a little hiking

At some point, I will max out what I am able to do with my iphone’s camera, but a combination of good luck, a steady hand and some good lighting have led to some impressive shots. This is one of them. Summer is shaping up pretty okay. I am back from a speedy road trip to St Paul MN via the Baseball Hall of Fame and a motel with unadvertised free kittens. I got to spend a few days in the twin cities on both sides of the river and saw lots of libraries and a few good diners. Was waiting to post this until my photos were up but they’re still not all up so here we are.

I’ve been back in Westport trying to go to as many places for quickie day hikes as I can. I had to get over my general aversions to 1) hiking alone and 2) driving someplace to go hiking. I found a good day pack that holds just enough stuff and have gotten better at finding and evaluating trails, printing maps, following trail directions and signs, and keeping bug and sun hazards to a minimum. I’ve always really liked the outdoors but have rarely felt competent enough to go for long hikes, where “long” for me is more than an hour or so. I am gradually getting over that. Here are a few recent hikes I’ve been on, left here as much for my own memory-jogging as for information that might be helpful to others.

Helpful websites – a few sites are the jumping off points for most of my exploration

– The Westport Land Trust has a “places to walk” page with local walks
– The Trustees of Reservations do land trust stuff at a state level and have a places to visit section
– Dartmouth Natural Resources Trust has a trails section
– The Commonwealth of Massachusetts just redid parts of their website leading to a lot of broken links from Google but they have this list of places to hike and this general parks page.

So, wishing I had been doing this for previous seasonal hiking, here’s a list of where I’ve been so far.

– Westport Town Farm – really just a lovely walk through a field but it’s one of the prettiest fields around.
– Dunham’s Brook Conservation Area – an actual place to walk that I can walk TO. A few short paths one of which I think would be longer but ends at what is now a cornfield
– Old Harbor Wildlife Refuge – a short set of trails that connect two roads. Teeny parking lot which had a slightly odd dude in it when I was there.
– Herb Hadfield Conservation Area – another “connect two roads” set of trails. More well-marked than most.
– Bird Street Conservation Area in Stoughton – about halfway between Jim and me (thanks MeetWays!), a nice simple trail that goes some neat places.
– I was put off from visiting the Freetown Fall River State Forest because of the big “crime” section of their Wikipedia page (though seriously, escaped emu?) and wound up at the Copicut Woods instead which were totally abandoned on the 95° day when I was there.
– Yesterday despite flash flood warnings–nothing like a cell phone warning alarm going off just as you’ve started your hike–we walked around Ponkapoag Pond which is part of the Blue Hills Reservation. In the pouring rain. This trail is less than half an hour from downtown Boston so I suspect this is the only way we would have gotten it to ourselves the way we did. Or maybe it was the flash floods closing down all the roads. Had a great time and found the best boardwalk I’ve ever been on. Fascinating part of Massachusetts with some neat (and somewhat appalling) history.

Got a few more Westport/Dartmouth walks planned over the next few weeks but they will have to wait until my boots dry off which, by the looks of things, may take some time. I’m sure Sarah Scully did not think that she’d be kicking off a whole hiking extravaganza by gifting me these boots several years ago, but that’s exactly what seems to have happened.

the 56 step plan to cooler sleeping

So I’ve been in Westport for a few weeks now. The days sort of run together which is the good news/bad news. I know what day it is because of my work schedule but not always what week it is and June has me all confused because there are five weekends which seems mathematically impossible. ALA is happening in Chicago which I’m sure is going to be a terrifically good time, but I am missing it. I swear I will go to another ALA conference when there is one within driving distance of where I live.

And speaking of driving, it’s really terrific to not have a broken ankle this summer! I have a FOAF (friend of a friend) who needs a car driven from Vermont to St. Paul MN and I’m going to take a mini vacation (as opposed to a Mini vacation) and take a little road trip right after the 4th of July parade in Randolph.

In the meantime, I’m teaching myself how to prune with a pair of loppers, a stepladder and an unruly wisteria. So far so good, I think. And Jim and I managed to get two kayaks on the roof of my car and go kayaking in the Westport River which was a thing I thought might be impossible. I mainly thought this because I had to break down the whole enterprise into steps–and there were a lot of them–and then think about the myriad ways things could go wrong. Which brings me to sleeping.

I’ve always been a weird sleeper, I like a ton of blankets, absolute dark and absolute quiet. I’m happiest of the room is cool and not too muggy which is a thing you don’t really get to choose in the middle of summer when you live nearish to the ocean and your bedroom is over the garage and right under the roof. I like to sleep in a hat because it’s bright in the morning. So one of my many routines here is to close up the room in the morning and then open it up at night to get the cool air in. And then manipulate the air with a number of fans for optimal air exchange. I’m too much of a cheap hippie to get an AC unit. I can get the room about ten degrees cooler in a few hours which is usually okay.

Unlike my place in Vermont which has eight windows total, the place I sleep in Westport (the “cottage” the set of rooms around and above the garage) has twenty-two windows, two doors, five ceiling fans (with two directional settings and three speed settings), one exhaust fan, two free-standing fans (with two directional settings and three speed settings). Most of the windows have curtains, some have two sets. So trying to figure out what the optimal setup is for this situation requires manipulation of a lot of variables. And the weather changes. All of this is to say that once I’ve hopped all over the place opening and closing windows and curtains and switching fans on and off and making them blow backwards and forwards, I am usually pretty tired. Some people count sheep.

looking back, towards future me

I was wrong about spring being here which is no surprise (there was one more snow) but this week has been nice. I even took my bike to the transfer station along with a tiny bag of trash and that was good for a few laughs from the pickup truck brigade. A few things have happened this month since I got back from Kansas. I did my last (3rd) talk for the season in Plymouth New Hampshire. Went well and I had a good time. I want to put together some “What’s what in copyright and fair use” talks for next season. I also took a few trips down to Massachusetts, see family, Jim, dad’s place. Counting the days til we can close the estate and move on in some actual way but everyone told me to be patient and I have been. A funny thing happened last week, along those lines.

As you may or may not know, Flickr did a big redesign recently. I’m on the fence about some of it, I sort of feel that being a person who lives on the web means I have to accept that things will sometimes change (as readers of my blog you have to accept that I redesign every half-decade or so). They also redesigned their account structure. Previously free accounts got space for 200 visible photos. If you uploaded one more, one would drop off (not deleted, just not visible) unless you upgraded to a paid account. Paid accounts got what basically seemed like unlimited storage. My dad had a paid account and had uploaded about 4000 photos that he’d had scanned from old slides, a lot of neat old family stuff some of it before my time entirely. I’ve been pretty good at paying bills that come due on the estate but that one escaped me. So suddenly instead of 4000 photos there were 200 and only the most recent ones. I wasn’t sure of the login for that account (I have most of the others) and the whole thing was just weighing on me along with all the other “When is this huge stack of paperwork going to be over?!” executrix concerns. “Man, I should really take care of that…” I’d think.

Anyhow. The redesign/reconfiguring meant that all of the sudden, nearly two years to the day after my dad died, all the free accounts had unlimited storage which means all the old photos came back. And the timing was good. And I spent a lot of time clicking around looking at photos of my family when they were younger, from before I was born, when my dad was just a kid. This is a photo I’d never seen before, it’s my grandmother’s stepmother who we always called Nana and my grandfather’s mother Agnes Wylie West who I never met who was from Vermont. Both from my dad’s side. It’s not quite “awesomepeoplehangingouttogether” but in jessamynworld it sort of is. There’s a photo on my mom’s Flickr page that might have my other two great-grandmothers at a photo of her parents’ wedding.

I was having a great talk with my friend Joe from college yesterday about how wonderful it is to be basically middle-aged. I like feeling I know who I am. I like having the health and the resources to do the things I want. My slightly fading memory is more helpful than harmful at this stage. I enjoy my nerdy hobbies. I have interesting friends. He pointed out a thing that I had somehow never noticed–and that probably everyone knows about me but me–which is that I’ve sort of always gravitated towards “things that older people do” for lack of a better term and then been really interested in those things and excitedly sharing them with other people. Blogging and Twitter nonwithstanding, I could list a handful of examples off the top of my head: The 251 Club; The Odd Fellows Hall; being a Justice of the Peace; my roommate/landlady situations; town parades; terrariums. I’m not really sure what it is about any of those things, and never noticed a trend at all until he had pointed it out, but I think it bodes well for future me.

finally

There are a lot of fake springs but I’m pretty sure we’ve seen the real one now. Trees are all popping out their leaves. Neighbors are all rooting around in their yards. Birds have fled the birdfeeders for Real Live Bugs out in the world someplace. I got out the newspaper and spray cleaner and scrubbed their suet smears off the window so I can see them better when they get back.

I went on my first on-an-airplane trip since last June sometime. After all my talk about desiring to travel less I realized that the best way to not travel is to not travel and said no to a bunch of things. Or no thanks, because that’s me. The downside of course is that I like giving talks, telling people what I think, meeting other librarians, and going new places. The downside is that I find travel sort of tiring, I like my home, and one little wrench in the works (a late flight leading to a late arrival leading to a delayed parking lot pickup) can mean I’m driving home from New Hampshire at 1:30 am thinking “Was this trip really necessary?” like one of those old cartoons.

But it worked out really well. I gave a keynote speech to a group of librarians from the North East Kansas Library System about copyright and the work I’ve been doing at Open Library. I got to stay in Lawrence at a nice AirBnB place and meetup with MetaFilter folks. Then I hung out for a few extra days in Manhattan and saw colleagues and friends and ate tamales. This image is from a hike I took out on the Konza Prairie with my friend Donna. I went to Kansas four times in 2007-2008 and had a weird kind of amnesia about some of it. So coming back felt familiar and new all at the same time. It’s sort of a weird thing to say but if I had to go get a library job in a state that was not Vermont, Kansas would be one of the top three places I would look. They have a cool state library system, a lot of librarians doing really interesting things (David Lee King does amazing things at Topeka Shawnee Public Library and Donna is getting great stuff done at KState) and a population that seems to be really into their libraries, though I suppose most populations are.

I came back to exactly zero snow on the ground (less than when I left), a bunch of postcards from people all over (mainly MetaFilter, for dealing with some difficult weeks) and friends who had been scheming things to do while I had been away. Jim came up this weekend and we attempted a straight up a (small) mountain hike and mostly did it. Now on the lookout for new mountains to climb, new things to see. Thanks to Kansas librarians and other friends for making my trip so great.

routine

I swear I am not turning this blog into some sort of Pinterest thing–although I will note that we did that for MetaFilter on April Fools Day and it was pretty well-regarded–and I haven’t really been traveling much or anything (up and back to MA, not much else) I’ve just been taking photos of birds and sleeping a lot and waiting for Spring to come. Which it seems to have mostly done today. Yesterday I walked to and from work in the rain since I needed the exercise. Today it was one of those days where you talk about it to everyone you meet. “Today is just a terrific day, isn’t it?”

And I’ve been going to the gym. A lot. I don’t know if you pay any attention to Foursquare but it’s one of those location-based things you can do with your smartphone where you “check in” when you go places and you can keep track of where you’ve been and see if your friends are at the places where you are (for me, here, usually, no). But it’s good for doing some gamification of stuff that might otherwise be difficult, or more difficult. Hey I’m the Mayor of the gym (meaning I go there more than anyone else who uses this app)! Hey I’ve been there every week for the past four months! Hey I’ve been there 98 times since I started counting! Between that and only watching recent episodes of addictive television shows like Elementary (the US Sherlock Holmes, not bad at all) and House of Cards (Netflix-based political drama) when I’m there, I go to the gym a lot. Ride the bike. Walk around on the revolving sidewalk. Swim in the pool. Take a long hot shower that is longer and hotter and higher quality than my shower at home. Get real tired, get real clean.

Oddly while there are some tasks that I do that I seem to always resent “I did the dishes YESTERDAY and they are dirty again?!” there is something about getting all tired out that is something I look forward to. I’m keyed up and spend a lot of time, especially lately, interacting with other keyed up people on the internet. Starting real soon now I can go run around in the woods instead of a pretend never-ending sidewalk, and even though it’s going to be a bummer for all my stats, I’m pretty excited about it.

subnivean

So I’ve been reading this great book I got for my birthday or possibly for holidaytime called Naturally Curious. It’s written by a Vermonter lady and it’s full of all this great trivia about local flora and fauna, with photos! It’s arranged by month so you can read it and see what’s going on in the natural world at any given point in time. And this month I learned a new word–I love learning new words–which is subnivean. Some animals hibernate for the winter, but some merely burrow. Mice and voles, among other animals, spend a lot of time under the snow but above the ground, scooting around and doing stuff. When the snow starts to melt, you can sometimes see their little tunnels. This is especially true if you happen to have a birdfeeder. I was all interested in this, Gooling to see if I could find some subnivean photography (upon cursory glance, no, but I will keep poking) and then I walked outside with my squinty “What’s that big yellow ball in the sky?” Mister Peepers look and noticed that I had some subniveal tunnels right at my front door. The photo is not much to look at, but it must have been something I’ve seen in the ground hundreds of times and just didn’t know what I was looking at. Little fuzzy animals, burrowing in the snow, secretly eating the sunflower seeds that fell from my feeder. Another winter mystery uncovered. And one more sign of eventual spring.

caveman winter

pictures of food, clothes and me with syrup

So this winter is a lot more like real winter than last winter. Snow. Cold. I broke my snowshoes and they are in (hopefully) for warranty repair. Which means I’m a lot more like a big hibernating bear, or maybe some smaller hibernating animal, perhaps a hedgehog. Sleeping a lot. Slow. Squinty. Muzzy-headed when I’m awake. Foraging for squash and other easy-to-eat foods. Doing a lot of communication that amounts to “Ug” and “Not-ug” (thanks to Andrea and Corey for this formulation, it’s very helpful). Today I woke up briefly energized so I headed out into the world and spent some money and got some things done, tidied up my den. I have a Board of Civil Authority meeting tomorrow (Hear that, world? I AM A CIVIL AUTHORITY!) so I’m drinking tea and fumbling around with paperwork. Working on a mix CD that I’m sending out. I got a Kindle and I’ve been reading a lot. I feel like just holding up pictures to show you what I’ve been up to. But instead here’s a price list of where the last $73 I spent went.

$12 haircut at the barber
$2 tip
$37 syrup (grade B, from the librarian)
$11 thrift store purchases including electric kettle postage scale, one whole outfit including fuzzy socks
$11 sandwich, soda and cookie at what I’ve taken to calling “the clip art cafe” because of their window display but maybe I should stop because this sandwich was amazing

Last night I went out to this thing that happens in Randolph, a Community Supper. Last Tuesday of the month a local organization puts it on and they provide food whether it’s hot dogs or group-potluck or spaghetti. You get to eat a free meal, hang out with your neighbors who all look about as moleman-looking as you do, and have a good excuse to get out of the house. This month’s host was the Bethany Church who put on a good event, over a hundred people as far as I could tell. It can be tough to stay connected to folks when everyone’s snoozy or sniffly or snippy. It’s nice to get out and be reminded that it’s not just you.