Day 2... June 21, 2009

Ah... forgot... yesterday, sometime in the afternoon, I also explored the neighborhood a bit - my closest neighbors are Shirley and Gene, as seen on their signpost. They are here right now, but I haven't gone to visit them yet. across the other side of the cul-de-sac is another house, not sure if anyone was home. I then continued up a fairly steep 4WD road - just barely wide enough for a truck, better suited for a 4x4. It went up for less than 10 minutes walking and dead ended in another pretty little home. It looked fairly recently occupied but the road had vegetation all over it, so not much traffic, and no recent treads.

OK.. back to the 21st. Slept in - LOVE! sleeping in. Got up, had my cold coffee, and went to try out my water collection pier - it worked! Not super deep, but the water came out clear enough and my feet stayed dry - need to get the water tested.

Spent the late morning working on the trail some more. Cleared it out quiet nicely from the clearing, but re-routed the part near the road and decided not to completely clear that part because (a) I really needed garden shears to do it and (b) I'm not 100% certain of it's final layout. I'm trying to make it as straight as possible to facilitate getting the logs in.

In the afternoon, I set to measuring stuff. Unfortunately I'd forgotten to bring the survey of the land, with it's borders and measurements, but I found the cairn we made last year for the border on golden Pond circle, and used that. I made a sketch of the golden Pond edge, to the stop sign,
and measured out to the clearing, mas o menos, and the trail.
Next visit, I'll have to figure out how to measure the border with the neighbors...

Around 5pm, I went for a short walk exploring the development across the street - down Thoreau Drive and then along the 4x4 road a bit - reached a good sized lake and saw two people in a canoe, but at that point got turned around by the mosquitoes. They really are bad right now. Not sure if my mosquito "zen" is lowered and/or the bugs are just super bad, but I hope it's a bit of both. I really can't sit outside for more than a few minutes without getting swarmed. Usually working is ok - measuring, clearing trail, etc. Although I think clearing vegetation brings them up because afterwards, I see a black swarm hovering over the area. I'm wearing full rain pants and rain jacket, sometimes with the hood up, but no mosquito net (forgot it, and hate wearing it) and no chemicals. The rain gear is hot, so I'm wearing little shorts and a muscle tee under it and the outfit works pretty well.

Yellow Pond Lily (Nuphar lutea)

Later that evening, I was longing to read with a bit of music, and lamenting my lack of music here right now. Played my harmonica a bit but playing isn't always the same as listening. Then, I heard DRUMS! A neighbor, somewhere, was playing drums - not a drum set, but some type you'd find in a drum circle. Being near the solstice, and being lonely, I decided to investigate. And I found them - Dennis and Becky - an older couple of "retired hippies" living on Twin Flower Circle. It's their summer place - they live more remotely in the winter, by snow machine. Super friendly, I hung out with them until 11pm, talking about music (need to look up Rocco John), Talkeetna, development, environment (Becky knew about the Rio Baker Project!), bears, etc. They live in a little cabin with mosquito netting and are currently building a larger timber frame house.