I went camping yesterday. It was a last minute thing.
I was gifted a spot someone reserved but couldn't use, due to other obligations.
Sure, I thought. The neighbors were gone. I needed to get away. The campground isn't far from where I live.
But was I last minute prepared to throw stuff in my personal car and go? No.
I hadn't rigged the back for sleeping. No board.
Without a board in there, the flat solid space is about four feet long. That is not long enough for me to sleep in. I didn't think about this, figured I could jam something in there, between the end of the laid down seats and the passenger seat, to create another 18 inches of solid space. Wrong. I had nothing along to fit the bill.
So I suffered through last night without much sleep and convinced this would set back my back rehab by months.
I'd taken a walk along the S. Santiam river and was not happy to learn how weak my right leg/knee are. But I toughed out half a mile. I took off my socks and sandals and waded out to a rock near the shore. I like to look at the water bugs and larvae down in the water.
In the 2nd video, I'm trying to follow a Mayfly's progress up one of those thin branches but you can't see it unless you look closely.
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| This is the molt of a Mayfly |
Then I set up my lawn chair and my little stove, made tea, laid out and read my book. It's a good book. I started it awhile back, then tucked it under the front seat of the car and forgot it was there. I was delighted to find it yesterday.
It's a recreated account of the Karluk arctic expedition ship disaster of 1913. The account tells the story from the personal journals of seamen and scientists along. Endurance has always been a favorite story of extreme survival/captain dedication of mine. That was antarctica. This is the arctic.
I took a break from reading to heat up some canned soup. It was quite delicious I thought. I'm not a fan of canned soup. But with gas prices the way they are, I have turned to pantry (from the food box I get), canned items. I had some toasted tortillas (store bought) and had a couple of those as dippers.
I'd thrown in some wood. It was all arborvita from when the neighbors had one cut down. I'd asked for it, knowing how well it burns when dried. I started a campfire but it burned very fast, and I had no wood that might last longer. I burned through the bigger logs I'd brought within two hours.
A couple came by and spoke to me, then came over. She loaned me her car phone charger. I'd forgotten to move mine to the personal car from the cat carrier car. They told me to come for breakfast this morning.
I couldn't forget the book, and began to read it in my car, after the campfire died down and it was dark. First the rechargable headlamp went dead. I tried the lantern I'd brought. It's batteries were dead. Fortunately I had two other flashlights along. I burned through the batteries on both reading and finished the book. Yeah, I couldn't put it down.
I couldn't believe the hardships the crew went through, after the Karluk became locked in the ice, drifting, lost. Finally, the ship was crushed in the ice. They'd moved most of their supplies to the ice before the Karluk went under. They had also created ice houses to live in, once the inevitible happened. They called it Shipwreck Camp. Their expedition commander had deserted them, once the ship became ice locked and made his way to Barrow, then on, leaving the captan and crew, along with the scientists, on their own.
The ship captain, last name Bartlett, was heroic in attempts to save them from their dire predicament. There were two eskimo men, one with his wife and two daughters along. These were the hunters and Auntie, the wife, the sewer, since the expedition commander had not equiped the rather derelict ship properly to begin with, not even with winter skin clothing, to ward off the cold and wet.
So now these things had to be sewn up or they would not survive. The ice kept carrying them to the southwest. They were existing on pemmican and biscuits in tins and whatever they could hunt. They finally spotted Wrangel Island, 100 miles or so off the coast of Siberia and determined to send a scouting crew with supplies to the island to leave supplies there and slowly they all would move to the island. Land at last. But their first attempts were perilous and resulted in the presumed deaths of four seamen. Three of the useless complaining scientists struck out on their own, taking one crew member with them, and they too succombed to the cold, starvation and ice. The ice was brutal, with massive pressure ridges, cracks and open leads developing suddenly.
Finally Bartlett led them all on a desperate attempt to reach the island. They had to chip out and build roads for the sleds and dogs through the gigantic pressure ridges until they finally were on land ice and then land. There they set up two or three camps with some crew and scientists in each and Bartlett took one eskimo and headed across the ice for Siberia, then south. He and his eskimo companion travelled by sled and foot hundreds of miles over ice to get help.
The crewmen left on Wrangel Island were unruly and starving, injured and sick, fighting amongst themselves. There were only some with character enough a person reading could root for to live, among them the young brave Mamon, who finally died, of beriberi and bad pemmican. The rest were lazy or vile or trouble makers, complainers, all except the scientist Mckinley, who along with an older man, Hadley, and the eskimo family, held things together.
Eventually in September of 1914 the Wrangel Island survivors were rescued.
Anyhow.....after I quit reading, by then the rain was pounding on the metal roof of the car. I couldn't believe it, when we were to have such nice weather. It was just thunderstorms. Today is clouded over.
I had breakfast with the couple who had invited me---two eggs. Somehow the hashbrowns and bacon had been forgotten, which put them at each other in a friendly way, on who forgot. I got home around 10:00 this morning and will be napping the afternoon away.
I wish I had another good book but then I might not get that needed nap.
The Ice Master, is the book I read, in case anyone interested.













