It was raining when I woke up.
There was a barbed wire running on the ground just outside my tent, and beyond it the drop-off to the river below. On the other side were a series of well-worn trails. If humans hadnot made them, they had certainly used them. It was raining, and the rain was either loud enough to mask the noise of the mining operation a mile over the trails, or the rain was persistent enough to prevent those mines from working.
There had been numerous evening showers on my trip so far, but this was the first time it was raining when I woke up. My rain pants were stowed in the canoe, soaked as it would turn out. It would be uncomfortable to canoe with soaked legs.
I was quite busy in that little shelter of mine. The previous night I had been thinking that the two-person tent was overkill. If I had brought a one-person tent, I could have been more flexible, able to pitch on smaller patches of flat land.
Now it was wonderful. I typed up four journal entries and almost completed my latest reading of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia in spacious comfort. Worried I would be cooped up all day, I slid down the muddy slope to my canoe to see what I could.
The sky was overcast with no sign the rain might let up. The canoe was a bit swamped and I imagined the river creeping higher and higher to swallow it. I checked the GPS, and it said it was only 8:30. I could wait before setting out.
I felt fortunate to have a sheltered campsite in a high location. And it was surprisingly warm inside the tent where I read and wrote as I waited. When I checked the GPS again, it read 10:30, and then -- brzzzzp -- flashed forward three hours. It was suddenly afternoon.
I found a decent walking stick and carefully slid down the slope to my canoe. I had a quick dinner in the rain, and bailed the boat a liter at a time. The path I had been taking was now far too slippery to climb, so I had to find a different way, climbing up the weeds to the top.
I walked the trail to my tent and got in. I wasn't going anywhere that day.
It was raining when I went to sleep.
Day 62 ended: 50*29.566N, 101*31.446W
Friday, October 3, 2008
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3 comments:
"I've been through the desert on a horse with no name,
It felt good to be out of the rain"
My big critique so far is that you tell us what happened, but not necessarily what you thought about. There are idea posts, and there are doing stuff posts. I wonder if both don't occur together very often. I have trouble with exercise programs just because I get bored, although I find the Wii very compelling and I'm not sure why
Today, I was sleepy. Last night I stayed up a bit later that I might usually, since S wasn't well I was attending. S is better for the moment.
Had lunch with some church folks.
I ended up staying late at work, as my boss is going to be taking some time off early next week for his anniversary, and wants some work available to people. Things somehow got twisted around so that he's behind, and everybody wants our heads on sticks.
It was nice though, because S had brought me some leftovers from yesterday for lunch, which I then had for dinner as I worked.
Also, Dave L. stopped by (Dave L. is my local discussion partner, and was a serious contender for a groomsman, except he used to date one of my S's bridesmaids, and ended weirdish.) He observed quite astutely that fields such as futures studies and social software also can attract cybernetics-inclined new-agers, somewhat blurring the field with brush of a different eras countercultural values. I've run across touches of this in my own work. It's a tricky thing for me, because some of that stuff I find genuinely true and insightful, and other parts of it I find incredibly juvenile and trite.
I've watched all of project runway except for the first half of season 4 and the first season. We thought about renting the first season tonight, but we it wasn't at the library, and S didn't feel like going into campus for Rentertainment.
John,
A lot of days my thoughts can be summed up simply as
"ARRRRGHHH!"
or
"aaahhhhhhhh."
Steinbeck says being alone and often speechless reduces one to a pleasure/pain basis. I am not sure if this is correct, but it is difficult to simultaneously exert oneself physically and mentally.
Although I have been having really awesome dreams lately, realistic, fairly cohesive novellas.
The problem is that dreams often happen during sleep, in which memories are consolidated so they can effectively be forgotten.
On the other hand, maybe that's not a bug, it's a feature.
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