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Grizzly Man - Werner Herzog
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
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After a hard days walking I decide to treat myself to a couple of slightly better movies. Too much Netflix, not enough intelligence.
The first pick, "Grizzly Man" by Werner Herzog. I love Herzog, but - there's a reason I hadn't seen this one. If you aren't familiar I'll let you do your own research, but the subject of the documentary - "Timothy Treadwell", is too much like a hundred other whack-a-doodles I've met. I want to feel sorry for him - or sympathize with him in some way - but I just can't, and there seems to be too much going on in his head for the documentary to appear to be other than an exploitation of mental illness.
Not a bad movie, merely not at all to my taste.
18 KM
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2070
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...
Jam Tart
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
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And, today another trip planned with Chris, a 10 KM hike to some new ground I'd mapped, only Chris, he isn't big into the hiking in, looking for shit, I've spoiled him with the good findings, and at the last minute he bails. Jam-Tart. Anyways, tomorrow I'll hit it on my own, and won't he be envious of my finds....
In any event it's a good thing, "New Ground" is only a phrase for the places I haven't visited in person but nonetheless spent a great deal of time finding via maps and old geological surveys. So - rather than have him profit off my expertise, it's better for me to find it first and decide if I'm willing to share...
Spring 2021
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Images
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The last couple of days a record 10 degrees above zero. The snow is gone, time to get out there.
A sunny morning, a spiderling drops from the eavestrough, blue-bottle fly on the glass of the deck. Chris and I head out to a few spots.
Nothing new, places we've been before, some still too deep in snow. But, digging up by a mine where we'd found some good quartz and silver ore he finds some amber. Not amber, precisely, but glassy resin in the dirt. Looking around I spot the bark it's dripped from, tear it down, when:
It begins an awful hissing and takes me a moment to figure out what it is. I would have thought - given the abundance of mines, that hibernation would take place a little deeper in the mountain, but maybe (hopefully!!!) this guy was an early riser.
Anyways, tuck him back near a hollow on the tree - hopefully he can resume his hibernation, not enough bugs out yet. And a reminder to be a little more careful traipsing about the woods, wouldn't want to prematurely wake up anything else.
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