At Walden Pond (Or our version of it)

       As summer draws to a close, the weather is becoming more comfortable for camping and hiking. This, coupled with school, made this last weekend a good one for a campout. Spending time outdoors is the best way I have found to rest and reset my mind and spirit. It helps to put things into perspective when you spend a little time living more primitively.

       Our family lake has been residing at the edge of town for my entire life, and is the place where many of my hobbies first took root. When I was young, we would visit the lake to row around and to fish. My father also grew up playing in this lake, and doubtlessly his love of the outdoors helped to form my love of the same. We decided that this lake would make an excellent place to camp last weekend. 

        Upon arriving at the lake, we selected a spot on the opposing side on a small peninsula where we have camped in the past. We loaded our gear into a Jon boat and paddled across the lake. 

The city "suburbs" have grown out to reach the area around the lake, but the lake itself still remains wild. The Girl Scouts of America have recently bought a huge swath of land leading up to the edge of our property there, which to a degree guarantees that that area will remain wild. 

       The peninsula we chose has two large inlets on either side, into one of which the feeder stream spills out amongst willows and cypress trees making a shallow swamp. The land begins as a flat area along the bank of the lake, which then rises up to be four or five feet above the water where there is a flat area containing a fire ring. There is a dirt mound atop this bluff which gives views out over the lake. This position on the high ground gave us ventilation while residing there. 

        As soon as we made it across the lake, we began to set up camp. 

I chose a couple of trees off to the north of the fireplace to hang my hammock.

            The forest was very pleasant, although it is still somewhat hot this time of year. I have found that heat is easier to cope with than cold due to the fact that cold is painful, but heat is merely uncomfortable. Pain is difficult to overcome mentally, particuarly so when there is actually some danger associated with it such as freezing to death. Heat is not likely to hurt you, and the discomfort is merely a feeling. Feelings can be controlled by the person feeling them by sheer willpower or by conditioning the behavior. I have found that when I "tell myself" that the heat is not going to hurt me, and that sweat is not a bad thing, after a time it stops bothering me. That is not to say that I wouldn't prefer it if it were a nice 75 degrees (Fahrenheit) as opposed to 90, or that I don't often catch myself complaining about the heat, but rather that my complaints are not valid. Work is more draining in the heat, and it is important to drink a lot of water, but these things can be coped with. The heat of the Alabama summer is not an excuse I can use to prevent myself from enjoying the outdoors any longer.              My friend Zac, who I met at Renovation Ministries while we both worked there as interns, accompanied Dad and I on this trip. We brought some hamburgers with us for dinner, so we started a fire to cook them over. 

       There is a certain satisfying aspect to cooking food on an open wood fire, as though one connects to humans of the past. The way we cooked our meat on this trip is the same basic way humans have been cooking food for a million years. There are a few differences, (meat from wal-mart, an iron grill, steel tongs, Homo Sapiens as opposed to Homo Erectus) but none which are significant. 

As the meat began to cook, the campsite was flooded with the smell of woodsmoke and red meat. The smell of a campfire is distinctive, and brings back many memories.  

The fire cooked the meat very quickly; I had set it up in a log cabin style of fire arrangement so to channel the heat upwards. 

The burgers tasted very good. There was a distinct woody flavor from the fire. 

We cooked and ate as darkness began to fall. 

In the wild, darkness often seems to come suddenly. I think it is because our eyes adjust to each level of darkness, so we don't really notice that it is getting dark until it gets to the point where our eyes cannot fully adjust. 

Father did not join us in eating our saturated fat-filled burgers, rather he made some Edamame beans and salmon fillets. 

 Zac shared some dried pineapples with me that were quite good. 

 Darkness was creeping up on us, noticeable in the pictures, but not to us at the time. We could hear owls and other night-birds beginning their songs. A Barred Owl cries a song that sound vaguely like "Who cooks for you? Who cooks for yoooou?" but with more birdlikeness. There is also a distinctly different cricket that sings at night than the day ones. A night cricket will sing in a burst of "chicka-cha chicka-cha" and then another from a different direction will respond with the same, seamless enough to make a constant white noise that one's ears tune out unless you listen for it intentionally. 

Soon the only light came from our fire, and the one small light at the far end of the lake where the street is. 

The stars began to come out, one at a time like timid beings slipping out from behind a curtain when they are sure few are watching. 

It is hard to believe that those little specks are actually vast suns, an unimaginable distance away. 

The night sky makes one feel small, and to some this is uncomfortable. For me, it makes my problems feel small. The lack of my personal importance in the grand scheme of the universe makes me feel better, rather than worse. The universe isn't going to be affected by what I do, so that makes it that much more important for me to care about myself and the stuff which is important to me.  

Soon we all made our way to our sleeping areas. No rain was forcasted, so I went without my rain fly. It actually got cool enough in my hammock for me to get my sleeping bag out, though not cold enough to need my underquilt. I woke up around three to aquire the sleeping back, and then slept soundly for many hours. When I woke up, it was 8:30 or so. 

The morning brought with it clouds, as humid mornings here often do. There was a cool breeze which threatened rain from those clouds, but didn't deliver. 

After a few years of use, my ENO hammock is holding up well, and is still my preferred sleeping arrangement. The only times it is inconvenient are camping with dogs or when there are no trees. 

We lit a breakfast cookfire and made grits. 

Our big Ozark Trail tent continues to serve us well.

Zac and I rowed out and did a little fishing. 

It is a beautiful lake. I am glad we have it. 

Eventually we decided to pack up and head home. 

It was a fun trip to me. The weather will soon begin to get cooler and less humid, and the true outdoorsing season begins. It is already in the 60's at night, so fall is coming. It is much easier to find people to accompany me into the wild when the weather is nice. So I hope to camp again soon. 

Expedition 600-1

This week my family from Pennsylvania came in, and we decided to go camping yesterday. The weather channel was forecasting rain, but we said that we are tough enough to survive a little water.
We had the doors off the Jeeps, but left the roofs on. We loaded up the two Jeeps with more gear than we needed, and headed off to the south.

 Our target was a ridgetop road numbered 600-1, which I recalled was somewhat rough. As we drove towards Talladega, we saw ahead of us a sizable storm stretching across our field of view. We didn't think much of it at first. Soon, we caught up with the southward moving storm, and began to think more of it. While we were moving, it wasn't too wet, but as soon as we reached the dirt and slowed down, it got moist. The rain had slowed down some, but the road was fairly well flooded.

Now that mine has four wheel drive again, neither Jeep had any issue with the soft, damp roads. We followed this very long stretch of rough road for a good ways, as the water flowing on the road increased and the puddles got deeper. Some views opened up off the ridge.

After a while, we topped a ridge and found a place where the Pinhoti meets the road, and a great view stretched out beyond.

We considered camping there, but the ridgetop seemed like a risky place to sleep with the lightning. Not to mention the wind.
As we stood there, we noticed a wall of rain approaching from the south, and realized it was coming rather swiftly. Michael was still standing a good ways away from the Jeep, and he yelled "Oh, its coming!" Before sprinting back to where I was. It almost looked like a tsunami hit before he made it back, as the storm obscured vision and thoroughly soaked everything. The small trickle of water on the road became a rushing stream, and a large volume of water came in through the door and filled the floorboard. We couldn't see enough to drive until the rain slowed down a bit. When it did slow down, the road was quite waterlogged.
We drove on, through what looked like a tropical rainforest. The rain had brought mists with it, making the forest look mystical.

   We eventually arrived at Guinn Hunter's camp and decided to stay there for the night, despite a large volume of trash. We lit a somewhat small and wet fire, and set up the tent and tarp.

We slept the night, I heard a few distant coyotes and a Barred Owl's distinctive cry.
The following morning the sun came out and dried out the fog. It was a lovely day.

The road home was pleasant and dry.
It was a great trip, the inclement weather served to make it more of an adventure.

Wales Day 5- 12

Day 5

On this day, we looked at the Ordinance Survey map and noticed a Mott & Bailey style castle 2 miles south of the house.
We set off walking south in the morning.

We came to a medieval bridge, just before arriving at the earthworks of the castle.

The mound in the center (the mott) in where the keep would be located, and there may have been a palisade on the surrounding dirt ring. The picture below is taken from the bailey, where the village would have been.

After that, we walked back to the house.

Not this house

On the way back, we stopped at the church in Llansilin, where there had been a church since ancient history. The Yews, (a tree, pictured below) are thought to be several hundred years old. They found some yew trees over 2,000 years old, though they were larger than these. 

The churchyard had many old graves. There is a door in the side of the church with bullet holes from the English civil war. 

Day 6

(disclaimer-from this point forward was written well after the trip, so memories are likely somewhat distorted.) 

Today's itinerary focused on Stokesay Castle, which is a 13th century English castle in Shropshire, built by a wealthy wool merchant to protect against welsh raiders. It is really more of a fortified manor house. 

On our way in, we passed a beautiful Aston Martin in the parking lot, because England. 

Despite being less fortified than some castles, Stokesay does have a deep moat, a curtain wall, and a fortified tower. 

The main building of the castle has a great hall (featured in Russell Crowe's Robin Hood), which would have preformed many functions. 

We climbed to the top of the tower. From there the chapel and graveyard were visible, with the curtain wall separating them from the grounds. Looking left from there there is a good sized lake and some sheep farms.

 Dad and I ate a snack and got some tea in the yellow "modern" building on the right, which was built in the 17th century. This castle saw a hostile takeover in the English civil war, but remained largely undamaged.
Since it was summer at a high latitude, we still had plenty of day left. We next went to the town of Church Stretton, and went hiking just outside of town. The towns in England are much, much more compact than the ones in Alabama, so a few minutes walk gets you into the wild. The trail we were on went to the Light Spout Waterfall.

We set out from the pleasant resort village at the car park and began to climb.

The trail ground through a green, gourse lined valley with a stream in the middle. It felt much like how I picture the edges of Tolkien's Shire.

As the trail climbed, the hills became rockier, and the terrain mildly rougher. The trail was very well maintained though.

Soon the hills were mountains, but the creek had carved a gentler slope between them.
The trail went over rocks here, but was still well traveled.

In the distance, we began to see a craiggy rock area appear. There was a cleft in this that we were sure the waterfall ran through.

The waterfall was there, with fifty-foot rock walls towering above us. There was a natural stairway that we decided was the trail on from here.

(Note: get dad's picture of us resting and place here)

After the hard climb, the trail flattened out a little. There were several sheep trails here as well, so it made locating the proper trail more difficult.

We soon noticed that we were atop a plateau of sorts, as the mountains flattened out on top.

 The town of Church Stretton was visible below.

The fields here were thick heather and gourse, which is a very different biome than our forests at home. We came to a small, dark pond in the mountains.

Here the trail began to head back down to the town.

As the sun declined, so did we. We made it to the car with sunset behind us and returned to the house.

Day 7

Today we rested, and wandered about Oswestry, as we are moving to a new house next day. 

Day 8

We left Llansilin to head to a little town on a lake in a more mountainous region of Wales. The town of Trawsfynydd is located on the banks of the artificial Llyn Trawsfynydd, a lake which was made to assist in the function of a power plant. More on that later. On the way to this village, we drove past Dinas Bran ("Dinas" is welsh for "fort"), which is supposed to have some connection to Arthurian legend. We did not stop to visit it, but its place atop a hill made it very impressive even from afar.

As this area is not far from where Tolkien grew up, it is not surprising that so many of the place names seem straight out of middle earth: Dinas Bran, Dinas Emrys, Moel y Gaer, etc. Even some of the historical names seem like they could be past kings of Numenor, like the person who built the currently visible structure of Dinas Bran, "Gruffydd Madog." That fort looks so much like Weathertop from The Fellowship of the Ring that it isn't even funny. 

Anyway, we did stop at Valle Crucis Abbey on the way. 

This abbey was built and populated by Cistercian monks. It and Dinas Bran were contemporary structures, with this being the primary religious building and Dinas Bran being the main ruling building. The monks valued solitude and peace, and you defiantly get that feeling here. It is nestled in between sizable mountains, and sitting on the edge of the fish pond one can reflect on life with ease. 

The main hall was large, and while little is left of it now just looking at the size of the base of the columns one can imagine how grand it would have been in its complete state. 

This is the front of the building from inside, which gives some impression of the height.

The monk's living area was in a separate wing off the side of the main area. 

Inside this wing was the Chapter House, which is the room where chapters of the bible or the "Rule of Saint Benedict" were read. 

From there we went up a very narrow stairway to the monk's dormitory. 

Inside here, CADW (the historical preservation organization that owns the property) had the grave markers from outside stored to avoid weather damage. 

Most every room of these large buildings had a fireplace. It gets quite cold here in the winter, and there was no central heating in the middle ages. 

One of the rooms off of the main dormitory had an intricately carved mantle. 

We then went back down the narrow stairway, and out to the back to see the graveyard (Minus the neat markers, of course) 

We ate lunch at the site's cafe, which was pretty good, and then headed on to the much too long of a name to spell town. 

After arriving at our house, which was once a bank, we walked out of town and toward the lake. As the lake is manmade the town doesn't sit on the bank of it directly, but rather on a nearby hill. 

We walked out of town, crossing over a few sheep walls. 

On the edge of town, there are a few unused farmhouses. The whole of the British Isles are covered with these very atmospheric ruins. Makes great exploring. 

Despite the lake being industrial, unlike some online reviewers I thought it and the surrounding area was beautiful. 

We walked to a sizable bluff above the lake. 

The powerplant in the distance only slightly detracts from the spectacular landscape. 

We came out this way to look for a geocache, which we didn't find, but I doubt we would have come to this awesome place outside of town without it, so I guess we found the really important part of the cache. 

The view from atop Garreg yr Ogof (The name of the large rock) was great. 

We made our way back to the house after that. 

Day 9