2020-10-01 20:22:02+00:00 (UTC), UNIX: 1601583722
Hello, this will serve as a place to post my exploratory outdoor adventures.
Often times, I go wandering with no real end goal in mind, meandering through the trails
and taking in the sights. I want to start structuring my trips and documenting them in great detail.
With this journal, I plan to improve my hiking skills, showcase the beauty of the world around us,
and hopefully become a better outdoorsman. As of now, I'm a novice. I've gone for some fairly long day
hikes and a ton of little excursions for about 2 years now. My gear is a backpack, a canteen, a lantern,
some cheap binoculars, a walking stick I made out of a dried up piece of old birch wood, and a phone camera.
Forgive the quality of these photos, but carrying my phone is a lot more convenient than lugging my DSLR and
taking pictures (though I might do that considering I'm now making this blog).
Due to current life circumstances, my easy access to many unique trails is limited; however, in a short
time I will be able to wander to my heart's content. In the mean time, stay tuned, as I will be posting
some of the more interesting pictures and stories I have from my time in the slightly untamed bush close
to home.
2020-11-22 06:34:25+00:00 (UTC), UNIX: 1606026865
Sup, I'm finally back. Life has been rough for me lately, so I have decided to take a break from most social forms of the internet and abstain from video games
until I can sort my mind out (or until the end of Christmas). I have been spending a lot of time with family and just enjoying the absurdity of life.
This has bestowed me with a modicum of motivation, enough to update this site pretty significantly, and work on other projects; some are tech related and others are not-so tech related.
I would like to at least update the state of this blog to let you know that I have not abandoned this project.
While I'd like to say I made some significant progress in relation to hiking and outdoorsy
pursuits, I have only miniscule news. I've been researching a lot about camping and am trying to become acquainted with some of the equipment and related skills. Speaking of equipment, I got an early christmas
gift, a digital GPS watch that I can upload maps to and I have also been tending to my so-called "shitty"
hiking stick. Today, I sanded the wood down to make it smooth and used a grindstone to remove some of the glaring imperfections and branch stubs.
I also carved a design into it, a coatl (Nahuatl word for snake). I'm thinking of adding others, but I mildly screwed up the carving portion by using a rotary tool
on a setting too powerful for my hands to handle properly. After I'm done fixing the botched carving, I'm going to use a soldering iron to burn the design into the wood. It's not ideal, but I've tested it and it works.
After all that is done, I plan on coating the stick in sealer to give it a glossy finish. Once the stick is in a desirable state and I've finally adjusted my fucked up sleeping schedule, I am going to go for a hike
in the mountains with some family. I will document it all.
Season's Greetings,
Nanashi
2021-02-21 03:19:15+00:00 (UTC), UNIX: 1613877555
Hey, hey! It's me again. I went on a fairly long day hike recently. The gear I was carrying was a new 2 qt canteen, medical supplies, food, a pocket knife, some binoculars, a headlamp and various other types of flashlights and lanterns, my canon DSLR, a thick book about the Yugoslavian civil war, a spanish dictionary (hey you never know), a waterproof outer layer and insulation just in case, a flimsy tarp,
and a gps watch.
I hiked a trail that I'm somewhat familiar with. I walked 5.7 miles through chaparral, with a total elevation gain of 2218 feet. I started at the base of the mountain, first walking through some thick vegetation. This was the result of a miscalculated shortcut, thinking I could cut across a normally flowing creek that was dry. Turns out, there's a reason you should follow the trail (roughly, anyway) :^). A fire had ravaged the area about a year ago and the flora was making
a comeback. Many of the bushes towered over me and had thorns and prickly bits, so I got poked quite a bit. There were also a lot of felled trees that were burned and I had to navigate this thicket with the added challenge of loose branches, vines, and other refuse hindering me. Anyway, after about twenty minutes of this nonsense, I managed to finally get past this obstacle and headed back onto the trail into a beautiful meadow surrounded by oak trees. I kept heading down the trail and started off for my first destination, a wooded creek that would loop back to the trail head.
This particular area is one I hold dear to my heart. When I was a teenager, I came to this creek a few times with my best friend to relax and
shoot the shit. In general this was my sanctuary, a place where I could go to be alone. It had been a while since I had gone to the creek, but the first thing I noticed was that someone had made a memorial for their dog, so first I stopped and paid my respects and then headed further upstream to find a shady place next to the water to sit. After resting, I decided that it was about time I looped back. I came back to the trail head, climbed up a hill, and started the real journey up into the mountains. The ascent was fairly easy and there were a large amount of boulders all over; I made it to a false summit fairly quickly. Here, the trail would open up into a tiny valley nested within the peaks. The view from here was decent, enough to see three local mountain ranges. The trail would then diverge, one path ascending further into the mountains and eventually leading to a plateau, the other going around and through some boulder peaks. I stopped, ate lunch and then headed back home. I simply backtracked, as there were other hikers coming up the other way and I really didn't want to speak to or see people. Click here to see all the pictures I took. Side note: the quality on some of the photos may be complete shit because truthfully, it's been a long time
since I've used my DSLR and I have no clue what settings to use. I promise that next time I'll try to get the settings just right for my pictures!
