Chapbook

[sasha]

404 - Not Found

After nearly two weeks of cold, miserable weather spawning flood watches and warnings, we finally got a break last weekend. The clouds parted, the sun poked its head out, and temperatures climbed into the mid 60s. No longer under house arrest, I was eager for a wander before the next round of storms rolled in, preferably someplace I could go without dealing with any Mothers' Day traffic. The recently-created Pearly Lake WMA in an adjacent town came to mind. It's a scant 10-minute drive along a modest 2-lane country highway. And it's someplace I've only begun to explore.

Sounded like a plan to me.

I made the drive & parked in a shaded spot by the gate, where I pulled an old wool shirt on over my tee, and a blaze orange vest atop that. I clipped a water bottle to my belt, shouldered the camera, and set out, ready for adventure.

The managed area is relatively small, and the trails neither especially challenging nor extensive, which suited me just fine after weeks of glum inactivity spent watching rivulets of water running down my living room windows. I thought a nice little 3-miler taking me around the perimeter would be a pleasant way to spend a nice afternoon, and maybe offer some photo ops. I was also familiar enough with the general layout to recognize there was ample opportunity to improvise as well.

This perimeter trail encloses a rectangular area roughly a mile in the north-south direction, and maybe half that east to west. Midway between the southern & northern boundaries, a path cuts across the interior, connecting the two north-south trails. On the map, it looks like a 1980s-vintage digital "8" - an "H" with the vertical strokes each connected at their tips by horizontal lines. My departure gate was located at the bottom of the leftmost downstroke of the H.

But my past explorations there have shown it also to be criss-crossed by myriad remains of old farm roads and byways dating back to God-knows-when, none of which show on any map I've seen. So one would be well-advised to pay attention and stick to the main trails.

Well-advised, indeed...

What a glorious day! Just past the gate, the trail passes through an overgrown field - possibly once a staging area for logging operations. Now it's filling up with white pine seedlings, while bluettes and violets sprout in the grassy mohawk between the two tracks. I stopped to photograph their clusters, but without the context of sun, birdsong, and a soft breeze, the images in the viewfinder just couldn't convey the quietly profound beauty underfoot - I took a few perfunctory shots anyway, which ultimately landed in the "Meh" folder. There are some scenes whose soul I've just never been able to capture. This was one of them.

After passing through this clearing, the trail enters older-growth forest as it approaches the base of a steep hill. I was already rather warm, and becoming concerned about overheating from the uphill exertion to come. It was also clear that I'd overestimated the amount of shade the freshly budding trees would provide, so I sought out a suitable "hanging tree" on which to hang my vest & camera so I could remove the wool shirt. Peeling off this layer provided instant relief, and after donning the rest of my gear I continued on.

The recent rains were still draining from the hills, in places flooding the trail enough to force me to gingerly tiptoe past or even portage around muddy pools. Shortly after passing the crossbar of the H, the trail begins its climb, and there's nowhere for the water to collect. It gushed downhill in torrents, and I found myself hopping from one side of the trail to the other to keep my footing. It was more distracting than tiring, and kept my attention focused on the ground beneath me rather than the woods around me - a small price to pay.

At least until you compute the interest...

Where the slope begins to relent, one of the many undocumented trails veers off to the west. I'd tried following it once before, but had found it to be completely flooded by the outflow of a small pond a few hundred feet from the junction - as it was today. I briefly considered making my way around the pond to see where the trail emerging from its far side might lead - but the land downstream was wet and rocky, and the swampy inlet extended further than I could see; so I abandoned the idea. Only able to speculate where the track might lead, I turned and plodded back to the junction to continue my northward trek.

The trail levels off again as it approaches a clearing at the crest of the hill - the top of the H. Here I turned east to follow the northernmost horizontal traversal, and before long my hidden agenda came into view - an active beaver pond. Water cascaded over the top of the dam, completely submerging the road. I walked as far as the trail would allow dry feet, then allowed myself to be seduced by the spirit of the place.

I've only been able to proceed beyond this point on one other occasion, when a prolonged dry spell had slowed the torrent to a trickle. Had I been able to today, I may or may not have - it was one of the opportunities for improvisation that had influenced my decision to come here. For now, I was content just to immerse myself in the ambience under an azure sky - the glittering sunlit waters of the pond, the music those waters sang as they tumbled over the dam and into the woods beyond - all in a quiet state of unthinking wonder and gratitude that I've come to regard as prayer.

I closed my eyes in bliss. Seventy-five years, I thought. How many more will I be able to make this pilgrimage? I dug out my mental list of places I'd like my daughter to sprinkle some of my ashes and jotted down this place. She could always deliver them from the trailhead just up ahead without making the hadj - I'll never know.

Refreshed by this sip of the divine, I sighed and turned back towards the west. Time to press on.

The plan had been that IF the trail past the beaver pond were passable, I'd return by the other downstroke of the H, the eastern one, and complete a full circumferential loop around the WMA. Fully aware that in all likelihood it would be flooded, though, the alternate plan had been to partly return the way I'd come, crossing over to the eastern downstroke halfway down. So I after returning to the clearing at the summit, I picked up the southbound trail for the start of my homeward journey.

I knew that to reach the crossbar of the H I'd first have to pass the junction with the unmarked dead-end I'd visited earlier; but as the way grew steep, and the seepage from the rains coalesced into flow, I was again preoccupied with my footing - even more treacherous now that gravity and I were heading in the same direction. So I can't be sure just where I went astray. I came to a trail junction I first assumed led to the dead-end - but the side trail veered off on the wrong side before taking a sharp turn to the south. I thought maybe I'd been so busy watching my feet that I'd sailed past the first junction without even seeing it, and that this was the crossbar; but I didn't remember it disappearing around a bend. It just didn't look familiar. A faint note of cognitive dissonance began echoing through my subconscious.

If this were the crossbar, it should descend continuously to the other downstroke, passing by a large clear-cut at the bottom. I set out uncertainly down this track, past the bend and partway down a long, straight slope with no traces of past logging activity in sight. I decided that this course was just leading me even further from where I wanted to be, so turned back before I'd added even more to an uphill retreat. Back at the junction, the position of the sun told me which way was to the southwest, so that's the way I went.

And went. And went. And went some more...

By now I realized nothing looked familiar. I was running into far more flooded patches than I had on the outward leg, and while my shadow still assured me I was headed in the general direction I wanted to go, I was also aware that the sun - and therefore the direction of shadows - had shifted since setting out. My confidence in being on the right track was giving way to a reluctant uneasiness. When I crossed a crude, wooden snowmobile bridge I hadn't seen before, I accepted the final verdict: You Are Lost.

Although I could feel panic stirring behind locked doors in my mind, it never managed to open one. This wasn't the 1st time I'd gotten myself turned around on a hike, and each time I have, salvation has come from admitting the situation as fact and changing tack to deal with it. Instead of shrieking, "Dear God, this can't be happening!", just take it as a given: "Oh shit, I'm lost," and matter-of-factly face this reality head-on. It's OK to be scared shitless - but not witless.

So here's the deal. I'm 75 years old, without the stamina I once had at a sprightly 50. I'd signed up for a 3-mile walk after a week or two of sitting on my ass watching YouTube videos of other people hiking. I'm tired, but not at the end of my reserves. I have no idea where I am, or how much further I have to walk. But I know I'm a mile (plus or minus) due north of the primary east-west highway hereabouts, and where relative to that highway I'd left my car. I know what time it is, and consequently roughly what direction the sun casts shadows. So I have a compass of sorts, and a mental map of the area. It's not a very good map, but it's enough to assure me that bushwhacking to the south will eventually bring me to Rte 119. In the worst case, I can claw my way through the bush for a mile or so to get there, though I'd much rather not. So for the moment it makes sense to stick to the southerly-leaning trails, however rough they might be.

Like most ad hoc plans, it was far from ideal - but the only other alternative I could think of was to turn around, climb back up the hills I'd already descended, and hope to find where I'd made my original blunder.

I didn't care for that one at all. So, onward. I returned the camera to the bag - I was no longer a tourist on a visual safari, but a tired infantryman in unknown territory slogging through mud hoping to rendezvous with friendly forces. As long as I faced the sun, I'd be traveling more or less in a direction that should bring me to a road - eventually.

And so I tramped on. For a while, my shadow lay to my right, indicating I was traveling more westerly; but snowmobile trails meander, and I fervently hoped this was just a section steering around or towards some feature of interest. And the signage no longer bore the NH Forest Society logo, but proclaimed "Posted - Private Property, No Trespassing". Great, I thought. In a way I hoped I would run into an irate landowner. He'd no doubt help me off his property, post haste.

The trail continued relentlessly downhill. This was encouraging - Rte 119 passes through marshland in the gaps between hills, consistent with the sodden woods I saw around me. The sun was no longer high in the sky, but a fiery beacon peeking through the upper reaches of the trees around me. I still had several hours of daylight, so there was no real urgency - but I really, really wanted to be done with this. My taste for adventure had long been satisfied, and now was turning sour - maybe even a bit rancid.

Unbelievably, I came upon a kiosk at a four-way intersection of trails. At last! A roadmap outta here! I wasted no time rushing to it and examining the trail maps so providentially placed here.

It showed me immediately that the maps available commercially or for free online are woefully incomplete. In the maze of trails shown, it took me several seconds to locate the hand-written "You Are Here" on the black-and-white photocopy mounted behind glass. It showed the trail I'd been following would soon cross a dead-end side road - "soon" being a relative term. It looked like either of the two westerly trails proceeding from the intersection would take me there, but the one I was already on might be a tad shorter. Encouraged now that my instincts had brought me within striking distance of my goal, I tried to get some idea just where I stood now relative to where I'd come from.

"Holy crap," I muttered. "How the hell did I get way over HERE?"

The map was so convoluted it looked nothing like the simple H-pattern of the maps available from Google or the USGS. In fact, I couldn't even find the trails I'd come in from, lost as they were in the visual noise. I tried running my finger from the X-marks-the-spot of my current location back to my car, but couldn't find my way there. All I managed to glean was the numerical designation of the trail I'd been following since realizing my predicament: 404.

Trail 404. How appropriate, I thought and even laughed aloud: "Trail not found!" Giving silent thanks to the Monadnock Sno-Moles for erecting this kiosk, I took my leave, weary but heartened. I wouldn't stand down until I knew with 100% certainty where I was, but it finally looked promising.

So I continued trudging along trail 404. The downhill gradient seemed to be relenting, the flooding a little less frequent, the road surface a little more mannered. Finally I saw in the distance a pair of bright red objects flanking the trail, which turned out to be traffic cones. At long, long last I'd reached a vehicular road - and power lines. I'd made it out.

To where?

Jock Page Hill, a broken sign said. I knew where I was now, on a private road off another I was more familiar with, Scott Pond Road. I was more than 2 miles from where I'd parked, but at least the way was defined clearly enough to put navigation back on autopilot. I even allowed myself the luxury of thinking about what I might fix for supper this night.

The road proved to be a little longer than I remembered, but at last I stood at the edge of Rte 119. I still had a long trek ahead of me - my 3-miler would clock out at 7ish. I didn't care. An 18-wheeler roared past, the rushing wind of its passage hurling dust in my face and ruffling my already unruly hair. I still didn't care. I'd made it out. This final leg started with a long, uphill grind of at least a mile - but now it was just a matter of doing it. Just a matter of putting one foot ahead of the other, and resting whenever you damn well felt like it. Time was not of the essence.

I unclipped the water bottle from my belt, took a generous swig, and snapped it back into place. With a sigh of equal parts relief and resignation, I set out on the long trudge to where I'd left my trusty steed.

Chicken and spinach, I thought as the homeward-bound Mothers' Day traffic flowed past me. That sounds good. With quinoa. And maybe the last of that butternut squash.

[saw]

I relished, even before leaving the house, the mere idea that today I would br exploring an unfamiliar stretch of landscape. Often this would involved a much longer hike than inticipated, but usually head over heels about the adventure. Sure, I've been lost. It comes with the territory, so to speak.

[sasha]

I've always liked having a plan when exploring new places - at least some notion (from trail maps) where I'd start & where I'd end, letting whatever came in between TBD. What made this experience so unsettling was discovering (at the snowmobile bridge), that despite being so cock-sure that I knew roughly where I was, in fact I had NO idea. With no idea where I was, I had no idea where I was going, and in that maze of unmarked trails, I could be out there for a long time. At that point, finding my way out outbid exploration for its own sake. But I still want to go back, find out where I'd messed up.

[saw]

It's easy to get turned around....sometimes subtle curves can trick you brain in thinking you're heading in a certain direction, when if fact you're heading 90 degrees from what you thought...I too like to map out in my head the basic layout....of course when the sun is out, you can somewhat rely over which shoulder it should be....but gray days.....not so much.....since I'm a fan of hiking in and around water...that has been helpful at times.....find the river...and I'm good....in this neck of the woods there are many trails that have not been curated....they are not listed on any map.....because they were created by the mountain bike boys.....I don't begrudge these guys... they maintain not only their new trails, but the curated ones that lead them there as well....if a tree falls across the path, usually within a day they've cut it up. I will say, if you know you're on a bike trail, be extra prepared to dive out of the way as you come around a big curve.....they are nuts....I think they remove the brakes to make it more fun....so hike the bike trails, which are really cool, but understand the risk....these guys are adrenaline junkies.....I've talked to many of them....nicest people on earth.....in love with the outdoors ( and danger )...and young...this is not an old man's endeavor...

[sasha]

Soooo, true, all of what you say - trail hypnosis happens - all part of the package. And we could all use a booster shot of humility once in a while. In fact, 2 days after the 404 debacle, I faceplanted in full view of two Jeeps tiptoeing towards me along an old roadway I'm very familiar with. I'd gotten over into the weedy shoulder to give them room, and they'd pulled over as far as they could to give me some. My foot hit a rock, or a clump, or a root, & I went down like a felled tree - fortunately landing in a dry, grassy patch. Didn't even have time to throw my arm out in front of me - my camera & glasses broke my fall. To their credit, they stopped: "You OK?? Are you hurt?" I took quick inventory. "Only my pride," I said, & we chatted & laughed a bit before continuing on our separate ways. My left knee & right shoulder are still a little sore, but no real damage appears to have been done. I did find 4 ticks crawling over me when I got home, but that's a whole 'nother issue.

[saw]

I've been making my own tick spray for about 10 years...there are many ingredients that seem to work for people that send in their suggestions to hiking sites....I use the essential oils of eucalyptus and lemongrass.....I bought a few plastic sprays bottles that are still holding up....mixed with water.......been damn lucky or this stuff really works...only found one dog tick in 10 years...of course you probably won't see the deer ticks if they grab you ....so my rule is always shower after each hike, especially if I've been bushwhacking....my daughter in law has advanced Lyme disease....No Joke....as far as I know each variety of ticks can carry of vast array of potential diseases....I've found that if I spray my neck it keeps mosquitoes away as well and the lemongrass gives it a delightful aroma....I cover my clothes, my boots, my neck....and live to hike another day...I make 5 bottles at a time....and the essential oils last forever since you're only using a few drops for each batch....I'm not crazy about DEET ....I've got enough health problems....I'm Mr. Natural...haha

[sasha]

I used to be able to buy a locally-made natural repellent made with citronella & other aromatics in corn oil. This was before the ticks became an epidemic, so I don't know how effective it might have been against them; but it worked just fine against mosquitos & black flies. Not so much the deer flies - NOTHING seems to deter them. I haven't seen the stuff in years - only a handful of neighborhood general stores carried it - & they're a vanishing breed too. Now I carry a DEET spray, but I rarely actually apply it - I don't like the smell, the feel, or the fact that it dumps petrochemicals AND fluorocarbons into the environment.

[saw]

https://shop.natchezss.com/outdoors/hea ... 20Outdoors



this one is pretty affordable....and already mixed !.....

[sasha]

Thanks for the link!

[sasha]

A Mathematical Curio Shoppe

* Prime numbers are those which cannot be evenly divided by any other number. 2 is not only the smallest, but the only even one. The rest are odd.

* In a random crowd of only 23 people, the odds are better than 50/50 that two of them share a birthday. For 57 people, those odds increase to over 99%.

* "Platonic solids" are blocks constructed of regular geometric figures glued together at their edges - like the cube, constructed from six identical squares. Another is the tetrahedron, four equilateral triangles forming a pyramid. Two tetrahedra joined base-to-base make the octahedron; 20 such triangles make an icosahedron. Twelve identical pentagons can be fashioned into a dodecahedron. These five are the only such solids possible in three dimensions.

* There are infinitely many numbers that cannot be expressed as fractions, such as pi, or the square root of 2. This seemed so heretical to the ancient Greeks that it is said they executed the philosopher Hippasus for proving it.

* If the digits of a number add up to a multiple of 3, then the number itself is a multiple of 3. Not only is this true for every multiple of 3, it is only true for multiples of 3.

* The formula for finding the distance around a circle is so simple, it's taught in elementary schools: circumference = diameter X pi. There is no such formula for the circle's next of kin, the ellipse. It can only be calculated by adding up an infinite number of ever-smaller terms, stopping when it's "close enough".

* "Perfect numbers" are those that equal the sum of all their divisors (numbers that evenly divide them) - like 6=1+2+3, or 28=1+2+4+7+14. Only 51 such have been found. No one knows if there are any more.

* The calculus operation called differentiation is a way to characterize how a quantity changes. Differentiation in reverse is called "integration", and characterizes how a quantity accumulates. Exact integration is often difficult or even impossible, but is readily amenable to numerical approximation. Its mirror-twin differentiation is just the opposite - easier to do exactly than to approximate with numerical methods.

* Mathematician Kurt Godel demonstrated in 1931 that any intellectual edifice constructed entirely of logical inferences must have unprovable or even self-contradictory conclusions - including mathematics itself. So when someone tells you "Yeah, but mathematicians have shown..." just ask them about Godel's Incompleteness Theorem...

[saw]

I noticed that Elon Musk was holding a piece of graph paper, and I thought to myself, He must be plotting something.

[sasha]

ah yes, the axis (!) of evil....

[winddance]

maybe it's just because it's my birthday but lots of people seem to be born or know someone born on the 4th of july. what was going on in october?

[sasha]

You & Louie Armstrong (and, I think, Thomas Jefferson) ! Mine coincides with Willie Nelson & Carl Friedrich Gauss, Apr 30. I think it'd be interesting to get a huge database of peoples' birthdays and plot them, to see if some dates are more frequent than others, and how they might reflect cultural preferences. THe popularity of June weddings, for example, might be reflected as a spike in March birth dates.

[sasha]

A Dream Come True...

I've long been fascinated by dreams & dreaming, and even journaled my own for a while. Two in particular, though, stand out - not so much for their content as their prescience.

One of them occurred in the late 1970s, during my stint at an insurance company as a mainframe computer programmer. The job was an ill-fit - management doggedly clinging to the mores and styles of the 1950s, me neither mature enough to accept deadlines and dress codes as givens, nor smart enough to keep my mouth shut about them. Despite this, they'd made me the principal coder for a massive development project requiring implementation of a new & relatively untested technology, all while simultaneously upgrading their operating system.

The effort was headed up by a green outside contractor leading his first major project, and between us we made enough mistakes to push the completion date - a promise made by parties who didn't have to do the work - back by weeks, then by months. Those who'd made the promises eventually had him fired, and the entire thing was dumped into my lap - even though as a mere Coder, a lowly grunt, I'd been explicitly excluded from all the design sessions, leaving me with no idea what its overall architecture was meant to be. And now I was next in the crosshairs - but despite 12, 16-hr days, I continued falling behind.

A critical test involving month-end figures needed to run promptly lest the deadline slip further and turn the hotplate up another notch or two, so I rushed the code module into production and managed to escape the bullpen by 7 or 8 one night. As was becoming my norm, I drank myself to sleep - and had this dream:

In it, I was back at my desk, poring over a printout of binary figures representing a snapshot of the computer's memory at the time of a program crash - known then as a Hex Dump (for hexadecimal, base 16 addressing). I was following this trail of breadcrumbs to the source code (the stuff I'd written) hoping to find the error that had caused the derailment - and there it was, a mistyped line that had slipped past my cursory editing. I felt a cold desperation at the discovery, until something woke me up.

It was the phone. To accommodate us, the computer was primarily used for testing during the day, so all production jobs - and their beta versions - were run on 3rd shift. This meant that we programmers were on call 24/7. I groggily picked up the receiver - it was the computer operator, apologizing for waking me while in the background a 120-column printer noisily spat out paper.

My critical month-end test had crashed - could I come in and fix it?

Well, the short of it is, I did, and the hex dump led me right to the very line of code I'd just dreamt it would. I figured if I was starting to debug code in my sleep, it might be time to look for another job. Before too long I found one across town as an engineering tech - for 20% more pay. I spent over 20 years there, making my way up the technical ladder.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

The other dream is a little harder to rationalize. I was listening to a lot of Miles Davis at the time, particularly from his electric period. I had double LP set (what we called a 2-fer, or a 4-sider) of mostly live material recorded at a club in DC. It opens frantically at a dead run with a piece called "Sivad" - Davis on amplified trumpet trading riffs with John McLaughlin's guitar, while Keith Jarrett & Chick Corea comp behind them on keys. Eventually it flames out, abruptly slowing to a gentle keyboard phrase that segues into a more relaxed bluesy stretch for acoustic horn.

On one of my nocturnal excursions, I'd found a 3rd disk tucked away in a pocket I'd never noticed before in the dust jacket . Dropped it onto the turntable, which revealed it to be an alternate take of "Sivad", identical to the one I already knew, screeching to a halt at the keyboard solo. But instead of transitioning into a leisurely acoustic blues, it introduces a heavily amplified Buddy Guy-ish 12-bar guitar riff. I awoke with the tune in my head, and tried to keep it there, but you know how it is with dreams, & by the time I was brushing my teeth it was gone.

Now, I should step back & talk a bit about the collaboration between Miles and his producer, Teo Macero. MIles' MO in the studio was to gather his sidemen around him, hum & whistle a few fragments, discuss chord changes, then start tape rolling and play - literally play, like kids in a sandbox making up stories to act out. Rarely would they perform a whole song - just bits & pieces that Macero would then edit best he could into a saleable package of 45 minutes of music. Likewise, concert recordings sometimes ran so long he had to break them up, & weave in some of these studio leftovers so they'd fit onto a vinyl disk.

After Miles died, Columbia Records answered aficionados' demands for his music by mining their vaults for whatever they could get their hands on, and these shards & multiple takes started finding their way to CD. Years after my dream, the studio sessions that spawned the Jack Johnson LP were issued as a box set - and on one of the disks reside a few takes of a tune called "Honky Tonk" - one of which begins with the keyboard segue Macero used to bridge "Sivad" and its quieter conclusion. But instead of that concluding passage, it leads into John McLaughlin's distorted guitar wailing the very blues I'd dreamed of so long ago.

I don't explain it - just shake me head in bemused wonder.