Beaches

Posted on January 27, 2014 by waterhigh

White Sands

Winter beaches. Summer beaches.

I have my favorites. If I were a travel writer, I’d tell you about them, but really, I’d rather keep quiet. Nothing like a crowd to dampen the specialness of a secret spot. Just ask Forrest Fenn.

Favorite (secret) lobster dock/restaurant in Maine

Today’s high will be about 0 degrees Fahrenheit. I’m using my imagination, picturing running on a beach. Well, maybe just strolling. With a metal detector? Since I’m imagining, sure.

Treasure is where you find it.

(I think I’ll pick up a real one before my next treasure-hunting trip.)

Blue Water

No travel plans this winter, but I’ve gathered lots of memories.

Loose Ends

There was a kid who had a grandpa who every morning said “It’s a good day for it.” Didn’t matter if it was hot or cold, sunny or rainy, it was always a good day for something. As often as could be, that might be fishing.

So, today was a good day to make blackberry jam. Much better than heating up the kitchen on the hot, steamy July days when I picked, washed, pulped and put them in the freezer.

(Yes, I know I skipped the Oxford comma. I don’t believe in them.)

Raspberry Trove

Also, I made a pot of tea and sat down to blog. Is it writer’s block? I should be well into a revision at this point, but things have only just now settled down around here.

The bonus of the super cold days — it’s usually sunny. I can get my vitamin D through the window, right? Then, back to work. It’s a good day for it.

Blue Dusk with Pine Tree

Imagination

Posted on January 15, 2014 by waterhigh

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”
– Albert Einstein

Thor (-ium) Ablaze // Road Food

Posted on November 17, 2013 by waterhigh

Miss Muffet

{Not a happy post. Not a Fenn treasure post.}

When I packed for my road trip to search for the treasure chest, I filled a cooler with frozen juices, healthy food, waters, and even falafel mix. (I know, but when you’re trying to dine gluten-free and non-GMO and non-ractopamine, etc, etc, what are you going to do? )

It was a cooler apparently in name only, and with the 105 degree days, I was adding copious amounts of ice within 48 hours. I ran low on my rations early on, but once I hit Wyoming, I started ordering steak salads, (and was never disappointed!)

Okay. So how does this relate to Thor, you ask?

— See prior post– a reblog of Regenaxe’s Nuclear Fire. It gave me pause.

Once upon a time, I was avidly against nuclear power plants. After Three-Mile-Island, I was ardently antinuke. Post Chernobyl–fervently so.

As I said, I thought it was difficult to eat on the road and avoid gluten and gmo’s (biotech) and other toxins. Now, post-Fukishima, I find it hard to eat even at home.

Grocery shopping: I hesitate to buy seafood now. Pasture-raised meat and dairy? Doesn’t excite me like it used to.

Can I even find non-gmo corn products? Only if it’s organic, and now I’m not even sure about that.

Does it really only have to be 95% Gmo-free by weight to be considered organic? Just how much can an engineered gene weigh? And I just read that organic doesn’t mean Round-Up free, either. What the ….?

Remember that first week after the tsunami and the reports of spikes in the readings starting on the West coast, and then the East? And then, no more news?

We’re sort of ‘fuked’.

So, back to Thor.

A couple weeks ago I heard an interview on the radio. Someone promoting a book promoting nuclear power. Before changing channels though, I heard enough to be interested.

Thorium reactions can’t go critical (into meltdown mode) and create maybe only 10% of the waste current technologies produce. Not a bad thing.

While China and India are pursuing this technology, America is burying thorium as a waste product. (Somewhere, I guess.)

Other minds know more about this. The book is Thorium–energy cheaper than coal by Robert Hargraves.

Is it too late? Who knows. With three reactors in meltdown and spent rod cooling ponds running out of water storage space across the ocean, and fish freaking me out on the scale of their radioactivity, I kind of try to ignore it.

No Fishing Allowed

When Japan got hit and the news trickled out, I sent my kids emails and told them to eat seaweed and kelp. Not that they listened, but it was the least I could do. Now I won’t be buying any more seaweed products either, not that I was a big fan. I still have some pre-Fukishima capsules.

Okay. Back to the Chase. I need some fun.

Radioactive fish and the NRDC (vernonradiationsafety.wordpress.com)
West Coast Strange Animal Deaths As Fukushima Radiation Hits America (naturalcuresnotmedicine.com)
Fukushima No. 1 radioactive water problems laid to Tepco ineptitude (japantimes.co.jp)

Impossible Earth

Posted on November 1, 2013 by waterhigh

Colorful blaze but don’t get excited— it’s in Nevada.

Impossible Earth.

Methane-decomposing bacteria from hot springs need the valuable metals to produce energy (phys.org)
Yellowstone National Park: Large magma reservoir gets bigger (sott.net)
hot spring (Photo credit: Rick Payette)

Gators in Minnesota ! ? ! ? !

Posted on August 31, 2013 by waterhigh

Gators in Minnesota ! ? ! ? !

{Just so you know, I toss a gator in the moat before I leave home.}

Related articles

Alligator surprises boys fishing on Minn. lake (metronews.ca)

Alligator Season Set to Begin (wtok.com)

Hilton Head woman bitten by alligator (thestate.com)

Couple catch live alligator in Joplin pothole (stltoday.com)

Wisconsin Wit

“An alligator that surprised two boys fishing in a Washington County lake was shot dead by a Minnesota Department of Natural Resources enforcement officer, but another alligator remained on the loose Thursday.”

This was necessary because, as the DNR officer explained, “alligators don’t belong in Minnesota lakes and have no business alarming anglers.”

The search for Bonnie continues. You already know the name of her dead partner.

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Serendipity

Posted on May 21, 2013 by waterhigh

The morels and asparagas already gone, I wandered a washed field on Mother’s Day afternoon and found a trove of arrowheads, mostly pieces. Like gold and fish, they are where you find them. I think luck plays a part, but also some logic and imagination. To find Forrest Fenn’s The Thrill of the Chase treasure, it will take all of the above. And research. He says the lucky finder will be able to walk right to it, deliberately.

And so, we seekers continue our research and refine our plans. A simple Venn diagram (see Wikipedia) is a series of overlapping circles yielding useful data. A Fenn diagram is going to look more like a flow chart

Flowchart (Photo credit: BWJones)

branching off each time a clue has more than one solution. There are so many diagrams because no one knows where to begin. Well, we might think we do.

I thought at first it would be a simple fill-in-the-blank game. Decide where the warm waters halt, where to put in, and what the blaze is. Okay. But ‘halt’ has many meanings, likewise ‘warm waters’, even ‘warm’. And then you start to wonder, what does ‘it’ even mean!

A couple weeks ago, I came up with an utterly unique answer for “where warm waters halt”. This week, I even found a butterfly connection.

So, maybe the Chase isn’t keeping me away from the internet, but it has gotten me into the library, especially the history section. Here’s to all your discoveries made along the way. Enjoy.