{"id":27,"date":"2008-09-29T21:55:00","date_gmt":"2008-09-30T01:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/?p=27"},"modified":"2011-01-09T10:44:50","modified_gmt":"2011-01-09T15:44:50","slug":"wandering-in-the-wilderness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/2008\/09\/29\/wandering-in-the-wilderness\/","title":{"rendered":"Wandering In The Wilderness"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\n<\/a>This weekend I went hiking. Until I got home last night I didn’t know\u00a0that WAMU had failed. I didn’t know that Paul Newman had died. I\u00a0hadn’t watched the debate. I didn’t even care. And guess what? The\u00a0world didn’t end.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I spent Friday afternoon walking through the woods in the rain. It was\u00a0beautiful. The world was green and red and gold dripping with bits of\u00a0silvery water. The rain stopped sometime during the night, and on\u00a0Saturday I walked through the still-dripping woods all day, calling on\u00a0some old friends; Branch Pond, Bourne Pond, and Stratton Pond. I\u00a0passed Bourne Pond mid-morning savoring memories of a weekend spent at\u00a0the no longer extant Bourne Pond Shelter one chilly October weekend\u00a0years ago when I drifted off to sleep to the sound of dozens and\u00a0dozens of Canada Geese landing on the Pond to rest overnight, then\u00a0awoke the next morning to a cacophony of sound as they all rose,\u00a0circled once, and headed on south.<\/p>\n

A couple miles north of Bourne Pond I came across some recent beaver\u00a0activity that had flooded a stretch of trail and forced me to\u00a0bushwhack around it, getting myself soaked from head to toe but\u00a0leaving me with a stupid grin on my face. There were about a dozen\u00a0white birch trees in a little grove next to the brand new beaver pond,\u00a0and the beavers had felled each and every one of them. I understand\u00a0birch is one of their favorite foods.<\/p>\n

On Saturday night I was camped above the shore of Stratton Pond and\u00a0just before rain forced me into my little tent for the night I walked\u00a0down to the shore and watched a beaver swim across the pond. When he\u00a0or she was next to the bank opposite me, he smacked the water three
\ntimes with his tail. I knew beavers did this, but I never realized\u00a0what a big splash they make. Each time the tail smacked the water a\u00a0geyser of water shot several feet into the air. It was really quite\u00a0amazing.<\/p>\n

On Sunday morning the rain tapered off and I found myself in a tight\u00a0little world about 10 yards around, hemmed in with a heavy fog. I\u00a0picked my way around the shore of Stratton Pond and started up the\u00a0slope of Stratton Mountain. For some reason I was feeling really good\u00a0and just cruised up the mountain in one steady push and arrived just\u00a0as the sun started to burn through the top layer of fog. It was still\u00a0early and I had the summit all to myself, just the way I like it. I’m\u00a0selfish that way.<\/p>\n

I met no other hikers on Friday. On Saturday I did cross paths with\u00a0two men who had spent the night camped at Bourne Pond. The rest of the\u00a0day I had the forest all to myself. On Sunday while I was on my way\u00a0down Stratton Mountain and nearly back to my car, I passed a few day\u00a0hikers on their way up to the summit.<\/p>\n

It was a wonderful weekend.<\/p>\n

More photos<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This weekend I went hiking. Until I got home last night I didn’t know\u00a0that WAMU had failed. I didn’t know that Paul Newman had died. I\u00a0hadn’t watched the debate. I didn’t even care. And guess what? The\u00a0world didn’t end. I spent Friday afternoon walking through the woods in the rain. It was\u00a0beautiful. The world was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hiking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":572,"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27\/revisions\/572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}