jrnl: finished up st george piece

1 files changed, 54 insertions, 49 deletions

diff --git a/scratch.txt b/scratch.txt
index 679c6b2..3bad752 100644
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+++ b/scratch.txt
@@ -206,103 +206,108 @@ People have forgotten how important the sun is. You can die from lack of sun.
 Every little withdrawl you can make, not only resists the system, but empowers you. Yes even tiny acts like paying cash to a person rather than swiping your implant at the self checkout screen.
 
 
-## St George
+## Bus Work
 
-Driving west on Florida's highway 98 is a little like traveling back in time. It's hard to believe standing amidst the crowds of Panama City Beach, but not ten miles east, once you pass through the actual Panama City, the crowds disappear, along with everything else. 
+I was scraping the windows one afternoon. It was hot and humid, the Florida sun can feel like a heat lamp in a kitchen, relentless, baking. I was sweating and scraping and the old sealant was warm so it was gummy and not coming off the way it does in cooler weather and I was hot and frustrated and mad and feeling like I'd rather be at the beach and why was I doing this anyway and my daughter walked by and said that's out window. We share it (meaning her and her twin sister). She pointed to the pane that is behind her head and the pane that is behind her sister's head and then she walked off. And I stood there for a minute and thought right, that's why I am doing this, to keep my family warm and dry.
 
-After winding through some rundown warehouse districts at the very eastern edge of the city the highway passes over East Bay and onto the property of Tyndall Air Force Base. The base is a kind of barrier that stops Panama City from advancing eastward. Once you clear the long stretch of pine forest that makes up the eastern portion of the base you come to Mexico Beach, which is in the process of expanding. I'm not sure why, it's the least appealing part of this area. My working theory is that it's cheap. If you can't afford 30A, you buy here maybe. 
+That's really the only job there is in life -- making sure my wife and kids have a warm, dry, safe place in the world. Strip away all the pretensions of culture and what's left? We make shelters and feed our family and friends, maybe even strangers. That's what all creatures do, each in their own way. 
 
-It's after Mexico Beach that you begin to slip back in time. The road alternates running along the seashore and winding through slash pine forests. It's wilder, and only occasionally interspersed with small towns. This is the part of Florida we've been visiting regularly since 2010.
 
-<img src="images/2023/GX010132-f001676.jpg" id="image-3481" class="picwide" />
+### night sounds
 
-The region from roughly Port St Joe in the west, to Alligator Point in the east, is known as The Lost Coast. That's mostly a local marketing term, but it has an element of truth to it. Far fewer people come out here. It's too far from any airports and it lacks high end resorts to draw in the tourists. Those who come here like it that way.
+walking in the evenings whipoorwills echo on all sides, the spring peepers croak and creak in the reeds. A warm soft wind puffs a sigh of coolness, here and there through the trees I catch a glimmery flicker of flames from a campfire.  
 
-<img src="images/2023/2023-04-15_071331_st-george.jpg" id="image-3466" class="picwide" />
+The window tracks 
 
-Having been coming here for so long, I've written about this area quite a few times so I went back and read some of my older pieces. In [All The Pretty Beaches](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2013/05/all-the-pretty-beaches) I call this area "a little backwater in time" and it still is, mostly. It's a slice of the world as was before the proliferation of mega-resorts and all-inclusive vacation package extravaganzas. 
 
-There's still little more to St. George than a store, a gas station and a couple of seafood trailers offering up fresh shrimp and scallops from nearby Apalachicola. Sure, there are plenty of AirBnBs and condos, and I'd guess that there are fewer full time residents than there were in 2010, but the two motels are still rundown affairs that still look like holdouts from the early 1990s. Nothing on the island feels all that different than it did over a decade ago. Perhaps this place really is lost.
+## Fire, cooking with fire
 
-Little things have changed of course. Doug's seafood trailer is no longer there, Doug passed away several years ago. The grocery store on the island is considerably fancier than it used to be. A Boar's Head has replaced the dried out breaded shrimp under heat lamps. But otherwise the same resturants still serve up the same food to people that look much the same as they always have.
 
-Prices are through the roof though. We couldn't afford to rent the beach house we used to stay in even if we wanted to. AirBnB changed everything everywhere for the worse. That's okay. These days we head even further away from civilization to the state park at the far end of the island. It's a good twenty minute drive from our campsite to the first signs of the civilization, which is a rarity on the east coast, let alone on the Florida coast.
+"No longer did pre-humans hide in the safety of their trees, but communicated, learned to make music, discuss politics, gossip and laugh under the protection of ground predator’s worst enemy - the campfire, while cooking meals that were collaboratively brought home.{
 
-It manages to feel even further removed than that. When we come out here we load up before hand so we don't really have to leave the park. For about ten days we didn't do much other than wander the maritime forests of oak and pine and swim and play in the sea. 
+"During the age of the campfire, communication and language, cunning and humor, strategy and camaraderie all intermingled in a shared life by the warmth of a fire. The campfire imposed advanced communication and social interaction onto the arc of human evolution, and this is the time in which the human brain swelled in size - rapidly by evolutionary standards - to meet the demands of a socialized group."
 
-The only problem was the purple flag. 
+from: https://www.notesfromtheroad.com/cascadia/dark-divide.html
 
-Coming from California, I find Florida's definition of what makes for a red flag day downright hilarious. I have never seen any beach conditions in the Gulf that would warrant more than a yellow flag in California. If that. But here the red flag is almost constant. I've already said my piece about our safety-third philosophy, I won't repeat it here. But a purple flag is different. We did not have those in California. The purple flag is for "stinging marine life". I talked to a ranger about it. Portuguese man o' war had been washing up the week before. He said it had been a few days since they'd had any alerts. But then, you never now. Portugese Man-o-war are pretty obvious in clear water, they stick up above the surface and are bright purple. The problem is their tentacles can be alarming long and often proceed them in the water, depending on current.
+There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace. . . . To avoid the second, he should lay a split of good oak on the andirons, preferably where there is no furnace, and let it warm his shins while a February blizzard tosses the trees outside. If one has cut, split, hauled, and piled his own good oak, and let his mind work the while, he will remember much about where the heat comes from, and with a wealth of detail denied to those who spend the week end in town astride a radiator.
 
-When we were here at Christmas the kids and I stumbled on a little trail that led down to the leeward side of the island, which faces St. George Island sound.
+–Aldo Leopold (“February” in A Sand County Almanac)
 
+"First and foremost, heating with wood requires planning. Paradoxically, *well-seasoned* wood does not grow on trees. Best practices for heating with wood dictate that one had better budget for several months of curing and drying—a year is even better. And this is not an aspirational best practice given that burning unseasoned, “green” wood is frustrating, inefficient, and dangerous: unseasoned wood leads to greater creosote build-up in the flue and thus an increased risk of a flue fire."
 
+"To have a year’s supply of firewood stacked and covered twelve months before one plans to burn it requires a commitment to preparation that runs counter to our “on demand” and “just-in-time” world. "
 
+"Thus, depending on wood for heat places one in a close relationship with wood. In addition to the BTUs particular species contain, one who is mindful and observant can learn much about other, sometimes subtle characteristics of specific species of trees for, as Thomas Hardy notes at the beginning of Under the Greenwood Tree (1872), “to dwellers in a wood almost every species of tree has its voice as well as its feature.” Black walnut (Juglans nigra), as it burns, buries itself in a layer of ashes that insulate and preserve coals. In this regard black walnut even seems to outlast long-burning, high-BTU species like oak, hickory, and locust. I don’t know exactly what to call this quality other than an afterlife. Black walnut seems to me to have the longest afterlife I have come across—even after the fire has dwindled and the stove cooled, I have uncovered a bed of glowing embers that enables me to bring the fire back to life. Tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipifera) is about the opposite: it ignites quickly and burns out rapidly. And it gets its other name (yellow poplar) from the way it “pops” as it burns, so be wary of leaving an open poplar fire unattended."
 
-And, 
 
+https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2023/01/heating-with-wood-as-a-habit-of-mind/
 
+https://amazingribs.com/more-technique-and-science/grill-and-smoker-setup-and-firing/campfire-cooking/?p=22415
 
-<img src="images/2023/2023-04-11_152823_st-george.jpg" id="image-3465" class="picwide" />
-<img src="images/2023/2023-04-11_145822_st-george.jpg" id="image-3464" class="picwide" />
-<img src="images/2023/2023-04-05_113155_st-george.jpg" id="image-3463" class="picwide" />
-<img src="images/2023/2023-04-04_163641_st-george.jpg" id="image-3462" class="picwide" />
-<img src="images/2023/2023-04-04_162252_st-george.jpg" id="image-3461" class="picwide" />
-<img src="images/2023/2023-04-04_160444_st-george.jpg" id="image-3460" class="picwide" />
-<img src="images/2023/2023-04-04_155857_st-george.jpg" id="image-3459" class="picwide" />
-<img src="images/2023/2023-04-04_152419_st-george.jpg" id="image-3458" class="picwide" />
-<img src="images/2023/2023-04-04_151441_st-george.jpg" id="image-3457" class="picwide" />
-<img src="images/2023/2023-04-04_151356_st-george.jpg" id="image-3456" class="picwide" />
-<img src="images/2023/2023-04-03_151352_st-george.jpg" id="image-3455" class="picwide" />
-<img src="images/2023/2023-04-03_142846_st-george.jpg" id="image-3454" class="picwide" />
+## loss of getting lost
 
-## Bus Work
+https://www.vagabondjourney.com/you-cant-get-lost-anymore/
 
-I was scraping the windows one afternoon. It was hot and humid, the Florida sun can feel like a heat lamp in a kitchen, relentless, baking. I was sweating and scraping and the old sealant was warm so it was gummy and not coming off the way it does in cooler weather and I was hot and frustrated and mad and feeling like I'd rather be at the beach and why was I doing this anyway and my daughter walked by and said that's out window. We share it (meaning her and her twin sister). She pointed to the pane that is behind her head and the pane that is behind her sister's head and then she walked off. And I stood there for a minute and thought right, that's why I am doing this, to keep my family warm and dry.
+## Q and A Bus article
 
-That's really the only job there is in life -- making sure my wife and kids have a warm, dry, safe place in the world. Strip away all the pretensions of culture and what's left? We make shelters and feed our family and friends, maybe even strangers. That's what all creatures do, each in their own way. 
 
 
-### night sounds
+# jrnl
 
-walking in the evenings whipoorwills echo on all sides, the spring peepers croak and creak in the reeds. A warm soft wind puffs a sigh of coolness, here and there through the trees I catch a glimmery flicker of flames from a campfire.  
+## St George
 
-The window tracks 
+Driving west on Florida's highway 98 is a little like traveling back in time. It's hard to believe standing amidst the crowds of Panama City Beach, but not ten miles east, once you pass through the actual Panama City, the crowds disappear, along with everything else. 
 
+After winding through some rundown warehouse districts at the very eastern edge of the city the highway passes over East Bay and onto the property of Tyndall Air Force Base. The base is a kind of barrier that stops Panama City from advancing eastward. Once you clear the long stretch of pine forest that makes up the eastern portion of the base you come to Mexico Beach, which is in the process of expanding. I'm not sure why, it's the least appealing part of this area. My working theory is that it's cheap. If you can't afford 30A, you buy here maybe. 
 
-## Fire, cooking with fire
+It's after Mexico Beach that you begin to slip back in time. The road alternates running along the seashore and winding through slash pine forests. It's wilder, and only occasionally interspersed with small towns. This is the part of Florida we've been visiting regularly since 2010.
 
+<img src="images/2023/GX010132-f001676.jpg" id="image-3481" class="picwide" />
 
-"No longer did pre-humans hide in the safety of their trees, but communicated, learned to make music, discuss politics, gossip and laugh under the protection of ground predator’s worst enemy - the campfire, while cooking meals that were collaboratively brought home.{
+The region from roughly Port St Joe in the west, to Alligator Point in the east, is known as The Lost Coast. That's mostly a local marketing term, but it has an element of truth to it. Far fewer people come out here. It's too far from any airports and it lacks high end resorts to draw in the tourists. Those who come here like it that way.
 
-"During the age of the campfire, communication and language, cunning and humor, strategy and camaraderie all intermingled in a shared life by the warmth of a fire. The campfire imposed advanced communication and social interaction onto the arc of human evolution, and this is the time in which the human brain swelled in size - rapidly by evolutionary standards - to meet the demands of a socialized group."
+<img src="images/2023/2023-04-15_071331_st-george.jpg" id="image-3466" class="picwide" />
 
-from: https://www.notesfromtheroad.com/cascadia/dark-divide.html
+Having been coming here for so long, I've written about this area quite a few times so I went back and read some of my older pieces. In [All The Pretty Beaches](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2013/05/all-the-pretty-beaches) I call this area "a little backwater in time" and it still is, mostly. It's a slice of the world as was before the proliferation of mega-resorts and all-inclusive vacation package extravaganzas. 
 
-There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace. . . . To avoid the second, he should lay a split of good oak on the andirons, preferably where there is no furnace, and let it warm his shins while a February blizzard tosses the trees outside. If one has cut, split, hauled, and piled his own good oak, and let his mind work the while, he will remember much about where the heat comes from, and with a wealth of detail denied to those who spend the week end in town astride a radiator.
+There's still little more to St. George than a store, a gas station and a couple of seafood trailers offering up fresh shrimp and scallops from nearby Apalachicola. Sure, there are plenty of AirBnBs and condos, and I'd guess that there are fewer full time residents than there were in 2010, but the two motels are still rundown affairs that still look like holdouts from the early 1990s. Nothing on the island feels all that different than it did over a decade ago. Perhaps this place really is lost.
 
-–Aldo Leopold (“February” in A Sand County Almanac)
+Little things have changed of course. Doug's seafood trailer is no longer there, Doug passed away several years ago now. The grocery store on the island is considerably fancier than it used to be. A Boar's Head Deli has replaced the dried out breaded shrimp under heat lamps. But otherwise the same resturants still serve up the same food to people that look much the same as they always have.
 
-"First and foremost, heating with wood requires planning. Paradoxically, *well-seasoned* wood does not grow on trees. Best practices for heating with wood dictate that one had better budget for several months of curing and drying—a year is even better. And this is not an aspirational best practice given that burning unseasoned, “green” wood is frustrating, inefficient, and dangerous: unseasoned wood leads to greater creosote build-up in the flue and thus an increased risk of a flue fire."
+Prices are through the roof though. We couldn't afford to rent the beach house we used to stay in even if we wanted to. AirBnB changed everything everywhere for the worse. That's okay. These days we head even further away from civilization to the state park at the far end of the island. It's a good thirty minute drive from our campsite to the first signs of the civilization, which is a rarity on the east coast, let alone on the Florida coast.
 
-"To have a year’s supply of firewood stacked and covered twelve months before one plans to burn it requires a commitment to preparation that runs counter to our “on demand” and “just-in-time” world. "
+We embrace the remoteness. When we come out here we load up on food before hand so we don't really have to leave the park. For about ten days we didn't do much other than wander the maritime forests of oak and pine and swim and play in the sea. 
 
-"Thus, depending on wood for heat places one in a close relationship with wood. In addition to the BTUs particular species contain, one who is mindful and observant can learn much about other, sometimes subtle characteristics of specific species of trees for, as Thomas Hardy notes at the beginning of Under the Greenwood Tree (1872), “to dwellers in a wood almost every species of tree has its voice as well as its feature.” Black walnut (Juglans nigra), as it burns, buries itself in a layer of ashes that insulate and preserve coals. In this regard black walnut even seems to outlast long-burning, high-BTU species like oak, hickory, and locust. I don’t know exactly what to call this quality other than an afterlife. Black walnut seems to me to have the longest afterlife I have come across—even after the fire has dwindled and the stove cooled, I have uncovered a bed of glowing embers that enables me to bring the fire back to life. Tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipifera) is about the opposite: it ignites quickly and burns out rapidly. And it gets its other name (yellow poplar) from the way it “pops” as it burns, so be wary of leaving an open poplar fire unattended."
+The only problem was the purple flag. 
 
+Coming from California, I find Florida's use of warming flags downright hilarious. I have never seen any beach conditions in the Gulf that would warrant more than a yellow flag in California. If that. But here the red flag is almost constant. I've already said my piece about our [safety-third philosophy](https://luxagraf.net/essay/safety-third), I won't repeat it here. Suffice to say that the color of flag never has much bearing on what we do at the beach here. But a purple flag is different. 
 
-https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2023/01/heating-with-wood-as-a-habit-of-mind/
+We did not have those in California. The purple flag is for "stinging marine life". I talked to a ranger about it. Portuguese man o' war had been washing up the week before. He said it had been a few days since they'd had any reports. But then, you never know. Portugese Man-o-war are pretty obvious in clear water, they stick up above the surface and are bright purple. The problem is their tentacles can be alarming long and often proceed them in the water, depending on current.
 
-https://amazingribs.com/more-technique-and-science/grill-and-smoker-setup-and-firing/campfire-cooking/?p=22415
+<img src="images/2023/2023-04-05_113155_st-george.jpg" id="image-3463" class="picwide" />
 
-## loss of getting lost
 
-https://www.vagabondjourney.com/you-cant-get-lost-anymore/
+I decided -- wait for it -- that is wasn't worth the risk. When we were here at Christmas the kids and I stumbled on a little trail that led down to the leeward side of the island, which faces St. George Island sound. This became our hang out spot. Everyone else headed to the windward beaches, leaving the sound side to us. We spent whole days out there without seeing another soul.
 
-## Q and A Bus article
+<img src="images/2023/2023-04-04_151441_st-george.jpg" id="image-3457" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2023/2023-04-04_152419_st-george.jpg" id="image-3458" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2023/2023-04-04_163641_st-george.jpg" id="image-3462" class="picwide" />
 
+I got out the paddle boards, we'd pack lunch and head down to the water. There was even a little picnic table I could work at while the kids played. I'd be hard pressed to think of a better place to spend our time. Not coincidentally, the campground on Lake Superior where we spend our summers has virtually the same setup, picnic table by the water with a little beach. We really don't need much to call a place paradise.
+
+<img src="images/2023/2023-04-03_142846_st-george.jpg" id="image-3454" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2023/2023-04-04_151356_st-george.jpg" id="image-3456" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2023/2023-04-11_152823_st-george.jpg" id="image-3465" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2023/2023-04-04_162252_st-george.jpg" id="image-3461" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2023/2023-04-04_160444_st-george.jpg" id="image-3460" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2023/2023-04-04_155857_st-george.jpg" id="image-3459" class="picwide caption" />
+<img src="images/2023/2023-04-03_151352_st-george.jpg" id="image-3455" class="picwide" />
+
+One day I took the paddle board on a longer trip, paddling for a few hours up the coastline. I am in the process of editing a movie about, but it was interesting. I made me realize that longer paddles, perhaps even going overnight would definitely be possible. Florida is too hot these days to make that comfortable, but I'm looking into some trips when we get up north. I'd be curious to hear from anyone who's done an overnight paddleboard trip.
+
+As happens when you live this way, we reached the day when it was time to head on. We had some business to take care of back in Pensacola. I mentioned this to the camphost one day and she kind of wrinkled her nose and paused for a moment before saying, "oh... it's very crowded up that way". I smiled because I knew exactly what she meant. You get used to life at the pace of the Lost Coast and everything else starts to seem like... too much. We decided Pensacola could wait and managed to book a few more days out here.
 
 
-# jrnl
 
 ## St. Andrews