Saturday, March 30, 2013

#138 - Initial Impressions of the Appalachian Trail - March 30, 2013

One of the things that I was very excited about when I first started researching moving to this part of New York was our proximity to the Appalachian Trail.  This trail stretches almost the length of the Eastern Seaboard.  My house is less than 10 miles from the AT, and there is a certain mystique for me. It brings images of rural Kentucky to me (or how I imagine it to be) and here it is in my own back yard!

One of my Boy Scouts recommended that we camp at a place on the AT, so that's where we set out to go.  Directions were not hard to find, and we set out on a short hike at 6:15pm.  The parking area (in Oregon it would be a Trailhead) was at an old cemetery.  Some of the headstones show death dates in the early 1800s, so the area has been inhabited by Europeans for a while.

We walked across the road and 100ft down a gentle hill and there we were: the mythical AT, previously only known to me by legend.  The entire area here is heavily wooded.  So this is just one more heavily wooded hillside, like many that I drive by every day on the way to or from work.  The trail follows a gentle switchback.  The woods in the Winter (and the forest has not fully woken from its Winter slumber yet) are lifeless and brown.  The only green is a little bit of moss, and some ferns flattened by snow that have not risen above the leaf layer yet.

You can walk any way you want through the forest.  There is no undergrowth to slow you down, nothing to impede your progress.  Although the area is completely natural, you would think it is carefully cleared.  A hillside such as this one in Western Oregon would be nearly impossible to plow through.  You would sink into 6 inches of detritus, stumble over hidden logs, slip on moss and ferns, and find yourself stopped by impenetrable bushes.

We arrived at our camp site in about 15 minutes.  It was only a quarter mile.  The site was 3 sites under one name.  A smaller site just East of the shelter that has a large platform for a tent and a fire ring, the shelter with its wood pile and stone cooking area, and a larger site with a larger fire ring close to the edge of the hill.  There is a spring, and a well attached to it (although the well pump is currently out of order), and a composting outhouse.  The outhouse is required, because there is no cover for a person to get some privacy.  It's a very foreign environment.

The shelter has a plastic box with a log book and some pens, and another with emergency supplies.  It's wonderful.  Water, food, shelter, and privacy for bodily functions.

The forest was quiet, but we didn't notice this so much until the morning.  An owl hooted all night, but we heard nothing.  Our dirty dishes were not touched all night.  No animal made itself known to us at all.  We made breakfast, broke camp, and got ourselves ready to leave.   Then we headed on a day hike, to explore.  We ended up following a trail marked by white paint on the bark of trees.  It wound around and over hills, over creeks, crossing roads, and sometimes in sight of houses.  The whole morning, we saw nothing that moved.  No squirrels, no snakes, nothing.  We found some raccoon tracks, deer tracks, a dead frog, woodpecker holes.   But nothing alive.  It was eery.

On the way back we spotted a hawk circling, and heard another bird, but it was so little life.  Almost a Silent Spring.  It would not have to change much.

I think, though, that the area will be nearly unrecognizable in a couple weeks, once leaves have come on the trees.  The Pacific Crest Trail has many long sections, and they are not accessible by car.  The AT has short sections (1-2 miles) that are accessible by car.  I think that over time, I'll be able to hike a large portion of the AT with Christian and Jake and my brother Tim.  It's going to be a good accomplishment.  Maybe I'll do all of NY first, then get Connecticut, then move to New Jersey.  Fun stuff.

Sunday, March 3, 2013

#137 Reflections on a year in NY March 4, 2013

I started work in NY on Feb 5, 2012.  The past year has brought a massive amount of change in my personal and professional life.

Firstly, I did not fully appreciate the difference between the suburban sprawl lifestyle we had and the rural sprawl lifestyle we now enjoy.  I call it rural sprawl because there's woods everywhere, and the land has been cut into 1-5 acre lots for miles around.  Where the land is flat and the farming is reasonable, there are farms.  Most of the land is a shallow layer of soil on top of shale or granite.  It's deep enough for trees to take root, and seriously unbelievably rocky.  No wonder the first Europeans headed west, where the farming was easier.

We now have to think about the grocery store.  My work commute brings me right past a grocery store.  It's not the cheapest around, but it'll do for milk, eggs, fresh veggies, and meat when it's on sale.  As I leave the house in the morning, I take a quick obvious inventory and make a mental note.  On the way home, I'll stop in if needed.  All of our non-grocery purchases either go through Amazon or to special trips to town.  And even that is consolidated with the weekly major grocery trip to Wal-Mart and Sam's Club.  Our life is much less commerce oriented, and that is refreshing.

Instead of doing whatever it was we were doing in the evenings in the suburbs, we spend our evenings either out with the church youth group (Katrina and I both do that now), or at home.  The kids play in the lego room, do homework, sled, read, work on projects, and sometimes play video games or watch TV.  In the summer, there are fires in the firepit, swimming, and exploring the forest we live in.  I've been working on house projects.  The most recent is sorting and organizing our basement detritus.  Some of that stuff moved with us from California 9 years ago, and I just sorted through it.  Now that is complete, and spring is nearly here, I'm transitioning to trimming, raking, and doing some other early outdoor maintenance.  Because out house is in the middle of 2 wooded acres, I can use power tools in my garage all night long and nobody notices.  Not even in the house, because we've built the pantry between the garage and the house and the bedrooms are on the far end of the house.  It's wonderfully freeing.

Katrina, after a frantic few months of moving in and getting organized and having family here for Christmas, jumped into college, and she's been doing homework most evenings.  It's a pleasant life - not lazy.  Certainly not lazy.  But a life that is less driven by outside rhythms and more by internal rhythms.  Is Aria in a show?  Are the kids' friends coming over?  Did something in the house break and need fixed?  Conversely, is there an improvement project that needs doing?  Those get queued up and done, one by one, as time allows.  It's nice.

The kids have grown immensely in too many ways to document fully.  Liberty is still fully in transition.  She has a very good friend at school, but she really misses Oregon.  Jacob is fully acclimated to life here - he loves the outdoors, the Lego room, and the freedom he has here to go outside, scream, and run around.  Christian is coming around.  He has become much more responsible with his homework, and now chooses to spend his free time with books or Legos instead of the TV when he has the chance.  He is making life choices confidently, and that's encouraging to see.  Aria jumped into school, did 2 plays, and had made the honor roll every term.  Her last report card was straight As, and she's very passionate about doing well at school.  She's an amazing person.  A seriously impressive individual.

I suppose that's enough for this post.  I owe more detail and more frequency.  We'll see.  I have a busy Spring lined up, and things to accomplish!