Nomadic Vacation 9/25-9/27 Carp Dreams

The vacation continued with renewed vigour on monday as I drove vaguely northwards towards Cape Cod in Massachusetts. My goal was to eventually see the humpback whales that are rumoured to be prowling those northern waters. With ethanol mixed fuel in the engine, my Honda civic meandered in fatigue ever northwards. I passed through New Jersey and into New York. As usual the course took on a very irregular pattern. Stops were made here and there. I watched some loggers busily at their work at the shire of Woodbridge. Observations were made on some farmers harvesting corn outside the Village of Gardiner. Finally, after hours of random driving, I drove over a bridge near the town of Wytheville. As I drove by, I saw these incredibly huge fish swimming underneath the bridge. Obviously, one cannot let such a good opportunity pass by. So I parked the car nearby, grabbed my rod and went fishing.

The giant fish turned out to be Eurasian carp, an aquatic nuisance species that is devouring entire marine ecosystems along the eastern U.S. There must have been dozens, scores of these huge carp swimming lazily under that bridge. Trouble was, I couldn't catch them! I tried every lure and bait line that I had to no avail. The huge critters simply won't bite.

Along the way I caught a whole lot of other fish, but no carp. That night, at a local Hostel, I researched Eurasian fishing methods in regards to capturing carp and also of the carp species itself. This Eurasian species apparently reproduces four times faster than native American fish of the same weight class, it is a carrier of waterborne diseases that wipes out other fish, and it eats everything, including grass and garbage. I learned of the hair rig created by the English, and of various chumming techniques mastered by the Chinese. Next morning, with these new tools in hand, I went back to that bridge. I chummed the waters with hundreds, nay, thousands of kernals of corn, and I used the English hair rig. But the fishing gods were unkind that day. I caught dozens of other fish, but the carp just won't bite. No wonder they are so bloody effective at wiping out other aquatic species here, Carp is simply far superior at surviving human predation. In anycase, I managed to acquire:














15 Black Crappies
5 Sunfish
3 White Perch
2 Pumpkinseeds
1 Small Mouth Bass
1 Yellow Perch
1 Catfish

Roughly 30lbs of fish were thus harvested. I wandered some more before heading back to home. My plans of seeing those whales will have to wait.

Nomadic Vacation Hiatus 9/22-9/24

I spent a good 3 days to rest and recover from the boar hunt. Back at home, the garden was in a fine shape. The tomato plants were hanging on strong due to absorbing the warmth generated from the compost pile. The turnip seeds had all sprouted into 3 emerald rows of turnip leaves. Turnips being a cold-resistent plant will continue to grow even during the harsh autumn and winter months here in the North East. The beauty of it all is that turnips serve 3 purposes. It grows fine white tubers which are edible, it's leaves are also edible, and it's non-edible roots fix nitrogen into the soil, thus making it more fertile for next year. Turnips are perfect crops to improve the conditions of the soil. Since next year, I plan to triple the total surface area being farmed, the turnip land will make a fine base to grow a heavy feeder such as squash or sweet potato. I added on another layer of fresh grass and leaves to my manure bins and topped it off with heavy helpings of water and half-rotted grass clippings. The bins are now up to the brim with rich black compost. This fine compost will be made richer one's the leaves start falling. Next spring there will be enough of the black gold to fertilize some 9 square meters of garden land!!!



I gathered some 10 tomatos on saturday. There are at least another 40 tomatos still on the vine. I plan to transplant the remaining green tomatos to an indoor location within the next two weeks, before the first frost sets in. It is critical that the green tomatos not be exposed to a frost since that would induce rotting rather than ripening. However, detaching green tomatos from the vine would immediately stop these tomatos from growing any bigger. Thus a careful balancing game must be played to maximize the number of big tomatos ripened.

On the fishing front, a quick trip to the lake on sunday netted 3 sunfish and 1 yellow perch.

Nomadic Vacation 9/20-9/21....The Boar Hunt

I woke up at 6am Wednesday and prepared myself. A wild boar's best sensor is his snout. Thus, I gave myself 2 separate showers with de-scenting soap to remove all traces of human scent from my body. I hadn't eaten anything in 12 hrs so as to minimize scent from breathing. My camo-suit had been resting in an air-tight bag from the rest of my clothing, that suit I now stuffed with leaves and pine needles from the surrounding forest. The suit's charcoal linings will capture the sent of the local vegetation and allow the wearer(myself) to blend in with the scents of the forest. At 7:30 am, my guide Lathern arrived at the lodge. We quickly gathered our tools and weapons and headed out into the forest. After about 20 minutes of hard trekking, we arrived at an open area where I proceeded to test out my weapons.

Lathern produced a pie-sized target that was covered by a hard bony plate, and he set that target some 25 yards away from us. He then told me that to safely hunt wild boar with the bow, my arrows must pierce that target completely. With that in mind, I drew my longbow to it's fullest extent and loosed three of my best arrows upon that target. At 25 yards, all 3 missiles flew straight and true. Unfortunately, none of them managed to penetrate the bone plate. I tried again at 20 yards, to no avail. Finally, at a range of 5 yards, my arrows did indeed pierce the target's armour, but it did not penetrate all the way through the target. Alas, my longbow was simply to too weak to fatally wound a boar. At best it would have inflicted a broken rib on the boar, but more likely, my sharp arrows would only produce mere cuts and bruises on those beasts. I should've brought my 80 lb warbow instead of the 55 lb light hunting bow. So after little debate, we decided to go with the rifle instead.

Off we went to the ambush site. The weather was glorious, and the mountains of Tennessee was indeed very beautiful. The ambush site was simply a camoflouged tent placed some 40 to 50 yards behind a clearing in the forest. We laid down about 50 pounds of corn at the clearing as bait for the Boars. With that deed done, we got into the tent and waited for boars to show up. And we waited and waited and waited. Morning turned to noon, and we waited. Noon turned to afternoon and yet we were still waiting.

Late afternoon was turning into evening, and in the gathering twilight, I was drifting in and out of conciousness. A greyish/blackish figure quietly emerged from the tall grass around the clearing, it made almost no sound. I would've missed it had it not been for that sudden contrast in color at the periphery of my field of vision, it jerked me into full alertness. I looked next to me, Lathern was fully alert and intently gazing at the clearing as well. That greyish figure was a boar for sure but almost as soon as we spotted it, the beast faded back into the tall grass. For the next 15 minutes, we didn't see a soul, by then I was beginning to doze off again. Suddenly, I heard very quiet foot steps coming towards our tent from behind. Very slowly, the steps came closer and closer until I was sure it couldn't have been more than a few feet behind us. There came this heavy breathing sound from behind, and a hideous warmth resulting from that breathing permeated the thin fabric of the tent right onto my back.


The tension at that point was thick enough to cut with a knife. Needless to say, my free hand was grasping my hunting blade so tightly that it was turning bone white. Lathern mouthed the words "don't breath, don't move" as his hand silently unsheathed his hunting knife. Every single nerve within my body seemed to be anticipating that boar charge into our tent. I wanted to scream out and run for it. But obviously, I held myself as steady as a stone, my hand never leaving the blade. After about a minute, we heard the foot steps softly move away from our tent. Less than a minute later, the boar re-emerged into the clearing from the tall grass. It was a huge beast, and far quieter than it's size would've ever suggested. Twice, nay, three times it looked at our tent and took a few steps backwards. But eventually, it headed towards the corn bait, lowered it's gigantic head and began feeding. At that point, my last shreds of self-control seemed to rest on that trigger finger. "Take him now?" I whispered to Lathern, "take him out!" was the reply. My bullet thundered out of it's barrel at supersonic speeds. In the blink of an eye, the projectile had bridged the distance to bite into that boar. It chewed through hide, bone, and flesh to reach the beating heart of the beast. Once there, it's poly-carbonate tip unlocked an expanding core of copper alloy which caused a miniature explosion in the boar's chest cavity. The boar's heart was shredded by that rotating disk of death into a ghastly puree of blood and muscle. The mighty beast grunted with sudden agony and charged off into the forest.

Almost at once, we were out of that tent in pursuit. Night was emerging and it should've been cold, but my body felt like it was on fire. I could hear every little sound, I could see colors as vivid as broad daylight in that spreading gloom. The 20lbs of gear in my hunting vest felt like nothing, as I ran like a madman through the trees in pursuit. The hunting rifle that usually weighed so heavily, it was a mere twig in my arm as I charged towards my dying prey. I was in rage, I was in ecstacy, I felt like a white-hot jet of molten steel, it was a feeling of ungovernable, uncontrollable, unintelligible anger and joy and dominance all at the same time!

100 yards into the deep forest, we found our prey. The boar died in an orgy of it's own blood. The blood was everywhere, it covered half the beast, it was splattered on trees and bushes, pools of the dark liquid were all over the ground. We tied the animal up a tree branch and took some photos. Afterwards, the boar was disembowled on the spot and it's organs heaped into a steaming pile on the ground. As Lathern torn out the beast's stomach, liver, and intestines in great handfuls, using my hand and the blade I clumsily ripped off the Boar's genitals. That I placed on the nearest tree as an offering to the Guardian Spirit of the Hunt. We dragged the corpse out of the woods onto Lathern's truck and eventually handed it over to the local Butcher at Robbins. Afterwards, Lathern told me that two years earlier, he had been on a similar hunt. Only in that hunt, the hunter had breathed. That boar picked up the scent, charged into the blind, mangled up the hunter's arm, and put a tusk through Lathern's leg. After hearing that story, I felt lucky to be alive. This was a very fair hunt indeed. I gave my boar the chance to strike me down, his mistake resulted in his death.

In anycase, the next day was quite anti-climatic. I spent thursday morning stalking deer with the longbow, to no success. At mid-day Lathern arrived with 70 lbs of de-boned pork straight from the village butcher. I took the pork, thanked the guide, and drove 12 hours back to PA.

Nomadic Vacation 9/19 Middle of Nowhere

I left Grundy early in the morning and drove onwards. The roads became quite treacherous with many twists and turns. To make matters worse, the roads ran along mountain-sides or across steep ravines. These geographical obstacles served to impede my progress. There seemed to be deer everywhere, I saw them along hillsides, mountaintops, and valley bottoms. Every so often a small settlement or homestead was seen. They all seem isolated, self-contained, and rather cut off from the wider world. In a sense, these homesteads are closed-systems where most foodstuffs are collected and consumed locally. Every little homestead seems to have at least some land being farmed and some domesticated animals. Every settlement seemed to possess either windmills, water-wheels, or solar panels. One cannot help but envy these smallholders, their societies have far greater sustainability than the Mega-cities and suburbs that we live in.

By early afternoon, I had crossed from West Virginia into the Tennesse border. Quickly speeding past Knoxville, I caught sight of several M1-Abrahm Tanks along with an unmanned Robotic Predator Drone. It appears that through a quirk of planning a pre-industrial era society is existing alongside an information age military. In anycase, I drove onwards. Past Knoxville, the Smokey mountains region was at last reached. After driving ever deeper into those mountains, I arrived at the small village of Robbins. 10 Miles west of that village, I came upon my hunting lodge, located at the absolute center of nowhere.

After getting in touch with my hunting guide Lathern, I settled down in that little lodge. Lathern mentioned that early tomorrow we should try out my boar hunting weapons: the rifle and long bow before proceeding to hunt. For apparently, the wild boar has some major differences in physiology when compared to the domesticated pig. Some 6,000 years ago, the wild and domesticated hog would've been identical. But humanity stepped in and modified the basic structure of the pig. The tusks and fangs for hunting were the first features to cull. It's thick, furry hide was then selectively breed out in favor of a hairless varient for ease of butchering. It's brain was then bred to be smaller and smaller to the point where the domestic pig's average brain size is 2/3 that of the wild varient. Wild boars have 2 thick bone/hard cartilage plates extending from the base of it's spinal column down to it's rib cage, these bone plates protect the boar from his prey and from other boars. Humans bred out the feature entirely so that domestic hogs have only small vestigial plates of soft(edible) cartilage.

Knowing that wild boars will have the advantage of tusks and fangs, thick hide and bone armor, I at once began preparing my weapons. The hunting knife, the weapon of last resort, was sharpened until it took on a wicked edge. I made sure that my rifle was clean and well oiled. My home-made ammunition was examined and re-examined for defects. Each and every bullet was precision loaded to be able to consistently hit a quarter at 100 yards. My hand-crafted ash arrows were all spined to within a pound of the bow that it'll be shot from. These spined shafts were then braced with Turkey feathers for flight stabilization, after which, a coating of tallow was applied to prevent wood-warping.

Each arrow was tipped with a triple-bladed carbon steel broadhead. These broadheads, I sharpened on a soapstone until each carbon-steel edge could slice through a piece of paper. Then the edges were coated with a thin layer of vegetable oil to aid in the smooth penetration of flesh and bone.

A precisely spined arrow will consistently hit a pie plate at 40 yards. A sharpened heavy broadhead will slice entirely through the upper torso of large animals like deer or goat out to 30 yards. With my weapons in a state of extreme readiness, I felt at last ready for the hunt tomorrow.

Nomadic Vacation 9/18.....Mountain settlement

A bright and beautiful day it was on monday. I sped away from home towards the remote smoky mountains of Tennessee. Being a journey of some 800 miles, I brought along a huge supply of trail-mix along with the last few pounds of acorn meal. The journey was off to a brisk start. I quickly sped through Delaware and Maryland to reach coastal Virginia. While driving through this span of fertile Virginian territory, I made frequent stops at sites of historical significance.

At the small town of Shenandoah, I visited the famous battlefield where an outnumbered army of confederate soldiers charged up a hill lined with Union artillery and repeating rifles and won the day. The small villages of Roanoke and Greenville which boasts as the respective birthplaces of General Stonewall Jackson and American Explorer Davy Crockett were also visited. Last but not least, the railroad station at Manassas Junction could not have been left unseen. At Manassas, the rebels under the command of Stonewall Jackson, held back 2 separate invasions by the armies of the Union. While one can argue that the intentions of the confederacy may have been tainted with the tarnish of slavery, noone can doubt the courage and warcraft of it's fighting men. In anycase, the bravery of the South was no match for the industrial might of the north. The crushing of agricultural societies by industrial ones is an event all too common in the recent history of mankind, regardless of cause or intent.

On I drove towards my destination, from the coastal plains of Virginia into the mighty Appalachain mountains. I quickly crossed from Virginia into the state of West Virginia. It appeared to be a very underpopulated region with miles upon endless miles of mountains and forests. Small isolated communities were seen every 10 miles or so. The views of this state were simply breathtaking. Perhaps before the industrial revolution, much of the planet would've been as beautiful as this. In anycase, several hundreds of miles were traversed in West Virginia. The mountains and valleys grew ever narrower and more claustrophobic. At last all I could see was the road and perhaps 20 to 30 yards on either side of the road, after that, nothing but tall overhanging peaks. At last, I reached Grundy, a town of around 1000 souls. Grundy used to be a coal-mining camp that had the good fortune of having a road built through it. Now that the era of industrialization had passed, a small town somehow spawned itself upon the tiny sliver of ground that exists alongside of the highway. At no point along the entire span of the town, did the total width of flat ground ever exceed 150 yards. And even that mere sliver of flat land was only built through the accumulated rubble of countless strip-mining operations, it was indeed a sad sight. Backed by mountains on both sides, there's a strong sense of gloom and claustrophobia surrounding the place, I was more than a little uncomfortable there. At Grundy, I visited a good friend of mine, and gave her a special delivery of Oriental Moon Cakes for the upcoming Spring and Autumn Festival.

At one point in my life, Allison was perhaps the dearest person in the entire world to me. But time, distance, and perhaps fate had conspired to make that bond all but dissapear. Allison was hospitable enough to offer me boarding at her own home, and we spent many hours that night in dialogue of days gone by. I realized that much distance had grown between us, distance not of mere space and time, and that saddens me more than a little. That night, I was plagued by strange and melancholy thoughts. If things had been just slightly different, Allison wouldn't be stuck here in this claustrophobic mountain town, I wouldn't have allowed that to happen. But if things had turned out differently, then I would never have discovered my one and only, chances are that I wouldn't even be on this side of the continent. But one cannot spend one's nights dwelling on what might have been, not when the undiscovered country of the future still holds such a promise of happiness.

Nomadic Vacation Hiatus 9/17

Today has been one of rest and recuperation. Nomadism is a hard way of life regardless of the technology. Tomorrow, I shall take off for the smokey mountains of Tennesee on a quest to slay a full grown boar of pure Eurasian stock. But first, several significant short-comings were recognized during the two day "dry-run."

• The collapsable hunting tent is a vital component of any hunter. It serves as 360 degree cloak to deceive large game into coming within the kill-zone of one's bow or rifle. It performs admirably as a temporary shelter and sleeping rig. On stalk hunts, the tent serves as an adequate "home base" of sorts where weapons, supplies and communication equipment can be cached. During the dry-run, my tent proved roomy enough, but the tent stakes were too short and feeble. Additionally, the seating cushion that I had proved to be very bulky during transit. This could be due to the warm weather though. The tent stakes I replaced with thick wooden dowels. The seating pad was replaced by a fabric stool.

• The longbow proved to be a clumsy weapon when traversing forrested terrain. The trees and branches complicates the process of maneuvering and fully drawing the bow for that smooth shot. Additionally, the backquiver during the stalk causes significant noise which may alert the more cautious animals to my prescence. With that in mind, I replaced the 70-inch longbow for a shorter 60-in varient that I crafted last year. This bow is weaker but the decrease in arrow speed should be more than compensated by the bow's stealthier and more flexible profile. The quiver, I padded with some cotton to reduce it's noise signature. In anycase, the shorter bow should still suffice to deliver that killing blow out to 25 yards.

• While on the move, the experienced hunter must seek to absolutely minimize his visual, infrared, audio, and olfactory profile. My hunting camoflouge jacket, trousers, and backpack proved to be rather inadequate for the task at hand. While the camo clothing provided enough visual concealment, it was not very good at releasing heat. After 20 minutes of walking in the forest, one is left sweating profusely. That predatory scent of sweat would flag me as a threat for miles around. The sound of my bow quiver(rifle for that matter) bumping against the backpack while I'm moving is unforgivably loud. The problem cannot be easily solved via a low-tech solution, so I decided to go all the way. To solve this issue, I finally coughed up some hard currency and purchased a modern hunting vest. The vest has built in modular compartments that tightly seals necessary items such has food, water, tools, navigational/communications equipment. So in effect, a person is wearing his supplies, and this creates comparatively minimal sound. Each major compartment can be detached from the vest during transit to reduce weight if the need arises. The vest is camoflouged in the visual light spectrum and it absorbs body oders to lower the olfactory profile. An additional innovation, the vest has a perforated backside which allows some of a hunter's body heat to be dissapated into the air behind him, thus significantly lowering his frontal Infrared signature.
  

Nomadic Vacation 9/16

I began the day by driving some more in a northerly direction. The terrain was distinctly more mountainous and less populated. There were mile long stretches without any signs of human habitation. But then again, mountains are inherently difficult to inhabit on a permanent basis. The rains of the night before had dissapated and everything had the appearance of profound beauty. There was no hurry in my driving since I wasn't going anywhere in particular. My car passed by some state game lands. I got out and turned hunter/gatherer with the longbow. After a few hours of wandering in the woods, I chanced upon some wild slowberries which I collected, washed with some spring water and gobbled down.

A short while after that, I spotted a woodchuck just sitting there staring at the sky. I let loose one of my arrows from 35 yards away....and MISSED!!! My horribly inaccurate arrow flew into a bush a several feet away and the woodchuck fled in the opposite direction. I went back to the car and drove on.


Several hours more of driving took me to a bend in the road that presented a magnificent, panoramic view of the valley below. There was a post by the road, and it mentioned that this road used to be part of an old Native American trail network. About 400 years ago, a tribe called the Huron inhabited the land that I drove upon. The Huron fought the English and French colonists who tried to subjugate them, they also fought other Indian tribes. That trail over the mountain side was part of a strategic defense over that piece of their territory. Needless to say, the stone-age Huron had no real chance against the European colonists. The French introduced diseases such as smallpox which wiped out large swathes of their population and the English gave their greatest tribal rival, the Iroquis, muskets and cannons. The Huron had nothing more than primitive bows and wooden hatchets. Huron flint and obsidian couldn't defeat European steel, and arrows were no match against gunpowder. And thus the Huron were massacred by their Iroquis enemies. All that remains of their legacy is this little road and a few dusty books in forgotten libaries.


I began heading back home around mid-day. After several hours of driving, I came upon the small town of Hamburg. Right outside the town, there was a huge Hunting Outfitter store called Cabela's. It was massive, truely gargantuan, the size of a large mall. I suppose this one store must be responsible for the bulk of the Town's employment opportunities. I went into this shrine of the Outdoors and browsed their archery section. The dismal performance of my home-made bow and arrows is an embarrassment that needs to be rectified. A very friendly old gentleman by the name Elliot was of great help in that Store. We spent an hour chatting about the primitive bows of North America and that of traditional wooden arrow construction. Elliot was formerly a machinist at an industrial plant near Reading. After the Industrial Revolution passed the region by, the only employment he could find was to become an arrowsmith at Cabela's. Making a long story short, I ended up buying half a dozen razor sharp carbon steel arrowheads that perfectly matched with my quiver of wooden arrows.

The rest of my journey was fairly uneventful. I reached home late saturday night along Route 61 South.

Nomadic Vacation 9/15

My car meandered northwest-ward without any particular drive or purpose. There was no need to rush or follow directions. There were no pressure to take this road versus that. I simply went where fate took me. And there was a lot to see on the way. Our state used to be at the heart of the North American Industrial revolution. Only 2 generations ago, the land over which I travelled produced a quarter of all the steel consumed by humanity!

But seasons wax and wane, and few glories of that era remained. I passed many abandoned factories and mills. Derelict looking factory and rail-road towns blurred into one another due to their frequency. The all-pervasive ambiance of nature towered over the works of men now deceased. High above the abandoned buildings and grimy towns were emerald mountains and hills cloaked with mist. Such a duality of beauty and ugliness was a sight to behold. At some point, I passed through the city of Reading, and lost track of where I was going. The terrain became kind of mountainous with a smattering of isolated farms and villages. The strange thing was that I didn't care the least bit about being lost.


After several more hours of aimless driving, I happened to chance upon a small village called Friedensburg. There alongside of a rather empty and non-descript road, under a drizzling sky, was a kiosk manned by a young woman. The stand read "fresh Organic Produce", so I decided to stop and buy a few ears of corn. The price of the corn was dubiously cheap, and I suspected fraud. So I asked the girl, Andrea was her name, as to the source of her produce. Apparently, Andrea didn't quite know the difference between organically produced versus mass-produced corn, since she was just selling some corn for her uncle. For some odd reason that conversation went on for much longer than I thought. Maybe it was the fact that we were the only two people along an empty road in the middle of nowhere with nothing better to do. Maybe it was just the corn.

The girl was rather lithe and very easy on the eyes. She looked to be in her early twenties, a brunette with big brown eyes, though I obviously didn't ask her age. Apparently Andrea never went to college and her family were mostly farmers or retired steel workers. Apparently, selling corn in the middle of nowhere is one of Andrea's 3 jobs. For some reason, I had the nerve to ask her what her future plans where. And her reply was to be a DJ in NYC. What an odd and out of place dream for someone who is probably my age, I thought then and there. But this Oriental have enough common sense to remain silent and let the girl continue her story. Andrea was obviously in love with a man from this place called Pottsville. He was studying at some sort of a trade school to fix cars in that "city." The standard story was then told. As soon as he was done with his learning, he was going to marry this girl and they'll live happily ever after. At least that's what she blurted out to me. I was foolish enough to ask when the ceremony was planned. The girl seemed uncertain, even fearful and replied that she didn't know. I don't know what was promised to her, but she sure seemed hopeful. I bought my corn, thanked her for the company, and left.


That night, after hours more of wandering, I rented a motel room at another tiny, non-descript village called Shoemakersville. Late at night, lying in bed, thoughts raced through my mind. Is this what love is like? Or is it just a desparately lonely country girl trying to tell her story to someone, anyone, who would take a moment to listen? In a person's life, there must be that special someone, that immortal figure, the one and only. Andrea believes that her one and only will marry her one golden day, such a simple and sweet ending. I wonder if my feelings for that special someone would ever be requited, but by the gods, how much I do want to believe it as much as that simple farm girl...

Nomadic Vacation Initial Planning

Some prefer the excitement of pre-planned, pre-packaged adventures in "exotic", far-away lands, while others content themselves within an environment of profound luxery and opulence. Neither options would suffice to quench that hunger of the spirit, that thirst of the soul. I'm referring to the wander-lust which inflicts the hearts of the young. The desire to explore the undiscovered country so hard to reach( or so easily overlooked ) by others burns strongly within me. And for two and a half weeks out of the year, one can actually follow that desire.

I wanted to go off the beaten path, to take the roads less travelled. There are hundreds of small villages and towns tucked-away in the mountains and backroads of this nation. Within these little communities are lives and adventures worth exploring. I have 16 days on my hands, so an initial short-ranged roam around my home state of Pennsylvania was in order. This journey will flush out any inadequacies in planning and/or equipment related to long range wandering. I intended this trip to be an abridged version of the ten day long road trip across the Eastern U.S that will begin first thing monday.

Thus, with such plans in mind, I gathered a plethora of supplies for the journey. The material possessions that I took were simple, like that of most nomads. For defense and hunting, I brought along the rifle/longbow/knife triage. A collapsable hunting-blind came in handy for a makeshift shelter of sorts. For communications, I brought along my trusty consulting laptop and PDA phone. A miniature kerosene heater for cooking was carried along. For sustenance, I took the remaining 3lbs of acorn meal, some chocolate, and a few gallons of spring water.

With those supplies in the trunk of the Honda Civic, I was off.

Weather Warrior II

Now that summer has passed the weather has turned ugly yet once again. The cold resistent kale and turnips that I planted last week have already sprouted out of the good earth. The problem seems to be that after a recent thunderstorm, these tender turnip and kale plants are being attacked by viscious hordes of slugs. I've yet to devise biological means of defense against these creatures, so for the time being, slug-slaying has become a weekend chore for me.

The two tomato trees are unfortunately being affected by the cold and damp weather. Here in the north east, september night- time temperatures can dip below 60 degrees, and all it takes is one light frost to kill my tomatos.

There are some 50 tomatos growing on the vine and it would be a shame to lose them to bad weather. After consulting the handy Cold Climate gardening manual, a few strategies were devised to counter this threat. Firstly I put up a lean-to structure of bamboo lashed with hemp ropes over the two tomato plants. A rough hemp fabric is draped over the structure during stormy and/or windy days to protect the fruits.


On clear days, the hemp blankets are piled on top of the compost bins. Effectively, the hemp blankets holds in the heat generated by the rotting compost and releases that heat slowly over the night. Since the bins are located immediately behind the tomato plants, the air around these plants are raised by several degrees during the night. I'm hoping that these measures will prolong the time of the tomato plants by several weeks, just enough for all of the green tomatos to ripen on the vine.