Yak

After posting about my interest in attempting the old school pack cloth technique I got to work using some of the material I have on hand. First off here is a writeup of the components...

Canvas tarp bedroll cover
A while back when the Canadian dollar was nearly at par with the US, I purchased a homemade canvas bedroll off of Ebay. My intention was to use some wool blankets and have some nice bushcrafty like sleep with an open fire. The maker simply took a 12oz,  7'x9' firetreated, marine tarp and stitched up the bottom. He added a large military zipper up the side. Seems like he might've been desperate to sell, because I  won the bid for just $40 with a very reasonable shipping fee. Just the tarp alone costs around $70 around these parts.



Inflatable Sleeping Pad
Last summer I had planned to do some basic car camping with my elder son. Since I usually go solo and use a hammock system, some new gear was necessary. After researching new tents and some inflatable sleeping pads, I decided on this heavier (but comfortable) MEC Super Reactor double pad to ensure we both had some good sleep. Luckily before pulling the trigger on a new one, I found an ad for the same pad being sold off by another father. It had been used once when a bear encounter at a provincial park scared the crap out his daughter. That bear saved us $85 and an expensive parking trip downtown to the always crowded MEC store.

The double pad has a slight seam down the middle where it is folded to fit into its stuff sack. Turns out, the pad can be folded in half when inflated to serve as an ultra luxurious mattress. It fits perfectly into the canvas bedroll cover in this manner







Sleeping Bag
My sleeping bag is an older generation, MEC Gosling bag insulated with down and rated to +5C. I've used it hammock camping in a Hennessy Hammock and have always been quite happy with it. In addition, I've also used a fleece liner bag to increase the warmth when the temperature drops. While not in the picture below, the fleece liner can be seen in the indoor bedroll photo at the beginning of the post.



Pillow
Instead of dropping more funds on commercial camp pillows, I use an old laptop computer sleeve that has fuzzy fleece on the inside. Turn it inside out, stuff it with spare clothes and it works just fine

The tarp was folded over at the head and foot of the bedroll and then the tumpline was layed down like described in the readings, with the "tails" running down the side of the canvas bedroll and extending out past the bottom of the tarp



At this point the sides of the poly tarp are folded over to the centre of the bedroll. Given the slippery nature of the synthetic poly tarp the whole thing started opening up in the middle. I suspect when I repeat this with a larger canvas tarp shelter (another work in progress), there will be more overlap and protection.




Now the head and foot of the bundle were folded over to the centre point like so...


With the sides tightened, the tails were brought over to the centre of the bundle and crossed.

The bundle was rolled slightly and the tails tied off.

Here's what the completed bundle looked like.


While using the pole the bundle got wet from the splashing and such but the tightly wrapped poly tarp did its job in protecting everything inside. I think for a quick poling overnighter trip, this system might be a fun method although I'm not confident it would be completely dry in a prolonged submersion.

Here's  a view poling in some shoreline shallows amongst the lilypads.

I set out from the North Cove in Essex, waded the gap into the big river because it was just past low tide and the water was not more than 2 inches deep at that point, and headed up and across.  I soon noticed that I was being sped along in a great eddy - not one of those dramatic swirls of whitewater, but one that was fast and smooth, something you would not notice from shore, something of the big river.  In fact, I did not see it until I was in it.  It lasted two or three hundred yards.

I'm no expert on spirit things.  My experience is thin...  I've had a spirit animal dream, which came after many consecutive days of canoeing.  Meaningful as it was, it was still a dream.  Weirder, much weirder, was my run in with a forest tree spirit.  And, this makes me sound insane.  It was unexpected and came after many frequent off trail hikes in a rugged cedar forest.  I saw nothing, I heard nothing, but I was distinctly told to leave the area - that I did not belong where I was standing.  I left.  I imagine that it will never happen again during my lifetime.

I don't think that anyone has ever seen any of the land spirits.  I don't believe anyone ever saw a sasquatch, or a dzunukwa, or a Norwegian huldre.  I do believe that people sensed them, or sensed something.  These are spirits of big wild places where people disappear, where people are much much smaller than the world they live in. (City people don't have spirits, they have characters.)

Common mergansers are flocking and red wing blackbirds have returned to the marshes.  I am finding a good number of bird nests from last summer - the taller brush is down and the random woven structures easy to spot in the taller shrubs.

So, how much space does a spirit require?  What is space?  This is not really a conversation of yards and feet.  It's a spiritual world and "space" goes well beyond our measurable quantities. 

I believe that the land will only speak to one who is open and completely prepared to hear.  Space is probably different for different people, but I would guess that anything that takes one's attention away from where they are is an intrusion into the space...road noise, airplanes, cell phone, gps device, hiking partner, plant guidebook, camera, work stress, etc.  The closer you are to being one with the land, the closer you are to.... something you don't understand.

Unable to reconcile the nature of Union Bay and the industry of Lake Union, which for your information are separated by one mile of water, I split today's journal into two parts.

I put in on the big lake and decide to make this 1850 day. Settlers arrived here, permanently, during that decade. It is in the mid 30's with not one cloud anywhere and with a light cold wind out of the north. There is a small chop on the lake so that the surface is a dark blue green with black static running through it. Mt. Baker is clearly visible, snow and glaciers all white, on the north horizon, eighty miles away. There are buffleheads and canada geese along the shore, a cormorant or two, and four common mergansers. The common mergansers, a very large and pretty duck, have just arrived recently in the lake (this year). The 1850 skyline is about 100 feet higher, Douglas Firs, Western Red Cedars, maples, and alders replacing the rooftops. The lake is 10 feet deeper and it drains by a river 10 miles south, a river that no longer exists. It is steep where I put in, so that shoreline hasn't changed much, but in many places, where there are now houses, there is instead a quarter mile of shallow water and marsh. The Duwamish live all up and down this and other nearby lakes and along the rivers. Smoke, on a cold day like this, would be the most obvious marker of their village locations. At the opening to Union Bay, a potlatch house stands on the south shore while the point forming the north side is a tangle of forest. Exposed to winds during storms, there would be some massive trees lying on the ground there making land passage difficult. This bay is considered a rather well-to-do village site. In the NE corner of the bay is a longhouse, 2 more are a mile north from the current north shore, that mile being open water and marsh. Another stands near the smokestack that marks the University steam plant. The south shore is a good 1/4 mile south of its current location, and the largest island, the burial island, is the only island in the bay and it is much smaller than it is today. The Duwamish place their dead in boxes and place the boxes in trees on this island. Since then, it has been misused by the settlers and their descendents. This would be fine weather for hunting waterfowl, which would be present in much larger numbers than it is today.
I stop and talk with two bird watching friends on the north shore. The eagles are not out right now, but there are two red-tailed hawks. I am informed that one of them has learned to hunt coots and ducks like the eagles do. One catches a mouse while we watch. The eagles show up as we stand, but they do not go to hunting directly. As I paddle down the west islands, both eagles land on a drift log 30 yards away. They have a dead seagull there. One picks at it, but I get the idea that they would prefer coot and the gull is considered leftovers. I continue on through the cut, which can't be done in 1850, because the cut won't exist until 1916. Instead, there is a well used and ancient portage of maybe 200 yards that takes one into Portage Bay. I continue on into Lake Union, a far too nice day to be inside.



It seems even the streets of Florence are paved with art.



Not the sort of sign we expected to find in a Florentine restaurant bathroom

Tito’s staff appear to have a ball at work and don’t seem to mind the slightly out there uniforms.

The view  to the Tuscan hills from our budget room at Hotel Benvenuti

Officially it’s the Church of Santa Maria del Fiore or the Cathedral of Florence. It is also the ‘Duomo’ a word that comes from the Latin domus meaning house. To the Florentines, the Duomo is the house of God and his people.

The Duomo takes up an entire, large city block and every inch  of its exterior is white and dark green marble.

There’s  intricate decoration at every turn as demonstrated by all the sculptures in the tower.

The interior is reasonably plain.

Other than the dome of course

The Baptistry doors are incredibly intricate and it takes quite a while to take all the detail in.

It was a little hard to believe this used to be a grain warehouse but the grain chutes still run through the columns.

Time for a gelato stop.

The Medici family used the Palazzo Vechio as their personal palace and virtually ruled Florence from within.

This sculpture of The Rape of the Sabine Woman stands around three metres high and all three figures were all carved from the single block of Carrara marble by Giambologna in the 1500s.

The Ponte Vechio was the only bridge over the river left standing as the Germans retreated in WW2. The commanding officer disobeyed orders rather than destroy such significant history.

In medieval times the bridge originally housed butcher shops which dropped their offal and leftovers into the river but now it is a major tourist mecca lined by gold merchants and jewellers.

Standing in front of Michelangelo’s statue of David is simply awe inspiring. With a hammer and chisel he breathed life into a cold block of marble.

The people in the foreground give an idea of the scale of this massive statue.