Nobody who's not an anti-racist, don't not raise your hand!
Did you pass?
Thursday, August 9, 2007
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Writing the hell out of racism
I am one of those people who think that words can change the world, especially words that are made of electricity and that are written by encouragable energy-balls who have over-mastered the use of the gamepad and the exclamation mark.August 6 through 12 is International Blog Against Racism Week. What you need to do is:
- Get yourself a blog.
- Write something in your blog about racism for a week.
- Sit back and watch racism get pwned.
- Smile because you totally did it!!!!!!!! LOLOLOL
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Emotional meteorology
Warning: This post contains brain violence and emotional nudity. Also, it is ridiculous.
Last night, I was taking a mercury bath and had a thought, maybe. I don't remember. But I guess what I'm trying to say is that I wish I knew how to talk good about my feelings. Like, I want to be able to go from feeling a feeling, to noticing that I am feeling it, to figuring out what feeling it is, to deciding whether or not I like feeling the feeling, to being able to make the words with my brain that would stick to the feeling and make it so that when someone asks me what I'm feeling I can say something that makes sense like, 'hungry' or, 'my heart hurts because I missed the Golden Girls on the TV box.'
That was a bad example. I should come up with a point before bringing forth the examples.
See, I wish I knew how to make points. They told me in school that it was like whittling an arrowhead from a piece of obsidian. Not a big clumpy piece like one you would find buried in a river bed but the nice flat smooth pieces you find in cowboy skeletons that were once part of the circle of life on ocean floors 50 hundred million years ago.* Case in point: I was having a conversation on (in?) the subway and a dude came up to me and told me to get to the point. It was none of his business, so I was like, 'why don't you get to the point?' Really. I wasn't talking to him or to anyone in that car so it was none of any of their businesses. I was having a great conversation nevertheless. Mobile phones don't work in (on?) the subway.
So I gave him the old Garrison Keillor, 'No, no, it's a different story, about a pontoon boat.' And then my studio audience laughed. With me, not at me. 'Ha ha' and not 'hee hee,' as it were.
So to get back to what I was talking about before: some people have what those same people like to call 'emotional intelligence.' As far as I can tell, it's like the force, except it is missing some forcey things the most lamentable of which are levitation and deadly (but peace-loving) skill with a hybrid light saber.
Sometimes I wish I were able to identify the things that I know I must be feeling and to describe them in the same way that I can describe other things that I like such as juice. (Oh my gosh have you had it? It's delicious.) People who have this emotional intelligence feature are ever-aware of their own emotional climate--and they can sense the emotional meteorology of others.
Even though it sounds like a load of goat cud, I wanted to raise my 'emotional IQ,' as it were. One of my good friends claims that he is one of these feeling Jedis. Let's call him 'Linda.' I thought that, since I've been calling him by a girl's name, this might have something to do with why he's so good at keeping in touch with himself. (Don't even.)
So for two weeks, he called me 'Janet' at my request. We would go out for sushi, and I'd say, 'Hey Linda, pass the wasabi.' Then he'd say, 'Janet, I think you're being passive aggressive.'
'Can you shut up and grab me that white tuna** from the conveyor belt? You always get the good seat you bastard, where you get to see what's coming upstream while I have to keep asking you to feed me like a fessacchione. Ooh, wait, is that a $4.00 plate? Forget it. By the way, that's active aggression, right? How'm I doing? Good?'
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I wish I had wider shoulders so that I could wear a double-breasted pea coat without people thinking that Manute Bol had an albino midget son with a homeostasis problem.
* Note: this is not true at all.
** My second favorite variety of sushi in the world, after eel kabayaki nigiri.
Last night, I was taking a mercury bath and had a thought, maybe. I don't remember. But I guess what I'm trying to say is that I wish I knew how to talk good about my feelings. Like, I want to be able to go from feeling a feeling, to noticing that I am feeling it, to figuring out what feeling it is, to deciding whether or not I like feeling the feeling, to being able to make the words with my brain that would stick to the feeling and make it so that when someone asks me what I'm feeling I can say something that makes sense like, 'hungry' or, 'my heart hurts because I missed the Golden Girls on the TV box.'
That was a bad example. I should come up with a point before bringing forth the examples.
See, I wish I knew how to make points. They told me in school that it was like whittling an arrowhead from a piece of obsidian. Not a big clumpy piece like one you would find buried in a river bed but the nice flat smooth pieces you find in cowboy skeletons that were once part of the circle of life on ocean floors 50 hundred million years ago.* Case in point: I was having a conversation on (in?) the subway and a dude came up to me and told me to get to the point. It was none of his business, so I was like, 'why don't you get to the point?' Really. I wasn't talking to him or to anyone in that car so it was none of any of their businesses. I was having a great conversation nevertheless. Mobile phones don't work in (on?) the subway.
So I gave him the old Garrison Keillor, 'No, no, it's a different story, about a pontoon boat.' And then my studio audience laughed. With me, not at me. 'Ha ha' and not 'hee hee,' as it were.
So to get back to what I was talking about before: some people have what those same people like to call 'emotional intelligence.' As far as I can tell, it's like the force, except it is missing some forcey things the most lamentable of which are levitation and deadly (but peace-loving) skill with a hybrid light saber.
Sometimes I wish I were able to identify the things that I know I must be feeling and to describe them in the same way that I can describe other things that I like such as juice. (Oh my gosh have you had it? It's delicious.) People who have this emotional intelligence feature are ever-aware of their own emotional climate--and they can sense the emotional meteorology of others.
Even though it sounds like a load of goat cud, I wanted to raise my 'emotional IQ,' as it were. One of my good friends claims that he is one of these feeling Jedis. Let's call him 'Linda.' I thought that, since I've been calling him by a girl's name, this might have something to do with why he's so good at keeping in touch with himself. (Don't even.)
So for two weeks, he called me 'Janet' at my request. We would go out for sushi, and I'd say, 'Hey Linda, pass the wasabi.' Then he'd say, 'Janet, I think you're being passive aggressive.'
'Can you shut up and grab me that white tuna** from the conveyor belt? You always get the good seat you bastard, where you get to see what's coming upstream while I have to keep asking you to feed me like a fessacchione. Ooh, wait, is that a $4.00 plate? Forget it. By the way, that's active aggression, right? How'm I doing? Good?'
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I wish I had wider shoulders so that I could wear a double-breasted pea coat without people thinking that Manute Bol had an albino midget son with a homeostasis problem.
* Note: this is not true at all.
** My second favorite variety of sushi in the world, after eel kabayaki nigiri.
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Ireland, Part V
Tuesday, 13 April
I slept for so long last night; I was extremely tired. I woke up, had a small breakfast, and then went across the street with my clothes from the weekend’s hike to get them washed at the laundromat. Including my shoes. A while later, I’d changed into the more comfortable (and now clean and dry) pair and was able to walk around much less painfully. In fact, after an hour or so, the blisters weren’t bothering me in the slightest. I decided to visit Trinity College, since I’d only walked around the edge of it the last time I was in Dublin. Once inside the campus, I was surprised that I was still in the same city. It’s not a huge campus, but one that is pleasantly spacious in that everything’s not crowded together. There were lawns everywhere, rows of trees, flower beds, benches, people kicking a ball around, and the buildings themselves were beautiful. The library, a relatively massive structure with shelves twenty feet high and tracked ladders to match was most impressive. Again, this could just be my reaction to something so starkly different from what I’ve been getting used to living in London, LSE’s campus being a claustrophobic maze of dirt-caked behemoths lining a narrow street that effectively limits the sun’s reach.
Speaking of sunlight, there was plenty of it, and I decided to try and lose myself in the city for a while, thinking of what to do next, both in the short and long terms. I did get lost, but I only noticed when I found myself at the port. I guessed I’d been walking for more than I’d noticed, taking random turns here and there. It was a lot more difficult finding out where I was than I’d thought it would be.
This is mainly because of Dublin’s deliberately confusing street naming and numbering 'convention.' Streets change names every one or two blocks in Dublin, and the numbering goes up along one side, and down along the other. So while I might have thought I’d be on Dame Street, for example, five minutes later, I’d be on College Street. Personally, I can never remember whether or not I’d accidentally turned somewhere, and the fact that the street name just changes on me like that doesn’t help me find my bearings (which are more often than not misplaced). So it was the better part of half an hour that I spent toiling over my map and asking people what this street was called further down that way. Of course, this being perfectly normal for them, people were amused that I was confused by it. But they don’t know that I could get lost sitting on a park bench.
Anyway, I did find my way back from wherever it was I’d ended up. But I got to see a lot of Dublin, and I did notice that I was still south of the Liffey, the river that runs through the city (I’ve been known to cross rivers without noticing). I made a mental note of some buildings and other things I’d be likely to come back and photograph, depending on whether or not I could find my way back here.
I'm sitting at St. Steven’s Green, since I’ve managed to lose sight of my planning for tomorrow, or even tonight for that matter. I think I'll go to Sheep’s Head peninsula. No, maybe Cork? No, I’ll go to the Dingle peninsula and bike around there. No. It’s going to be Sheep’s Head. Oh, it depends on when the bus leaves. No, no. There must be a bus that leaves quite early to each place. Why don’t I go and find out? Tomorrow morning there will be time.
For now, I was able to catch the museum before it closed (oddly enough for a museum of Celtic heritage, they still couldn’t resist including a sizeable Ancient Egyptian exhibit). More interesting was the Natural History museum, with an immense collection of many known (and stuffed) species of fauna running around Ireland. Later, I walked around Temple Bar, went into a café, and sat and read more of The Wasp Factory.
To be continued.
I slept for so long last night; I was extremely tired. I woke up, had a small breakfast, and then went across the street with my clothes from the weekend’s hike to get them washed at the laundromat. Including my shoes. A while later, I’d changed into the more comfortable (and now clean and dry) pair and was able to walk around much less painfully. In fact, after an hour or so, the blisters weren’t bothering me in the slightest. I decided to visit Trinity College, since I’d only walked around the edge of it the last time I was in Dublin. Once inside the campus, I was surprised that I was still in the same city. It’s not a huge campus, but one that is pleasantly spacious in that everything’s not crowded together. There were lawns everywhere, rows of trees, flower beds, benches, people kicking a ball around, and the buildings themselves were beautiful. The library, a relatively massive structure with shelves twenty feet high and tracked ladders to match was most impressive. Again, this could just be my reaction to something so starkly different from what I’ve been getting used to living in London, LSE’s campus being a claustrophobic maze of dirt-caked behemoths lining a narrow street that effectively limits the sun’s reach.
Speaking of sunlight, there was plenty of it, and I decided to try and lose myself in the city for a while, thinking of what to do next, both in the short and long terms. I did get lost, but I only noticed when I found myself at the port. I guessed I’d been walking for more than I’d noticed, taking random turns here and there. It was a lot more difficult finding out where I was than I’d thought it would be.
This is mainly because of Dublin’s deliberately confusing street naming and numbering 'convention.' Streets change names every one or two blocks in Dublin, and the numbering goes up along one side, and down along the other. So while I might have thought I’d be on Dame Street, for example, five minutes later, I’d be on College Street. Personally, I can never remember whether or not I’d accidentally turned somewhere, and the fact that the street name just changes on me like that doesn’t help me find my bearings (which are more often than not misplaced). So it was the better part of half an hour that I spent toiling over my map and asking people what this street was called further down that way. Of course, this being perfectly normal for them, people were amused that I was confused by it. But they don’t know that I could get lost sitting on a park bench.
Anyway, I did find my way back from wherever it was I’d ended up. But I got to see a lot of Dublin, and I did notice that I was still south of the Liffey, the river that runs through the city (I’ve been known to cross rivers without noticing). I made a mental note of some buildings and other things I’d be likely to come back and photograph, depending on whether or not I could find my way back here.
I'm sitting at St. Steven’s Green, since I’ve managed to lose sight of my planning for tomorrow, or even tonight for that matter. I think I'll go to Sheep’s Head peninsula. No, maybe Cork? No, I’ll go to the Dingle peninsula and bike around there. No. It’s going to be Sheep’s Head. Oh, it depends on when the bus leaves. No, no. There must be a bus that leaves quite early to each place. Why don’t I go and find out? Tomorrow morning there will be time.
For now, I was able to catch the museum before it closed (oddly enough for a museum of Celtic heritage, they still couldn’t resist including a sizeable Ancient Egyptian exhibit). More interesting was the Natural History museum, with an immense collection of many known (and stuffed) species of fauna running around Ireland. Later, I walked around Temple Bar, went into a café, and sat and read more of The Wasp Factory.
To be continued.
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Ireland, Part IV
Monday, 12 April
(Continued)
No, I’m kidding. We headed north. We joined another little road, left it again for another forest walk, and then joined a road deeper inside the forest. It was still raining and we had little shelter from the rain because there were no trees on the road. Its edges were impassable, going sharply up a hill on one side and down a steep slope on the other. We were now descending the mountain we’d been climbing on its opposite side so far, and it had been five or six hours since we'd left Knockree.
After another look at the map, we found that we were getting quite close to our destination. I think we had crossed the county border by this time, or were about to cross it at the foot of the mountain. But either way, from then on we were walking along rural roads rather than dirt paths and trails. On the way down, we caught some amazing scenery through gaps in the trees; the clouds were so low, we had been walking through one, or a group of them, for most of the mountain, which is why it was raining the whole time, and it served to make the view all that more inspiring by dithering the light. It made everything look so vibrantly alive and fresh through the mist, light playing off of the vapor and shimmering whenever the sun came through the cloud cover. Eventually, we could see Dublin’s outskirts in the distance, and Melissa commented on how from here it looked a little like Fremont, sprawled out, colorful, and lightly built up.
At the bottom, we had definitely crossed the county border because we found a sign that told us were on the edge of Marlay Park, where the Way originates, somewhere within. On the map there was an ancient burial site not far from where we were, and we started looking around for it. A man walking his dog came up to us (extremely friendly, the Irish) and asked us if we were all right, and we asked him if he knew of the burial site. He said, “of course!” and pointed to a place on the edge of the slop upwards where we should begin our climb, and that they were about 50 m in from there. He was so keen on helping us, in fact, that when we reached the slope, he called back to us excitedly, indicating that we were in the right place, and to have a nice day.
It was a refreshing departure from the stark bluntness and sometimes rude interactions one has with the English, but that’s a whole other journal.
We found the site, and actually there were two. Apparently built one thousand years apart (well, I couldn’t tell just by looking at them, there was a plaque). The older one had also been reused when the newer one was built, the old remains and artifacts pushed aside but the lithic provenience was preserved, or so the archeologists thought, because of the difference in design between the two sites. But it was quite difficult to examine the sites well because of the amount of littler around the place. Someone had had a party or something, because there were packages, wrappers, cans, bottles, toilet paper, socks (socks) and shoes, just everywhere. All kinds of stuff. And it was recent, nothing was faded. Shame.
The last stage of the walk was nice, through Marlay Park, which used to be the Marlay family's gardens. In front of Marlay House, we sat on a bench; our hike was over.
We just sat quietly in the sun, leaning on our packs, looking bedraggled and tired. This was it. My feet started to hurt, and I remember smiling to myself -- not a moment too soon. They were probably in pain the whole time, but I’d just started to really notice it then, as I sat, the memory of the walk piling up and finally forcing some of my body’s complaints up to the podium. I looked down at my shoes, in horrible condition, and my jeans, although dry, still had the dirt from yesterday's bog wade and were brown up to the knees.
It was almost five. We barely caught the bus back into Dublin, running after it as it was about to leave. We sat sitting upstairs, still silent. Fifteen minutes later the bus ride came to an end, and we hurried downstairs and jumped out. I slung my pack over my shoulder, she extended her left hand as I extended my right. That didn’t work, so I freed my left hand and we shook hands, said goodbye, and headed in opposite directions, she to Trinity College to meet her friend, and me to Avalon House hostel to spend a few nights' rest.
By now my feet really hurt and my back ached from carrying my pack for two days in difficult conditions. But I felt good, and I would hopefully meet more people. After all, I had another eight days ahead of me.
I checked in and went upstairs to shower, and just lied down in my bunk and fell asleep. I woke up at around 8 pm, by now quite hungry. I went downstairs with the intention of just going out and finding somewhere to eat, but I noticed people in the kitchen, went inside, and was impressed with the facilities. So I was inspired to make my own dinner. All I can really cook is pasta. So I went and bought pasta and some sauce and vegetables, soda bread and spread, and fruit. I had a huge dinner, but I hadn’t eaten anything really substantial for a long time. Then I went for a walk, stopping for a while at a café in Temple Bar opposite the museum of art to write some of this and then slept at around 11.
To be continued.
(Continued)
No, I’m kidding. We headed north. We joined another little road, left it again for another forest walk, and then joined a road deeper inside the forest. It was still raining and we had little shelter from the rain because there were no trees on the road. Its edges were impassable, going sharply up a hill on one side and down a steep slope on the other. We were now descending the mountain we’d been climbing on its opposite side so far, and it had been five or six hours since we'd left Knockree.
After another look at the map, we found that we were getting quite close to our destination. I think we had crossed the county border by this time, or were about to cross it at the foot of the mountain. But either way, from then on we were walking along rural roads rather than dirt paths and trails. On the way down, we caught some amazing scenery through gaps in the trees; the clouds were so low, we had been walking through one, or a group of them, for most of the mountain, which is why it was raining the whole time, and it served to make the view all that more inspiring by dithering the light. It made everything look so vibrantly alive and fresh through the mist, light playing off of the vapor and shimmering whenever the sun came through the cloud cover. Eventually, we could see Dublin’s outskirts in the distance, and Melissa commented on how from here it looked a little like Fremont, sprawled out, colorful, and lightly built up.
At the bottom, we had definitely crossed the county border because we found a sign that told us were on the edge of Marlay Park, where the Way originates, somewhere within. On the map there was an ancient burial site not far from where we were, and we started looking around for it. A man walking his dog came up to us (extremely friendly, the Irish) and asked us if we were all right, and we asked him if he knew of the burial site. He said, “of course!” and pointed to a place on the edge of the slop upwards where we should begin our climb, and that they were about 50 m in from there. He was so keen on helping us, in fact, that when we reached the slope, he called back to us excitedly, indicating that we were in the right place, and to have a nice day.
It was a refreshing departure from the stark bluntness and sometimes rude interactions one has with the English, but that’s a whole other journal.
We found the site, and actually there were two. Apparently built one thousand years apart (well, I couldn’t tell just by looking at them, there was a plaque). The older one had also been reused when the newer one was built, the old remains and artifacts pushed aside but the lithic provenience was preserved, or so the archeologists thought, because of the difference in design between the two sites. But it was quite difficult to examine the sites well because of the amount of littler around the place. Someone had had a party or something, because there were packages, wrappers, cans, bottles, toilet paper, socks (socks) and shoes, just everywhere. All kinds of stuff. And it was recent, nothing was faded. Shame.
The last stage of the walk was nice, through Marlay Park, which used to be the Marlay family's gardens. In front of Marlay House, we sat on a bench; our hike was over.
We just sat quietly in the sun, leaning on our packs, looking bedraggled and tired. This was it. My feet started to hurt, and I remember smiling to myself -- not a moment too soon. They were probably in pain the whole time, but I’d just started to really notice it then, as I sat, the memory of the walk piling up and finally forcing some of my body’s complaints up to the podium. I looked down at my shoes, in horrible condition, and my jeans, although dry, still had the dirt from yesterday's bog wade and were brown up to the knees.
It was almost five. We barely caught the bus back into Dublin, running after it as it was about to leave. We sat sitting upstairs, still silent. Fifteen minutes later the bus ride came to an end, and we hurried downstairs and jumped out. I slung my pack over my shoulder, she extended her left hand as I extended my right. That didn’t work, so I freed my left hand and we shook hands, said goodbye, and headed in opposite directions, she to Trinity College to meet her friend, and me to Avalon House hostel to spend a few nights' rest.
By now my feet really hurt and my back ached from carrying my pack for two days in difficult conditions. But I felt good, and I would hopefully meet more people. After all, I had another eight days ahead of me.
I checked in and went upstairs to shower, and just lied down in my bunk and fell asleep. I woke up at around 8 pm, by now quite hungry. I went downstairs with the intention of just going out and finding somewhere to eat, but I noticed people in the kitchen, went inside, and was impressed with the facilities. So I was inspired to make my own dinner. All I can really cook is pasta. So I went and bought pasta and some sauce and vegetables, soda bread and spread, and fruit. I had a huge dinner, but I hadn’t eaten anything really substantial for a long time. Then I went for a walk, stopping for a while at a café in Temple Bar opposite the museum of art to write some of this and then slept at around 11.
To be continued.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Ireland, Part III
The Wicklow Way, day 2.
Monday, 12 April
It's still raining this morning, although the wind, which I heard whistling all night, has calmed down. The sun comes out in between patches of cloud and it makes the windows glimmer.
We had a small breakfast of some more steamed nutella mixes and cookies, using up a lot of milk from the grab pile that you often see in hostel kitchens and refrigerators. We poured over the map book tracing the day’s upcoming trek, my feet aching as my finger followed the path across contour lines that were getting ever closer together. It was 9 am.
My shoes haven't dried, but I think that if I wear them and the sun spends a little more time out from behind the clouds, they will dry as I walk. We thanked the hostel owners and set out, trying to find the path we’d left amid rain and gloom the evening before. The wind had twisted the signpost so that the signs for both Knockree and Enniskerry were pointing the same way: over the cliff, more like a windvane than something we'd follow. But soon with the help of the earth’s magnetism we were going the right way, and no thanks to gravity we were going up. Over the hill, which I hesitate to call either a hill or a mountain -- it was somewhere between the two -- we descended into another valley with sheep bleating and bouncing away when we came too near. Sheep look amazingly silly, like they’re heavier than they look, and they have thin legs that perfectly enhance the comedic effect. The rain had slowed to a light drizzle and the sun still came out minutes at a time. We stopped for lunch some hours later and I nursed some of my blisters (the rain wasn’t helping). But anyway, we trudged onwards.
The Way parted with the road, as we’d come to expect it to do, and into some dense forest. There was no obvious path this time, no trail of trampled foliage or dirt, and we had to resort to the compass to show us the way out. We also began to see, strangely enough, more and more litter, and our trash bag, which we’d been filling with litter we were picking up along the way since yesterday, was filling up. It was really getting to me that people would just throw away their wrappers and cans and bottles here. Melissa, a hiking veteran, was telling me that she and the friends she hikes with are always picking up after other hikers. Either way, I never thought hiking could be this rewarding.
Well, anyway. We came out of the forest on its north side, and still saw no little yellow man. Ahead of us was a vast moor, sloping slightly up at about 5 degrees maybe. To the left and right (west and east respectively) the forest’s edge went on as far as we could see, since it curved southwards on the eastern side, and northwards in the west. We settled on heading east to what looked like an old fencepost about 500 m away, crookedly set in the mud. I had my doubts, but as always, we didn’t see that we were in any hurry and if we happened to walk for long then it didn’t really matter because we’d see more. But she was right, and behind the fencepost, in a little dip in the ground, was what we were looking for. He pointed north, so we headed south.
To be continued.
Monday, 12 April
It's still raining this morning, although the wind, which I heard whistling all night, has calmed down. The sun comes out in between patches of cloud and it makes the windows glimmer.
We had a small breakfast of some more steamed nutella mixes and cookies, using up a lot of milk from the grab pile that you often see in hostel kitchens and refrigerators. We poured over the map book tracing the day’s upcoming trek, my feet aching as my finger followed the path across contour lines that were getting ever closer together. It was 9 am.
My shoes haven't dried, but I think that if I wear them and the sun spends a little more time out from behind the clouds, they will dry as I walk. We thanked the hostel owners and set out, trying to find the path we’d left amid rain and gloom the evening before. The wind had twisted the signpost so that the signs for both Knockree and Enniskerry were pointing the same way: over the cliff, more like a windvane than something we'd follow. But soon with the help of the earth’s magnetism we were going the right way, and no thanks to gravity we were going up. Over the hill, which I hesitate to call either a hill or a mountain -- it was somewhere between the two -- we descended into another valley with sheep bleating and bouncing away when we came too near. Sheep look amazingly silly, like they’re heavier than they look, and they have thin legs that perfectly enhance the comedic effect. The rain had slowed to a light drizzle and the sun still came out minutes at a time. We stopped for lunch some hours later and I nursed some of my blisters (the rain wasn’t helping). But anyway, we trudged onwards.
The Way parted with the road, as we’d come to expect it to do, and into some dense forest. There was no obvious path this time, no trail of trampled foliage or dirt, and we had to resort to the compass to show us the way out. We also began to see, strangely enough, more and more litter, and our trash bag, which we’d been filling with litter we were picking up along the way since yesterday, was filling up. It was really getting to me that people would just throw away their wrappers and cans and bottles here. Melissa, a hiking veteran, was telling me that she and the friends she hikes with are always picking up after other hikers. Either way, I never thought hiking could be this rewarding.
Well, anyway. We came out of the forest on its north side, and still saw no little yellow man. Ahead of us was a vast moor, sloping slightly up at about 5 degrees maybe. To the left and right (west and east respectively) the forest’s edge went on as far as we could see, since it curved southwards on the eastern side, and northwards in the west. We settled on heading east to what looked like an old fencepost about 500 m away, crookedly set in the mud. I had my doubts, but as always, we didn’t see that we were in any hurry and if we happened to walk for long then it didn’t really matter because we’d see more. But she was right, and behind the fencepost, in a little dip in the ground, was what we were looking for. He pointed north, so we headed south.
To be continued.
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