Freedom Camp

I woke a little before dawn. I usually do. Before I came to the camp, I still woke up early, but not always before the sun rose. I have more trouble sleeping here.

Maybe it’s the lack of beds.

The advantage of turning in earlier is that you can find a spot a little further from the drafts at the doorway. The disadvantage is that you have to crawl over everyone else to get out and pee.

Someone had stolen the shoes I wore yesterday. I’d left them by the doorway to dry a bit in the night air. I should have known better, and kept them at my side while I slept. The risk would not have been eliminated, but it would have been significantly reduced. It was one of those little moments that made me glad I’d been assigned to a camp in a more temperate area, rather than one that had colder mornings. There was no snow on the ground here, not ever, and I knew that if I could keep blood flowing through my toes until mid-morning, they’d warm up to be almost comfortable. I took off my wool socks and stuffed them in a jacket pocket, rather than wear them out on the ground. My feet would heal. I may never replace a good pair of socks. I’d be fine, really. Still, I’d had those shoes for almost a month. I’d grown to like them. It’s so hard to find them in my size.

I peed in one of the collection tanks, faint steam rising up from it in the morning air. About a dozen of us had worked for three months to collect the materials we needed to build it. The water would be distilled out and filtered for reuse. The rest would be mixed with other components to make fertilizer for the garden. I headed to the garden next, hoping that the early hour would mean there’d be some berries left I could grab for breakfast. I could probably find some glop at the commissary, enough to fuel me for a few hours, but even a handful of real fruit was a great joy, and an increasingly rare treat as the days grew shorter.

Mo was already at the blueberry bush. He sat with his legs folded under him on a small blanket, and smiled at my approach. One corner of the blanket had been folded over, and when I sat on the dirt next to him, he silently flipped the corner flat, revealing a generous pile of dark blue spheres, spiked crowns bristling from each one. “Yours, my friend.”

“You’re too kind,” I told him, and scooped about half the berries up in one paw. I ate them slowly, one at a time, as he bowed toward the burgeoning sunrise and recited his fajr.

I didn’t pace myself well. As slowly as I thought I ate, and as briefly as he prayed, my hand was empty well before he finished. I waited, watching the glow of dawn and listening to him speak a language I didn’t understand. I didn’t need to understand it. I didn’t even need to believe it. I just needed to sit quietly and watch the sun rise.

Mo represented only one of many faiths in the camps, but his was the first. Most Muslims were deported or arrested within a few months of the election under the new Anti-Terror acts. Mo was born here, which made him less suspicious, and converted in college, which made him far more suspicious. He would have been deported, but as this was his country of origin, there was nowhere to send him. After Brexit and Europe’s subsequent anti-immigration policies, many borders were closed to exiles. American-born Muslims who refused deportation to Islamic countries--usually because sharia law in such places made it even more dangerous for them--only had one alternative. Freedom Camps.

He settled back, a change in his posture and bearing telling me that he had finished, and eyed the remaining berries. “They are all yours. I have mine.”

“Didn’t want to be rude.” The berries were in my hand before I finished speaking, and in my mouth the next instant. I smiled at him through a chipmunked face. “Breakfast?”

He nodded, rolled up his blanket, and joined me for a walk to the commissary. “Something is different about you. New shoes?”

“Do you like them? They’re all the rage in the East Coast camps this season. I ordered mine right away, and they just arrived yesterday.” I gestured grandly at my bare feet. He chuckled. I had never seen him wear shoes. By now, his feet had surpassed leather for sheer toughness, and I wondered whether he would even notice walking on broken glass. I stepped gingerly, watching so I could avoid the more obvious rocks.

Our Freedom Camp was one of the oldest, meaning it had been hastily assembled without much planning, and no improvements had been made by anyone but the occupants. The sanitation was rudimentary and often needed repair, leading to our own development of the urine stills and composting toilets. They couldn’t handle the volume generated by all the occupants, but it was enough to offset the faulty facilities. A little. We spent a lot of time repairing things ourselves, knowing that in the time it would take for the official crews to take care of things, the camp would have been cleared by cholera or norovirus. Maybe that had been the plan.

Main Street, the broad central corridor which ran the length of the camp, was used primarily by the pseudo-military types who were in charge. They drove back and forth in old military trucks, proudly wearing bastardized uniforms and enforcing whatever new policy of abuse they had for the day. We called them camp counselors. Never to their faces. We avoided them mostly by avoiding Main Street.

Many of the real military abandoned their posts following the decrees after the election. At first, there were some court-martial trials and military prisons briefly filled with AWOLs, but it soon became clear that there weren’t enough personnel loyal to the new regime to maintain the practice. Rumors spread that ships full of naval crews and entire army battalions had either defected or found quiet places to establish small bases elsewhere in the world, retrieving their families if they could, and essentially becoming tiny nation-states. It was hard to tell how much was true. With the stranglehold on the media and Internet, even those outside the camps had to rely upon word-of-mouth for any unfiltered news of the world. Inside the camps, we only got coded messages from our families and friends outside, or reports from new campers.

The camp counselors we had were exactly the sort of people who should never be in charge. Picture people who thought a twenty-foot wall topped with razor wire and sporting sniper towers every quarter-mile along the Mexican border wasn’t enough. Even with a hundred-yard mine field buffer. Picture people who dress in bedsheets and tall, pointy hoods. Even worse, picture people who will blindly follow whoever is in charge, without ever asking, “is this right?” People who have never, not really, made a choice for themselves, instead allowing someone else to pour opinions and attitudes into their ear, and listen to whomever yells loudest, rather than to those making the most reasoned arguments. Then give them power over exactly the people they fear most. That’s why we avoided Main Street. We walked parallel to it, a few blocks to the south, where a careful eye could spot a few scrawled messages reading “Make America Hate Again.”

Most of the Habi-Pods were just shipping containers or old railroad cars. They had been arranged in rows with just enough space between for a crane truck to unload them. Later, that spacing allowed them to be stacked up to four high, with increasingly suspect stairways and ladders leading up from ground level. At first, there were cots, chairs, and some other rudimentary furniture. Later, as population in the camps rose more quickly than the supply line could satisfy, people started making furniture and hammocks out of whatever we could find. Those who got good at it developed a sort of cottage industry, working for trade, but it was difficult to hold on to anything long in the camps. Like my shoes. One of the later decrees was that personal property in the camps was limited to what each person carried with them. I couldn’t really claim that someone had stolen my shoes, because according to the rules of the camp, they weren’t my shoes. They weren’t anyone’s shoes. They were everyone’s shoes. The despot had reasoned that since many of us were essentially socialists, we could share whatever property was inside the camps.

We weren’t socialists. Most of us were dyed-in-the-wool capitalists. There were quite a few former small business owners who had voted for him who had ended up in the camps. They had thought he would be a better choice for them than his political opponent, because he espoused business growth in his campaign. After election, he quickly made several changes which made it obvious that he was only interested in growth of major corporations and heavy industry. Large companies consumed smaller companies, or drove them into the ground. Electric and hybrid vehicles were declared illegal, ostensibly to encourage development of American petroleum resources. National Parks were opened for drilling and mining under the argument that to ignore those resources would be wasteful. Global warming escalated. The small business owners, and any others who opposed the draconian edicts, were given the choice to leave the country or enter the camps. Those who could left. Those who couldn’t afford it, or whose political exile papers were denied by other countries, ended up in camps.

I wasn’t given the choice. I protested the new regime. I wasn’t a leader; I wasn’t an activist. They were rounded up before me. But as the louder voices were silenced, smaller voices like mine became harder to ignore. Soon after the election, the major news networks were threatened with sanctions if they stepped outside the new socio-moral guidelines. Later, specially-appointed Monitors were assigned to each media outlet to ensure that all material was approved before broadcast. That was around the same time that similar censors--call a spade a spade--began trolling the internet with bots and filters designed to eradicate messages which ran counter to the despot or his policies. There had been foreshadowing during his campaign, when he called for the termination of journalists and even judges who spoke against him. At the time, he had claimed that conservative outlets should fully support him, as he was the duly-chosen candidate of his party, and that conservatives speaking against him should follow the party line or be silent. Liberal voices were dealt with more simply, as a petulant child might: he called them names and said they were lying, then yelled until they shook their heads and gave up. After the election and Monitors, he claimed that any dissenting voices weren’t properly supportive of him, and thus un-American. If they were not American, they should leave.

Or go to the camps.

The only problem with attaining total media control across the country was that it was only one country. Media personnel who left the country and continued reporting their views--or worse yet, the facts of what happened here--were beyond his purview. The world was full of places happy to tell others how badly things were going in America. Some felt we were getting comeuppance. A few may have seen us as a dire warning against tacitly choosing totalitarianism. I made some public observations online comparing the media control to that enjoyed by the leaders of China and North Korea, where the populace was fed only what the government allowed them to believe. I had made other dissenting views, but I guess they had already culled the loudest voices, and mine was heard in the relative silence. I was collected from my home, which was seized by the government, along with any possessions I wasn’t carrying, and taken to a Freedom Camp. There was no trial. When I asked, I was told that it was held in my absence. I asked about my right to face my accusers. They told me that I had supplied all evidence against me myself when I posted it online, that I had been found guilty of seditious and inflammatory speech, and that I could say whatever I wanted in the Freedom Camp. That’s why it was called a Freedom Camp. I was free to do as I liked within its confines. I asked if I would be free to have contact with the outside world. One of them struck me with the butt of his rifle. When I woke up, I was laying in the dirt inside the fence. Naked. They had taken what few personal items I’d managed to collect before they took me from my home. Apparently, they were also free to do whatever they liked.

The commissary was a quonset hut, a long, semi-cylindrical building with large overhead doors at each end and harshly buzzing lights high above the concrete floor. Mo and I got in line, received our trays, and found a pair of seats in an acoustic irregularity we had discovered. Large television screens at both ends of the hall continually broadcast messages from the despot and his advisers. Reminders of how we were expected to behave, reports on new policies outside the walls, news of dubious factual value. Our spot was in a small pocket where the broadcast was almost silent. It was our favorite place to sit in the commissary.

Supplies for the camps, including food, are mostly the cast-offs of the outside world. Meat that didn’t quite meet the standards, produce that had gone a bit soft, three-day-old bread. Sometimes, we’d get lucky and positively identify the contents of our meals. More often, it was the formless stew we called Glop. It made the gardening efforts that much more appreciated. In a few rare cases, people managed to bring in some livestock and maintained tiny breeding populations. They were jealously guarded, and it was always easy to find volunteers to help care for and raise the animals, because helping in any food production effort inside the camps was the best way to gain yourself a share of the yield. Any food you could recognize was a rare luxury.

After we returned our trays, we headed toward Zeke and Margarita’s place. They kept a small herd of goats by the east border of the camp. I helped tend the herd. Mo was trying his hand at making cheese. A sudden pain in my foot sent me hopping a few steps, and I doubled back to collect the framing nail whose head had driven its edge into my heel. I carefully nudged Mo down a shoulder-width gap between shipping containers, and crouched near the far end. He leaned casually against one of the containers, blocking view of me from that side, while I scratched “Make America Hate Again” into the brightly painted metal under a large hashtag mark. “Some day, they will catch you doing that,” he warned, his voice casual.

“They’ve already caught me.” I stood and followed him out of the gap. “Good thing, too. I’m a dangerous man.”

“Full of dangerous ideas.”

“Like freedom of the press.”

“There is no press here.”

“Freedom of speech, then.”

“And religion?”

“Yup. Wacky stuff like that.” I chose not to linger on that topic. He had been here longer than me, and was wary of showing any signs of faith in front of the counselors, knowing that they’d shout “terrorism,” and he’d get disappeared to an even darker hole.

“Truly revolutionary ideas.”

“Me and Tommy J, buddy.”

We bumped fists, knowing it would piss off some of the counselors. Here, that gesture wasn’t just a greeting. It was a reminder of a time when the word Freedom still meant something, as recently as the former presidency. A man the despot actively sought to discredit, defame, and unseat throughout his terms. The henchmen who served the despot remembered, and minor accidents commonly befell those who showed support of the former president, or either of the despot’s greatest opponents during his election bid.

There was a subtle irony there.

The election should have been closer. The despot had gained support from many people who were so upset that their candidate didn’t do better in the primaries that they switched parties. Mistakes made by party personnel were blamed on the other candidate. Many people who had thus voted for the despot were now in the camps with the rest of us. Maybe they just weren’t “real American” enough.

Others had fled, seeking asylum elsewhere. Short-sighted anger, like that shown by the despot, had cost us everything, not just an election.

Many had hoped that we’d only have to put up with him for four years, eight tops, but the changes he wrought even before launching weapons against supposed enemies will have ramifications for generations. That was before he instituted martial law and suspended further elections. Congressional opposition was handled as he had handled detractors to his campaign: with abuse, harsh criticism, and tirades. Whenever possible, he would find ways to push them out of office entirely. His favorite line was an old catch phrase: “you’re fired!” Several were in camps. More, we suspected, were just… gone.

A whining, petulant, bully of a man-child had been elected to the most powerful office in the free world, and still there were people who seemed surprised when his presidency continued just as his candidacy had. Healthcare decisions were made by appointed committees, carefully governed by insurers, and individuals could not choose their care options. LGBT communities were forced into actual, physical communities much like the Freedom Camps, but where many suspected they were subjected to reeducation and chemical treatments to “cure” them. Corporations were given limitless power, and individuals were robbed of their rights. Anyone who spoke out against his atrocities were exiled or locked up because they were inciting unrest, or acting in a seditious or treasonous manner.

We put a bully in office, and he took everyone’s lunch money.

We should have seen it coming.

Mission Log 3

Mission Log, Day 61

There are many important examples of the interactions between the primary bipedal species and the numerous animal species of the planet; few exhibit the level of ceremony and ritual as that of the annual Poultry Sacrifice.

Harvest festivals are common among agrarian societies, and the Poultry Sacrifice seems to be a carryover of an earlier stage in the development of the bipeds’ civilization, when scarcity was more common. It hearkens back to another, rather counter-intuitive, commonality among more primitive peoples: sacrificing something dear to ensure its later availability. Presenting grain at the altar of a grain god in hopes of a bountiful harvest, for example. When these sacrifices involve animals, or even people, the sacrificial individual is often given a high standing and exemplary treatment, to emphasize or even heighten the value of the sacrifice.

In the example of the Poultry Sacrifice, size is an important consideration. Bipeds will often compete with each other in their food distribution centers for a prized specimen of the avian in question, and even reserve a sacrificial subject with the merchant weeks in advance. The sacrifice is a family event, with some members of biped extended clans traveling great distances; the size of the gatherings often results in multiple sacrifices.

Curiously, sacrificial events when the avian begins the proceedings alive are incredibly rare, even unknown. Instead, this large species of avian is killed, deflocked, gutted, and in many cases frozen well in advance of the ceremony.

The purpose of the ceremony itself is perplexing. If it involved the ritualistic slaughter of the avian, then it would be natural to assume that, like the example of grain sacrifices cited above, the intended goal would be to entreaty some higher power for a bounteous hunt, or otherwise successful procurement of edible supplies in the coming winter months. Instead, the ceremony seems to be an attempt to restore life to the avian; perhaps this is the goal, with the belief that by restoring life to the avian, even symbolically, the bipeds will be restored to health, or guaranteed bounty in a perceived future life or afterlife.

First, the avian is cleaned, and in recent years, an additional step has become popular: to soak the avian’s body in a saline solution to symbolize a return to the seas where life first evolved on this planet. Thus the sacrificial specimen is cleansed, renewed, and the bipeds are vicariously renewed with it. When removed from the saline bath, it is rubbed with fragrant herbs, spices, and oils, much as the bipeds themselves are known to douse themselves with fragrant oils and floral extracts.

Second comes the ceremonial feeding, wherein the avian is hand-fed great quantities of bread, fruit, vegetables, and nuts, all of which are symbolic of life and food in general across several biped cultures. I find this step especially puzzling, as even I, a stranger to this world, can tell that they are feeding the wrong end of the creature. I have yet to determine the ceremonial significance of this oversight.

Third, the avian is placed in a great incubator, or ceremonial womb, in which it is heated for several hours, and treated to frequent re-applications of the same oils and herbs used after the bathing. Many biped families choose a different method for this stage, using a smaller incubator filled with oils to save them the trouble of re-applying them manually. They claim this method is superior, but the number of biped dwellings which fall victim to fires related to these devices suggest that whatever higher power they seek to please with the ceremony may not be convinced of the sincerity of their efforts.

Finally, when the flesh of the avian has darkened and become aromatic, it is removed from the incubator and devoured by all those present, to infuse their own bodies with the symbolic life they have striven to instill in the avian. This is commonly followed by a couple hours of quiet meditation for each biped, sometimes while listening to the broadcast of bloodless gladiatorial combat which I shall explain later.

hiatus

Due to unexpected developments, I won't have time to write anything for a while. One month, maybe two, and then hopefully I can spend some quality time with my keyboard. Until then, find your own adventures.

Trick Arrrrrrr Treat

It is October in Northern Virginia, and that means one thing above all else: the pirate house has gone bananas*.

Why, yes that IS a life-size Johnny Depp figure atop that throne. Doesn't everyone have one of those?

We make it a point every year to see the display. There's a neighborhood contest for Halloween decorating, and this house is so far past what anyone else does that they've taken themselves out of the contest after winning so many times that it just didn't seem fair to compete anymore. This year, there was a small sign in the yard indicating that the house was in the neighborhood Hall Of Fame; I've never heard of such a thing, which leads me to believe that they invented a new category of prize just to have something worthy of presenting to this display.

We've watched the pirate house Halloween display grow for three years. This is a new feature.

I've been there in the evening, usually on trick-or-treat night, when there is a police presence directing traffic on the street, because otherwise cars will just stop and stare, and nobody can get through. Even the cops I've seen on this duty will spend a lot of time looking over their shoulder, as though they still haven't managed to take in everything.

I think the bar is also new, but some of the patrons are regulars.

Two animatronic skeletal pirates flank the sidewalk to the front porch. Trick-or-treaters have to make it through that gauntlet.

On Beggars' Night the homeowners have a party for their friends, everyone in costume, and they take shifts handing out candy while the rest of the guests stay inside, enjoying whatever pirates enjoy. We want to become their friends just to get in on the action. Outside, the yard gets methodically trampled as hundreds of people wander through, gaping and taking pictures. The display takes at least a month to install, and nearly as long to get re-packed after Halloween. (I have seen the pirate ship re-fitted as an enormous Santa Sleigh for Christmas)

Even the ship has grown over the past couple years.

A couple years ago, Hurricane Sandy slapped the bejeezus out of the East Coast. We didn't get the worst of it here, but we still had our share of ridiculous rain and lots of wind. The timing was really bad for the pirate house; they had almost finished the display when the storms began, and they had to hurry to get everything inside and protected. We happened to walk by the next day and saw a woman on the porch, shaking her head and looking tiredly at the sodden figures left on the lawn. I was impressed more with how they rallied: the storms abated about a day and a half before Halloween, and by the time the trick or treaters arrived, you couldn't tell anything had been removed. The entire pirate-witch-zombie-skeleton crew had been restored to their positions, and all the light and sound had resumed. I can only assume they had lots of help from their party guests.

In addition to the yard full of pirate madness, there's also a coven of witches cackling off to the side, welcoming victims/guests to their cauldron.

* this is the same as going apeshit, but with less processing.

The Old Man and the Cave

When I was a kid, our parents would occasionally take us on "mystery trips." This was the height of weekend excitement. We rarely knew what the trip was, but we always tried to wrangle information that would help us guess. What should we wear? What should we bring? Have we been there before? Often, our destination was a museum or zoo. Sometimes, it was just a nice place to hike or play outside. One of my personal favorites was visiting Old Man's Cave, in Hocking Hills. I even have a vague memory of visiting in the fall, and convincing myself (I may have had help) that it was haunted, because I love Halloween.

Last weekend we went to Detroit for a friend's wedding. On the way, we stopped in Ohio to visit The Girl's brother, who wanted to go hiking with us. I was secretly thrilled that the destination they chose was a favorite of my childhood. I had forgotten how beautiful the area is.

According to a 12 year old we met, you can tell this is a female by the eye color. Yes, I was disappointed in myself for not already knowing.

Upper Falls

I love this bridge. The portions are not connected to each other.

Old Man's Cave.

Lower Falls

The CCC carved the stone steps throughout the park--and this long tunnel leading up to the top of the gorge.

Cedar Falls

We also took this excellent photograph of her brother and his two clones. Hurray for exploiting technology!

The Cutting

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bike building

Two weeks ago, I got to help with a very cool program. The DC Public School system, with support from the DC DOT, decided that every kid should know how to ride a bike. They could teach it as part of the PhysEd curriculum, and aim at second graders, who would be old enough to grasp the basics without being old enough to fear falling or looking silly in front of their friends.

The problem was getting enough bikes.

That's where the crowd of volunteers came in.

Revolution Cycles, a local chain of bike stores (I feel like there's a pun in there, but I'll let it slide), took the lead in ordering the bikes and organizing the work force. They recruited several of their customers and staff to build bikes for a week in August (I was out of town then) in a hot, breezeless warehouse in northeast DC. Last month, they built the second round, and I was there for it. So were many more volunteers. More, even, than Revolution had expected. On the first day, we built four hundred balance bikes (no pedals, no brakes, no problems) and over 120 sixteen-inch bikes (pedals and coaster brakes).

The storage room looked like Christmas morning.

These took more time to unpack from the boxes than they took to assemble.

For the next two days, we built sixteen- and twenty-inch bikes (the twenty-inch bikes introduced hand brakes), bringing the week's total to 875 bikes, almost twice what was built in August. The build was such a popular project that the woman in charge of recruiting volunteers was contacted by half a dozen people Tuesday night asking if they could come help, too. The Washington Redskins wanted to build bikes, but by the time she heard from them, we actually had more help than we needed. In fact, we finished the build two days earlier than expected.

We built so many bikes so quickly that they ran out of room in the warehouse, and had to begin distributing the bikes to schools just to make room for us to continue working. For me, the funniest part was that the work I did was mostly taking boxes from pallets and moving finished bikes to storage. I only built one bike, at the end of the last day, when the pallets were empty and we had started storing the finished bikes in our build room, because we were once again out of storage elsewhere. Still, I had a lot of fun helping, and every time I see a news item about the kids getting to learn to ride because of that week of work, it makes me feel really good. Bikes are freedom.

(I am not artful enough here to properly embed the video, but one of the other volunteers made a time lapse of part of our last day of building. You can see it here.)

Mission Log 2

Mission log, day 47

I believe there is a higher predator on this planet. Very advanced, and possibly undetectable. The primary bipedal species seem to be aware of it, but I am not sure whether it is a conscious awareness, or merely a general sense of imminent mortal danger. Until recently, I had believed the bipeds were dominant, because their works are the most common, but I have since concluded that many of their efforts--especially the tall buildings of metal and artificial aggregate stone, and the blockier metal conveyances--are in fact defensive efforts against this higher predator. Is it possible that the pressure of predation has elevated a minor species to relative dominance through forced technological development and social bonding?

Naturally, with a creature imperceptible to the naked eye and which remains undetected by any of my devices scanning across all known frequencies of the electromagnetic, visual, and auditory spectra, it is extremely difficult to collect any information on this terrifying new species. I felt that I might have to forego efforts to catalog this beast until I remembered how I first detected it, and remembered the words of one of our own great thinkers: If you wish to know the size of the stone, watch the ripples. After all, I did not learn of the predator by finding any direct evidence of the creature itself, but by observing its impact upon the environment.

Throughout my visit, I have watched the bipeds engage in a variety of activities, and have carefully documented and analyzed many of them. One of these activities continued to baffle me. Individually, in pairs, or in larger groups, I had seen them running, without any discernable reason. They were not hunting prey, or pursuing potential mates, and until recently, I could not fathom why they would so frequently be in such a rush. The only conclusion that made sense was that they were attempting to evade some unknown attacker. I had seen them engage in this behavior in a variety of costumes and weather conditions, and in many cases there could be no other rational explanation. These attacks must have come at random times, without opportunity to prepare, for I frequently saw them running with their pair-bonded quadrupeds, or with their own spawn in wheeled carts; surely, no responsible being would willingly subject their young to the danger of a higher predator which they seem unable to even detect. The likelihood that they would endanger their quadruped, prized for its organic deposits, is even more remote.

As I considered this hypothesis, several previous observations began to make more sense. The thick walls on their largest buildings, high fences in apparently peaceful residential areas, and the unusually large vehicles used by many individuals for even the shortest trips (often, but not always, the bipeds traveling in this manner appear to be physically ill-equipped to survive a chase on foot). Bipeds who travel mainly by the curious open-air two-wheeled carts, powered by their own bodies, have a distinct mechanical advantage over the runners. They may not be able to traverse the same variety of terrain, but the speed potential is certainly higher. However, they also sacrifice maneuverability in tight quarters.

I have not determined why only some of the bipeds are hunted, though I suspect that they carry a protein or other factor critical to the health of the higher predator, and whose presence is immediately detectable to that predator, so that it only needs to chase those bipeds which would provide this rare benefit. The bipeds themselves seem as incapable as I am of detecting the predators directly, at least on a conscious level. Clearly, some instinct drives them to evade capture, and they will occasionally glance behind them, as if they know that something is there, even if they cannot perceive it. I have seen many, though not all, of the running bipeds checking devices on their arms or wrists, and some wear devices with aural outputs plugged directly into their auditory organs; these may be part of some sort of warning system, but if that is the case, then why wouldn’t all of the threatened bipeds be so equipped?

Whatever this predator is, one thing is clear: it completely devours all of its prey. I have yet to find any remains of these kills, which I had hoped would at least provide tooth or claw marks so that I might begin to develop a better hypothesis on the size and nature of this invisible threat.

Nocturnal auditory signatures

While I was home helping Dad cut down everything murdered by the ash borer, I noticed something that I really liked. The sound of Dad's yard is unique to me.

When I was in junior high, I spent the night at a friend's house. He had a tepee in the back yard, and after a few hours of bonfire, we crawled into it for the night. Things slowly settled down (teenage boys are biologically incapable of settling down quickly. If you think that we have, we are fooling you), and eventually we were ready to actually sleep.

Then I heard the roaring.

"What the hell is that??"

"The neighbor's lions."

"...When you say 'lions'..."

His neighbor across the road had a couple lions in a pen. "Across the road" sounds close, but my friend's house (and tepee) were at the far end of a half-mile long driveway through dense forest. I don't know how far away the lions were, but their growls carried through the night, the trees, and the thin canvas walls of our shelter. I wasn't afraid; I was fascinated. I was thrilled. Lions!! I fell asleep grinning after listening to them for ages.

In high school, we spent a week on Hilton Head Island in my great-aunt's time-share. We went out walking at night and heard the bellowing of mating alligators. We never saw them; we just heard them, the growls carrying far through the swampy areas.

I developed a useful skill in college. The campus was in an urban area near a hospital and railroad tracks. Occasionally, police helicopters with searchlights would fly overhead. Trains, sirens, and medical helicopters were commonplace. Now I don't hear any of those when I sleep. On several bike rides and a few hikes, we've camped near train tracks and everyone else will stumble out of their tents in the morning complaining about the trains all night long, and I never hear any of them.

Along the trail last year, I learned a few things about whippoorwills. They love to nest near shelters and tent sites, they are nocturnal, and they will inexhaustibly defend their territory by singing at it. For hours. One night, I set up my tent at a border zone between three whippoorwills, and heard them each singing at the others as I set up my tent, got water, stretched, made dinner, wrote in my journal, and read for a while. I met one hiker who said that he hated whippoorwills because his childhood bedroom had a nest nearby, and that he never slept at night when they were present. I loved them.

At Punchbowl Shelter, which was rumored to be haunted, there is a small pond full of singing frogs. My trail name was Treefrog; I fell asleep listening to the songs of my people. (peeple?) Later, in Maine, we camped at a shelter on a pond where I could hear four distinct species of frogs singing. It was fantastic.

In the south, I often heard owls. I could recognize the barred owl by its call because I'd done a lot of research on them after one of my training hikes. I'm not that good with other species, but at Overmountain Shelter (the Barn), I could hear four different types of owls calling out in the woods. One of them was barred. I can only guess at the others.

In the far north, we were occasionally lucky enough to hear loons. They will call throughout the day, but the sound is especially clear--and unsettling--at night, when their eerie voice echoes in the darkness.

Each place has its own night sounds. At Dad's, I lay in bed at night and listened to the very specific chorus of chirring bugs and singing frogs, and it felt instantly familiar. It was the same sound I listened to as a kid, falling asleep every summer evening. No other back yard sounds quite like Dad's, and as much as I love the sounds of all those other places, that's the place that sounds like home.

Yardwork

I know, I know. Yardwork is not an adventure, and does not warrant a post. But I can justify it! Plus, it's my damn blog, and I can write whatever I want.

I haven't had full-time access to a yard since I moved out of Dad's house. I miss it. I miss climbing in trees, chasing the dog, listening to the bugs... and sometimes, I even miss the yardwork. I discussed this with one of my aunts, who came over to help one afternoon. While we're doing yardwork, we just want to know when we'll be done. But when we finish, it feels good. All the leaves have been raked, the sticks have been mulched, and everything smells like fresh-cut grass. And I don't get any of that sitting in my apartment. No matter how much I work in here, no matter what I accomplish, I don't get that feeling of accomplishment that I get with yardwork.

Plus, power tools.

My hat is already covered in sawdust. The tiny person near my hand is Dad.

On this trip, "power tools" meant a chainsaw, Dad's mulcher (which will eat a 3-inch diameter limb as easily as you can chug a glass of water), and this sixty-foot articulating boom lift. We rented it so I could take down the trees from the top. Dad's yard has too many other trees (and the dead trees were too close to the house, the garage, and the dog coop) to just slice through them at the bottom and hope for the best. So I did what I often do when helping Dad with trees: get really far from the ground, and take a chainsaw for company.

Stay high, sweet chariot.

In the past, that's usually meant a ladder, or me clambering up the tree and dropping a rope to Dad so he could send me the chainsaw while I tie myself to the trunk. This time, I spent three days driving around his yard in something that handled like a tank. It took a little practice, but I got pretty good at getting the basket where I wanted to be, although my technique allowed for a little bit of banging into things I was going to cut down anyway.

Mission log

Mission log, day 38

Life on this planet seems to be dominated by two species, with both exhibiting a startling diversity in body shape, body size, skin coloration, and hair color/length/texture/coverage. One of the two species is bipedal, and tends to wear clothing, especially when outside the home. The style, color, material, and amount of this clothing is widely variable, though I have been unable to discern a pattern, as individual members of the species often show a great difference in opinion on what clothing is appropriate for a location, situation, or even current weather.

The second primary species is quadrupedal, and generally relies on a dense coat of hair covering its entire body for protection from the elements, and for whatever social paradigms which demand that the bipeds wear clothing.  A select few of the quadrupeds have been observed wearing simple garments, but these individuals seem generally displeased, and I have concluded that they are experiencing some sort of public shaming ritual as a punishment. Nearly all of the quadrupeds wear a single ornament around the throat; the material, color, and decoration of this item shows nearly as much variation as that of the bipeds’ clothing, and displays a small collection of bright metal chips.  Current assumption is that this throat band is a distinction of rank; further study is required to determine whether it signifies rank among the quadrupeds, or to show superiority of all quadrupeds over that of the bipeds.  When quadrupeds are seen in public with bipeds, they are almost always joined by a strap leading from this throat band to the biped’s hand, probably to indicate some form of pair-bonding.

It is by observing these pairings in public that I have discovered a most astonishing behavior linking the two species, in a symbiosis which is unique in my experience.  The quadrupeds generate small deposits of organic material once or twice a day.  The bipeds, in turn, collect these deposits in polymer pouches.  This behavior leads me to believe that the organic material must be highly valued, because it is collected as soon as the quadrupeds create them, and the pouches are usually sealed immediately, perhaps to preserve freshness.  On several occasions, I have followed the biped/quadruped pairings over several degrees of their sun’s course through the sky, and observed that after collection, these pouches are carried for the remainder of their foray, sometimes suspended from the strap which marks the pair-bonding.  Sometimes, the pouches are deposited in collection devices supplied by the Municipal Authority.  I believe that this a form of taxation, levied to defray costs of several stations I’ve seen to dispense the polymer pouches for deposit collection.

Clearly, the value of these deposits must be great, but I have failed in my attempts to capitalize on this knowledge.  In rare cases, I have seen bipeds ignoring the leavings of their quadrupedal companions.  These must be individuals of great wealth and power, who have no need for the bounty of their pair-bonded quadrupeds.  In such cases, I have taken it upon myself to collect the deposits myself, hoping to trade them for local currency.  Every seven days, a gathering of vendors congregates in the heart of the community to sell fruiting bodies and edible roots of several plant species, muscle tissue from less valuable quadrupeds and bipeds, ovum with crunchy shells, and baked comestibles.  I believed this would be an excellent opportunity to both experience the trade system of these people, and learn more of the value of quadruped deposits.  I secured a table and piled it high with a collection I had made over the past week, but was unable to make a single sale.  In fact, I observed most of the bipeds contorting their facial features and moving away from my wares, although in a curious twist, the quadrupeds showed some interest.  Perhaps the samples I had collected had lost their vital freshness.

There is another possible explanation for my commercial failure.  The color, consistency, texture, odor, and size of the deposits is nearly as diverse as that of the quadrupeds who leave them.  I confess that I only tested the flavor of one sample, and was so displeased that I have made no further comparisons of that sensory experience.  Perhaps the samples I had collected for sale did not display enough variety, as did the plant and animal matter of other vendors, or maybe additional processing is required before the product is commercially viable.