East Branch Campsite Walk Around
I am looking forward to warmer weather, camping in the Adirondacks like this one camping trip in April 23, 2017.
Worldly PFAS
I have been thinking a lot about PFAS and spreading sewage sludge lately, as it’s been in the news. At the same time, my fascination with off-grid, homestead, self-reliant living and fascination with the Amish continues to be on the top of my mind.
The solution to PFOAs in mind of many liberals seems to be bigger landfills, greater mounds of garbage on the outskirts of cities. Rather then spreading sewage sludge on fields where the nutrient value can be recovered, they’d rather focus on encapsulation and disposal via mounds of massive quantities of poop and toilet paper the cities generate.
The Amish are often dismissed as being overly religious and trying to avoid “worldy” concerns like pollution from their farms and homesteads. They burn plastic netwrap and garbage, shit in outhouses that if poorly sited can pollute waterways and allow their cows and livestock the ability to shit in creeks, and don’t file detailed nutrient management plans with their local ecology or environmental department like the big commercial farms do. While many feed and mix food waste into manure as compost or fertilizer, the stuff that doesn’t burn or have scrap values like broken machinery parts gets dumped into the gully.
But really is the Amish in generally have quite sustainable livestyles compared to the typical American household that flushes their poop and toilet paper down the toilet, where it goes to a sewage treatment plant, and its placed in the landfill in outskirts of town. Where their garbage is picked up every week, and added to the landfill on the outskirts of town. Where they consume hundreds of watt-hours of electricity, usually generated from coal or natural gas and buy tons of food packaged in plastic and paper, shortly destine to landfill. Or constant stream of electronic devices and gadgets, mined, glued together with toxic soup of chemicals, and then smashed and buried in that same mound of literal crap.
Truth is I actually like the Amish model of living in many ways, and I think it’s quite sustainable notwithstanding. I like the idea of composting toilets, humanure, or even the basic outhouse which if it doesn’t immediately turn the poop into night soil, it’s still returned to the ground and will eventually become soil even if it not immediately used. I get the concerns about disease and patheogons, however a well managed outhouse or for that matter a composting toilet or humanure system can kill them and turn what is literally being used to build mounds on the outskirts of our cities into something useful or at least non-harmful.
Nearly every office I’ve worked in the city overlooks a literal mound of garbage. So much of our enlightened industrial system is about extracting material, using it briefly and discarding it. Food is no exception – what isn’t tossed directly from the grocery store or kitchen shelves into dumpster and landfill is run through the sewers, filtered out and hauled to landfill. We are told this is the enlightened solution, the one that keeps PFOAs out of fields and our food. It protects human health. But I’m not convinced.
Now I’m not saying the Amish or off-gridders are perfect people. In many ways the way they manage waste poses risks. But they generally generate less waste, and dispose of it in ways that is more sustainable with less of an impact on nature – and with fewer mounds of literal crap on the outskirts of town. We should definitely be stopping the production of PFOAs but I question how much we should fear the trace amounts of the toxic chemical that is in widespread use in our clothing, kitchenware and lives.
Campsite 4
Riding the hump into a snow storm ⛄ 🐪
First snowstorm of the week, I guess. Little one this evening, maybe an inch or two of snow and freezing rain and ice. That could improve conditions for riding on the Rail Trail, though I think I’m done riding to work for now.
The snow and I was was really too deep yesterday for good riding on the Rail Trail. 🚴 But despite my best sense getting to me, I did it both ways. The snow was so deep that it was a complete slog to go through it, on the way back up through the gorge I got stuck multiple times, and ended up pushing my bike most of the way from the bridge over the Norman’s Kill to above Rockefeller Road due to snow being too deep on the way home. 🦵 It was 6:30 PM by the time I got home, it was pitch black 🌃 by the time I reached Delmar and was back on the roads. I avoided using the light on my bike on the trail, lest I draw attention that I was riding after dark on the trail, as you’re not supposed to do that. I didn’t really expect to be pushing my bike home in the dark in the snow ☃️ though I should have, as it was bad going in and somehow I expect it not to be so bad going up hill, due to non-existent snow melt and packing of hikers.
It was kind of gross, I was completely covered in sweat 😅 and I was a half hour late to work, even though I left the normal time when I ride or maybe a minute or two later because it was such bad riding conditions on the trail. It literally meant I was bumping along at 3 or 4 miles per hour versus the 15 mph or so I do flying down the hill when the pavement is bare. There had to been close to a foot of snow on the trail. It was so hard peddling through all that snow.🐢 I get it, I’m the director, and nobody but myself to yell at for being late, though if I was much later I would have let staff know and maybe the executive directors lest they needed some kind of rush data job. 🖥️
Truth is I really hate winter. 🌨️ Not that I particularly hate the season, but it’s tough in the cold. I had so hoped to get out and have that much needed campfire this weekend, 🔥 burn up some of the paper and burnables, giggle with some grass and listen to the music. I wish had that little cabin with the wood stove, so I could be warm, and not be stuck in my 50 degree drafty apartment that I refuse to turn the heat up on 🏠 because I want to save whatever pennies 🪙 I have for that future place in woods where I can not only heat with woods but have bonfires whenever I want to get rid of all that crap. But we are getting a foot of snow this weekend. 🌬️ Sucks.
Just got to make it through two weeks more of February. ❄️ It really is the cruelest month, as I was reminded slogging through the snow yesterday on my mountain bike. I really should have taken the road in if I was going to bike and bus back home. I mean the have the racks on the bus for a reason. 🚍 But I hate riding the bus, even though today I’m back on the bus. I guess it’s depression, though what you can say, it’s all in your mind. All I know, is I just got to push through this month, when I can be back up in the woods, doing the fun stuff. And riding back and forth to work, not in the deep snow. That was so awful yesterday, not only was I dripped in sweat at work, when I got home I was also soaked from all the sweat. 🏕️ I so wish I could get up to the woods this weekend 🎄 and have that fire but it’s going to snow so much this weekend on top of the foot plus they already have in Rennselaerville. I get that the road is plowed but it would be a lot of digging out then with another foot coming, it would be a challenge to camp even with a roaring fire. 🔥 It’s though.
Of course, because of the articles I clicked on social media, 🖱️ all these days I see is ads about schizophrenia, depression and mental health. 🤪 We have pills for you! We have support! Call 988 for help now! 💊 They’ll even tell you how to live your life, how wonderful life in suburbs is in your plastic house heated with fracked natural gas and a TV set in a every room. Truth is I’ve been interested in mental health, because I want to live a healthy life, and because so many of those issues are intertwined with smoking pot, which I like thinking about much more then doing. It’s good to look back fondly on giggling next to a waterfall last year’s. 🧠 Psychosis and paranoia are always risks of cannabis, though I think a bigger risk is eating too many apples and sweet corn while laughing my head off floating down the East Canada Creek singing along with the Dire Wolf. Yet, I always wonder why I feel the way I do. Why do I value certain things, and don’t care about others? How can I maximize my relationships with others in mutually beneficial ways? How can I be a better person. Plus, I know if I’m better at working people and connections I can make more money 💰 which puts me closer to owning my own land, with that wood stove and burn barrel out back. 🔥 And goats 🐐 and hogs. 🐽 Four wheeler, big black scary rifles and anything else I want in a little town that smells like silage. 🐄
I’ve been avoiding it but I need to talk to the head programmer about deleting some of data I’ve created at work, 💾 as I realized I’ve gotten a bit carried away. While it was at first just an issue of storage and capacity, I realized some of sets I linked and tagged will never get used and it was just a complete waste of disk space and resources. I would delete it myself but it’s a couple of million records, and it would be better if database administrator did such a big delete without the journaling being turned on, to avoid excess journal entries being done. 🎩 I’ll have to do that today, hat in hand. Yesterday, I had an excuse, I was kind of busy getting in late and then I was completely disgusting 🤢 as a sweaty pig 🐖 from riding to work.
Rensselaerville at Dusk
A winter's evening, driving through the hamlet of Rensslearville after cross country skiing at Patridge Run and coming back through Huntersland.
South New Berlin
A one horse town! Okay, maybe more then one horse, as its not that far from the Brookfield Horse Camp and Trail System. Fascinating how the Chenango Canal still so prominently is seen on the landscape more then a century and half later.
