it's hard to find bike in the UP, try finding a piñata. Somehow though Corrinne managed to come up with the perfect tiny piñata for our tiny home. - -

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- -We have still never fixed our oven. It can probably be done, but at this point we've already adapted. I'm going to be buying a waffle iron in Mexico because Elliott won't hear of not having waffle cake for his birthday. See what you started Taylor and Beth? Thanks for that. - -

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diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/trees.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/trees.html deleted file mode 100644 index 4b77db2..0000000 --- a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/trees.html +++ /dev/null @@ -1,559 +0,0 @@ - - - - - The Trees - by Scott Gilbertson - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

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The Trees

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Picture Rocks National Lakeshore, Michigan, U.S.

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- July 2, 2018 - -

I lay in the hammock looking up at the trees, watching the birch leaves fluttering in the light breeze a hundred feet above me. From down here it’s a confusion of light, color, motion, and shadow. What’s it like up there though? What would it be like to stand among those slender branches that would probably, some of them, support my weight? What kind of perspective on the world would you get up there?

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People climb trees, adults I mean. Probably kids aren’t allowed to climb trees anymore. But some adults do. There are even groups that get together and go climb trees. So I’ve been told.

John Muir writes about climbing a tree in storm to see what it felt like to be blown around. He climbed a 220 foot sugar pine in a storm. “Climbing these grand trees, especially when they are waving and singing in worship in wind-storms, is a glorious experience,” writes Muir in The Yosemite. “Ascending from the lowest branch to the topmost is like stepping up stairs through a blaze of white light, every needle thrilling and shining as if with religious ecstasy.”

I plan to do that some day, but I probably won’t start with 220 foot sugar pines in the midst of a storm. I’ll probably work my way up to tall trees in storms, but I’d like to try it. One of the nice things about this life is that I can lie here in this hammock and stare up at the trees. I can think about climbing them. I can think about other trees, other hammocks.

Last summer, Colorado. A very similar vertical view. This summer it’s birch rather than aspen, jack pine rather than lodgepole and ponderosa, but the overall feel of the place is very similar to Colorado and the vertical view is very close.

A friend of luxagraf, who lives in Iran, but has traveled the desert southwest of the U.S. quite a bit has an interesting article about the visual and ecological similarities between the Sindh desert in Iran (where he lives) and the high desert region of eastern California into western Arizona.

These similarities exist everywhere. I have no doubt that if you beamed me and this hammock into the right elevation of Ural mountains in Russia or the Andes in Peru or the Himalayas of Himachal Pradesh, I would have a similar view of similar tress. The world is made up of similarities more than differences I find, and I think that’s true whether you speak of ecology, culture, religion or my preferred starting point for philosophical reflections — the vertical view from a hammock.

Significant ecological, cultural and religious differences exist as well. I think to certain extent that’s the part of traveling that I like the best, discovering these similarities and differences and holding them up before you and trying to make sense of them, finding the threads that connect places, the threads that exist only in one place and then weaving them together until in some way your journey makes sense to you. Why does the jack pine thrive here, and lodgepole pine thrive in Colorado? Why is there a massive body of fresh water here and a huge range of mountains there? Why do men and women hold hands here, men and men hold hands in India and no one holds hands in China? Why does the idea of reincarnation thrive in Himachal Pradesh and not here? Why is the arboreal forest that used to be here now over one hundred miles north of here?

It’s wrestling with these things that makes travel interesting to me. Seeing things is part of that, part of finding the unique threads of a place, the threads that bind things but that’s not the end of it by any means. Round the world sailor and author Teresa Carey calls this kind of inquiry “a far greater adventure” than just traveling.

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Laying in the hammock, Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, MI photographed by luxagraf

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If you only have two weeks in a place, I guess I understand that drive to get out there and try to see everything you can. We watch people pulling out every morning to go do things while we’re still cooking breakfast¹. A lot of people seem to go somewhere every morning. But then if your time is limited, you want to see what you came to see, I suppose. I’d still probably spend at least half my time “sitting around” because without the chance to daydream and reflect, to pull it all together what’s the point?

But then we’re fortunate enough to be able to more or less stay anywhere we like as long as we choose. Camping limitations do exist, but otherwise we’re pretty open ended. Consequently we don’t tend to rush out and see everything right away, if we see it at all. For instance, we’ve been in Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore for well over a week and haven’t seen the eponymous rocks yet. And I’ll be fine if we never do, that’s not a thread that happens to interest me.

These days I’m content with trees, hammocks (when I get some time in one), sitting here in the forest, watching the wind play in the leaves, the birds sharing food and building nests, the kids digging up earthworms for pets. As more than a few writers have demonstrated, you can spend years obsessing over a single square meter of forest and not exhaust everything it has to teach².

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At the same time, you can take that too far. We don’t sit around all the time, we don’t refuse to “see the sights”. Some long term travelers I’ve met seem to look down on seeing things, like that’s the status symbol that sets them above the common traveler — they’re too cool to see the sights. I think that’s equally as silly as running around like the proverbial headless chicken trying to see it all. The opposite of one bad idea is often another bad idea. If I no long care what’s around the next bend, over the top of that rise or on the other side of the horizon then I’d stop traveling. There is always a third option; some sitting around, some seeing what’s around the bend.

In our case we walk around quite a bit. I walk slowly, the rest of my family not so much. Sometimes I can convince Lilah to hang back with me though, that makes for nice hikes. The world is more fun when you have someone to share it with.

Here there’s a good 3 mile round trip trail out to a lighthouse. That’s about what Elliott is comfortable doing these days, three to four miles. At the end there was a lighthouse and a few outbuildings connected with the lighthouse. We forgot the money for the tour of the lighthouse, but it seemed closed anyway. We marched right on past and scrambled down some rocks to the lake shore for a little lunch. The sandstone shelf we sat on extended nearly half mile out into the water without getting much more than six feet deep. Hence the need for a lighthouse.

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There was a fog bank to the east of the lighthouse that day, a thin layer that obscured all but the top of the dunes just to east of us, dunes that sit some five hundred feet above the lake. The first four hundred feet were hidden by a fog bank that stretched out over the lake and curved back toward the lighthouse, losing density as it neared the point we sat on. We ate our food and watched wisps of wet cloud blow by us and down the coast, seemingly circling back down toward the dunes.

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It wasn’t particularly warm and only Lilah and I hung around after lunch we finished lunch. We explored the shoreline to the east for a while, looking for interesting signs of life. There weren’t many. Lake Superior is cold, clear, and not exactly teeming with life. I’ve seen a few fish, including a huge trout in very shallow water, and Lilah and I found some curious insects, around the rocks, but for the most part it’s pretty quiet around here, biologically speaking. At least on the water. The water average 42 degrees, there’s just enough life to support a fair number of fish, and the birds that feed on them, but not much more than that.

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But what it lacks in life it makes up for in weather. The weather here is the most unusual and dramatically changing weather I’ve ever experienced anywhere on the planet thus far. It’s completely left field. One minute it’s hot, the next it’s cold. And a good percent of the time that’s just barely hyperbolic.

A good bit of my early travels were in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. I’ve backpacked several hundred miles worth of trails and seen a good bit of “interesting weather”. Lightning so close your hair stands up? Check. Hail the size of small oranges? Check. Snow in mid July? Check. Rapid drops in temperature as a storm approaches? Check. Well, maybe not check.

I thought I had experiences some rapid temperature drops, but Lake Superior is a different class with those. One morning, a particularly warm, humid morning, it was 8 AM and the temperature was already climbing steadily. It can get surprisingly hot and muggy around here, and I figured it was going to be a really hot day. But then, about five minutes later the sky was so dark it looked more like night than night, the temperature had dropped well below 55, and the wind was tossing the leafy crowns of the birch trees around like a salad spinner. It was the most complete reversal of weather I’ve ever experienced anywhere in the world.

It was also very localized and didn’t last long. The wind faded quickly and within an hour the nice cool temperatures were gone as if it had never happened. Curiously though, it happened again around 2PM and again around 8PM. My best guess is that somewhere inland it’s heating up enough to pull some air off the middle of the lake and the lake is definitely cold enough to drop the air temp by 30-40 degrees. That particular day the last lake effect cooling timed nicely with bedtime. I still woke up sweating by 1AM, but at least we got to go to bed with a nice cool breeze blowing through.

When it is hot here, and it is more than I expected it would be, especially after our experience in Wisconsin, at least there’s a freezing cold lake to cool off in. And it is cold, cold enough that even the kids haven’t been past their waists. I went under, but it took some effort. Lake Superior is the coldest large body of water I’ve ever swam in. The water temp right now is 55 degrees, but honestly it feels even colder. It’s almost as cold as the Sierra lakes I used to swim in during the early season when there were still fields of snow leading down into them on the north facing slopes.

When its 85-90 out though Superior feels refreshing and nice. At least for a minute or two. Then you get out and the air around you feels insanely humid and hot and you want to slip back into the lake, but then it starts to be too much, you get a sort of pins and needles sensation in your feet after a while. So you climb out, sit on the rocks, and play with the kids until you get hot enough that you want to try getting back in the lake again.

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The second time we went down to the shore line to beat the heat we learned something else about the wind in these parts. When it blows onshore it keeps the black flies at bay. When it blows offshore, look out.

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Playing in Lake Superior, Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, MI photographed by luxagraf

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For whatever reason I have no problem with mosquitoes. Some recently asked what we do about mosquitoes and I told them we have Thermacell, which works well enough, and we use it during the times of day the mozzies are really bad, but the rest of the time, honestly, I don’t bother much. They bite me. I swat them when it hurts, and if I’m in malaria/dengue/etc areas I take mosquitoes more seriously, but mosquitoes are supposed to bite, that’s what they do.

Where I come from though flies are completely benign, perhaps that’s why biting flies bother me. It seems extra cruel to take an ubiquitous and already fairly annoying creature and then make it capable of a painful bite. Screw that. I hate black flies. But then I hate when black flies drive me away from something I want to do, so I tend to stick it out until they get real bad. If you keep moving they don’t bother you as much, so we spent most of our beach time walking, climbing rocks, looking for agates, good skipping rocks, gnarled driftwood, birds, fish and whatever else captures out attention.

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Not that we’re late risers, by the time we make breakfast I’ve usually been out birding, meditated and drank my way through at least two moka pots worth of coffee and Corrinne has generally walked 5 miles or so. ↩
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This is, to me, the best argument against traveling — it doesn’t allow for the sort of depth of study, be it ecological, cultural, whatever, that’s possible when you stay in one place. For me though, staying in one place leads to complacency, less awareness and a tendency to take the world for granted. ↩
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Fauna and Flora

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Birds
- American Redstart
- American Robin
- Black-and-white Warbler
- Blackburnian Warbler
- Black-throated Green Warbler
- Cedar Waxwing
- Common Raven
- Golden-crowned Kinglet
- House Wren
- Red-eyed Vireo
- Sandhill Crane
- Yellow-rumped Warbler
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2 Comments

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- DREW ELDRIDGE - July 16, 2018 at 11:07 a.m. -

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I am 100% the chicken with its head cut off traveler. I sit here in my cube 50% of my waking hours on this planet it seems. The other 50% im trying to see as much as possible. On our upcoming trip the sun rises at 5AM and sets at 1030pm and I plan to use it all.

Awesome perspective- if I had the time- I would love to chill and reflect. But ill wait until im back in my cube to do that. -Until then, I will continue to live through you all- Carry on!

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- Scott - July 26, 2018 at 10:19 a.m. -

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DREW-

I’m naturally drawn to the chicken approach myself. It’s taken me about 10 months to let go of that need to always be doing something. I’m still not entirely there. We’ll be passing through a huge city later this year, we have about 5, maybe 7 days. I’ve already got a list of about 25 places I want to visit. :)

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Thoughts?

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- - - - - - - diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/trees.txt b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/trees.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 4d85b03..0000000 --- a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2018/07/trees.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,93 +0,0 @@ -The Trees -========= - - by Scott Gilbertson - - Monday, 02 July 2018 - -I lay in the hammock looking up at the trees, watching the birch leaves fluttering in the light breeze a hundred feet above me. From down here it's a confusion of light, color, motion, and shadow. What's it like up there though? What would it be like to stand among those slender branches that would probably, some of them, support my weight? What kind of perspective on the world would you get up there? - -

- -People climb trees, adults I mean. Probably kids aren't allowed to climb trees anymore. But some adults do. There are even groups that get together and go climb trees. So I've been told. - -John Muir writes about climbing a tree in storm to see what it felt like to be blown around. He climbed a 220 foot sugar pine in a storm. "Climbing these grand trees, especially when they are waving and singing in worship in wind-storms, is a glorious experience," writes Muir in The Yosemite. "Ascending from the lowest branch to the topmost is like stepping up stairs through a blaze of white light, every needle thrilling and shining as if with religious ecstasy." - -I plan to do that some day, but I probably won't start with 220 foot sugar pines in the midst of a storm. I'll probably work my way up to tall trees in storms, but I'd like to try it. One of the nice things about this life is that I can lie here in this hammock and stare up at the trees. I can think about climbing them. I can think about other trees, other hammocks. - -Last summer, Colorado. A very similar vertical view. This summer it's birch rather than aspen, jack pine rather than lodgepole and ponderosa, but the overall feel of the place is very similar to Colorado and the vertical view is very close. - -A friend of luxagraf, who lives in Iran, but has traveled the desert southwest of the U.S. quite a bit has an interesting article about the [visual and ecological similarities][4] between the Sindh desert in Iran (where he lives) and the high desert region of eastern California into western Arizona. - -These similarities exist everywhere. I have no doubt that if you beamed me and this hammock into the right elevation of Ural mountains in Russia or the Andes in Peru or the Himalayas of Himachal Pradesh, I would have a similar view of similar tress. The world is made up of similarities more than differences I find, and I think that's true whether you speak of ecology, culture, religion or my preferred starting point for philosophical reflections -- the vertical view from a hammock. - -Significant ecological, cultural and religious differences exist as well. I think to certain extent that's the part of traveling that I like the best, discovering these similarities and differences and holding them up before you and trying to make sense of them, finding the threads that connect places, the threads that exist only in one place and then weaving them together until in some way your journey makes sense to you. Why does the jack pine thrive here, and lodgepole pine thrive in Colorado? Why is there a massive body of fresh water here and a huge range of mountains there? Why do men and women hold hands here, men and men hold hands in India and no one holds hands in China? Why does the idea of reincarnation thrive in Himachal Pradesh and not here? Why is the arboreal forest that used to be here now over one hundred miles north of here? - -It's wrestling with these things that makes travel interesting to me. Seeing things is part of that, part of finding the unique threads of a place, the threads that bind things but that's not the end of it by any means. Round the world sailor and author [Teresa Carey][3] calls this kind of inquiry "a far greater adventure" than just traveling. - -

- -If you only have two weeks in a place, I guess I understand that drive to get out there and try to see everything you can. We watch people pulling out every morning to go do things while we're still cooking breakfast[^1]. A lot of people seem to go somewhere every morning. But then if your time is limited, you want to see what you came to see, I suppose. I'd still probably spend at least half my time "sitting around" because without the chance to daydream and reflect, to pull it all together what's the point? - -But then we're fortunate enough to be able to more or less stay anywhere we like as long as we choose. Camping limitations do exist, but otherwise we're pretty open ended. Consequently we don't tend to rush out and see everything right away, if we see it at all. For instance, we've been in Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore for well over a week and haven't seen the eponymous rocks yet. And I'll be fine if we never do, that's not a thread that happens to interest me. - -These days I'm content with trees, hammocks (when I get some time in one), sitting here in the forest, watching the wind play in the leaves, the birds sharing food and building nests, the kids digging up earthworms for pets. As more than a few writers have [demonstrated][1], you can spend years obsessing over a [single square meter][2] of forest and not exhaust everything it has to teach[^2]. - -

- -At the same time, you can take that too far. We don't sit around all the time, we don't refuse to "see the sights". Some long term travelers I've met seem to look down on seeing things, like that's the status symbol that sets them above the common traveler -- they're too cool to see the sights. I think that's equally as silly as running around like the proverbial headless chicken trying to see it all. The opposite of one bad idea is often another bad idea. If I no long care what's around the next bend, over the top of that rise or on the other side of the horizon then I'd stop traveling. There is always a third option; some sitting around, some seeing what's around the bend. - -In our case we walk around quite a bit. I walk slowly, the rest of my family not so much. Sometimes I can convince Lilah to hang back with me though, that makes for nice hikes. The world is more fun when you have someone to share it with. - -Here there's a good 3 mile round trip trail out to a lighthouse. That's about what Elliott is comfortable doing these days, three to four miles. At the end there was a lighthouse and a few outbuildings connected with the lighthouse. We forgot the money for the tour of the lighthouse, but it seemed closed anyway. We marched right on past and scrambled down some rocks to the lake shore for a little lunch. The sandstone shelf we sat on extended nearly half mile out into the water without getting much more than six feet deep. Hence the need for a lighthouse. - -

- -There was a fog bank to the east of the lighthouse that day, a thin layer that obscured all but the top of the dunes just to east of us, dunes that sit some five hundred feet above the lake. The first four hundred feet were hidden by a fog bank that stretched out over the lake and curved back toward the lighthouse, losing density as it neared the point we sat on. We ate our food and watched wisps of wet cloud blow by us and down the coast, seemingly circling back down toward the dunes. - -

- -It wasn't particularly warm and only Lilah and I hung around after lunch we finished lunch. We explored the shoreline to the east for a while, looking for interesting signs of life. There weren't many. Lake Superior is cold, clear, and not exactly teeming with life. I've seen a few fish, including a huge trout in very shallow water, and Lilah and I found some curious insects, around the rocks, but for the most part it's pretty quiet around here, biologically speaking. At least on the water. The water average 42 degrees, there's just enough life to support a fair number of fish, and the birds that feed on them, but not much more than that. - -

- -But what it lacks in life it makes up for in weather. The weather here is the most unusual and dramatically changing weather I've ever experienced anywhere on the planet thus far. It's completely left field. One minute it's hot, the next it's cold. And a good percent of the time that's just barely hyperbolic. - -A good bit of my early travels were in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. I've backpacked several hundred miles worth of trails and seen a good bit of "interesting weather". Lightning so close your hair stands up? Check. Hail the size of small oranges? Check. Snow in mid July? Check. Rapid drops in temperature as a storm approaches? Check. Well, maybe not check. - -I thought I had experiences some rapid temperature drops, but Lake Superior is a different class with those. One morning, a particularly warm, humid morning, it was 8 AM and the temperature was already climbing steadily. It can get surprisingly hot and muggy around here, and I figured it was going to be a really hot day. But then, about five minutes later the sky was so dark it looked more like night than night, the temperature had dropped well below 55, and the wind was tossing the leafy crowns of the birch trees around like a salad spinner. It was the most complete reversal of weather I've ever experienced anywhere in the world. - -It was also very localized and didn't last long. The wind faded quickly and within an hour the nice cool temperatures were gone as if it had never happened. Curiously though, it happened again around 2PM and again around 8PM. My best guess is that somewhere inland it's heating up enough to pull some air off the middle of the lake and the lake is definitely cold enough to drop the air temp by 30-40 degrees. That particular day the last lake effect cooling timed nicely with bedtime. I still woke up sweating by 1AM, but at least we got to go to bed with a nice cool breeze blowing through. - -When it is hot here, and it is more than I expected it would be, especially after our experience in Wisconsin, at least there's a freezing cold lake to cool off in. And it is cold, cold enough that even the kids haven't been past their waists. I went under, but it took some effort. Lake Superior is the coldest large body of water I've ever swam in. The water temp right now is 55 degrees, but honestly it feels even colder. It's almost as cold as the Sierra lakes I used to swim in during the early season when there were still fields of snow leading down into them on the north facing slopes. - -When its 85-90 out though Superior feels refreshing and nice. At least for a minute or two. Then you get out and the air around you feels insanely humid and hot and you want to slip back into the lake, but then it starts to be too much, you get a sort of pins and needles sensation in your feet after a while. So you climb out, sit on the rocks, and play with the kids until you get hot enough that you want to try getting back in the lake again. - -

- -The second time we went down to the shore line to beat the heat we learned something else about the wind in these parts. When it blows onshore it keeps the black flies at bay. When it blows offshore, look out. - -

- -For whatever reason I have no problem with mosquitoes. Some recently asked what we do about mosquitoes and I told them we have Thermacell, which works well enough, and we use it during the times of day the mozzies are really bad, but the rest of the time, honestly, I don't bother much. They bite me. I swat them when it hurts, and if I'm in malaria/dengue/etc areas I take mosquitoes more seriously, but mosquitoes are supposed to bite, that's what they do. - -Where I come from though flies are completely benign, perhaps that's why biting flies bother me. It seems extra cruel to take an ubiquitous and already fairly annoying creature and then make it capable of a painful bite. Screw that. I hate black flies. But then I hate when black flies drive me away from something I want to do, so I tend to stick it out until they get real bad. If you keep moving they don't bother you as much, so we spent most of our beach time walking, climbing rocks, looking for agates, good skipping rocks, gnarled driftwood, birds, fish and whatever else captures out attention. - - - - - -[^1]: Not that we're late risers, by the time we make breakfast I've usually been out birding, meditated and drank my way through at least two moka pots worth of coffee and Corrinne has generally walked 5 miles or so. -[^2]: This is, to me, the best argument against traveling -- it doesn't allow for the sort of depth of study, be it ecological, cultural, whatever, that's possible when you stay in one place. For me though, staying in one place leads to complacency, less awareness and a tendency to take the world for granted. - -[1]: /books/gathering-moss -[2]: /books/the-forest-unseen -[3]: http://teresacarey.com/ -[4]: http://newslinemagazine.com/is-it-california-or-is-it-sindh/ -- cgit v1.2.3-70-g09d2