General – Page 18 – As The Crow Flies

Chilling walk.

The warmest it got today was 2F (-17C) degrees. The sun isn’t even down and it’s already in the minus. I snow shoed down to my mailbox, 2.5 miles(4km) away. It was 2 F(-17C) degrees and the wind was blowing some of the time. I didn’t feel that cold but now that I’m back I feel chilled to the bone. Times like these I really miss having a bathtub.

Most days I walk down to my mailbox to retrieve or send a movie from Netflix. Some days I walk down to mail a movie in the morning and again in the afternoon to receive a movie. On those days I get 10 miles(16km) in. It’s my getting fit by watching movies plan.

Snowy and cold

A lot of snow fell yesterday. Today, I put on my snow shoes to go for my walk. It was 8 degrees F (-13 C) when I went on my walk, now it’s 4 degrees (-15C) and I presume it will get colder tonight. I didn’t know it could snow when it got this cold but it’s still coming down.

When I go walking in the snow I wear running shoes because they let my feet move and so they stay warm. I was reading The Prairie Traveler: The 1859 Handbook for Westbound Pioneers and they recommended wearing moccasins in the snow for the same reasons. In an old Boy Scouts manual they also recommended wearing shoes that let your feet move as the key to keeping them warm in the snow. Boots hold your feet stiffly so your feet get a lot colder. My snow shoes are called Northern Lite Elite Snowshoes. They are very light (36 oz per pair 1kg ) and you can run in them.

laser light show in the cabin.

My son came for Thanksgiving weekend. He brought with him a small hand held powerful laser. Outside we looked at the stars and pointed at them with the laser. Inside he wrote his name with the laser while I took a picture using a 10 second shutter speed.

hermit goes to town.

helpful advice

In my cabin…

Wind blown rain.

Icy road

Even though the days are warm (40 F, 4 C) and most of the snow has melted, there are still thick patches of ice on the road. I think they will be there until spring. I only left my cabin twice in 4 months last winter but this is what I learned about driving a small rear wheel drive pickup on the ice:

Carry weight in the back of your pickup: sand is the best thing to be carring because you can sprinkle it on the road for extra traction if needed but anything will work. Try to keep the weight over your back wheels.
If you have to go down a steep icy hill, get a set of chains for the front of your pickup, also. I like Les Schwab chains. They have cables where you hook them and chains for the actual traction. They come with a big plastic mat that has pictures and directions on how to put them on that you can kneel on while you are putting them on. You can buy them in the winter and if you don’t use them they will buy them back from you in the spring. There is also a video on their site of how to put them on.
Bring 4 composite roofing shingles to put under your tires in case you get into a situation that you need the extra traction.
Bring a shovel in case you get stuck in a snow bank and need to dig out the tires.
When going up the big steep hill I put it in first gear at the bottom and never let up on the gas until I get to the top. When going down the steep hill I put it in first gear and give it no gas and as little brake as I can.

Why I hate the Multnomah County Library.

I like going to the library. If I will be in a town for more than a month; I call myself a resident and get a card. At one time in my life I had books checked out from 5 different library systems.

The worse library system that I have ever encountered is the Multnomah County Library. Those surly librarians were always annoyed with me for some reason. When I was a kid, the children’s librarian was always scolding me for not being carful enough when using the big dictionary. She would run over and say, “We have to be very careful with this; it is very fragile.�? Why would anyone buy a fragile dictionary to begin with and then to add stupidity on top of impracticability, put it in the children’s library?

As I got older I ventured out of the children’s library. When I brought my books to the check out they would say” these are adult books you need to get permission to check them out. Go to the big desk.” Most of my life, checking out books at the downtown library required going, for one reason or another, to that big desk. As I remember it was this large room with soaring ceilings and a very high counter like a judge’s pulpit and there I would have to plead my case as to why they should let me check out books. Sometimes they wouldn’t let me. Most of the times I was sent there was because of overdue library fines.

The exorbitant library fines were hard when it was just me; a good chunk of my babysitting money would go to the library, but when I had a child they became crushing. It doesn’t take very long to read a children’s book so we would have to get quite a few children’s book at a time to keep us in reading material very long. Since life gets busy when you are a single parent working 60 hours a week sometimes the books wouldn’t get returned on time. Often the fines exceeded the price of the item I had checked out. At one point I just started buying books instead of going to the library, saying, “It’s justs cheaper, this way.”

We moved away from the Multnomah county library and started going to the Forest Grove library where they didn’t have fines and the librarian is happy that you came in to get some books.

My son came up with this theory about librarians: There are two kinds of librarians: (1) those that see themselves as keepers of knowledge and(2) those that think of themselves as educators of the community.

The keepers of knowledge don’t want you to check out any books they just want to have them all there still in the same condition as when they bought them… Those librarians are never happy when you come in to take “their�? books and I think if they could, would like all the books under glass and locked up.

Then there are the librarians that see themselves as educators of the community and those librarians see books as tools that need to be used to be of any use. They are happy when you come in and happy to see you leave with a bunch of books.

We eventually moved back to Portland, right away the fines started piling up. (Now the library had videos and the late fee for a video was a dollar a day!) But we always paid them before they would let us check out more books. But then the Multnomah County Library started giving their accounts to a collection agency. This is not for unreturned library books this is for books that were returned late. My son moved away to Florida and went to buy a house. When he applied for a loan, his credit report had a ding on it from the Multnomah County Library. Even the loan officer was surprised to find that someone’s credit rating had been hurt from overdue library fines.

I have since moved away, myself. Yet once when driving through town I stopped to use the Internet, as I have done in dozens of libraries across the country. The librarian said the internet is only for people with a Multnomah County library card. Since library cards don’t expire, I said I have one but I don’t have it with me. She looked me up in the computer, turned to me and with a look and a voice most often found on police officers and Nazis said, “You know, you have 97 dollars in fines”.

Ponderosa Pine needles cause abortion… and prevent scurvy.

From http://stripe.colorado.edu/~mitton/ponderosa%20pine.htm:Pine needles have been used to produce abortions in many societies, for a long time. Dioscorides and Pliny the Elder, physicians writing almost 2,000 years ago, both reported that snow on Ponderosa pine consumption of pine needles caused abortion. American Indians, including the Arapaho, independently acquired and used the same knowledge. During harsh circumstances, a pregnancy had a low probability of producing a healthy child and it endangered the life of the mother; a tea of ponderosa needles was used to produce an abortion.

From the site http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Environment/CulRes/conifers.htm: Ponderosa pine needles and branches may cause abortions and stillbirths in pregnant cows browsing them, and a tea of needles is reputed to cause miscarriages in pregnant women (Turner et al., 1980).

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine : “A tea made by steeping young, green pine needles in boiling water (known as “strunt” in Sweden) is high in vitamins A and C.�?

Seems like the perfect famine tea, causes abortion and prevents scurvy.

Peace Pilgrim

The Peace Pilgrim walked away. She left all off her stuff and walked. For thirty years she walked, walking until offered shelter; fasting until offered food. She never asked for anything. She only brought the clothes she was wearing, a comb, and her message: “This is the way of peace: Overcome evil with good, and falsehood with truth, and hatred with love.”

Her friends put together a website and a book: Peace Pilgrim: Her Life and Work in Her Own Words. At the website you can read most of the book online or ask that a hard copy be sent to you. There is an hour long documentary to download, interviews and a 2006 calendar to download.

The peace pilgrim pamphlet called the “The steps to inner peace�? can be read at and is offered in 8 different languages on the web site, as well. You can also request a hard copy be sent to you.

Rose hips

I’m interested in foraging for my own food because I don’t think we can ever be free or even adults as long as we have to ask someone else to supply us with food. I don’t want to grow my own food so much as I want to find wild food growing around me that is edible. To be able to forage for my own food seems like taking a step away from this man made and contrived world where everyone, no matter how little substance they get from it, feel that they have a vested intrest in seeing it continue, and taking a step towards a life of my own creation.

From Plants of Southern Interior British Columbia and the Inland Northwest: Rose hips are high in vitamin C, as well as providing calcium, vitamin A and phoshorus. They are eaten by coyotes, bears and other wildlife. Harvest from anytime after the first freeze to spring.

From Edible Wild Plants: A North American Field Guide:
Harvest and preparation: Remove dried flower parts from top of hips, then split open and remove the seeds and eat the rest. Dry whole or halved cleaned fruits for later use( soak overnight in warm water) or finely grate or grind dried hips to yield a slightly fragrant powder rich in Vitamin C and essential minerals. Sprinkle on hot breadfast cereals or use to make hot tea.

Another source of information I found, a website called “Native foods- rose hips“, said to boil the whole berries until they split, about 10- 15 minutes, drink the tea and then eat the berries alone or in soups and stews. I was wondering about the high temperatures destroying the vitamins. Since they stay on the bush all winter and fresh food is rare in winter why not just eat them raw? No one seems to recommend eating the seeds but I imagine the coyotes and bear eat them.

Beautiful snow

It warmed up later today and melted a lot of the snow. But, oh what a treat to wake up and find the world so beautifully transformed. The snow here is dry and fluffy; I have woke up to a foot of new snow and cleared my porch off with just a broom. Winter, here, is wonderful.
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Nomandic bed

My sleeping bag is a Marmot Helium; it’s a 15 degree, down bag. It’s a warm, fluffy, and beautifully made bag with no cold spots. It is supposed to weigh 1lb 13 oz but mine weighs 2lbs. If you are 5′ 6″ or less there is a short version and if you are tall there is a tall version . This is a really nice bag made with 850 fill down. If I could only have one bag this would be the bag I would chose. I rarely zip it up; I just stick my feet in and throw the bag over me like a luxurious down comforter.

When not in use and not in my pack (which is rarely for me), I keep it stored in the large cotton bag it comes with. Compression is not good for a sleeping bag, so, I buy a bigger stuff sack then the one it comes with to use when backpacking.

I also have a Western Mountaineering Highlite bag that weighs 1lb. It also comes in a long. Good for travel in warm climates, but for me, it’s not warm enough to take on a long distance hike. If I put the two bags together I have a winter weight bag for under 3lbs.

I use my clothes bag as a pillow when not at my cabin.

When traveling, I also bring a Jag bag silk liner. The extra wide weighs 4.75 ounces, is beautiful, and is the same size as a sarong so it can be used as every way a sarong can: skirt, dress, bag, etc. Many hot nights in Thailand it was the perfect weight to sleep in. It keeps your bag from getting all smelly an dirty. You can easily just rinse it out and it will dry very quickly. They also sell a mummy version that weighs 3oz and a standard rectangle one that weighs a little more then the mummy but less then the extra wide one; It could be used as a skirt but probably not as a dress.

For a pad when hiking I use a full length Z-Lite Sleeping Mat I carry a full length because it gives me a little island to lie on when the night is really wet. Most hikers just have a 3/4 length and put their pack under their feet. A pad is necessary for insulation from the cold ground. It doesn’t matter how warm your sleeping bag is if you don’t have a pad, the cold ground will suck all the warmth out of you. I keep it strapped to the outside of my pack and grab it and lay it down on breaks. It’s particularly nice on rainy days because it gives me someplace dry to sit. It also can be ripped up for splinting material if needed. The cheap option is to buy a blue closed cell foam pad at a store like Wal-Mart, for 6 dollars. You can even score the blue pad and make it like the z-rest. Learn how at http://www.trailquest.net/TQaltgear.html#pad

Even though it packs flat, a full length pad doesn’t make your luggage look like a nice tidy package and always pegs you as someone who is planning on sleeping without a bed; which is fine on the trail but for international travel it’s better to have everything inside your pack. I have carried either the inflatable ultra light therm-a-rest ( the short one weighs 13 oz or 368 grams) or I had a small cheap closed cell foam pad that fit inside of my backpack when traveling internationally. When traveling to warm counties it’s not that important to have a pad for warmth but some people need one for comfort. The Ultra light inflatable Them-a-rest also can be converted in to a comfortable Trekker Chair for an extra 10 oz (283 grams).- For a long hike the chair kit would be pretty silly but depending on what you are doing it might be kind of nice. You lean back in it and it’s like a rocking chair that sits on the ground.

The hot sack Western Mountaineering Hot Sack is a vapor barrier/ bivy/ pack liner/ emergency sleeping bag that I sometimes carry. I bought this and have used it on really cold nights as a vapor barrier. It also doubles as a pack liner, though I still kept my sleeping bag in a plastic bag. The coating started to wear off after awhile but Western Mountaineering sent me another one. It weighs 4.5 ounces.