I’m puzzled by the lights and dark

/ one2travelfar / 3 Comments

Plural lights and singular dark.  I finished sewing the blocks for the kaleidoscope quilt I began in the spring. The pattern creates optical illusions, which intrigue me.   I followed the lights and darks of the pattern obsessively with the intent of piecing the four different blocks: A-B-A-B…C-D-C-D; very orderly , very simple.  Not!  When the blocks were carefully laid out in order, they looked too orderly.  I was stumped.  Every time I went into my work room, I moved a few pieces around.  Then I slept on it, not literally on it, but in spirit, and when I woke up I decided to throw order out the window, mostly, and just lay them out randomly.  Now I’ve been moving the random pieces around so they are almost ordered.  I didn’t expect such a contrast from the the lights and the dark.  The light components jump off the quilt while the dark ones recede and go into hiding.

A-B-A-B...C-D-C-D

I’m not sure which version awaits me.  I think I just have to stop looking and start sewing.

The other light is an outdoor light fixture I have puzzled over for several hours, took apart the light, the switch and now Tim has tested it with different fixtures.  Apparently it’s the wiring.  We’ll leave that one in the dark for now.

Latest Arrangement

Sideways, random order

The earth moved on our anniversary

/ one2travelfar / 2 Comments

We awakened to the sound of heavy equipment on our fifth wedding anniversary.  Wood is the traditional gift and I revealed to Tim that my gift to him was a new bridge.  OK not really wood but close enough.  Sadly the bridge has not been delivered yet but all the preliminary work was done yesterday including pouring four cement pilings for its support.  With a mere meter wide path remaining down the middle of the bridge approaches, what better time to decide to go canoeing, with the boat 1/2 mile  up the road.  The wheels worked fine on the trip out and the road crew was very accommodating, even offering to carry the canoe over the bridge.  I would have liked to take one of them with me for the portage!  But alas they wouldn’t fit in our new little canoe.

Paul Smith's campus

We left from Paul Smith’s College located on the Lower St. Regis Lake.  It was a perfect day and a lovely paddle, we took a loop through Spitfire Lake, past Rabbit Island where Dr. Trudeau conducted experiments on the effect of the environment on TB in rabbits, Upper St. Regis Lake, North Bay and then….the carry.  It started steeply with lots of roots and the wheels didn’t work as nicely as on our road and I was wishing for the road crew.  I wimped out and Tim ended up becoming a canoe head.  He had the canoe on his shoulders but he couldn’t see much and his voice sounded like he was in a tin can.  But it did the trick.  I was sure we were going to drift over the falls at the put-in and back paddled furiously, much to Tim’s amusement.  Along the way we heard several loons, lots of yapping little dogs, saw beautiful boathouses and camps, a heron fishing at the falls, oodles of mahogany lake boats and stately Adirondack gaff rigged sloops.  They are Idem sailboats designed specifically for the St. Regis Yacht Club in 1899 to race in light winds.

Adirondack sloop

Studies to restate the obvious

/ one2travelfar / Leave a comment

I am preparing for a medical recertification exam and am reading reams of information about menopause.  Some studies have amazing observations. Here are two which come to mind.

Menopausal women who drink small to moderate amounts of alcohol seem to stave off osteoporosis.  However if they drink too much they fall more, so in the end they have the same amount of broken bones.

Tim was reviewing my material as well and he came across this astounding fact. Women without partners have less sex!  Pretty blue berries

We’ve lost our way

/ one2travelfar / Leave a comment

More precisely we’ve lost our bridge and now the main road near our house. It was severely eroded from the flooded river after Irene and the edge continues to fall away.

The State has installed two traffic lights placed about a half mile apart to close the disappearing lane. Our car enters the road in the middle betwwn them so we have to guess which way traffic is flowing by looking at the backs of the traffic lights.Fallen road
The good news is the new bridge work may begin tomorrow. Today’s food was brought over the river and through the woods by wheelbarrow.

Maybe a Mabey Bridge

/ one2travelfar / 1 Comment

 

The bridge separating from shore

 

 

We spoke with engineers last week about our closed bridge.  I thought they told us we may be  getting a new bridge.  Or we were maybe getting a bridge.  But what they were actually talking about was a Mabey Support Bridge as a stopgap measure.  It seems like it arrives, prefabricated and is rolled over the new bridge relying on a longer portion of the road as its support.   It’s a good thing too because the rain we had the past couple of days is really undermining the support and the adjacent road.  Our neighbors walked home last night and luckily missed this new gaping 15 foot deep hole.

 

 

 

Since the High Peaks were closed this weekend, we explored our backyard and the views were beautiful.   We walked up to a very large beaver pond behind our house.  The dam raised the water level by six feet and the beavers had worked on some enormous trees.  Now it explains why I heard a tree fall one day from home.

The view above our house

Beaver dam with pond behind it

 

Tim dwarfed by an abandoned log

Tree fungi

 

What would a beaver outing be without some fungi?

Whose stool?

After Irene – reduce, reuse and recycle

/ one2travelfar / 3 Comments

Since we’ve been home, I have reduced, reused and recycled. But not enough. Especially since we’ll have to haul trash ourselves since our bridge is closed to cars and garbage trucks.

While I am hopeful the bridge will reopen to cars someday, when it does, it may not allow heavy vehicles like garbage trucks to cross. Yesterday, I stopped a UPS driver and asked him how much his truck weighed.  He had no idea.  If we can’t get UPS deliveries and can’t shop online, I may have to move. 

But back to our trash. I reduce – we buy no processed foods, which means way less packaging and we eat healthy foods. I reus e and recycle – old sheets become rugs, dog hair is spun into yarn and duct tape becomes all sorts of wonderful gifts for Tim.  I sort and haul our recycleables to the “transfer station”.  

However, for one reason or another, we never composted. It was literally a dirty word for a while because we spent one summer and a month last year at a lighthouse with indoor composting toilets, which we ultimately stopped using because we couldn’t find the happy balance.

We gingerly composted in Australia with some success but were reluctant to start at home. It’s too cold, we don’t have a garden, we’ll attract deer, rats or even worse, bears. But these times call for desperate measures.Our deluxe compost bin

After Irene – We’re the lucky ones

/ one2travelfar / 1 Comment

We sat comfortably in our dry house during the storm and listened to the wind whistling through the trees.  I thought we might lose power and made dinner early, since we only have a small generator, which couldn’t power the well pump or stove.  The power flickered on and off and was out for about a half hour. To prevent a mess in the freezer, I finished what was left of the half gallon of ice cream stored there. Then the power returned.  We got a call from neighbors to let us know our dead end street was under water from the river a half mile away.  We donned our foulies and headed out.  We didn’t get far.  We live atop a hill but when we got down to river level, we were walking through a three foot deep, rushing stream.  The road was flooded, with more water streaming onto it, for a half mile and I was unwilling (perhaps unable) to forge against the current to check out the bridge over the actual river, which is our only way to and from our house.

Our road becomes river road

Thigh high

By morning, the water had receded but washed out the road.  No problem.  I had my bike and walked/rode it down the street, over the bridge and merrily made my way to work.  I passed major road erosion, downed trees and detours and closed roads.  I stopped at the food store on my way home and by the time I got back to my road, it was already repaired – filled and graded with sand and stone.

We are amazed to see the amount of damage Irene caused in the North Country.  Neighboring towns have extensive flooding, small brooks flooded with the 11 inches of rain and became locomotives tearing things down along the way — roads, bridges and houses.  The entire Eastern High Peaks, where we camped last week, are closed because of washouts, flooding and limited access.

Yesterday a NY State Trooper pulled into the driveway to tell me the State DOT had inspected our bridge and found damage and was closing it until it’s repaired.   How long? Can’t say.  So for now, we’ve left our cars on the other side of the bridge and will ride our bikes or walk to them.   We are used to this after spending a winter on Fire Island where we had to ride two miles to our cars.  But we had garbage pickup.   I haven’t figured out how we’ll haul our trash out.

The bad news

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Backyard backcountry

/ one2travelfar / Leave a comment

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

We had a chance to caretake in our backyard, almost.  We spent last weekend as volunteer hosts at Johns Brook Lodge, three and a half miles into the woods.  We had a huge tent on a platform, near trees carved with bear scratches.  Someone said they scratch trees to mark their maximum height to gauge their prey?  or to see who is the biggest bear around?  I wanted to get a ladder and make my own marks way up high.

I now have 3 and 2/3 “46’s” under my belt.  46 mountains in the High Peaks region thought, when they were originally selected, to be over 4000 feet high.  To make up that 1/3, when I thought the view was just fine from below the summit, I’ll have to hike the whole hill again. So only 43 left to go!  The weather was mostly fine, the water, crisp and clear and the food at Johns Brook Lodge, abundant and delicious.

Back at the ranch, I ate half our apple crop!