Steve,
Your day sounded great to me. I collect herbs and have more than a passing interest in the medicinal use of plants, so even the Aeta man's description of plants would have made the trip worthwhile. I enjoy hearing about people who keep this knowledge alive, but am also a little disappointed at how often it turns out that the "keepers" of this knowledge are usually quite old and there don't seem to be young people who are willing to receive this knowledge. It's quite easy to understand why ethnobotanists feel such an urgency to collect and classify plants and to talk with elders who still know the properties and uses of these plants.
BTW, I think I'd pass on climbing up that tree to gather honey. I don't mind bees too much, but I usually leave them to their own devices. Reminds me of something that happened on my final canoe trip of the season though. I saw this massive paper wasp nest suspended on a branch out over the creek, so I decided to photograph it. I reasoned that it was a very cold day and that the wasps would be dormant, so there wouldn't be much to worry about. I got my camera ready and then glided up under the nest. As I was getting the camera focused, my dog began to move around in the canoe...something which she never does. I suddenly became aware of "wasp sounds" and to my horror, wasps were beginning to drop down out of the nest...BIG WASPS...!! I quickly clicked my camera (resulting in an imperfectly focused photo), and then we made a run for it with my collie, Maggie, snapping at angry wasps as we beat a hasty retreat.
The sound which your new paddle makes is undoubtedly the same one that I'm talking about. When you're in the canoe, the sound that a rock makes on the shell is somewhat akin the the sound of a monstrous egg breaking... very alarming! But then you pull your canoe out only to find a small nick in the gelcoat. Very tough material but its acoustics are peculiar.
Yes, I do a lot of cross-country skiing. Here on my own farm, I usually snowshoe around the place to set down a track and then ski over that. I use snowshoes to get into hiking trails that are too precarious or heavily wooded to access on skis. Those are the places where you are likely to see wildlife. There is a lot of birch, poplar and willow on this land so the deer, porcupine, etc... congregate there to nibble on branches once the snow gets deep.
Your mention of shovelling off ice and skating on lakes brought back a memory. A few years ago, we went up to visit friends who live in the Gatineaus (low mountain range) north of here. We went for a skate on a small spring-fed lake up between two mountains. The ice was as smooth as a sheet of glass as it had been a really cold winter without much snow. It was the most unsettling "skating rink" that I've ever been on. The ice was extremely translucent and the deep water was like some dark infinity below, but with narrow white pressure cracks running through it. At first, I could barely force myself to skate on the ice. It almost felt like you were skating on the night sky. However, my friends and their kids had been playing hockey on the ice for weeks and had tested the ice with an augur early in the season and assured me that it was actually a couple of feet or more thick. Once I overcame my initial discomfort of skating over "nothingness" it was just about the best skate I think I've ever had.
Today we're in the grip of that big snowstorm that is sweeping across much of the US and eastern Canada... so there'll be some excellent snowshoeing and skiing very soon....(-:
Croc |
