I am not Thoreau.

Unforseen Consequences

2010-06-18T14:06:00.003-04:00

There's a lot that I had envisioned for this summer, especially in relation to living in the woods. I even dreamed of growing a few vegetables next to my tent! As the experiment goes on I will make a blog post about those dreams, about what succeeded, what I never got around to, and what outright failed.

But today I want to give another pearl of wisdom. It is that when you place yourself in unfamiliar territory, when you throw routine to the wind, space opens and opportunities for positive growth reveal themselves.

For example, living in the woods leaves me with a small yet persistent feeling of 'house-envy'. Also, I am trying to convince my parents to start an organic garden on our property, at least just enough for themselves. For these two reasons I've gone home on weekends much more than I usually do during school terms.

And it's been fantastic. I've always had fun cooking dinners with my mom, but now I am appreciating it even more. More, the last weekend I was there I spent almost the whole time doing "farm" work, and I loved it. Not only that, I spent time researching organic farming practices: things like companion planting and crop rotation.

Now, I recently learned that we need to re-shingle our house. Another opportunity! I haven't any clue how to do this, but I started to read a little about it, and maybe I can try. Someday I'd love to know enough to build a simple house, and here's an opportunity to learn part of that. Would I have even considered attempting this if I hadn't taken on this summer experiment, if I hadn't torn up my routine? No, if I were renting a place in Waterloo as usual, I'd surely be spending my weekends in Waterloo, much of my time on the internet; I wouldn't be going home so often, so it wouldn't have even occurred to me that I have enough time to undertake this project.

In a sentence, this is my summer: Routine makes a small number of daily tasks more efficient, but breaking your routine opens the world, gives a far broader range of experiences.

And as I am someone who deeply values and draws pleasure from the gaining of experience, especially varied experiences, this is good.

As is becoming custom, I will leave you with related passage from my readings this morning:
Excerpts from Song of the Open Road, by Walt Whitman:

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.
...
From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of limits and imaginary lines,
Going where I list, my own master total and absolute,
Listening to others, considering well what they say,
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.
...
All seems beautiful to me,
I can repeat over to men and women, You have done such good to me
    I would do the same to you,
I will recruit for myself and you as I go,
I will scatter myself among men and women as I go,
I will toss a new gladness and roughness among them,
Whoever denies me it shall not trouble me,
Whoever accepts me he or she shall be blessed and shall bless me.
...
Have the past struggles succeeded?
What has succeeded? yourself? your nation? Nature?
Now understand me well--it is provided in the essence of things
    that from any fruition of success, no matter what,
    shall come forth something to make a greater struggle necessary.

This isn't hard enough

2010-06-11T21:16:00.005-04:00

I'm realizing that what I'm doing this summer is not quite challenging enough, by itself. I mean, it is challenging: I have to plan ahead, although mostly I don't and am just comfortable with not necessarily knowing where I'm going to sleep right up until the hour before; I have to pack and repack things (like a toothbrush and toothpaste -- my dentist will probably be able to tell the number of times I've forgotten to pack these this summer... but then as with everything else, if I lack some material thing, I just make do with some substitute. Floss/toothpicks, in this example); I have to shower on campus, which generally means I schedule my daily exercise for the morning hours; I barely have a refrigerator, which means buying food more frequently (which is sort of a good thing, at least when I'm buying local food)...

But there is more that I can do. Last week I was sitting around and somehow got to thinking these thoughts, that I can do whatever crazed task I set myself to. These sorts of feelings of potential power come over me from time to time: last summer I got it into my head that I would train for a four minute mile. I have since realized that this is truly insane, that people train for a season to shave 5-10 seconds off their mile, and they run on tracks and in track shoes. This time I will pick a slightly more achievable task, instead probably going for distance than speed. So, readerboat, I want you to hold me to this. It's going to be another marathon, or maybe a solo double century (200 miles on the bike, which I've done once before in a group ride).

It's all about inspiration. Once we have that, the difficulties fall away. In Tennyson's words, we shall live "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." From Ulysses:

Come, my friends,
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.

Sounds and Lights

2010-05-31T12:37:00.003-04:00

Well it's been a while. Let's get up to speed! I've been reading Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself", and I have translated myself, rather literally actually. Up from the swampland and over to a bit nicer place, with a running brook and trails, and some high land that does not quite offer respite from mosquitoes, but nonetheless there's a small clearing where my tent snuggles against the tree-line. So sadly, I am saying goodbye to the hammock (for now). It was pretty great to sleep in (aside from the problem of my sleeping pad edging sideways on me in the night, which on the morning I was packing up the hammock I realized could solve by putting the pad inside my sleeping bag), but setting myself up in it, getting into the sleeping bag and straightening out while my book and bottle and things skirt their way under and stick me with their corners -- it's a bit of an ordeal. So let's try out the tent.

I just skipped over a very important event: how did I find this new land? Miraculously! I knocked on one fellow's door, told him what I'm doing, and was immediately granted unofficial permission. I wasn't peppered with questions and looked at curiously. This is the kind of trusting and generous man who I've been waiting to find!

And I slept wonderfully last night. Maybe it was all the cycling and sun I got that day. I watched the fireflies come out and play about at dusk, some of them floating high above me so they looked like flashing stars against the darkening sky. The frogs from a nearby pond echo through the forests. Having grown up with my room adjacent to the pond by our house and sleeping warm summer nights with the windows open, this is one of my favourite sounds.

(In the middle of the night I heard the squawk of some sort of bird as it was caught by a predator. Actually, this is the second time this summer I've heard such a catch.)

I leave you with a passage I read last night from "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman:

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars,
And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren,
And the tree-toad is a chef-d'œuvre for the highest,
And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven,
And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,
And the cow crunching with depress'd head surpasses any statute,
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.

"Vehiclism": racism between cars and bicycles

2010-05-31T11:23:00.008-04:00

Yesterday I rode 111km on my bicycle, but the truly exhausting part was the sun. We had a UV index of ~9 yesterday. I don't burn easily, but my arms really took a beating. In the mid afternoon with the sun at it's highest, I would put one hand behind my back to shade it, or twist it to turn the underside out, just for some relief. A UV index that high is absurd!

After riding into the city from this new hovel, K and I rode out to his farm called Plan B in the Hamilton direction. On the way an old convertible squealed by us and the Sunday driver inside squealed something too, something about "get off the road!" Hoping to find out more, I pedaled hard and was just about behind him as he was stopped at a light a kilometer later; the light turned and he belched outta there, giving me a nice tailpipe worth of exhaust only. Thanks guy!

And twice recently, I've taken the lane and a car has nudged in and passed me on the right of my own lane. And one friendly lady fell asleep with her face blaring the horn as she drove behind me for over half a kilometer. Of course most drivers are good, just like most people here and now aren't outwardly racist. But it strikes me that these incidents are just like racism: "vehiclism", if you will. As the racists think it's a 'world made only for whites', the vehiclists think it's a 'road made only for cars'. To illustrate, drivers don't have a problem with slowing down or even completely stopping and waiting while the car in front of them makes a left turn, yet something troubles them when a bicycle going at 30kph slows them up. In fact it troubles them so deeply that they often have trouble expressing it articulately. They'd rather yell obscenities and speed by the bicycle and nearly clip it, than show respect and treat it as another vehicle on the road. Of course a driver and a cyclist would have nothing against each other if they passed while walking on the sidewalk, so it's almost as if it's the car and the bicycle themselves that are the living creatures at odds, with the people merely passengers and witnesses.

What do you think?

Thoughts on Cars

2010-05-19T09:51:00.003-04:00

I ran into work this morning (from K's, 6.5km not bad!) and on the way I counted. "One, two... three! one, one, one... one, one, one, one... one one one two! one one..." My summer job is all about enumeration, so believe me, I know how to count, and I didn't make any mistakes here. No, I was counting the number of people in each car that I saw. I must have counted over 200 cars, and I estimate at least 85% of them carried only one person. Think about that!

So if those who drive alone instead took mass transit and if by so doing we got that number down to 50%, then car traffic would be reduced to 30% of its current load. Wouldn't that be great? The day before, I cycled past about 3/4 of a kilometer worth of cars congested at an intersection, while the bike lane was free.

On a related note, I recently had the thought that we should lower the speed limits in cities. Think about the benefits: less accidents, lower percentage of accidents result in fatalities, safer for cyclists because the speed difference is less, less time spent accelerating / decelerating and therefore less gas burned, more encouragement to switch to public transit... This idea is not new. It has been brought up in Toronto's city council, various cities (London, Amsterdam) in Europe (.pdf link) are experimenting with dropping their speed limits.

Last thought on cars: I sometimes look at traffic and cars and people inside them and have fun thinking about the cars as if they were sentient life forms. There's something to this: cars behave like social creatures. They all behave broadly similarly, obeying social etiquette (the rules of the road), but every now and there's a crazy car (angry driver) who commits a crime (runs a stop sign), perhaps even murder (a car crash). They eat (at gas stations) and they sleep (in garages). They dress differently (polychrome sports car vs. smart looking smart car vs. hunk of a hummer) and you can correlate how they dress with how they walk (drive) and treat each other. Some even travel in packs and correlate their movements (transport trucks). Apparently I'm not the first to have this idea. My dad told me that there was a cartoon from the sixties in which some Martians were observing Earth, and they concluded that cars were the sentient life forms on Earth and that people were just viruses who every now and then lodged themselves inside a car. The car's response is to run wildly about until it dislodged the virus (until the person left). What fun! Does anyone know what this cartoon is called?

Glorious: Wild Leeks and Sunshine

2010-05-17T17:43:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was a glorious day. It will be forever cast in my memory in tremendous vivid and bright green, the colour of the forest I spent midday wandering through.

After a nice easy cycle into the office from Land A, I spent a few hours planning out a mini cycle tour, sort of an introduction to the concept intended for a big group. (See facebook for details, if you're interested!) I then cycled around the countryside on a nice 40km ramble, with a stop at the crown land. That place is incredible. It was "a bright, sunshiny day". The vivid greens of the underside of leaves are made yellow and brilliant by the sunlight, trilliums are in bloom across the forest floor, and just off the path there are patches of wild leeks.

To walk through this place is pure joy. It's fascinating to see different types of plants growing in clumps: over here a clump of violets, there a strange sort of grass, by that tree leeks, and so on. And every now and then, a rare red trillium.

I found a large swath of wild leeks and dug up a few with my makeshift dandelion puller (a butter knife), and am careful not to hurt the nearby leeks, nor to take too many from the same spot. Soon I had two bunches: enough to make dinner and then some to give out as gifts.

Returning to K's, I put CBC radio on and started preparing dinner. This was another pleasure. The smell of the wild leeks permeated the kitchen. Wild leeks are like a cross between an onion and garlic, but more delicate and subtler than either. I adapted a recipe I found for tuna, into a recipe for tofu!

1 brick firm tofu, cubed
2-3 tomatoes on the vine, or roma
a dozen wild leek bulbs
1/2 cup cooked beans: red kidney or anasazi
a vinegar, I used red wine vinegar
extra virgin olive oil
freshly ground black pepper
salt (optional)
parsley (optional)

Begin by slicing the tomatoes and sautéing them. Just after they begin to break down, purée them (or as I did, you can just mash them up by hand, with a knife or fork). Pour over the tofu cubes to marinade with some vinegar and olive oil and black pepper. While this is sitting, slice the wild leek bulbs and fry for just a minute. At this point I took the leeks out and cooked the tofu with any salt you like, covered, for 10 minutes, before re-adding the leeks, and adding the beans. Add some parsely at the end if you like.
The leaves of the wild leek are edible. Their strong flavour means that using them as the base green for a salad will give a powerhouse of a salad: exactly the way I like it! I combined them with a chopped tomato and red pepper, drizzled with balsamic vinegar and olive oil, and dusted with freshly ground black pepper.

After dinner I read from The Omnivore's Dilemma, in the chapter 'Big Organic'. I learned that the origins of the organic food movement lay in 1960's hippie culture, but the fascinating part is that the people who started the first organic farms since the Green Revolution were not farmers, but rather were hippies from the cities with no horticultural experience. They worked by trial and error. Where was the knowledge of how to grow food without chemical fertilizers and pesticides? Shouldn't these hippies just have asked for this knowledge? It's terrifying to realize that they didn't ask because the knowledge didn't exist, at least in so much as it had been so largely destroyed by the big agribusinesses that it was inaccessible to the hippies. The Green Revolution destroyed an entire knowledge-base.

I had no internet access, no laptop around this evening, and the evening was joyous. I would jump from book to book, always finding something interesting. I learned the basics of how PV solar cells work. Next time I'm at K's I'm going to learn about tidal power!

More photos are available on my Picasa site:

A Glorious Day: Wild Leeks and Cooking.

"It's getting better all the time!" Plus, two pearls of wisdom.

2010-05-16T10:00:00.001-04:00

Here's a quick night-by-night for the past week:

Tuesday, May 11: Slept at Kyrke's, because I wanted to use his kitchen to cook a dinner and bring leftovers in for lunch. Just a simple spaghetti. Also, it was raining.
Wednesday, May 12: Slept in the woods, at the place that I am now calling Land A -- that place out in the country where I have permission from the property owners. 'Twas a good sleep. I gathered little sticks and laid them around in the area under my hammock to firm up the mucky ground.
Thursday, May 13: Thunderstorm warnings, so as per my agreement at Land A I must sleep in the city. I put out a request to my friends and Peter quickly and graciously offered me sanctuary. We talked about grad schools, travelling, and even did a little brainstorming for his summer project in machine-learning. Here's the first pearl of wisdom: I realized that this summer experiment of mine had just created a great opportunity for Peter and I to connect on a deeper level than we had before, and that might not have happened otherwise. What other reason could I have had to ask Peter if I could sleep on his spare bed? Even if we had just started talking without my request, I might not have seen Peter's extraordinary level of generosity. I had a great time! Plus, I slept on the best and biggest airmattress I have ever seen! Thanks Peter!
Friday, May 14: Elliot's birthday celebrations are tonight, so in order to attend those I'll need to sleep in the city again. I decided to sleep in my office. Yeah, this is sketchy and, as my friends say, 'degenerate'. But hear me out. I did this precisely because it's the lowest I can possibly go. On the bicycle trip last summer, while staying with some couch surfing hosts, there was another couch surfer there with us. We got to talking, and Rosie explained to me how important, yet how difficult, it is to keep a distinction between having gratitude for someone's generosity, and feeling that you owe them something. This second pearl of wisdom has stuck with me ever since. So this night I slept on the concrete floor of my office (well, I had a sleeping pad) to make sure I truly appreciate all that my friends are doing for me.

This wisdom is also found in the writings of Kahlil Gibran. Here's an excerpt from The Prophet.

"And you receivers -- and you are all receivers -- assume no weight of gratitude, lest you lay a yoke upon yourself and upon him who gives.
Rather rise together with the giver on his gifts as on wings;
For to be overmindful of your debt, is to doubt his generosity who has the free-hearted earth for mother, and God for father."
Saturday, May 15: Spent all day researching graduate schools. I'm very glad to have found the time to do this. Spent the night at Land A. Was comfortable, aside from the time when my sleeping pad edged out from under me and ended out and sideways in the middle of the night, leaving most of me cold, to wake and fix this grave error.

Night three: better. Night four: lovely!

2010-05-11T08:39:00.010-04:00

Things are getting good! On Thursday after work I rode out to visit two friends in the country who had said 'maybe' I can camp on their land (see How to Find Walden Pond). Well, today that 'maybe' was turned into a 'I don't think so', but then over the course of talking for a while, it was reverted into a 'maybe', then a 'yes! We'll try it for a week'. Hooray! I now have a place where I can leave my camp set up: this saves me tons of time!

I had already made arrangements to sleep Thursday night on Ian's (Ian of dinosauropedia fame) back porch, so back to the city I went. The railings weren't high enough to get the hammock completely off the boards, but that was okay. I brought my sleeping pad with me that night, so I was a lot warmer, but it was still a cold night and by morning my feet were pretty well frozen. I woke up lots in the small hours of the morning, and finally sometime after 5 the first rays of the sun were coming up, and the garbage trucks could be heard scuttling about like ants exploring and carrying things back to their den. So up I get; it's warmer at the office. The sunrise really was magnificent though.

Hammock all set up, at night on Ian's back porch.

Sunrise at 5:30am.

Friday night I spent indoors at Nathan's, as there was a terrific thunderstorm and part of my agreement with my new friends in the country is that I won't camp during a thunderstorm. Relishing the opportunity to use a kitchen, I went out to buy groceries at Zehr's (in Conestoga Mall! Gaah, just walking through the mall to get to Zehr's was bad enough [thank you Jenna for brightening that!], but then Zehr's itself is enormous. Finding what I needed was frustratingly slow. Well, no matter, when I've got the time.) Nathan and I cooked up a delicious Thai green curry, which I'd wanted to do for a very long time. More fun.

Saturday and Sunday night I spent at my parent's, for a surprise Mother's Day visit. Still more fun. Watched Bedazzled (the old British one), and made another Thai green curry for Mom. :)

This brings us to Monday (last) night! I cycled out to the country, and set up camp with permission. Fears of trespassing and angry homeowners gone! I mucked about setting up camp in the trees in backyard. It's at a lower elevation, so is a bit mucky, but not too bad. I bet the mosquitoes are going to be great venomous killers later. No matter. Since I'll be leaving camp set up there, it's worth taking the time to set it up just right. I even hauled some logs under my tarp to create a platform on which to rest my bike, off of the mud.

Another good thing: Ian graciously offered to let me sleep in his -7ºC sleeping bag. That's a full 17ºC warmer than my MEC Caravan! I had a very toasty night, despite all the frost warnings. In fact, I actually slept in! When I awoke the sun was well up (I forgot my little clock [actually a cycling computer] at the office). One of the worst parts of last summer's cycling trip was packing up camp on a cold (let's not even mention wet) morning. The hands just freeze, and there's nothing we could do about it. So joyously I skipped that job this morning, packed my light bike, and rode to campus! Of course my hands froze on the ride anyways. Whatever. :)

Camping out for the first time this summer with permission from the landowners! Taken at dusk with a two second exposure so it's kind of blurry, then brightened up with GIMP.

In the morning, a shot of camp, with the bicycle just about ready to go.

Prognosis: This just might turn out to be a wonderful summer experiment!

Night Two: Worse. How can we keep doing this!

2010-05-06T09:23:00.006-04:00

Good morning readerboat,

I think I'll lay it on the line, because part of what this is about and part of what bicycle touring is about is getting through hard times, the kind that just make you despair and want to give up and go home. Here's how last night went:

4pm: Looking at the weather forecast, 'severe thunderstorm warning in effect for Kitchener/Waterloo/Cambridge'. Oh goodie! A storm! That means I'll finally get to test out my hammock in the rain. I need to do that. I'm going to camp out tonight.

6pm: Still at office, losing focus on work. Nathan graciously offers homemade dinner (pinto bean concoction! yummm, thanks!), I quickly and less graciously accept.

7:30pm: Back at the office, packing stuff up, carry it down to my bike.

8:10pm: Depart. I had planned to ride 15km out into the country and camp at a new spot, but since the sun is already just about down, I decide to go to basically the same place as last time: by the Grand River, near town. Except this time, I think, it'll be better because I won't go into that dense bush on someone's property. [See Update on first post for a photo of this bush.]

~9:00? - Arrive. It rained on me on the way over. I'd rather it rain during the middle of the night, while I'm in shelter. (That was not to be...) I also got lost on the way over; fortunately not severely. That's just my overwhelming sense of direction for you.

Leave bike at edge of forest, go in, searching for a spot. Need two biggish (not too big since there is lightning!) trees the right distance apart, with no smaller trees in between. Finally find a spot! Go back out to collect bike. Where's bike? Search, search, oh! Attempt to bring bike, loaded with stuff, into trees. Huge fallen tree prevents easy passage to my chosen spot. Search for new one. Lower standards. Find acceptable spot. Set up hammock and tarp, in dark (thank goodness for new headlamp!). Get in, read a few pages from Leaves of Grass. Sleep at 10:30pm.

From starting to pack up at the office to being set up in the woods, that took 3 hours. If I have to do this every night, how am I ever going to find time to research grad schools?

2:00am: Wake. Get out of hammock to pee, rather cold outside. Getting cold inside, too.

Between 2:00 and 5:00: Woke many times, getting very cold. Woke from one hellish dream in which some men drove up in a truck, high beams glaring down on me in my hammock, voices; I run, get out of there. Getting colder still. Can hardly sleep. Hammock is set up unevenly too, so I slide down.

5:15am: Still dark out, but can no longer sleep and shaking from cold. Decide it's either get up and move about, or die inside cocoon. Which do you chose? Shoes wet. Inside of pants wet (I turned them inside out before sleeping so all the bugs would accumulate on the inside which is really the outside.) Socks wet. Put them all on anyways and jump about for warmth. Pack hammock and tarp up and onto bike.

6:00am: Start to walk outta here, taking a few pictures along the way. Top: sunrise over the Grand River. Bottom: near where I camped last night. Collective: see what I mean about the Lion King!

7:15am: Made it to work. Open hammock in middle of office to dry it out a bit, really wish I had a proper place to do this. Still have to clean bike and change into normal clothes. Then write blog! And breakfast! Finally getting to work by 9:30am.

Prognosis: Discouraged, and after all that, I still don't know how my hammock holds up in the rain. Fortunately, writing this blog lifts my spirits! I really need a permanent place, where I can leave my camping gear. Since setting up and packing up camp every night takes a fair amount of time for one person (especially when you're doing it in the dark), I want to travel as light as possible. I try to fit everything I need onto the front and back racks of my bicycle (I have a little pack that goes on my back rack to give me some compartments and things), instead of loading up my big panniers. So last night, I thought it was going to be warm enough that I could do without my air mattress. Wow, I was so wrong. Lesson learned: better to take a bit more time to pack an extra bag than to leave something behind and lose hours of sleep because of it.

No idea where I'm sleeping tonight. We'll see! :)

Update: That Steely Dan tune, 'Show Biz Kids', has been going through my head lately. I finally have a good interpretation of the lyric

'While the poor people sleeping

With the shade on the light

While the poor people sleeping

All the stars come out at night.'

To me, the shade is placed on the light by the poor person while he/she is sleeping someplace where someone might not want them to be. I have been doing this myself: if I want to read in my hammock, I burrow into my sleeping bag: head, book, light and all. It gets awfully hot, but it's the only way to avoid lighting up my camp for all to see. So while the poor people are sleeping in fear, the stars come out at night, and the stars have no shade on them. This lyric asks why the stars, as natural objects, are free to shine brightly, while poor people, poverty being the most natural economic state for a human, are shamed into shading their light.

Update Two: Hah, I suppose an easier interpretation is to think of 'stars' in the Hollywood sense.

How to find Walden Pond

2010-05-04T22:25:00.000-04:00

I'm sleeping a few nights at my friend Kyrke's place. I decided that while I adjust to the new job, I would live a slightly familiar life -- indoors that is, with a shower around. I do have great respect for undertaking challenges even if the sole purpose is that the challenge is difficult, to gain skill/knowledge/strength, but this is not exactly one of those times. This time the goal really is to see if I can do this sustainably, for a few months, so I'm not going to burn myself out and discourage myself by making it overly difficult just yet. This is my justification, anyways; choose whether you believe me or not!

On Sunday I cycled out to the country to talk to two people about whether I can camp on their land. Ideally I want to have someone's permission, so that I can have a place that is somewhat permanent, so that I can leave things like a camping stove or my hammock there and not worry about them going missing. So far I've not had luck with this. Back in April, actually, I spent much time trying to find such a person; I contacted WWOOF hosts, farmers who have CSAs, couchsurfers, and I even knocked on a few random doors. The best response I got was a 'maybe'. The worst was people thinking I was insane, refusing to listen, not understanding, telling me to leave, closing doors. I thought that humans generally wanted to help each other. I wasn't asking for much, just a little square of land between two trees; I don't want a shower, I don't want a meal. I got two particularly crass responses that actually made me cry a little. Weeping for humanity, you know? Yeah, I'm sure they've worked hard to buy their property out in the country and they don't want some kid coming in and taking advantage of them. Is that how they saw it? I saw it as an opportunity for them to do a good thing for another human, and shouldn't that be enormously rewarding? Why are we so afraid to be the slightest bit generous?
Well, this story has a bit of a happy ending. The 'maybe' still stands, and I'll find out soon which way it goes. But I have another opportunity, which is a beautiful tract of land about 15km away from the University. Thanks to my friend Leanne for telling me about it! It's a forest, changing from deciduous to coniferous and back again as you walk the trail, with a good canopy and not thick with undergrowth. Right now there are trilliums in bloom everywhere, and a few other flowers that I'm not familiar with. (Pictures coming.) I met a friendly man 'walking' his Brittany Spaniel along the trail, and he 'gave me the lay of the land'. The best part? There's foraging opportunities! Wild leeks and fiddleheads, so far! I think I've found my home. :)

Day One: Night of Fear

2010-05-02T13:00:00.002-04:00

I spent my first night in the woods last night.
In the evening I bicycle out to the edge of Waterloo and search around for a spot to string my hammock for the night. I had scoped out the general area on Google Satellites. It's on the Grand River: very pretty. It sort of reminds me of an African landscape. (I've never been to Africa, but I've seen The Lion King.) The only problem is that all around there are "Private Property" and "No Trespassing" signs. These scare me. Images of scary men with big sticks shaking my hammock in the middle of the night and threatening. I eventually find my way onto a city trail, and there are people walking it; that's almost as bad. To try to get away from them, I dive into the bush (well, less of a dive and more of a nervous scouting mission to find the most hidden possible spot); looking at the map I'm pretty sure that's back onto private land. Fortunately, I'm not disturbed in the night, though the sense of fear never really leaves me and I wake many times throughout the night. At 6:30 I wake again to see the light of day, and so it's time to pack up and get out. I fold everything up, pack it onto my bike, and lift the bike through the bush, over trees and I am crashing around quite a bit. Hopefully I'll find a woods that's a little less dense. This place has some beauty, but I think it will be more of a emergency home to me, for when I want to camp out but don't want to cycle way out into the country: for when it's late or when the weather sucks moderately.
I make my way back to campus, and would really love a shower. It was a hot night, kind of sweaty. All the gyms are closed, though, so I guess I'll continue to grace the humans around me with a pungent scent. Today I'm gathering things that I've stored with friends around the city. I feel like a bit of a squirrel.
I'll try to get some pictures of the place I slept last night, but I didn't bring my camera last night. I went as light as possible!

Now, don't get me wrong; last night was still a great experience, even with the fear. Sleeping under the stars is always a pleasure. I heard some strange noises throughout the night; they were probably half-human, half-animal. Some weird blowing noise, maybe a giant bird. And fireworks, hrmm. I suppose I could have done without the forty-odd spiders hiding in the crevasses of my stuff in the morning, but hey. I always seem to find that when I sleep outside, I wake up feeling refreshed and great, even if I wake up in the night, even if I don't get eight hours. But sleeping indoors often means waking up feeling groggy and having tight muscles. I don't quite know why.

I start a new job tomorrow; yes, the abstract mathematics research one. So I will spend the night at my friend's place tonight, to be well rested and maybe a little bit clean.

Prognosis: not discouraged

Update: A photo of this thick bush, taken a few days later.