General – Page 15 – As The Crow Flies

Packing a propane tank.

Since my last trip with my propane tank in my backpack was so painful, this time I thought I would try to improve things. I ripped the plastic lid off of a bin and put that in the inside of the pack against my back. It worked great and I was able to walk the seven and a half mile loop down to the little store, up the road to my mailbox, and then back up to my cabin without any problem. The plastic lid made my backpack more supportive and kept the propane tank from poking me in the spine.

Once the tank was full and my snow shoes were strapped to the pack it was almost 45 lbs (20.4 kilos), which is a lot for a pack that weighs a little over 2 lbs. (1 kilo). My pack is the Mountain Smith Ghost. I bought it after trying on every sub 3lb(1.36 k) pack in Portland. It can lift all the weight off of my shoulders if I want it to. Sadly, it’s no longer made.

This is a great opportunity to get trail ready and accomplish something.

An entertaining fire starter.

While I was out hiking on the PCT this summer, I met a woman who was carrying some diversions with her. She carried knitting, a book, and some crosswords. A book always seems too heavy to carry and I don’t know how to knit, but a crossword puzzle ripped out of a newspaper seems like it would be a light diversion to have when a storm keeps you in your tent or you just feel like hanging out for a day. It would also make a good emergency fire starting material.

No guests.

After preparing my cabin for guests, they called and canceled. I didn’t really mind, except that they were going to take me to the little store so I could fill up my propane tanks. In anticipation of this, I carted six tanks all the way down my big hill to the spot I had shoveled off for them to park. Now I have to haul all those tanks back up the hill.

A simple outhouse.

The rare event of having company is happening today. In case they object to using the five gallon bucket on the porch, I thought I should prepare the guest bathroom for them. I broke trail out to my outbox and brushed the snow off of it. It’s a gaily painted plywood box with a toilet seat bolted to it. It sits over a hole. Unlike a lot of outhouses this one is no trouble to move when the hole is full.

My arduous journey with a propane tank.

trudging up the hill with a propane tank on my back Today, I put an empty propane tank in my backpack, strapped on my snowshoes and headed down through state land to the little store to get if filled. A full 5 gallon propane tank only weighs 37lbs and the whole trip wasn’t more than 5 miles but the tank didn’t ride very well in my pack; it poked me in the spine the whole way and the snow was deep.

Cold morning in the cabin

Most mornings I wake up when my cabin drops to 36 degrees F (2 C) but this morning I slept in till it was 26 F (-3 C). To start my fire I crumble up some newspaper, throw some wood and bark on it, give it a squirt of lamp oil and light it. This morning the lamp oil was frozen but the fire started just fine without it. The basin of water I use to wash my hands was even iced over.

cold, hungry, deer outside my window.

Missing time.

possible alien abduction Once, a long time ago, in Nevada, I got up in the morning and went out to eat breakfast. The time sign on the bank said it was 8:30 am but when I got to the restaurant, three miles later, it was 1:30pm and they were no longer serving breakfast.

The Perodical room.

I used to skip school and hang out at the downtown library. On the top floor was the periodical room filled with old magazines and microfilm and microfiche of old newspapers. I spent hours panning over newspapers and magazines from the year I was born, thinking there was some clue to who I was, hidden in them.

My son recently sent me Eighty Years of the New Yorker magazine on DVD and 50+ years of MAD magazine on DVD. It’s sort of like being back in the periodical room but now I never have to leave or make up any excuses.

How to fix your glasses

If you have a pair of glasses with the little fish line holding the lenses in on the bottom and every time you step on them the lens pops out, here is the secret to putting the lens back in: put the bottom of the lens in first, then pop the top part in.

Twilight zoning.

You remember that Twilight Zone where the man just wants to be left alone so he can read all day. Then one day while he is hiding out and reading in the bank vault, all the people are destroyed. He comes out and says, ” Yes! No one to bother me and nothing to do all day but read!”, and then he accidentally steps on his reading glasses, and yells. “NOOOO!” ? Some of the details are different, but basically, that’s what happened to me today.

Monkey Beach

Once, in Malaysia, I camped on a deserted beach called Monkey Beach. At dusk about 50 monkeys came out and played in the sand. I had a bag of peanuts; they all surrounded me and I fed them. Just as it was getting dark, six men with guns and machetes showed up. I spent a very stressful evening with them. One of them loaned me his machete to sleep with, because he said there were tigers in the area. In the morning, I hiked out and rented a room, exhausted from the stress of the night before.
Note: For good travel guides that list interesting places like this, that you won’t find in other travel books. Go to http://www.moon.com/ . They have the best travel guides, in my opinion, far better then Lonely Planet guides.

Non-Refrigerated eggs

On the PCT (Pacific Crest Trail), I once used the partial fuel canisters left in the hiker box to cook up some hard-boiled eggs to bring with me on the next section. I carried a bigger pot in those day, I filled it with hard-boiled eggs and then doled them out to myself along the way.

I don’t have a refrigerator at the cabin that I’m now living at but I find that the eggs last at least a month with out refrigeration. When researching refrigerating eggs on the internet, I learned that refrigeration of eggs is a North American thing and that in other countries they are stored on the shelf.

When in Java, I lived with a family that had a little open air store; they had a bowl of eggs sitting on the counter for sale. I was concerned about this bowl of eggs, day after day just sitting there, un-refrigerated in the hot Java weather. They told me that they had soaked them in hot salt water for a while to preserve them. I ate one. It tasted like a perfect hard-boiled egg that hadn’t been cooked too long. They said that if they didn’t sell in 2 weeks that they would bury them for a while and then try to sell them again.

Laen has this to say about it:

For an explanation of why this is, read: Science of Cooking : “Is it okay to leave eggs un-refrigerated?�?.

It seems the reasoning is this:
* 1 in 20,000 eggs is infected with salmonella.
* Leaving an egg unfrigerated allows salmonella to multiply.
* Salmonella can be dangerous.

But then, you can also kill salmonella by cooking the egg enough.

So, you’re taking a teeny tiny risk by not refrigerating, but you can counter that risk by cooking the eggs enough to kill the bacteria.

In a moment of clumsy inattention

Things are warming up here. It got up to 40 F (4.4 C)today, which is sort of sad because the snow is no longer fluffy. Everything is drippy. My porch looked wet this morning, when I went out to start the generator, but it was icy and I slipped and fell hard; my back hitting the corner of the step. I left my slippers lay where they had flown, hobbled back inside, took some ibuprofen and went back to bed. I forget to live carefully, sometimes. Sometimes, I live as carelessly as someone can, who lives in the city and who has health insurance.

On the trail I try to live carefully; the consequences of an injury could be great. I find that I hike more carefully and balanced by myself then when hiking with others. Ray Jardine, in the Pacific Crest Trail handbook, recommends not hiking alone through the Sierras, so, I started hiking with two other hikers in Kennedy Meadows. The partnership didn’t last long; I didn’t like hiking at someone else’s pace. I did enjoy the camaraderie and having someone to camp with at night. I started hiking at my own pace and meeting up with them, now and then and camped with them for a few nights.

We were all hiking together when we came to a swollen stream of glacial melt. The first guy walked across and he pointed at a log as the best way to cross. I didn’t think about it, I just crossed there. The log rolled and trapped my foot under it. I was trapped in a gushing stream of glacial melt up to my ribcage, I was thinking that I may die there. One of the guys was able to lift the log off my foot and I scrambled out. The other guy said, “See, that is why we should all hike together�?.

That was a joyous moment when that log was lifted off my foot and I was happy and grateful that he had been there, but the lesson is not that you shouldn’t hike alone but that sometimes logs roll and also that you need to find your own way and not let others lead you.

We all parted ways soon after and I was happily walking at my own pace again, aware and edgy like a creature in the wilderness should be.