Bits and Pieces

There's going to be a preseason hockey game in Boise for the first time in many years. There was supposed to be one a few years ago, but that was the 2014-2015 season, aka the lockout shortened season. That game never got played. But I thought, just maybe, we could get tickets and go see NHL players, even if the big names probably wouldn't take the ice. 

However, I was not the only person in Boise with this idea. Tickets sold out so fast, I never even got past the waiting room before they were gone. I guess I'll just have to travel if I want to see an NHL game. Maybe someday I'll get to see one of Boise's "local" teams (at least according to regional sports networks), like Seattle, Colorado or Las Vegas. 

I've been playing the game Dead Cells a lot lately. It's a roguelike game, which means that if you die, you start all over. The game doesn't take that long to complete, even with my style of "must kill everything" which takes longer. It's got an interesting, new-to-me, system of difficulty. Essentially, you can't really finish the game until you play it on the hardest (of 6) levels. 

For a while, I thought I wouldn't ever make it past the 3rd level (called 2 boss stem cell), but then I did. And then I wanted to complete a puzzle that required taking a specific route through the game and finding hidden areas in specific dungeons. I got through that, and now I'm thinking, well, maybe I can beat the final boss with 3 boss stem cells activated. 

But the last time I tried, on what was otherwise a very good run, I just couldn't get the final boss. Yeah, I'll probably keep playing the game until it leaves Xbox Game Pass. 

When this blog goes live, I'll be out in the wilderness. If the trip goes to plan, I should be at the Moose Creek Air Strip, or getting real close. As I write this, I'm so looking forward to being out there. I've got a headache from letting things at work stress me out a bit too much. I need to do some hiring and there's an awful project I'm involved in because I'm the only one with the expertise to get it done. Or that's how it feels. 

Being out in the woods should let me re-center myself. To remember that nothing at my work is actually life and death. To remember that I am not my work. 

Big Creek and Werdenhoff Mine Photos

Over the 4th of July weekend, my husband and I spent time at Big Creek. Last week I provided a write up; this week is all about the pictures. 

The Big Creek Lodge is home to more than just guests.

This bird had at least three little ones to feed in there.

Some of the hummingbirds fought, but I didn't get a good shot of that.

There's some baby birds!

Old equipment up at Werdenhoff Mine.

We only looked at the building from the outside.

But a missing wall panel gave me a glimpse of the inside.

And here, from the rear.

The original rock-smashing machine!

View from the mine down to a cabin that seems to be getting some upkeep.

Ambrose making his way down from the mine.

Just one big log was blocking the Smith Creek Cutoff Trail, close to the mine. 

Lots of bear grass growing this year!

I'm not 100% sure what flower this is, but I like it.

Ambrose found some bear sign - the rock got flipped to see if there were tasty grubs to eat underneath.

Ambrose going down one of the cutoff trail's switchbacks.

This dilapidated cabin is next to the cutoff trail.

An animal on the road - we didn't run over it.

We also managed to miss this deer :) 

Writing Along

My writing is moving along nicely. I started out with a 500 words per day requirement to just get me into the chair and writing. As I hoped, getting my butt into the chair has resulted in more than the minimum the longer I keep up the streak. I think I'm ready to start making my minimum daily word count 1000, which should speed the process along even more, as I start to exceed that goal. 

It's funny; when I started focusing on the writing, 500 words was hard. I would write a bit, check my count and find I wasn't even halfway there. Tuesday morning, I wrote a bit, then did my check and found I'd already exceeded 500 words. 

I think I prefer writing the Hike with Me books after the end of the season in part because it allows me to relive the trips just when I'm really starting to miss backpacking. Though I did like having the write-up done earlier the one year that I did my ICT hike in May and finished the write-up before July. Of course, I did two other books that year, so I was still writing in October and November. 

It's so much fun to look back over all my pictures and recall the scents and the feel of the breezes. How hot it was in the afternoons, and how cold in the mornings. The trip went exactly according to plan, and that was such a relief after my last few attempts at the Frank. 

I'm hoping to finish my write-up of both this trip and the second ICT hike that I did later in August before November 19th, but it will all depend on how long each one ends up being. I expect the second one will be a lot shorter simply because I was only hiking for two days, due to fire closures, but I'm not sure how many more words I'll need for the first one. 

However many it takes :) 

Trouble in the Trees

Over the Memorial Day weekend, my husband and I went backpacking in the Sawtooths. Usually, when we hike out this way, we'll see wolf sign, or even wolves, but this time we only saw very old scat and not much of that. 

This led me to mention that I'd read that Idaho would be culling its wolf population from 1500 to 200, and we proceeded to speculate that the wolves must have fled deep into the wilderness to avoid the cull. I was thinking about a dramatized story from the wolves' point of view, about how the packs needed to retreat, but Ambrose took it another direction. He started making a song about it to the tune of Rush's "The Trees" - one of his favorite songs. 

He made some line suggestions, but I will admit I did not consciously retain them in memory. Instead, I let the concept simmer in my brain for a couple days before coming up with this: 

There is unrest in the forest
Stirring deep in Idaho
They say the wolves have grown too many
And so the wolves must go

The trouble to the people

(And they're quite convinced they're right)
Is that the wolves are just too vicious
And have ranchlands in their sight

But the wolves can't help their nature
And they like the way they're made
And they wonder why the ranchers
Can't just build a better stockade

There is trouble in the forest
Since the wolves are marked to die
No creatures can scream oppression
When good folk turns a blind eye

There will be no union
To protect the rights of wolf
We cannot change their nature
And the ranchers have had enough

Now we'll see wolf suppression
All due to human flaw
And the wolves, they will be slaughtered
By poison, gun and law

Radical Acceptance

 When you're out in the wilderness, there is no air conditioning. No heating either. 

Well, I guess you could say there's both. At night, the temperature does tend to drop. And during the day, it gets warmer. But you have no control over the temperature, and no way to change it. Sure, you can try to stay in the shade for a minor adjustment, but if you're following a trail, there's not always shade to be had. I actually find it easiest to hike when it's just a little bit colder than comfortable, because the work of hiking warms me up. But when it's hot out, that works against me. 

I have to figure out what I can do to adapt. At night, that's the tent and the down quilt and long underwear. During the hiking day, it's get up hella early to hike in the coolest weather possible, and, when it's hot, to simply persevere. Stay hydrated, wet my hat at every opportunity, but it comes down to adapting to hiking in the heat, you just have to accept that you are hot, and you will continue to be hot. 

I'm not talking about ignoring the signs of hyperthermia. But you can be a long way from medically overheating and still be just unbearably hot. Especially when you're on a ridgeline, carrying a pack with over 20% of your bodyweight in it, and the sun is directly overhead, beating into your skull and reflecting off of the ground and right into your face no matter how wide your hat brim is. 

It's not comfortable. It's not super fun. The views, and other things, compensate for this. I certainly wouldn't sign up for a hot, loaded hike with no rewards. That's one way to help yourself through that kind of unfun, by focusing on the good things. 

Another way is to really lean into accepting what's going on. You get a distinct line between things that are in your control and things that are not out in the wilderness. You take care of your gear and it takes care of you. You watch your step and where your steps are leading you. You adapt as best you can to the temperature and the weather. You accept that you can't control the weather, the temperature, the bugs, the condition of the trail, other people you may encounter, animals you may encounter, where the trail climbs or descends, how many times water crosses the trail... 

Knowing what you can and can't do and accepting it allows you to find a different kind of focus. In the time of COVID, I've been experiencing so much anxiety. I've written about it already, and I'll keep writing about it, because I don't want constant anxiety to become normalized. I want to radically accept that I cannot control a whole lot of things going on in the world around me. And look closely at the things that remain. The things that I might be able to change. 

If I'm willing to try. 

Walking and Writing

On my last backpacking trip, I made a conscious effort to write every day. I feel like I've been slacking in the note taking department on my backpacking trips, the ones that I take with other people at least. I don't have problems writing on my solo trips. 

I succeeded in writing every single day on that trip. It wasn't even that difficult. It was like falling back into a comfortable habit. I liked writing down our times for starting and stopping for the day, and just recording things that I might want to remember later. Like seeing a bat at one of our campsites, or reminding myself that I wanted to look up the etymology of bat. 

Although I used to bring a notebook for writing, I now bring loose sheets of unlined 8.5 x 11 paper, which I fold into quarters. I treat each quarter like its own page, with its own orientation. I use a ballpoint pen, carried in the same gallon baggie that holds the maps I write on. Usually a black one, for whatever reason I rarely take blue ink. 

On my next trip, I'll be solo, so I shouldn't have any trouble getting my writing done. I'm excited to be going on this trip, and also excited about writing the book about the trip. The whole process of writing, putting together pictures, and publishing the book lets me relive the whole thing well into the fall and early winter. It's one of the things that keeps me sane in the off season. 

The only problem I foresee is that I typically write on the back of the ICT maps on my solo trips. Trouble is, I also typically travel from south to north. This year, I'll be travelling from north to south. That means that I'll be starting on an ICT map that overlaps with a future hike, and ending on one that I've already started. Worst case, I run out of room. I guess I could go ahead and print out a new copy for the future hike, and use the whole thing this year. 

I'll be happy if the worst issue I have on this hike is running out of room to write on the ICT maps. After all, I'll be carrying more maps, and they're paper too. Sure, they're the topo maps, but we don't ever use the back :)

Floating Free of Anxiety

 I recently took an eight day, seven night backpacking trip with my husband. Eight whole days without internet access, cell phone, work, and, for the most part, other people. 

When we first started hiking, I felt an unfamiliar fear and anxiety attempt to attach itself to something out here. I'm comfortable being out in the Idaho wilderness on the trails by now. I don't usually look around for something to worry about; out there, there's enough that's real to think about without making things up. But this time, it was like I kept grasping for something to be scared of. 

I actually considered not going on my solo trip, because I was afraid that I wasn't ready or wasn't fit enough to do what I planned to do. I had to keep talking to myself about the difference between this year's trip and last year's. Last year, I planned on the aggressive schedule of 20 miles per day on average, which works well enough in the Owyhee desert, but not so well on mountain trails that haven't been getting the kind of maintenance that would make them easy. This year, with respect for both the large elevation changes of my trail and the disrepair of several sections of it, I planned to average 14 miles per day over 7 days - with the first day being only 8. 

It wasn't until the 3rd or 4th day that I was able to let go of that anxiety and start to feel comfortable about the upcoming solo. By the time I finished the trip, I was feeling ready for the solo, but not ready to go back to the electronic world. I even avoided turning on my phone for several hours after I got back home, and I left it in airplane mode for days and didn't open social media. Although I did play games and catch up on some of my favorite websites. 

I just wanted to keep avoiding the world as much as I could. I wanted vacation to last forever, and to forget about the world for as long as possible. 

And while vacation can't last forever, I can at least try and maintain that connection to the side of myself that the wilderness brings out. The side that knows she can hike the hike, and doesn't much care what anyone else thinks. 

Nature Cure

Usually, my husband and I don't go out into the woods until May. Often, we don't head out until Memorial Day weekend. But in the last few years, we've headed out earlier, because we both get to the point that if we don't, we'll go a little nuts.

This year, that 'going a little nuts' thing is happening earlier in the spring due to the whole stay at home order and my working from home and Ambrose not being able to go to the gym. I like where I live, but I do miss having more than one room. Okay, technically, there's the bathroom; it has a door and I could shut myself in there, but it's not the same!

On Monday night, I learned that I would be required to take furlough days at work. I think the way they're doing it is pretty fair, requiring a set number of days from employees based on their salary, and not requiring any furlough days from employees making less than a set amount. On Tuesday morning, I was starting to freak out quite a bit, and Ambrose suggested that I take the afternoon off of work so we could drive out to the woods and see if we might camp out this weekend.

So I did.

We drove out to make sure that we could, that the road was in good enough repair for our Ford Focus to handle. And we drove out to get a dose of the nature cure that we both sorely needed.

About halfway to Twin Springs, I had a thought. There's a small hot spring on this road; not an official one, just a roadside park and soak kind of thing. I said we should go there and see if it's empty, and if it was, we should go and soak a bit. I hadn't brought a towel or a bathing suit, but my underwear would do and we had a small towel in the car.

We were able to drive all the way out to that hot spring, and no one was there. This hot spring is, to me, quite magical. It's practically a fairy grotto, with an overhanging ledge that drips water (hot and cold) into the pool, flowers and vines growing up the sides. And I adore hot springs. I was so overcome with emotion when I got in that I started crying. I was laughing, crying and grinning all at the same time.

Ambrose didn't get in the water with me, but he did sit near the pool. We chatted a bit, but I mostly just reveled in the heat of the water and the beauty of the scenery. I thought about something that Ambrose said to me when we had a bit of a fight. He asked why I couldn't just stop worrying so much, or something to that effect. To me, worrying is a part of who I am as a person. And that attitude tells me that the worry-monster has integrated into my psyche on a deep level.

We didn't stay too long at the hot spring. It wouldn't be fair to linger when only one group could responsibly use the area at a time. We didn't drive home yet though. We just went up the road a bit and found a spot to stop and relax next to the river. I spent some time alone, my body stretched out on the earth, feeling the breeze on my skin, mostly cool, but occasionally chilly. The warmth of the sun. The intense pine scent from the tree I was under. Rustling of wind blown branches. Water flowing along.

I asked myself what would happen if I stopped worrying so much. And the answer is that I can't know unless I try. So, I'm going to try. I'm going to try to let go of the worry habit. For all I know, it will help me lose weight. It will probably reduce the number of headaches that I get. And it could even have an effect on my digestive issues. All I have to do is learn to let go of something that I've been doing for as long as I can remember.

Los Vecinos Malos

I suppose we were lucky, when we arrived on the Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend, that there was a campsite available. It was the smallest developed campsite at the Queens River Trail Head, but we didn't need a lot of room and we took it.

The two larger campsites, closer to the bathroom, were thoroughly occupied by a different kind of camper than us. There's nothing wrong with camping your own camp, so to write, but it can be interesting when styles that are so different must co-exist.

They were fire builders, ATV riders, hard talkers, drinkers and shooters.

The fire wasn't so bad. We were upwind for the most part, so I couldn't even smell the smoke. I didn't hear any extra coughs from Ambrose, so the fires only bugged me at night when I wanted to look at the stars and the light killed my night vision.

The ATVs were noisy and smelly, but they served a good function. They took the rowdy folks far away and allowed the quiet campsite to be invaded by a visitor.

Hi deer!

Make yourself at home. 

Don't mind the trucks. 

You can come closer.

Or walk away...

That deer was quite exciting for me, because it's the first time I've gotten a good picture of a deer with antlers. 

I had to walk between the two campsites to get to the bathroom, and sometimes it was a little bit scary. These guys are drinking, yelling across camps at each other and swearing up a storm. Now, I swear. I'm not shy about using words, but I use more words than just swears. I  use the words that I feel are appropriate for the situation. These men spat swears in every sentence, harshly and drunkly. They never made a violent move or gesture towards me, but I still felt afraid from their tones and word choices. 

But that wasn't the worst part. The worst part came the first night when darkness fell. The larger camp began to fire what sounded to me like a damn cannon from the confines of our tent. Ambrose says it was a 9 mm automatic rifle. The boom cracked through the air, echoing through the air. We stayed low and hoped that they were sober enough not to fire in the direction of our tent or our car. But how were we to know? We didn't know them, or their standards of gun safety. 

We made it through the night, even though it was punctuated by period booming interruptions. The next day Ambrose figured out they were shooting at a target well away from any of the campsites, so we were more prepared for a repeat performance. However, we got lucky. There was no more shooting that weekend. And we spent Monday night all alone at the campsite, so I got to try my camera out on the stars with a tripod. 

Either the camera isn't suited for taking shots of the stars or I need to learn how to do the settings manually, because the pictures did not turn out. 

That dot - it's Mars. I think. 

Even though we had some challenges with our neighbors, the weekend was still great. Not even being scared to death at the crack of gunshots could ruin camping for us - as long as we don't get shot. 

Writing Literarily

I have a lot of work to do this month. At work, I have a variety of projects that I'm testing and shepherding. I have a new employee's training to oversee. I have to write a performance evaluation for the first time for another employee. I have a presentation to prepare for a conference coming up in early March. And then there are all the little fires to put out as they flare.

And so, when I found that I couldn't sign up to hand in my first story for class after the conference, I decided to get it done sooner rather than later. I would have signed up to hand it in last week, but I was going on a vacation to visit my family and I didn't want to make myself try to write it when I'd be traveling and visiting for so many days.

So I signed up to hand mine in yesterday. That due date gave me a nice, non-travel weekend to work on it. And I had everything planned out. I scheduled myself to write 1000 words each day on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and, if needed, Saturday. Sunday and Monday would be revision days to get it into shape for sharing.

In part, I believe, because of my success with the January Tabata challenge, where I committed to and did two 4 minute exercises every day that month, I rose to the challenge of writing a story on a tight timeline. I had no time to work on the story during work. Even my lunch time wasn't a good time for writing, because my brain needed to relax and decompress.

I wrote about 1000 words of story on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. I wrote more words of background, trying to figure out who my character was before I wrote her story, because I felt like the stories we had read the previous week by students had trouble in part because the author didn't know who the character was. In that, I feel I treated it more like the literary-focused class would have preferred.

But then I wrote into the dark.

I placed my character in a situation and figured out where it was going by writing it. A break in routine led to more characters. A vague idea of what might happen next developed into something I didn't expect until I wrote it. And I never imagined the ending from where I began. I had fun with the story. The words weren't difficult, for the most part. I just needed to keep exploring.

Since the writing into the dark technique of Dean Wesley Smith's worked so well, I went ahead and submitted the story to a magazine before I even handed it out to my workshop classmates. I got a rejection for it yesterday, and I'm going to send it out again. It's a story I like. There's no reason not to keep it "in the mail."

The Worth of Birdseed

One of the expenses that my husband and I occasionally argue about is bird seed. He, at times, buys more bird seed than I think is reasonable. And at those times, I usually can convince him to cut back.

But I never convince him, nor do I want to convince him, to cut it out completely.

We live in a studio apartment. Yes, it has high ceilings, and that's nice, but it is a single room plus a bathroom. It is a small space for two people to live, though not as small as the tents we use for backpacking. The front door looks out onto a concrete patio with other doors and metal stairs leading up to the second floor apartments that ring when someone runs up them.

I'm always a little amazed that this place rates a back door, but it does. We have one outside wall, two windows and a windowed door leading to a small concrete patio, sheltered overhead by a balcony, looking out on a grass ditch and a white fence that separates the apartment property from the sidewalk and the road. Across the street is a parking lot, more apartment complexes, some offices and a small creek. There's a park with a pond beyond that creek, and, across another street is the Boise River.

All that water makes for good homes for ducks and geese. And it turns out that while I grew up giving stale bread to ducks, they really like birdseed. And when they find a reliable source of birdseed, word spreads, quacks perhaps. And they come.

And they keep coming.

They quack and squeak and grumble. They peck each other for access to food. They are nearly impossible to count, because they move and flow, sometimes jumping or flapping their wings to reposition themselves. They are fascinating and wild.

In a way, these ducks are the closest we have to pets. We feed them and they provide us with entertainment. A glimpse at the wild life we like to immerse ourselves in when we backpack. A reminder of what we're missing when we're at home. And a mystery when, as one, they fly off without warning.

Hefafu, or, Why Won't Men Just Ask for Directions?

When Ambrose and I were hiking to the start of the trail to Scenic Lake in the Sawtooth Wilderness, we stuck together for most of the morning. But after the second stream crossing I went on ahead of him. I was feeling warmed up and ready to go. I zoomed off, and soon reached the cairn and sign that marked the turnoff to Scenic Lake.

I decided to wait for Ambrose there. The sign was fastened to a tree, and I dumped my pack near the trunk and pulled out my birdseed bag to sit on. Then I spent some time being quiet and listening to the birds.

Then I heard voices. I didn't think it would be Ambrose so I sat up and looked around. Two male hikers were coming down the trail from the other direction. I stayed sitting up and watched them approach.

When they were close, I said hello. The guys didn't seem interested in talking to me. They were intent. As they walked past me, I heard, "It should be right here."

I almost spoke up. I almost asked them if they were looking for the turnoff to Scenic, but they walked past very quickly, not turning.

If they had turned, they would have seen the sign.

When Ambrose caught up to me a few minutes later, he revealed that the guys had indeed been looking for Scenic.

How did he know this? Because they asked him.

I was highly amused by this. I was sitting practically on the junction and they didn't have a word for me. But they run into another man and ask for directions.

Now, Ambrose contends that they may have just been tired, hungry, thirsty or in a hurry. And that's why they didn't ask me. I don't know. It seemed a bit sexist to me. But it didn't hurt me in the slightest.

It would have served them right if I were hiking alone and they'd gone all the way back to the trailhead.

-isms

This past Monday was my birthday. To celebrate, I took the day off of work. I know it was a day off anyway for most folks, but my workplace does not recognize Columbus day as a holiday. However, we get the day after Thanksgiving instead, so it all works out. My husband and I drove out to a roadside hot spring with the intention of camping next to it and enjoying some drinks in the steaming hot water.

The first bump in our road came about when we saw the sign warning of a road closure at milepost 34. Neither of us could remember exactly where the hot spring was on the road, as far as mile markers go, but Ambrose thought that the Troutdale campground was at mile post 28, and I didn't think that the spring was more than 6 miles past it. So we drove on with some confidence.

And, although Troutdale was closer to mile marker 31 than 28, the hot spring I wanted to visit was just after mile post 34 - and just before the gated road closure.

Unfortunately, the campsite right next to the hot spring, though reachable by car, was fully occupied by a hunting camp. There was not room for us to camp there, so we turned the car around and drove a short distance to another roadside hot spring. This one was not as well developed, and not really usable, so we drove back and claimed a spot just past the one way bridge. It would be a short walk to the hot spring.

As soon as I got out of the car, I was reminded why I prefer backpacking to car camping. There was a well developed fire pit, surrounded by rocks, and piled high with trash. Not just trash that would reasonably burn, no, it seemed there was everything but the kitchen sink - aluminum cans, tin cans, a plastic two liter soda bottle, muffin wrappers, wet wipes, a styrofoam bowl, more aluminum cans.

And that was just the trash in the fire pit.

Scattered in the brush were unidentifiable papers, perhaps wads of toilet paper, perhaps paper towels. When I reached for a rock to hold our plastic vestibule down in the wind, I found not one, but two tampons under it.

What the hell is wrong with these people????

I cannot comprehend the state of mind that makes it okay to leave trash like that outdoors. What - you think the paper will biodegrade overnight? You think the tampons are cotton, which is a plant, so it belongs under a rock? You think that you can just burn anything and it will be hunky-dory?

I went on quite a tirade, and Ambrose patiently bore it until I calmed down. He was amused, because to him, I was behaving like an environmentalist.

And if being outraged at litterers and picking up trash makes an environmentalist, then I guess I am one.

But it made me think about the argument that being a feminist is just about believing that women and men should have equal rights (as stated by, for example, Aziz Ansari recently). That more people are feminists than claim to be, because it isn't about the word as much as the beliefs of individuals.

But believing that littering is bad is not the same as picking up trash. And believing that women and men should have equal opportunities is not the same as recognizing where they don't and working towards change.