Friday, July 11, 2008

We the People ...


... spent a couple of days in camp along the Illinois river at Pine Flat. Out in the open grassy flat we found the carcass of a bottle rocket that looked recently used. Fear and anger rise. Fear of being trapped by a fire, and anger that someone would take such a high risk over something so foolish. How could anyone be in this charred wilderness and actually consider using fireworks. To any one that would actually think of doing such an insane thing let me say this: Please don't go into the wilderness to shoot off fireworks, please continue to do that only inside your own house, so the damage will be restricted (hopefully) to only your stuff.

I saw a turkey, and a red fox. The red fox made an cranky, angry, loud, scary, run off your enemies, frightful sound. I have never heard a noise like that except maybe the time I heard the racoon lovemaking -- which is ummm ... really noisy. Anyway -- the fox came by the camp during the night to make that same noise while we were sleeping, or so I heard later.


This is Jim wearing the Albert Einstien hat with grass stuffed underneath it to keep the mosquitoes from drilling through the bandana into his head. I'm an advocate of the Albert Einstien hat, which is a bandana with a knot tied in each of the four corners. Any sculptor or physicist will immediate understand how this turns a flat rag into a bowl shaped hat.




The Sierra Designs Light Year in camp.

5 comments:

The Old Bag said...

Great shots -- it's great to get out into the wilderness now and again.

Eclectchick said...

For a second there, I thought Jim was wearing one of those fancy alien deterrent hats.

His isn't quite shiny enuf, tho. Careful - he might be alien fodder.

shawnkielty said...

Aha -- I knew those mosquitos were aliens, just never quite thought of it.

mindful mule said...

Looks like the land is recovering pretty well after the fire.

shawnkielty said...

OB -- it is, it is.

Jonah -- The biscuit fire is described here: http://www.fs.fed.us/r6/rogue-siskiyou/biscuit-fire/index.shtml

It was six years ago today. Although many areas look pretty good, some of the old growth forests were complete destroyed.

Those should take a few hundred years to really recover.