Today is the first day of autumn. While technically we have a little more daylight then night, we are now in the season of when they nights will grow longer then the days.
Today is the first day of fall. It’s also the first night of year when the night time equals or exceeds daylight. It seems rather strange after a summer of short nights and long days, to have the process reverse, but it’s a natural process, that man can not overcome.
I was setting up camp last night, and it really struck me how long the night time really was. I had to be camp by 7 PM, because it was already dark. The sun doesn’t rise until 6:30 or so now in the morning. It makes the evenings awful long with all their darkness, even if my campsite is well lit.
Long winter nights are all part of nature’s cycle. New England ecosystems depend on those winter nights, to keep ecosystem healthy. Darkness is just part of the whole cycle of winter, and cold and snow it brings. But it sure seems like 7 PM is an awful early hour to get dark.
It will be even stranger when the time changes in November, when the days start after 6:40 AM and end a little after 4 PM. Winter certainly is dark in the northeast.
Regardless, I guess the darkness doesn’t matter that much. Man has gotten good at lighting the way, so any darkness is offset by man’s artificial light. But it seems so strange returning to days when darkness exceeds light.
It was the comedian and sometimes political comenator that once P.J O’Rouke who described the Democratic Party as being a “Bunch of Fun Suckers”. Democrats generally advocate policies that are anti-fun, usually to save small children or the whales. They want new restrictions on what people can do — how fast they can drive, how much they can drink, and even more odiously, what they can drive, or what they can eat.
In contrast are the Republicans. Most good Republicans don’t really care what you eat or drive, or how fast you drive, or if you drink and drive. That said, Republicans are what Mario Cuomo once called the “Big Mean”. They are big and mean to people. They’re anti-welfare, and generally against people who are working class folks. They don’t like taxes, especially if they hit the rich, but watch out working folks, as they probably don’t care that much for you either.
The reality is neither party offers wonderful options. You get to choose between screwed by left or the right. You end up chosing the best of two bad options.
New York State requires you to get a camping permit if you stay in a spot or a campsite for more then 3 nights. I have never bothered to get a permit, unless the rare times I see a forest ranger, and he asks me to fill out a camping permit. I generally do not get camping permits, because I don’t stay more then 3 nights in any one spot – if I was a hunter, setting up a base camp in big game season – it might be different.
Pros.
It shows that you are using the land, providing justification for the DEC to spend more funding on that piece of land versus another piece of land.
It’s nice to stay at one site for an extend period, if you plan to stay in that general area, so you don’t have to pick up and remake camp every couple of night.
You don’t have to necessarily camp at a designated spot or farther then 150 feet from road or water if you get the permit for another place.
In case you are reported lost or injured, the forest ranger knows where to look.
There is no charge, and all you have to do give forest ranger a call with your license plate and other basic information.
Cons.
You have to plan where you are going a couple of weeks in advance to give the forest ranger a change to mail you the perm
Staying in one place leads to more wear on the campsite.
It can be be boring to camp in one site for an extended period.
Do you really want to tell the government where your camping, so it can track you?
.. As a kid, I always loved those marble tracks, where you would drop a ball, and it would bounce all around, until it came to a stop at the end of the track.
… I think it would be fun to drop a large boulder size marble on the top of the I-787 “Circle Stack” also known as a “Compact Urban Grade Seperated Interchange” in Downtown Albany, to find out where it would go.
