In 2015, my first camping trip ⛺ of the year was out to Chenango County at Balsam Swamp State Forest. It’s spring, it was rainy and muddy, as witnessed by truck.
I visited the Berry Hill Firetower, 🗼which is now gated part way up.
I camped at Balsam Swamp State Forest Camping-area.
Cleared out a bit 🌤 as the afternoon progressed.
Before sunset.
As the sun set, fog set in over the lake.
Here’s a map. 🗺
I am often appalled by the embrace of consumerism by the zero waste movement — the bamboo tooth brushes, the metal straws, the compostable and organic products — that are hallmarks of the industry movement. Rather then a focus on reducing consumption, making do with what you have, saving and investing, buying in bulk and with less packaging.
When I own land, I want as simple and small of home possible, as I want to spend my money on the land and not the building. Acreage is more important then square footage, and indeed a small home would be easier to clean and more difficult to accumulate things. If you don’t have room, you can’t buy it. While certainly a hot shower, refrigerator, gas stove and oven, and wood fireplace are essential, I am willing to give up most other things within reason. Obviously I would want room to have a table where I can walk on my laptop, some place to get up and stretch on a rainy or cold snowy day, and a relatively comfortable bed.
A smaller building is easier to heat and maintain order in. Less distance for things to break, and I really don’t want to have utility electric or internet service at my building. I’d rather be a long-ways back from the road, so I have my privacy and not be causing a nuisance with neighbors with my music or fires. I want things as simple as possible, both for low cost and sustainability. I want to make as few trips as possible to the landfill, use as little coal, oil or propane in support of my home. Have some solar power, but not a large set up — just enough to keep a few LED lights on, have fans for cooling or moving heat around, charge my phone, laptop and other USB appliances.
I do think many of the tiny homes you see online are pretty gaudy with stainless steel refrigerators, fancy woodwork and paint jobs. Or they are so tiny, something easily moved on wheels. That’s a bit too small for me, but a nice hunting-cabin style property would be nice, especially way back off a road, only accessible by four wheel drive, quad or snowmobile. I don’t need a lot of space, but I do need something that is decently well insulated and dry to make it through the inevitable rainy and snowy periods. Better insulation is more wood saved, less wood to split and feed into the stove and fewer carbon emissions, after all.
Natural wood is good as is natural materials. I don’t want to pollute my own land and I don’t want to haul much waste to landfill. While natural products can be less efficient and suspect to rot and degradation, they are obviously much preferable to the synthetic plastics that are common on modern houses. I remember years ago when I was a children, when my neighbor got a new double wide delivered — and they burned the scrap vinyl siding. Nasty! There is definitely a balance to be struck, and it all depends on what the property I like ultimately has on it.
But it’s not tomorrow. I have a few years to continue to think about it all. I have time to continue to read and learn, and research into solar and batteries by scientists across the world is only going to produce better, more reliable products that will be cheaper. They’re is a lot of benefit to all this research going on in reducing carbon footprints, as it also means better products will be coming on the market for off-grid homes. Time is on my side.
Every time I hear the song, Classical Gas I have to think he has a lifter that is ticking a bit. But then again I drove a 5.3L Chevy for 14 years and the lifters held out beyond the frame rot.
I used to be a lot more involved in political activism back in the day. But I’ve lost interest and have frankly been turned off by some much of the political ideology that goes along with it. I don’t like the idea of supporting groups that have only one limited world view on our country and are unwilling to see beyond what their group believes is right.
Maybe I’m too much of an iconoclast, too ready to jump ship when I only agree on seven out of ten points. Maybe I’m just too comfortable on where I stand today that I don’t feel like being involved with political movements is that important. Maybe loud and obnoxious protests aren’t my style.
Things could change in the Trump era. I like the man the lot but I am concerned with some of his policies and what they mean for the future of our country. Maybe I will be back out on the streets demanding change. Or maybe I’ll just go back in my fishing rod and shotgun, and forget about the world around me.
I choose to drive in the right lane on the expressway most of the time.
This is much different then my parents, who always suggested the safest and easiest place to drive on the road is the middle lane on those three lane highways. The right lane has a lot of advantages to the middle lane, including that traffic tends to go slower and drivers are less aggressive in the right lane. But there is another big advantage too – an emergency escape should something happen right in front of your car.
In drivers ed class, they always teach you to plan to have an escape route should something happen immediately in front your vehicle and you lack time to stop. The right lane on most interstates has the shoulder, which in an emergency can be used for stopping should something cut you off or traffic stop right away, and you don’t have time to stop. The shoulder provides a margin of safety that is unavailable in the middle lane, especially if you have cars on both sides of you in the middle lane.
Granted, the right lane isn’t perfect. People are slowing down in the right lane to enter and exit the expressway. Sometimes you have very heavy traffic getting on a ramp, so you best move over to center lane to let traffic on. In the right lane, you have to move over when there is a broke down car or a policeman, which can inconvenient to have to switch lanes. Not to mention, all of the slowest vehicles drive in the right lane, which means you have to move over to center lane to pass.
Driving in the right lane does mean you have to change lanes from time to time and be aware of slow traffic. But the pace is so much more leisurely, and you rarely get traffic on your ass in the slow lane. People just expect you to drive slow. To me, the right lane is the place to be on the highway, whenever traffic allows it.
The land has a tangy, sharp smell of cow during this time period in Upstate farm country. Is it a bad smell? I don’t know, it’s the smell of land working, nutrition and fertilizer returned to the land that will continue to support the cattle that produce the milk, the cheese, the beef, fats and meats that are important to both us humans and the livihoods of those who farm it.
Winters really are long in Upstate New York. The months of brown and gray – some days with blue skies – and others with ice and snow are long. The greens of summer are short, what seems like days while the dead kill of frost and winter are long.