Well Hallowe’en was what it was expected to be, very quiet. Not a single trick or treater – Go figure! No tricks, no treats, wth? Well, we had a couple of treats.
We decided that some of the brush piles out back should be burned off to clean up a little, so why not have a few beers and try to have a little fun at the same time? The weather was a little dicey but after the requisite humming and hawing, we finally decided that the weather looked like it would cooperate after all. So without further hesitation, Wendi grabbed a couple of squash and commenced to carving. Meanwhile, in the clearing behind the lodge, I prepared for a fire.
I had no idea how old (or new) these brush piles were but I knew one thing for sure; they were wet – very wet.
It was also lightly sprinkling out at the time so when building the fire, I didn’t really think a conventional technique would cut it. Instead, I used a 2.84 Litre tin can and filled it about 3/4 full with gasoline.
I secured it in place and lit it, then I began placing my soaking wet firewood over and around it in the traditional campfire structure type of format. The (almost) eternal flame burning beneath the fresh pile of wet branches and root wood gave it time to dry out and eventually catch fire.
Once the fire was started, I went down to the ice maker at the old guide shack and filled a wheel barrow with ice cubes and brought it back to the fire. Right about that time, Wendi came out with a bunch of beer and her Jacks O’ Lantern and we set them up on a nearby stump.
With daylight waining, a bitchin’ fire and a barrow full o’ beer, we saw no need for electricity. We shut the generator down and proceeded to celebrate the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain!
Well that was fun – no spooks, no hobgoblins, just fun. I don’t know what time it was when we went to bed that night but we did a pretty good job on that flat of beer.
November –
With October and the relative excitement of Hallowe’en now firmly a part of history, we are now looking to the near term future for our next bit of entertainment. So, we’ve decided to cut a trail over to Tingley Cove in Port Louis.
To be honest, we feel a little bit trapped here. Surprisingly, there is no network of trails through the bush around here, so we really can’t even go for a walk. Last week we did a few laps around the boardwalks but that got lame real fast.
I suppose when clients are here, they are here to fish – not to go hiking – so maybe the idea of a trail system for the guests has never come up. Fair enough but it seems to us that it would be a good thing to have some well beaten trails anyway, even if for no other reason but an emergency evacuation route.
We do have the trail up the hill behind the lodge that rises well above the expected elevation of any tsunami – outside those of Hollywood imaginations of course – but it is extremely steep. That would be a good thing when running from a tsunami, I suppose, but I have that laziness thing that keeps me from going on vertical walks just for the hell of it, you know.
Myself, I’m a little too old and a lot too lazy to think we’re going to go out with a hatchet and cut kilometres of trails but I do need to keep active and I do need exercise. Back in early October we had taken an afternoon hike over the hill to Tingley Cove but it was a tough hike with no trail. It’s really nice over there and we’d like to be able to go whenever we want, so that’s why we’ve chosen this as a destination.
The weather has been pretty stormy for the first few days of November so we never went outside much. We had three straight days of winds between forty and sixty knots and what was most significant was the direction.
Those winds were hitting us from the east and had a more pronounced effect than the Sou’westers we’ve become accustomed to.
On the fifth, the weather finally broke and we had a chance to get out and do some cutting. We spent about an hour and a half just cleaning up a previously flagged trail, but one that had obviously been unused for quite a while. We did about 280 metres that day.
Here is our progress so far. The red squiggly line that runs from the Outpost and ends near the water is what we did on the first day. The branch that goes to the right is what we did today, November 6th. Together it is a total of 456.3 Metres (so far) and rises to 40 metres above sea level.
The weather is kicking up again now. There is a sixty knot Sou’easter in the forecast and as I write, I can hear it making its presence known. I don’t know when we’ll get back to the trail blazing but as the saying goes, “it’s all down hill from here”, so it shouldn’t be too hard to get to the cove. Measured “as the crow flies”, it is only another 260 metres. Mind you, “as the crow flies”, we’ve only gone 240 metres.
Should be fun anyway! We’ll keep you posted… or… Out-posted 😉
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© Ron Morrison 2016