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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
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Yesterday, cloudy but not too cold, time to get into gear and head out towards new digs. According to my map, approximately 10 KM into the new ground, pack up my rucksack with hammers and chisels and set out.
It's an easy walk around the lake, on the railway tracks, not ideal (trespassing, fines), but I know the train schedule and the few times I've seen maintenance they've always been loud enough to give me plenty of time and warning to hide in the trees.
A long walk, after a long and sedentary winter.
There are pegmatites all the way in, everywhere there is potential, and while the bedrock is most clearly visible along the cuts there's another 90% of the ground that can be dug up, there are abundant changes in terrane, numerous faults, and every 50 or 100 yards there's signs of another pegmatite.
A little bit of banging, quartz, smoky quartz, some black tourmaline in the beginning, small muscovite flakes, lots of feldspar, as you get further in the muscovite turns to biotite mica, some pegmatites - narrow, an inch, max, others several feet wide. Chip, chip with the hammer. I need to bring a can of paint to mark the areas with more promise.
9 KM in, roughly, and it's more or less time to turn back. This is definitely worth considerably more prospecting, exploring, most pegmatites where I've found anything it's only been after repeated efforts and digging, there are so many here that even to canvas the ones I've seen exposed would take several months, let alone the ones that must lie buried under overburden and moss, and the countless others that must line the tracks for the next 100 KM or so...
Now the walk out, and at about 15 KM I notice my feet dragging, the pack, it's growing heavier and heavier, how much does it weigh? No more than 30 lbs, but it's starting to feel like a ton, and when finally I'm free I'm realizing it's time for a booty camp for prospectors. Nevermind, the restaurant will be open soon enough, I'll get my training in there, I'll also need though a mountain bike (the investment of time hiking could better be spent digging) - or - better yet - a dirt bike.
Hmmmm.
Or a Jet Ski...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
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In the perfect location, situation, to do all things, instead finding myself increasingly anxious and bored.
There is no reason to be bored - I've much to do, but as much as I enjoy solitude it needs to be somewhat balanced with society.
Society, at the moment and for the past year, has been out of the question, and Pandemic Fatigue is settling well in.
The restaurant, while I'd prefer to finish things up and never return, at least provides some time away from myself, the society of others (and I know Ken must be missing my company...!), and the reassurance that for a time - worst come to worst, my finances can be restored.
But rumor has it that the restaurant - despite March projections - may NOT be finally reopening, there are obstacles, and - it might be time to start planning for the new backup plan.
In short, paradise is seldom what it's cut out to be...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
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I'm now up to 12 every morning, waiting in the tree off the deck for breakfast.
There's always an even number, which makes me think that they're paired up - although they're not particularly social (not like sparrows or other smaller birds) - each Jay has it's own branch, some farther back, some closer, and when the closer ones swoop in for the nut the farther ones take their place.
After a fashion, we're kind of getting to know each other. The first bowl of food, it's a free for all - at first - riots, fighting at the dish, now it seems an almost orderly flight down - one or two at a time, another 1 or 2 waiting on the rail, things go until the dish is empty.
At this point I change it up. When I go outside for a smoke I place one peanut on the rail, wait until a bold one decides to swoop in and pick it up, then replace it.
There's a variety of approaches - the birds - indistinguishable - but they do seem to have very distinct personalities.
There's a couple that will make swooping attempts to grab a nut, then abort at the last minute and swoop away. These will later follow the other, braver birds around the trees, presumably harassing them to give up their nuts.
There are the ones that swoop in - in one stroke - and grab the nut with their claws or beak and abscond with it without stopping. Others will land at the far end of the rail, hop half-way towards it, then jump over the nut to land on the other side of the rail, approach it again...
...this isn't a great strategy. Some other, more opportunistic bird will have beaten them to it before they finally get close enough to the prize.
Then there are those that land on the end of the rail, hop slowly (relatively, they're at best abrupt in their movements) towards the nut, then pick it up and look me over for 2 or 3 seconds before flying away.
In the intermission, between my replenishing the peanut there will be a wag that will land on the empty rail, hop over and pantomime looking for the non existent peanut.
One, having grabbed the nut and still with it in it's beak sees me lay out another, swoops back to the far end of the rail, sets his first nut down, hops over and takes the second nut (to the annoyance of another bird already on the wing towards it), then hops back to pick up the first nut, only to discover that he can't carry two at once.
Try laying down 3 or 4 nuts at a time and all of a sudden there appears the connoisseurs, that will pick up each nut, shake it a moment, set it down, test the next one, and so forth, until having tested them all they can seize the best one and fly away.
Now, all the while they've got me wondering "What are they thinking?". This is, of course, the wrong question, they don't think like us, not at all, they don't have language which we use largely to form our thoughts - or - whatever equivalent they have in birdsong is unlikely to be shaping their thoughts in the same ways ours are. But - still - try and get into their heads. One is vocal with loud scoldings and kaws as soon as I lay down the nut, as if it's trying to shoo me from the deck so he/she can dine in peace. Another might make low chirps and birdsongs/warbles to itself - no others in the tree, or within hearing range, as it waits for a nut, and it reminds me somewhat of a cheerful inner monologue, the bird is simply going over the joyful moment it gets it's nut, "anticipating" out loud, as it were.
And then there's the whole - "Do they know they're being fed?" - which - I would think, yes, of course, but then why the super-abundance of caution? There's only 12, you need a minimum of 4 and twenty for any sort of half-assed pie. And there is the fact that - even now, as I'm writing this at the computer, they're landing on the rail, looking for nuts that plainly aren't there, then staring at me through the window...An I simply a careless forager, who accidently leaves nuts on the rail and should be followed around? Or...?
Anyways, for the moment largely the most intelligent companionship I have, so I'll enjoy it while it lasts.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
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And that now I should be setting about reforming bad habits, getting back into the routines of meditating, diet, exercise, writing, the new routine of crystal wrapping. There is time, after all, and the excuse of "the hell of other people" is no longer valid.
But it's never quite so easy as you think, once those habits take hold. For example, the inner monologue, it's largely disappeared, formerly rich - in doubt, anxiety, anger, outrage, indignation, but also inspiration and wit, and pass a sober day and wonder where it's gone. A drink, two, and there it is again. I've reset my baseline, and not in a good way.
And the exercise - easy enough when I'm working, or on a mission to gather some rocks, explore some caves or mountains, but now, here, in the perpetual poverty of EI/CERB and rationed gas, food, well, not so. Winter is not my season.
But, nose to the grindstone, a little over two months (guaranteed) left, and I'd better get my shit together...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
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Meanwhile, up early in the morning. Before the sun, a few stars from the deck, a slight crescent moon rising, the sound of the waves lapping on the beach. And as the day proceeds, shades of grey that slowly lighten and clouds that hang low and ragged over the farther shore, most days never rising above the first ranges, some days never rising at all, the waves disappear into a fog over the lake, colors in the foreground, the brightly painted deck chairs, slowly emerge, muted, then fade and vanish. By 4:00 again the day is dark.
This place, it's great, it's not mine, the few scant possessions I have with me aren't enough to take away the air-bnb ness of it, but that as well is good, one can be distracted by said possessions, there's a minimal of distractions here. Sit at the window with the craptastic laptop, the walloping 32 GB of memory filled with a walloping 31 GB of operating system (why did I not think of that?), limit your trips to town - money is tight, after all, and CERB might keep you fed, but that's it, not food and gas and everything else, there's the trimming and reining in of vices, the small pleasure of being able to cook your own meals, of a warm bed and a spectacularly atmospheric view.
A week and there's a lot to do - I mean a lot, creative-crazy-lot, and so much of what I have been meaning to get done has been forgotten but there's time to recall now, time to get started, I've been on the down low for the past week, overdrawn, unwilling to give up the warm place for even a brisk walk and the lack of exercise is taking it's toll, restless nights, how to cure this? More exercise, although the boots slip on the ice, the ground is too frozen to dig, the scenery - winter, without the snow, I need work, society, of some sort, merely trying to find something that I don't completely despise, people that I might enjoy, find a healthy balance and rhythm to it all.
Anyways, so that's where I am.