diff options
| -rw-r--r-- | 2018-05-18_athens.txt | 54 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 2018-06-04_alberto-land-between-the-lakes.txt | 56 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | TODO | 16 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | american-redstart.txt | 3 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | barredowl.txt | 11 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | beyond-the-blue.txt | 20 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | bobolink.txt | 9 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | cc.txt | 73 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | garden-gods.txt | 52 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | one.txt | 32 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | picture-rocks.txt | 47 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | road-again.txt | 35 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | scarlet-tanager.txt | 3 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | singing-on-the-bayou.txt | 5 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | st-louis.txt | 83 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | summer-tanager.txt | 7 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | thrasher.txt | 9 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | wisconsin.txt | 38 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | yellow-warbler.txt | 5 |
19 files changed, 556 insertions, 2 deletions
diff --git a/2018-05-18_athens.txt b/2018-05-18_athens.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..35c8b14 --- /dev/null +++ b/2018-05-18_athens.txt @@ -0,0 +1,54 @@ +One day we fired up the bus and finally headed off St. George Island. We hugged the coast for a while before pointing our nose north, toward our former home in Athens, GA. + +<img src="images/2018/2018-04-24_095547_beach-house-ii.jpg" id="image-1341" class="picwide caption" /> + +It was a slow drive, the mushy brakes never far from my mind, which gave things an edge, made it far more interesting than it should have been. But, and I know this sounds crazy, I really don't use the brakes much in the bus. Take your foot off the gas and 10,000 lbs (or so) will stop pretty damn quickly. That's no excuse for letting the brakes get as bad as I did, but it might explain how I made it to Athens in one piece. + +We stopped overnight at Reed Bingham State Park in south Georgia. It had been several months since we'd driven more than 100 miles in a day and we were out of practice, after driving for two hours, we needed a break. + +<div class="cluster"> +<span class="row-2"> +<img src="images/2018/2018-04-24_145319_reed-bingham.jpg" id="image-1339" class="cluster pic5" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-04-24_145431-2_reed-bingham.jpg" id="image-1340" class="cluster pic5" /> +</span> +<img src="images/2018/2018-04-24_143704_reed-bingham.jpg" id="image-1338" class="cluster picwide" /> +</div> + +After a little time on the playground, a good nights rest in the forest, and a dump of the tanks, we managed to make it the rest of the way to Athens. + +We had couple nights in town before I dropped the bus off at the mechanic's, so I spent the first few days in town frantically trying to get a dozen or so bus projects done. I pulled several panels of wood in the front (the little scoop air vents leak and I'm pretty sure they'll never stop so I cut new wood and sealed with fiberglass resin, if it's not waterproof now, it never will be), completely gutted our step area (the porch I call it), ran some new wires for new electrical outlet, repainted the kids' room in the back, and took care of at least a dozen other little "paper cut" annoyances that needed to be solved. + +And then we dropped off the bus at the truck mechanic's shop and became homeless for about three weeks. It was our longest stretch of homelessness to date, but at least we knew it was coming and we had friends and family to take us in. + +We spent a week at my in-laws, a week with our friends who run [Eastern River Expeditions](http://www.easternriverexpeditions.com/) and have a house on the river, a few days in our trusty tent (the guest house, should you meet up with us on the road) and then back to the in-laws, back to our friends' house, and so on. + +Many thanks to everyone who put us up. Somewhere in there we managed to celebrated a birthday, have a mother's water balloon fight, and beat the unseasonably warm temps playing in sprinklers. + +<img src="images/2018/2018-04-28_112128_athens-ga.jpg" id="image-1343" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-05-05_105439_athens.jpg" id="image-1350" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-05-05_105441_athens.jpg" id="image-1351" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-05-05_105955_athens.jpg" id="image-1352" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-05-13_135127_athens.jpg" id="image-1356" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-05-13_123308_athens.jpg" id="image-1355" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-05-13_150105_athens.jpg" id="image-1358" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-05-13_144150_athens.jpg" id="image-1357" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-04-26_103313_athens-ga.jpg" id="image-1342" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-04-28_115632_athens-ga.jpg" id="image-1344" class="picwide" /> + +We also made sure to stick nearby a river. We have two friends that live backed up to rivers and Watson Mill State Park has a river running through it as well so we had plenty of water to keep cool in. Lilah and I even managed to catch a small bass and a sunfish of some sort. Neither was any bigger than my hand, but they were the first we've managed to land since Texas. + +<img src="images/2018/2018-05-13_084820-1_athens.jpg" id="image-1353" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-05-13_085528_athens_Uitqb5t.jpg" id="image-1354" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-05-02_123714_athens.jpg" id="image-1346" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/IMG_20180503_155321420.jpg" id="image-1359" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/IMG_20180503_161349657.jpg" id="image-1360" class="picwide" /> + +The bus brakes ended up taking about three weeks. Not because they were that complicated, but because the mechanic is essentially the only truck mechanic around and he's very, very busy. The brakes turned out to be less complicated, and less expensive than I thought they would be. In the end the main problems was that the rear self adjusting screws froze up. Or rather they got so gunked up they no longer worked. When this happened I'm not sure. I know the rear brakes were smoking coming down the pass into California, but that could have been do to the axle issues. It's possible, likely even, that we've never had rear brakes. That meant the front brakes were the only thing stopping the bus for quite some time, which then wore down those shoes much faster than it should have. + +Now that we have new shoes in the front and working adjusters in the back I have a full pedal of brakes and she stops like a nice lightweight sedan. + +Three weeks of bouncing between houses and camping, with stuff here, stuff there, projects half finished in three locations, eventually it takes it's toll. I can't tell you what a relief it was to have the bus back, I don't know about the kids, they seemed more or less fine, but I was approaching desperation by the end of those three weeks. + +We got it back on a Monday and for about 48 hours all I did was eat, sleep and work on the bus. I re-installed all the panels, ran new wiring, fixed the dinnette seat cushion, and gave it a good tune up and an oil change. Just for good measure I got some new rear shocks installed on the Volvo and changed it's oil too (many thanks to John and Mike for help with the shocks). + +We had a perfect weather window lined up for a Monday departure, but then somehow I got talked into staying until Wednesday, which brought plenty of rain. It was, as Snoopy would say, a dark and stormy morning when we finally pulled out of Athens. It was nice to see our friends and family and spend some quality time with everyone, but if anyone was wondering if we'd decide to move back, uh, yeah, that'd be a very emphatic no. We love the bus and we're still looking forward to what's around the next bend. diff --git a/2018-06-04_alberto-land-between-the-lakes.txt b/2018-06-04_alberto-land-between-the-lakes.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6f8b8e9 --- /dev/null +++ b/2018-06-04_alberto-land-between-the-lakes.txt @@ -0,0 +1,56 @@ +We outran the storms of the better part of a week, but eventually the remnants of Alberto caught us up in northern Tennessee. We spent a couple nights at Mousetail Landing campground, mostly because it was on a ridge, no flooding to worry about. We got there early, barely lunch time. On the way up we passed this sign, which gave me pause. + +<img src="images/2018/2018-05-29_113845_mousetail-landing.jpg" id="image-1381" class="picwide caption" /> + +I dropped it in first and we made the top. It was a pretty good grade, but not than bad. We had the campground to ourselves the first night, well most of the night. I took the kids down to the playground for a while before the rain started. + +<img src="images/2018/2018-05-29_121933_mousetail-landing.jpg" id="image-1380" class="picwide" /> + +The rain kicked is about three that afternoon and didn't let up for about twelve hours. Luckily we keep plenty of rainy day activities on hand, though no matter how much there is to do eventually patience wears thin. + +<div class="cluster"> +<span class="row-2"> +<img src="images/2018/20180528_103637.jpg" id="image-1377" class="cluster pic5" /> +<img src="images/2018/20180528_103625.jpg" id="image-1376" class="cluster pic5" /> +</span> +<span class="row-2"> +<img src="images/2018/20180529_131902.jpg" id="image-1378" class="cluster pic5 caption" /> +<img src="images/2018/20180530_123814.jpg" id="image-1379" class="cluster pic5 caption" /> +</span> +</div> + +At some point in the night ranger had to move Larry, the only other camper around, from the lower campground up to the ridge because the river flooded. We didn't actually know anything about it until the next morning when we met Larry, but he had a far soggier night than we did. Aside from the front window seals, which have always leaked, there was hardly any water coming in the bus. Which means nothing, but until you remember that it makes you feel good. + +The next day was still a soggy, humid one outside. We plugged in the air conditioner and tried to de-humidify and dry things out. We did a little laundry, gave Larry a ride to a grocery store (he was paddling down the Tennessee River and had no ride for a week, and no where to go now the river was way too high to run) and hung out around camp. The next morning we said our goodbyes and continued on to Land Between the Lakes, which is a rarity for American names, it is what it says on the tin. + +<img src="images/2018/2018-05-31_105651_mousetail-landing.jpg" id="image-1382" class="picwide caption" /> + +Land Between the Lakes is one of the places we run across every so often that draws in semi-permanent residents. You find people well settled for the summer, rigs with full size refrigerators next to them, grills bigger than the one I had at our old house and golf carts, oh the golf carts. + +We stick out like sore thumbs at these places, but that's fine, at this point we're pretty well used to the attention. I'm not sure it'd feel like camping if half the campground didn't stop by to say hi and ask about the bus. Meeting new people is why I travel so I like it. Usually. I do wonder about the people who come up to me at the dump station, but otherwise. What interests me about these semi-permanent residents at campgrounds like this is that they're actually living the way the semi-nomadic people of the world have always lived -- winter in something designed for warmth, summer in something with easier access to outside. I often wonder why more of us don't do that, it's still fairly common in much of the world. + +Land of lakes is what is says it is, a huge chunk of land wedged between two large reservoirs. Most people seem to come for the fishing and boating. We drove around a bit and more or less felt like we had the place to ourselves. We discovered a road with a bridge that was out, found a herd of buffalo, saw a bright yellow flock of Goldfinches flying through a field of wildflowers that looked like you'd imagine a prairie would look if you didn't know what a prairie looked like, which I don't. + +Then we stopped at the 1850's era farm that's been preserved. I find these places somewhat tedious, but Corrinne and the kids love it. I like the history aspect, especially in this case because people are actually still running the farm as it would have been run in the 1850s, in period correct clothing no less. It's living history, and that's pretty cool. + +That said, it's probably no surprise that I my interests lie with the more nomadic people of history. I like the mystery of people who left only fire rings and animal bones here and there. The sort of people that left archaeological finds that tell little other than the obvious -- the ship lost its anchor in this little cove, the hunting party paused for a fire in the shelter of this cave, the hazelnuts were processed at this camp by the river, the clam shells where dumped in a mound here and so on. What these people thought, believed, loved, hated, revered, despised, or just did all day -- all lost in the fog of time. + +As one of my favorite characters says, referring to her desire to not have a gravestone: "I do not need a marker of my passage, for my creator knows where I am.... I lived a good life, my hair turned to snow, I saw my great grandchildren, I grew my garden. That is all." + +Still, I completely understand why the rest of my family loves to visit places like the farm. It's a way to step into the past and momentarily feel like you're part of it. + +We're probably something of a letdown to the re-enactors though. We shuffle into a two room house and they say something to kids along the lines of "can you imagine if you all had to live in something this small?" The kids stare and don't know what to say and then we explain that we actually live in something smaller right now and that two rooms is fairly palatial by our standards. Then there's an awkward moment of silence. + +And it is interesting to see how the various European immigrants did things a little differently depending on what they were used to back home. But in every case so far, when I see how people chose to live I can't help sitting there thinking, why...? Why were you fighting against the land? Why spend all this effort reshaping the land to meet your preconceived ideas of what it should be when others had been living off it for millennia working considerably less than the average newly arrived agriculturist? + +One thing that becomes apparent quickly when rummaging around in the European immigrant history of America is that only one among millions seems to have ever bothered to find out what the people already living in any area were doing. And for whatever reason those one in a million turn out pretty frequently to be French. The guiding light of settlement in most of the US seems to have been hubris and a misplaced sense of self assuredness. Basically the two American qualities that continue to irritate the rest of the world. + +That's not to say the farm didn't have its clever ideas, and clever uses of limited resources. It certainly did and I'm glad there are people out there keeping these ideas alive. But it's sort of funny that many of the things we do for fun -- hunting, fishing, hiking/walking, going to picking berries and other fruits, etc -- are the things hunting and foraging tribes, well, just do. Something to think about. + +Whatever the case, the kids had fun wandering the farm and we happened to be there when they were feeding the animals and putting them in the barns for the night. We watched chickens and ducks get driven into the coop, sheep and pigs fed and led to the barn and we even managed to get let back into the big barns to see the largest mules I've ever come across. + +And of course there was the hawk I mentioned in the last post. It just flew in a hung out one morning. The minute we left Tennessee the birds stopped being so friendly. I have no explanation for that. + + + +A couple luxagraf readers have asked where we're headed this summer. The long answer is we're not sure, but the plan is to visit Wisconsin, go around the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, then back west into Minnesota and the Dakotas, then south through Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, and down to either Texas/New Mexico. I mention this because if you're in that route and you want to meet up, drop me an email. And, if by chance you have a place somewhere roughly between Dallas and Santa Fe that would work to store the bus for about six months, starting in mid October, please get in touch. @@ -1,7 +1,19 @@ +birds to write about: -Lackluster promotional possibilities: +tree swallow +black capped chickadee +cedar waxwing +kingbird +that hawk on the ground +willet +gold crowned kinglet +blackthroated green warbler + +--- + +Set up rclone to backup git repos once a week to backblaze and amazon +make it possible to have two locations overlap if one is a child of other -1) ERE forums -- post in life is daring adventure thread --- diff --git a/american-redstart.txt b/american-redstart.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d1383bc --- /dev/null +++ b/american-redstart.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +The first time I saw an American redstart I thought wow, what sort of orange and black warbler is that? If it wasn't for the Audubon guide's handy little "similar birds" feature it'd probably have taken me a lot longer to identify it as a redstart. The redstarts love to flutter, tail spread, wings seemingly in slow motion as they chase after some insect. They almost look more like oversized butterflies than birds. + + diff --git a/barredowl.txt b/barredowl.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1a1cb9a --- /dev/null +++ b/barredowl.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +The owl came so fast and so big my brain couldn't put together a coherent thought about it until it was already well past me. But I did manage to follow the gray streak into the thicket of tangled beech and oak limbs and then, there it was, staring back at me with a look of indignation on its face. + +My eyes were so bleary I could hardly focus on it. There was no way I could identify it at first, the only thing I could see were it's huge eyes, and it's massiveness. I tried to focus and see if there were ear tuffs, but there were not. The only thing I could think of that was anywhere near a great horned owl's size and lived in this area was a Barred Owl. + +It was huge and gray, grayer than a Barred Owl should be, but then it was early morning, the light was bad and my eyes bleary. + +I'd only been awake about 4 minutes. I hadn't had so much as a sip of coffee and wasn't actually birding even, I was driving to do some birding when the birds started for me. I watched the owl for about five minutes, it watched me for the same. I've never had a bird return my gaze with so knowing a stare. It wasn't unpleasant, it felt curious in an offhand, vaguely irritated way. But it most definitely stared back the whole time. + +After a while a truck pulling a fishing boat topped the hill and the owl dove off the branch, flapped it's massive wings once and somehow glided expertly through the tangle of tree limbs until it disappeared deeper into the woods. I continued to watch the tree. I didn't even acknowledge the truck as it went by -- other people with the temerity to exist while I'm trying to stare down an owl don't get acknowledged. + +I climbed back in the car. As I drove off toward the meadow I was hoping would hold larks and prairie chickens and grouse, I started thinking about all the other owls that must have seen me over the past 18 months of living out in the woods, all the others that sat silent and watched me and I never knew it. Owls as largely invisible to us, writes ornithologist and writer Bernd Heinrich, talking about a barred owl he once studied. What Heinrich doesn't address is that we're not invisible to them. They're out there, watching everything, and every now and then you get to watch them back. diff --git a/beyond-the-blue.txt b/beyond-the-blue.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..911634a --- /dev/null +++ b/beyond-the-blue.txt @@ -0,0 +1,20 @@ +I wish this book were about twice, maybe three times as long as it is, and I wish it went into much more detail in most cases, though in its defence, there are many cases where we don't know much more than what's presented. + +I found this book at the Apalachicola library. We often take the kids to libraries, it's good free rainy day entertainment, although usually, since we lack a local address, we have to leave empty handed. The Apalachicola library though will apparently hand out a library card to just about anyone, local or not, which is how I came to spend a couple of week at the beach reading <cite>Beyond the Blue Horizon</cite> + +If you've ever wondered why, how or where, humans first got the courage to sail over the horizon, Fagan has some very convincing theories for virtually all the major coastal areas of the world. That said, they are of course hypothesises, not facts. We'll never really know who first went over the horizon into the unknown or why they did it, but Fagan is able to tease out some compelling stories. + +Fagan covers the sailing canoes of Polynesia, the North Sea and the Irish monks from Ceide Fields, early trips across Sunda and Sahel shelves in Southeastern Asia (encompassing everything from Malaysia to the Philippines), the east African/Persian coast with it's reliable trade winds, the Mediterranean, the Aleutian area, even the Gulf of Mexico where I sat on the shore, reading the book. + +There's quite a few reviews of this book on the web where people seem somehow put off at the amount of sheer conjecture in the book. If you're looking for certainty, reading about the edge of known history is probably not for you. + +It's true that there isn't a lot of archaeological evidence in many cases, boats don't last that long, there's hardly any boats left from just 200 years ago, let alone 2000 years ago. But Fagan is himself a sailor, has sailed many of these routes himself and knows well what sailors watch for and watch out for. Winds generally follow patterns, vague and seemingly arbitrary though they may be, tides follow much stricter patterns and sailors, like the rest of us, follow patterns as well. + +Because he's sailed many of the routes, he's able to weave in his own stories, as well as imagined stories of ancient sailors into the narrative to create a far more compelling story than most archaeological texts I've read. + +If you enjoy sailing or have ever wondered how ancient sailors did it, this book is well worth a read. + + + + +the mysterious Lapita people who spread across remote Oceania; the sailing canoes of Polynesia; the meltemi winds that rip across the 'wind-dark sea' in the Mediterranean; the Uluburun wreck that told us how wealthy was ancient trade; the Erythraean Sea (the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean); the 'stone towns' of trade along the East African coast; the voyages of Zheng He the eunuch Admiral; the hide boats of northern Europe; the Hanseatic Cog workhorse trading ship; the Aleutian baidarka cod fishing kayaks; the 'Fiery Pool' realm of the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean from where the sun seemed to rise for the Mayans. Any of the chapters of this book could be a book in itself. And since Brian Fagan has actually sailed these routes himself - you get a great sense of place and people, particularly when he describes the skills and knowledge of the navigators who could cross huge stretches of water with stars, wind and memory. diff --git a/bobolink.txt b/bobolink.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3e3cf8f --- /dev/null +++ b/bobolink.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9 @@ +The one and only time I have seen a bobolink was on the Bobolink Trail at Harrington State Park in Wisconsin, on the shores of Lake Michigan. The trail went back, away from the lake, back up a hill through a grassy meadow that overlooked some pastures and fields that eventually stretched out to the sort of postcard-perfect farmland pastorals that Wisconsin has in spade in the summer time. + +There were plenty of red-winged blackbirds wheeling about over the fields, but for the first mile or so I did not see any sign of the eponymous birds. And then I caught a flash of black and white whipping by the corner of my eye as I was watching the blackbirds. Then came the curious the bubbling, tinkling sound that, to someone anyway, sounds like the bird is saying "bobolink". It sounded like nothing of the sort to me, but then most bird names make no sense anymore (however much sense they might have made when they were bestowed). + +I moved up the trail a bit and discovered a pair of bobolinks fluttering about in the tall grass restoration area, favoring, it seemed anyway, the taller, thicker stalks of plant that were capable of holding their weight without teetering in the breeze. I couldn't tell what they were eating, but they were busy hunting something in the grass below, insects I assume. There were only the two, which, according to Sibley, means they were probably nesting, otherwise they would likely have been in a flock. + +The male is unmistakable, the yellow on the back of its head is so unusual it's almost disconcerting. It looks almost like it's missing half its head and you're staring at its brain. It's a strange color pattern anyway. I'm not aware of any other bird with a two-tone head divided in the same place, regardless of color. + +I was birding with family in this case, so after staring long enough to be sure of what I had seen, one of the kids dragged me along, leaving the bobolinks and their strange yellow heads behind. Despite crossing many a pastoral, prairie grass field in our travels through Wisconsin and Michigan, I have never seen another bobolink. @@ -0,0 +1,73 @@ +When I first saw you I was just trying to get a cup of coffee. But then I decided I'd rather have you. +That proved more difficult that I thought. Once You sat in my lap once at Jason and Christy's house +but I was pretty sure you were dating someone else and I was positive I was so that didn't go far +but I found I rather enjoyed you in my lap. Another time we went to prom and you made out with me +I know I was dating someone else then too but I didn't care. For years I made you many a spinach salad with salmon on it, +even when you were eating with someone else. Then you became a picture on my refrigerator for 3 years. + +Once when I try to meet up with you you ditched me. Then you decided to marry someone else I went traveling the world for years +I didn't think about you very much for a while, but when I got back I met you again at Nancy's house +I spilled Sangria on your dog but still you said it could be okay for me +to visit you in Charleston. We ate lots of seafood without going far +We went skinny dipping in your pool, in hindsight I'm surprised you did it. +the first night was a little rough, I had to fight the dog, she didn't want me, she wanted you. + +And then I considered once what I would do without and found I could not imagine life without you. +As Donne wrote, "All joys are thanks to you" and somehow I convinced you of it +I might redo them now, those standard vows we read, or listen to out back of our house +If I could do it over I'd tell you I'll love you forever, forever ever, years, +even beyond death, for I've walked many of the happy roads that take you round the world and far +away and have found them good, so long as you are with me. + + +--- + + +From "Valentine" by John Fuller + +The things about you I appreciate +May seem indelicate: +I'd like to find you in the shower +And chase the soap for half an hour. +I'd like to have you in my power +And see your eyes dilate. +I'd like to have your back to scour +And other parts to lubricate. + +I'd like to find a good excuse +To call on you and find you in. +I'd like to put my hand beneath your chin, +And see you grin. +I'd like to taste your Charlotte Russe, +I'd like to feel my lips upon your skin +I'd like to make you reproduce. + +I'd like you in my confidence. +I'd like to be your second look. +I'd like to let you try the French Defence +And mate you with my rook. +I'd like to be your preference +And hence +I'd like to be around when you unhook. +I'd like to be your only audience, +The final name in your appointment book, +Your future tense. + +--- + + +Have you forgotten what we were like then +when we were still first rate +and the day came fat with an apple in its mouth + +it's no use worrying about Time +but we did have a few tricks up our sleeves +and turned some sharp corners + +the whole pasture looked like our meal +we didn't need speedometers +we could manage cocktails out of ice and water + +I wouldn't want to be faster +or greener than now if you were with me O you +were the best of all my days diff --git a/garden-gods.txt b/garden-gods.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..40a0f42 --- /dev/null +++ b/garden-gods.txt @@ -0,0 +1,52 @@ +After the City Museum there didn't seem to be any real reason to stay in St. Louis, and the temperatures kept rising. We're generally okay until about 95 during the day, after that it's rough without air conditioning in this humidity. There were no electric sites left at the St. Louis campground so we headed north, to a campground just over the river in Illinois. Unfortunately that one turned out to be full, so we pushed on further north and found Beaver Dam State Park. + +One of the few guidebooks I actually like is Smithsonian's various guides to "natural" America[^1]. The one for Illinois starts off with something to the affect: "Only one state has less public land than Illinois". I read that back when we were in Athens and I thought, okay, well, how bad can it be really? Turns out... While it does have a few places in the southern part of the state, generally speaking, Illinois got used up before the push for public land preservation of the late 19th century could get much of it set aside. + +For the most part, Illinois is a desert of corn. + +From researching the seed strains and brands I saw advertised it would seem that the vast majority of the corn is not for food, but goes to the production of ethanol which (unless you're lucky) ends up in your gas tank. Author and adventurer Craig Childs has an essay about hiking through these lifeless fields of corn in his book, <cite>Apocalyptic Planet</cite>. The only thing Childs finds living in the field, besides himself and corn are two spiders and a species of fungus. + +<img src="images/2018/2018-06-08_132613-3_beaver-dam-st-park.jpg" id="image-1428" class="picwide caption" /> + +Dotted around, almost as if someone salted some green on the map as an afterthought, are little pockets of land generally just large enough for a small lake to draw in fisherman, the bare minimum of forest necessary to grant two hunting permits a year, and a little room left over for a campground. There are generally no other attractions, nothing that warrants a ranger station, nothing that needs a map. At Beaver Dam, if you opt for the back edge of the campground, you'll have one row of trees and then the endless expanse of cornfields spread out before you. + +The kids loved Beaver Dam though, so we stayed a few days. They loved it because it was full of kids. For the first time in quite a while they made new friends. And for the first time they got to run about in a gang of kids, roaming the campground the way we used to roam the neighborhood before everyone got scared of everything and started tracking their kids' every movement. + +The kids would jump up out of bed in the morning and run to the front of the bus and tear down the curtains to see if any of their friends were out riding their bikes yet. We tried to explain to them that most people sleep past six, but they just don't really have an context to understand that. Once there was someone else up and about they'd take off not to be heard from again until evening, except when they needed snacks. + +<img src="images/2018/2018-06-09_152619_beaver-dam-st-park.jpg" id="image-1429" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-06-09_152631_beaver-dam-st-park.jpg" id="image-1430" class="picwide" /> + +Corrinne and I mostly sat around the read, there's wasn't anything else to do really. There were a ton of red headed woodpeckers in the campground, probably because it had the only trees for hundreds of miles, so I took probably 200 photos until I got a couple I was happy with.. + +<img src="images/2018/2018-06-11_064239_beaver-dam-st-park.jpg" id="image-1431" class="picwide" /> + +We'd made plans to meet my parents down in the southern part of the state, so after the families went home Sunday afternoon and the kid gang shrank in size to just three, we packed it up and headed south to the auspiciously named Garden of the Gods. No, not the one in Colorado. This one is the limestone remnants of where the Gulf of Mexico's waters used to lap at the sand. + +<img src="images/2018/2018-06-12_113433_garden-gods.jpg" id="image-1434" class="picwide" /> + +Garden of the Gods gives something of a glimpse of what the wooded parts of Illinois were probably like hundreds of years ago. There's a campground up on a ridge overlooking the area, which also manages to catch a little more breeze than most of the surrounding area. There were also some pines and junipers mixed in with the hardwoods, which made it feel more like being in the mountains. + +<img src="images/2018/2018-06-12_120308_garden-gods.jpg" id="image-1437" class="picwide" /> + +The geology here is such that a lot of iron got mixed into the rock and formed interesting patterns. We hiked around one day, had lunch in the woods and let the kids climb rocks for a while. If you squinted hard enough and ignored the humidity it was almost like our time in Colorado last summer. + +<img src="images/2018/2018-06-12_114534_garden-gods.jpg" id="image-1435" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-06-12_124218_garden-gods.jpg" id="image-1438" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-06-12_115355_garden-gods.jpg" id="image-1436" class="picwide" /> + +The first campsite we had was right next to a pretty good size blackberry patch. They weren't really ripe, but tart berries you picked yourself still beat ripe ones from the store any day. + +<img src="images/2018/2018-06-11_140733_garden-gods.jpg" id="image-1432" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-06-11_171018_garden-gods.jpg" id="image-1433" class="picwide" /> + +Garden of the Gods was the nicest place we saw in Illinois, but it was still brutally hot and humid. Normally I don't complain about the heat, but here's the thing, if it's going to be hot there needs to be a payoff -- ancient ruins, beautiful beaches, spectacular deserts, or what have you. Illinois has some trees and lots of biting insects. + +So when I found out my parents might not be able to make their trip due to illness anyway, we jumped at the chance to have them reschedule to meet us elsewhere. Fortunately they were able to do it, so while the kids were disappointed they'd have to wait to see their grandparents, we were all thankful to have no reason to stay in Illinois. + +Unfortunately, the minute we hit the road north, a heat wave plowed through and send the temps into the triple digits, which made our drives miserable. We somehow traversed the rest of the state in two days, but we finally gave up just outside Chicago where we got a campsite with electricity, cranked the air to high and barricaded ourselves against the heat for a few days. + + + +[^1]: I really wish they also had a series, Guide to Unnatural America. Or would change the title of the Natural America series to "wild" America or something similar. +[^2]: @@ -0,0 +1,32 @@ +It's been a year on the road now, so to the handful of people who ask how long we're going to do this, I can say with some authority: more than a year. + +<img src="images/2018/2018-04-01_094955_st-joseph-st-park.jpg" id="image-1285" class="picwide" /> + +After our time in the woods we headed back down to the coast, picking up the main highway in Port St. Joe before heading out, way out, on to the long peninsula known as Cape San Blas. There's a state park out at the end of the cape with a nice enough campground and by far the nicest beach on this stretch of the Panhandle. It doesn't hurt that it's only a few steps from the campground. + +<img src="images/2018/2018-04-03_130436_st-joseph-st-park.jpg" id="image-1292" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-04-03_130452-1_st-joseph-st-park.jpg" id="image-1293" class="picwide" /> + +This is just around the corner from what I think is still our favorite spot in the Panhandle, the St. George Island, Apalachicola Bay. I don't know what it is about this stretch of Florida. Maybe it's me. To me then everything seems just a little bit nicer here, sharper here, clearer here, the sand a little whiter, the sea a little calmer, the sun a little brighter, the bugs a little fewer. Okay that's a lie. There's plenty of biting midges here just like the rest of the coast. + +Winter seems to have left anyway, finally, a brief rainstorm on our first day giving up a week of perfect 75 and sunny days at the beach. + +<div class="cluster"> +<span class="row2"> +<img src="images/2018/2018-04-03_075405_st-joseph-st-park.jpg" id="image-1290" class="cluster pic5" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-04-03_125155_st-joseph-st-park.jpg" id="image-1291" class="cluster pic5" /> +</span> +</div> + +<img src="images/2018/2018-04-01_094931_st-joseph-st-park.jpg" id="image-1284" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-04-01_113439_st-joseph-st-park.jpg" id="image-1287" class="picwide" /> + +A year later we're very close to right back where we started, which feels natural to me. + +Everything moves in cycles. Time is a vast swirling whirlpool, spinning us all around and around, each time a little different than the last, but themes emerge, patterns emerge, events repeat, for us, in the world around us. It's spring again, the birds are migrating back from the Yucatan and points south, just as they did last year. We've returned from our own migration. In couple of months the storms will begin to spin across the ocean, gather speed and rush toward the land. Animals, people, natural systems, everything is moving through cycles that have been repeating endlessly for longer than anyone can calculate. Don't like where things are today? Wait a week, it'll all change. + + + +There are cycles within cycles. From Ice Ages to Civilizations, everything rises and fall following roughly the same cyclical trajectories. Travelers rise and fall. It's been a year worth of rises and falls, with any luck we'll have a many more years, many more seasons, many more migrations, many more rises and yes, many more falls. + + diff --git a/picture-rocks.txt b/picture-rocks.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e666647 --- /dev/null +++ b/picture-rocks.txt @@ -0,0 +1,47 @@ +I lay in the hammock looking up at the trees, watching the birch leaves fluttering in the light breeze, 100 feet above me, wondering what life was like up there. What would it be like the stand among those slender branches that would probably, some of them, support my weight. It's not impossible. People climb trees, 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 like that. I plan to do that some day, but I probably won't start there. I'll probably work my way up to trees in storms. One of the nice things about this life though 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 post 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 to work to find the differences. The world is made up of similarities more than differences, and I think that's true whether you speak of ecology, culture, religion or my preferred starting point for philosophical reflections -- the vertical views from hammocks. + +Significant ecological, cultural and religious differences exist between places as well. I think to certain extent that's part of what travel is about, finding those similarities and differences and holding them up before and trying to make sense of them. 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 reincarnation thrive in Himachal Pradesh and not here? Why is the arboreal forest that used to be here now 100 miles north of here? + +It's wrestling with these things that makes it interesting to go to other places. Seeing things is nice too, but the longer you're out here I think the less inclination you have to "see the sights". If you have two weeks in a place, I guess I understand that drive to see stuff. We watch people pulling out every morning to go do things while we're still cooking breakfast[^1]. But then if your time is limited, you want to see what you came to see, I suppose. Maybe. I'd still probably spend at least half my time "sitting around" because without that chance to daydream and reflect, what's the point? + +On this trip we can more or less stay anywhere as long as we choose. Camping limitations 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 for well over a week and haven't seen the eponymous rocks yet. And I'll be fine if we never do. + +These days I'm pretty happy sitting here in the forest, watching the wind play in the trees, the birds building nests, the earthworms the kids dig up 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, we don't sit around all the time. 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. If I know 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. + +The answer is the third way, 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, that makes for nice hikes. Here there's a good 3 mile round trip trail out to a nearby lighthouse. That's about where Elliott is comfortable these days so we did it one day. 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 site 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 stayed for long after lunch. We explored the shoreline for a while, looking for interesting signs of life. There weren't many. Superior is cold, clear, and seemingly not teeming with life. I've seen a few fish, including a very big trout in very shallow water, and Lilah and I found some curious insects, 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 enough life to support a fair number of fish, and the birds that feed on them, but not much else. + + +The weather those is completely left field. One minute it;s hot, the next it's cold. Sometimes 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 travels 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 seen what wind can do, but here things are up a couple of notches. One morning, a particularly warm, humid morning, it was 8 AM and the temperature was already climbing steadily. Every morning I do a bit of discursive meditation for about 15 minutes. This morning I closed my eyes to world that was bright, sunny and about 80 degrees. When I opened them 12 minutes later -- because what was happening around me was so bizarre it broke my ability to focus on any particular train of thought and I stopped early -- when I opened my eyes again 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 lake and the lake is definitely cold enough to drop the air temp by 30-40 degrees. + +Lake Superior is the coldest large body of water I've ever swam in. It's almost as cold as the Sierra lakes I used to swim in during the early season, that still had fields of snow leading down into them. When its 85-90 though Superior feels pretty good. At least for a minute or two. Then you get out and air around you feels insanely humid and hot and you want to slip back into the lake, but it starts to be too much, you get a sort of pins and needles sensation in your feet after a while. And so I'd climb out, sit on the rocks, play with the kids and warm up just enough to get back in the lake. + +The second time we went down to beat the heat we learned something else about the wind. When it blows onshore it keeps the black flies at bay. When it blows offshore, look out. It's not quite as bad as what I remember about Maine, but they're annoying enough to drive you off after a while. 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 pretty well and we use it during the times of day the mozzies are really bad, but the rest of the time, honestly, I just let them bite me. I swat them when the hurt, but mosquitoes are supposed to bite. Where I come from though flies are completely benign, perhaps that's why biting flies bother me, it just seem extra cruel to take an ubiquitous and already fairly annoying creature and then make it capable of a painful bite? Screw that.:w + +[^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 travel, is that it doesn't allow for the sort of depth of study, again be it ecological, cultural, whatever, that is 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 + + +it was too hot to hike, the air too still to drive the flies from ht ebeach and right thing to do seemed to be sitting in a hammock and gently swinging. I even made a movie of it. + diff --git a/road-again.txt b/road-again.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..62f5df3 --- /dev/null +++ b/road-again.txt @@ -0,0 +1,35 @@ +There was a line of thunderheads just north of us and another just south, but we managed to slide right through Atlanta with nary of drop of rain on the windshield. + +Sometimes I forget that most people drive cars that allow them to more or less disregard the weather. We don't. I can drive the bus through a storm, and I have, but if we can avoid it by staying put for a day or leaving a day early, we usually do. When we slide right between two of them, I won't lie, we feel a little more clever than usual. + +We spent our first night back on the road at a small campground somewhere in Alabama. We got up the next day and hit the road early. As is par for the course, we didn't realize it was Memorial Day until it was really too late to plan for it. Most campgrounds we could find that took reservations were already full. We went with our usual plan, find a campground with no electricity. Take away people's ability to run the air conditioning 24/7 and you're pretty much guaranteed to find an empty campground. + +And we did, right in the middle of the Natchez Trace, one of the oldest highways on the continent. It probably started with big game during the last ice age and then various tribes picked it up as well. By the time Europeans arrived it was pretty much a highway connecting the Choctaw, Natchez and Chickasaw nations. These days it's a nice road that semis aren't allowed on. + +The Meriwether Lewis campground is somewhere in the middle, a bit toward Nashville. It's where the explorer lived and died I believe, though honestly we never made it to the monument. + +The campground was one of those head scratchers for me. It's really nice, up on a ridge in the middle of a mostly beech and oak forest, cool breezes, plenty of shade and pretty level sites, a water spigot, bathrooms with flush toilets, trash pickup and yet totally free. I mean I get it, my tax dollars at work. But why not charge a few bucks to cover some of the costs? Like everyone else, I love free camping, but when something is free I don't expect luxuries like picnic tables and bathrooms. I expect to not be hassled about where I'm parked and not much else. Amenities and free together doesn't seem sustainable to me, but then I've never been over the Interior Department's books, so what do I know? + +Whatever the case we claimed a spot on Thursday and didn't leave all through the weekend. Memorial Day, survived. We didn't get a lot of sun, but we managed. By the time we left nearly a week later our batteries were way lower than you should ever let your batteries get. Somehow though ours keep on going though. + +We sat out some thunderstorms, sweating a bit in the bus. Those gloriously huge windows don't do you much good with it's storming too hard to have the awning out. It wasn't all rain though, usually just a couple of thundershowers around midday and then it would overcast, but plenty warm enough to head down to the creek and cool off playing in the water, catching frogs, chasing minnows, throwing rocks. + +We tried to get in the water every day to make sure we got the ticks off us. This part of Tennessee has ticks like nowhere I've ever been. Most of them are not deer ticks thankfully, but ticks suck even if they don't carry some disease. + +One afternoon I drove a few miles up the road to dump the tanks at a nearby RV park and couldn't help noticing how badly rusted our black tank straps had become. It was on my mind because someone in a Facebook group that Corrinne belongs to posted a story about their black tank falling off and smashing all over the ground while they drove through a campground. Awkward. + +We already refer to small towns we can't remember the name of by saying things like, "you know, the one where the fuel line cracked?" or "What was that place, where the rear transmission mount almost fell off?"; "What was that place where you hitchhiked to get a new alternator?" + +I really did not want to have one of these that went, "you know, that campground where we dropped the black tank on the ground?" + +When I got back from dumping I crawled under the tank with a flashlight to get serious about things and realized that one of our straps was already cracked about halfway through. It is 1969 steel so it probably had some life left in it, but I didn't want to risk it. + +I called a few auto parts stores in the area looking for fuel tank straps, but no one had anything. I ended up driving the Volvo to the nearest good size town, which had a Lowes, and bought some aluminum, some large sheet metal screws and two long drill bit extensions. A couple hours under the black tank and I had a nice new strap in place. The only problem was that when I jacked up the tank to lift it off the old strap, I cracked it. So two days later I was back at the RV park dumped it again, dried the outside and got busy with the fiberglass and resin. Fun times. + +Nothing makes a creek bath feel sweet like an afternoon of sweating, fiberglass, and resin. + +That night we were sitting around the fire after dinner when a pair of summer tanagers flew right up to us, chatting away as if we didn't exist. The male sat up in the tree, chirping away, almost like he was giving suggestions to the female that was down on the ground gather sticks and pine needles in her beak. Then they'd fly away and come back a bit later for more. The whole time they didn't seem bothered by our presence, even the kids playing quite loudly, at all. It was the start of something of a running theme the last couple week in Tennessee. Birds just fly right up to us. This morning a hawk landed about 10 feet from us and just sat there on the ground, occasionally looking over at us, but for the most part seemingly unconcerned about our existence. + + + +[^1]: Last time I said that someone emailed me to ask why I was so opposed to free. It's pretty simple, free is not sustainable. diff --git a/scarlet-tanager.txt b/scarlet-tanager.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..504a3cf --- /dev/null +++ b/scarlet-tanager.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +We had a couple camps in Tennessee where Summer Tanagers were regular visitors, chirping away in the woods even if we couldn't see them. One day I was sitting outside, drinking coffee and trying to work, but really watching birds a bit more than working. I saw a red streak up in a tree. I'd been watching the Summer tanagers for days, I almost didn't grab my binoculars to look, but I'm a birder, no bird is every boring, so I did. And you know what? It was a Summer Tanager with black wings. Wait, that's not right. Not a Summer Tanager. A Scarlet Tanager, probably the most singularly striking bird I've ever seen. + +Not only did I get a new bird, but it was a good reminder from nature -- never assume, never make the mistake of thinking the world is what you think it is. It is, independent of you, though you are part of it. Pay attention and it will show itself. diff --git a/singing-on-the-bayou.txt b/singing-on-the-bayou.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..03fbe8b --- /dev/null +++ b/singing-on-the-bayou.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +When we first stopped by our friends new place, Mike was showing me around on the big back deck that overlooked the river when mentioned that sometimes in the evening someone across the river would sing old blues songs in a deep baritone, as the person, presumably a man, walked down to his favorite fishing hole. + +The other side of the river was dense thickets of Chinese privet and native plants fighting it out on the shoreline. There was a trail over there somewhere, but you couldn't see it from the house. Still, people used it, we'd seem them on the bank with their dogs, occasionally some would be fishing upstream. Still, I honestly wasn't sure if he was kidding or not about the blues singer. It sounded so outlandishly anachronistic that I had trouble believing such a thing really happened. This same river in 1955, sure I'd buy that, but today? There are still men who sing, alone, walking to their favorite river hole to fish? And in the middle of Athens no less. While their house has a secluded feel to it, it's about five minutes drive from downtown in a residential neighborhood. + +Later that evening I went outside to watch the birds while dinner was cooking and sure enough, the sound of a deep southern voice came booming through the woods and across the water, just barely louder than the sound of the river itself singing. It came and went, perhaps as its owner scrambled over rocks along the shore, or perhaps between bites, between casts maybe. I cupped my ears but I could never make out any words, just melodies floating up and down the river, mixing with the gurgle of water and fluttering notes of birds. diff --git a/st-louis.txt b/st-louis.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b4133e8 --- /dev/null +++ b/st-louis.txt @@ -0,0 +1,83 @@ +There's something I left out of the story of our time in Land Between the Lakes -- it was brutally hot and humid. More humid than I've ever experienced, including [Angkor Wat, Cambodia][1]. It put us in the mood for something, well, cooler. Or at least less humid. So we headed to St. Louis. Because we're not that bright. + +Actually it was strange, we drove north, up through Kentucky, and the minute we crossed the state line the humidity dropped about 50 percent and it was actually tolerable again. I didn't look it up, but I know what [earth.nullschool.net][2] would have told me -- we'd just crossed into a mass of air moving down from the north. It was short-lived, but welcome nonetheless. + +We stopped off at a mounds site on the way, and went through the somewhat creepy town of [Cairo][4], which has more or less been abandoned. It's about five miles of abandoned buildings slowly being taken over by vegetation. + +<img src="images/2018/2018-06-03_132649_trail-of-tears-sp.jpg" id="image-1400" class="picwide caption" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-06-03_135523-1_trail-of-tears-sp.jpg" id="image-1401" class="picwide" /> + +We stopped for one night at the Trail of Tears State Park, which had a campground right on the Mississippi River. We ate an early dinner and spent the evening down by the shore, watching the tugboats pushing their loads up and down the river. I managed to refrain from any [Clarke Griswold impersonations][3]. + +<img src="images/2018/2018-06-03_153115_trail-of-tears-sp.jpg" id="image-1402" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-06-03_183519_trail-of-tears-sp.jpg" id="image-1403" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-06-04_055630_trail-of-tears-sp.jpg" id="image-1404" class="picwide" /> + +And there was a train, you can't go wrong with kids and trains (which fortunately did not go by in the middle of the night, because you can go wrong with grownups and trains). + +<img src="images/2018/2018-06-04_083415_trail-of-tears-sp.jpg" id="image-1405" class="picwide" /> + +By the time we made it to St. Louis it was back to being hot and humid, doubly so because it's a city and cities are always 10 degrees hotter than anything else. + +We came to St. Louis pretty much for one reason -- the City Museum. Everyone who said we had to go there, and there were half a dozen of you, became real vague when we asked what it was like. And now it's my turn to be real vague -- I can't really say what the City Museum is exactly. + +It's like [Antoni GaudÃ][5] and Jules Verne got together and built an amusement park. + +It's sort of for kids. There are definitely things only kids were small enough to do, but then there's plenty for adults too, enough that every evening it becomes 18+ and stays open until midnight. Normally I'd say that a picture is worth a thousand words and insert of few here, but it's also a really difficult place to photograph, it's massive, full of dark areas with hidden passageways and tunnels. + +There's a bunch of slides and wire scaffolding stretching up about five stories on the outside, with an old fire engine, a wire rocket, an old cutaway airplane and a few other odds and ends mounted near the top. It's all connected by narrow scaffolds and slides. It's full of sharp edges, metal stairways and a good old fashioned modicum of danger you don't usually find in the United States of Safe and Boring. + +<div class="cluster"> +<span class="row-2"> +<img src="images/2018/2018-06-05_113742_st-louis.jpg" id="image-1411" class="cluster pic5" /> +<img src="images/2018/20180605_114801.jpg" id="image-1409" class="cluster pic5" /> +</span> +<img src="images/2018/2018-06-05_113643_st-louis.jpg" id="image-1410" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/20180605_114908.jpg" id="image-1407" class="picwide" /> +<span class="row-2"> +<img src="images/2018/20180605_115038.jpg" id="image-1406" class="cluster pic5" /> +<img src="images/2018/20180605_114911.jpg" id="image-1412" class="cluster pic5" /> +</span> +</div> + +Then there's the inside. The City Museum occupies a 13 story building, though only about four of those stories are currently open to the public, others are open, but still in the process of being built. There was even an art gallery of some sort that was blocked off behind drapes and locked doors, no idea if it even had anything to do with the City Museum. It's a very open space meant for exploring. + +The best part of the inside part is a kind of dark, cave-like labyrinth, that extends for at least two, possibly three floors, with connecting tunnels you have to crawl through made of rebar and driftwood, cement, plastic, metal ribs, you name it. They sell knee pads near the ticket windows at the entrance. + +<div class="cluster"> +<img src="images/2018/2018-06-05_102930_st-louis.jpg" id="image-1414" class="picwide" /> +<span class="row-2"> +<img src="images/2018/20180605_105454.jpg" id="image-1408" class="cluster pic5" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-06-05_130608_st-louis.jpg" id="image-1419" class="cluster pic5" /> +</span> +<img src="images/2018/20180605_125546.jpg" id="image-1413" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-06-05_110605-1_st-louis.jpg" id="image-1415" class="picwide" /> +</div> +<img src="images/2018/2018-06-05_130440_st-louis.jpg" id="image-1418" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-06-05_130414_st-louis.jpg" id="image-1417" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-06-05_111608_st-louis.jpg" id="image-1416" class="picwide caption" /> + +Then there's the roof, which costs a little extra, but is worth it. There's a full size bus mounted on the corner of the roof, 13 stories up, with a door that opens into a sheer drop off (blocked off, but you can look straight down). The roof also has a Ferris wheel and a giant praying mantis. + + +<div class="cluster"> +<img src="images/2018/2018-06-05_122741_st-louis.jpg" id="image-1422" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-06-05_121053_st-louis.jpg" id="image-1420" class="picwide" /> +<span class="row-2"> +<img src="images/2018/20180605_122922_01.jpg" id="image-1427" class="cluster pic5" /> +<img src="images/2018/20180605_122821_FslAdlr.jpg" id="image-1424" class="cluster pic5" /> +</span> +<img src="images/2018/2018-06-05_122658_st-louis.jpg" id="image-1421" class="picwide" /> +</div> + +The roof is also the place to catch the 10 story high spiral slide. It's long, but not actually as much fun as some of the other slides, especially the slides so steep you briefly free-fall or the others so narrow you spend your time really hoping you don't get stuck. + +Then there's also random things, like a 19th century-style natural history specimen collection, a barbecue joint on the patio (it is St. Louis), and a place you can train to be a circus performer. + +The City Museum is unlike anywhere I've ever been anywhere in the world and it's pretty damn amazing. If you're ever in St. Louis you should go, even if you don't have kids. Maybe especially if you don't have kids. + +[1]: https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2006/03/angkor-wat +[2]: https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-92.74,40.99,3000 +[3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUNMmSbkAG8 +[4]: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/cairo-illinois +[5]: https://www.archdaily.com/519298/happy-birthday-antoni-gaudi diff --git a/summer-tanager.txt b/summer-tanager.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..522968a --- /dev/null +++ b/summer-tanager.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7 @@ +Birding will make you a believer of patterns. It will teach you that there is no such thing as coincidence, just patterns you can't discern. There's a difference. For example, you go your whole life without seeing a bird, and then suddenly, you're in the right place at the right time and there it is. That in an of itself is remarkable and satisfying, but often that's not the end of the story, often that's just the point at which you step into some pattern that begins to repeat. Often, the next thing you know, you see that bird everywhere you go. That was my experience with the Summer Tanager. + +I was sitting out one evening at Watson Mill State Park when I heard a call I didn't recognize. It was already well into twilight and I had put away my binoculars for the day, but I went back inside the bus and grabbed them. I scanned the trees a bit and tried the walk toward the sound, but I didn't see anything. I kept walking up a little rise toward a big pine that was off by itself. + +Out of the corner of my eye I saw a red streak flash by. I dismissed it as a Cardinal, but then some pattern recognizing part of my brains said no, that's not quite right. So I tracked it and brought the binoculars to my eyes and sure enough, not a Cardinal, a Summer Tanager. It moved through pretty quickly, but I got a good enough look to identify it. Despite it being spring I did not see a female with it. + +Two night later we were several hundred miles west and north, at a campground on the Natchez Trace when I saw another flash of red that wasn't quite Cardinal like and once again it turned out to be a Summer Tanager. This time though there was a female around too. They chattered in the wood right around our camp, the kids got to see them. Later that night Corrinne and I were sitting by the fire when it flew right up into the tree above the fire and watched us for a good five minutes, seemingly impervious to the smoke rise up past it. It was watching the female gather twigs on the ground behind us, if we registered at all in its world we didn't mean much to it. diff --git a/thrasher.txt b/thrasher.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d77ebc9 --- /dev/null +++ b/thrasher.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9 @@ +Most birders want to see the exotic, the magnificent. I'm not different. I want to see a painted bunting. I want to see a Trogan. A Quetzal, a Lady Gouldian Finch, a bee-eater, and all the rest of the world's insanely colorful birds. But I also love the more familiar birds, the birds I see all the time. I like to say hello to them, to ask them how they are. I don't understand a word of what they say, but I like the sound and I assume they can't understand a word I say either, but perhaps they like the sound. Or maybe they think *what is that weirdo barking at me about*? + +The brown thrasher isn't necessarily a looker, but they sure can sing when they're in the mood. I sat out one evening behind the bus listening to a brown thrasher sing for the better part of an hour. I'm pretty sure that in that time it never completely repeated a phrase of its song. + +Some of the time I watched it through binoculars, studying at the way the short brown and white featherers around its throat rise and fall with the melody line it sang. The bird sat at the very tip of a dead branch a couple of meters up, not far from my head. Every now and then he would stop and focus his beady black eye to regard me with a look that implied some suspicion, what was I up to? Had I paid my ticket to hear the show? + +It was the first day we were back in Georgia. Fifteen months of travel and we were right back where we started in a deciduous forest, mixed oak, beech, pecan and other hardwoods with clumps of pines here and there. Just beyond the campground there was a small reservoir, perfect habitat for red headed woodpeckers, one of my favorite birds. But it was not the woodpeckers that ended up impressing me that evening, it was the Brown Thrasher. + +The kids had a hard time falling asleep that night. It was our first long driving day in well over a month and they had not had a chance to get their energy out. In between getting glasses of water and patting backs to get them to sleep, I sat outside and listened to the thrasher. Occasionally he'd be joined by a nearby Carolina Warbler, but nothing, not even the cawing of crows or the short, sharp chip of cardinals, seemed to deter or influence his song in any way. Olivia asked me at one point, what are all those birds singing? Not birds I said, bird. One thrasher singing away until the light faded and it roosted down for the night. diff --git a/wisconsin.txt b/wisconsin.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..108847b --- /dev/null +++ b/wisconsin.txt @@ -0,0 +1,38 @@ +The drive from the border of Illinois to Harrington State Park, half and hour north of Milwaukee, was the most dramatic climate change we've experienced on this trip. It was partly weather related, but we went from temps of over 100 with 72 percent humidity to 60 degrees and not much humidity at all once the rain stopped. It was a rather amazing and welcome transition. + +We stopped at Harrington because it gave reasonably easy access to Milwaukee and because if you run your finger along the edge of Lake Michigan starting at Chicago, it's the first green spot you hit. The day we arrived it was overcast, cold enough to pull out sweatshirts and pretty much exactly what we were looking for after weeks of sweating through Tennessee, Missouri, and Illinois. We ended up staying almost a week. + +As soon as we arrived and got settled I took the kids down to see the lake. We are, I think, with one possible exception, water people. Put us on a shoreline and chances are we'll be happy. There's one of us that insists the shoreline have salt water, but the rest of us aren't that picky. By the time we got to the shore of Lake Michigan the storm we' been just ahead of all day finally caught up. There was a steady drizzle and the wind was blowing hard enough to drive even the kids back the bus in short order. + +<img src="images/2018/2018-06-19_141357_harrington-st-park.jpg" id="image-1439" class="picwide" /> + +It wasn't only the temperature that changed, we reset the seasonal clock by a good month or two as well. Up here wildflowers still carpet the hillsides, trees haven't been leafed out for very long and the mosquitoes haven't hit cloud status quite yet. All the song birds are newly arrived too, still setting up house. Yellow Warblers and Cedar Waxwings were busy building nests in the trees and bushes around our site. It was the sort of campsite we haven't seen since Patrick's Point, heavy shrubs, most of which looked to be blueberries, or something very similar, about two feet taller than a person and far too thick to see though. The sites themselves were carved out and probably required regular maintenance to stay that way. + +<img src="images/2018/2018-06-22_134144_harrington-st-park.jpg" id="image-1442" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-06-25_091354-1_harrington-st-park.jpg" id="image-1458" class="picwide" /> + +It was still storming a little the next day so we decided to run our errands in Milwaukee and then we met up with some friends from Athens who recently moved to Milwaukee to take over the Woodland Pattern. We met up with them at Woodland Pattern and then headed out for Thai food. We only spent a few hours in Milwaukee, but we enjoyed it. + +<img src="images/2018/2018-06-20_164318_harrington-st-park.jpg" id="image-1440" class="picwide caption"/> + +We ended up hanging around Harrington Beach for a few more days so I could get some work done. I'd work in the mornings and in the afternoon we'd hike or head down to the beach for a swim. We hiked a trail called the Bobolink trail and saw bobolinks, we hiked the White-Tailed trail and saw white-tailed deer. After that I decided I had to go far enough down the birch trail to see a few birch trees. + +<div class="cluster" +<img src="images/2018/20180621_150039.jpg" id="image-1460" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/20180621_150117.jpg" id="image-1461" class="picwide" /> +<span class="row-2"> +<img src="images/2018/20180621_145656_01.jpg" id="image-1467" class="cluster pic5" /> +<img src="images/2018/20180622_133317.jpg" id="image-1465" class="cluster pic5" /> +</span> +<img src="images/2018/2018-06-21_151621_harrington-st-park.jpg" id="image-1441" class="picwide" /> +</div> + +Once the storm that followed us in was gone we had gloriously sunny days, highs in the mid 70s, pretty close to perfect. We ended up spending a lot of time down at the beach. Unlike the first couple of days, once the sun came out we did not have the beach to ourselves. + +<img src="images/2018/2018-06-23_150934_harrington-st-park.jpg" id="image-1447" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-06-23_151017_harrington-st-park.jpg" id="image-1448" class="picwide caption" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-06-23_151606_harrington-st-park.jpg" id="image-1449" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-06-24_160133_harrington-st-park.jpg" id="image-1453" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-06-24_160101_harrington-st-park.jpg" id="image-1452" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/20180622_050408.jpg" id="image-1463" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/20180622_052057.jpg" id="image-1464" class="picwide" /> diff --git a/yellow-warbler.txt b/yellow-warbler.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1148b0f --- /dev/null +++ b/yellow-warbler.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +Every campsite we stay in tends to have one or two species in abundance, birds that are around all day, regularly, and then the rest of the species tend to be passing through, sometimes very regularly, where we're camped as I type this there's a pair of black-throated green warblers that stop by every morning and evening at almost precisely 7AM and 7PM. At our campsite at Harrington Beach State Park the two regulars were yellow warblers and cedar waxwings. + +The yellow warblers were heard more than seen, though I did see them a good bit. Unlike most warblers the yellows would sit still long enough for me to photograph them (I have only manual focus lenses so fidgety, hoppy birds like warblers are generally impossible for me to photograph). All day every day though they were in the bushes singing. According to my Audubon guide it's usually easy to find the nests. I did not look for any, though I have no doubt they were around if for no other reason than there was an abundance of cowbirds around and yellow warbler nests are a favorite of cowbirds. + +Still it's the song that sticks out to me with the yellow warbler, the melodic, high-pitched, *sweet-sweet-sweet, sweeter-than-sweet* at all hours of the day and, up here, where it doesn't get dark until 11PM right now, well into what I could call night. |