Wandervogel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wandervogel

Just found out about it reading Gravity's Rainbow. Seems like an interesting movement. Kids wanted to get out into nature, have friends, and it wasn't parent driven. Cool. Abolished by Hitler.

website

Charlotte Alt

German History Museum

 

Middle of November

I thought the ash heap was over more towards Willow Lake, but now that they're building a NYCFC stadium in Willets Point, they're saying that is where the ash heap used to be. Ash Valley. Whatever corporation buys the naming rights to that stadium, I'm going to call it the Pigeon Coop. I was pretty intoxicated by the stadium news yesterday, and weirdly bored and impatient. It took them 10 years to find a sit for a potential stadium and it's going to take another year or more for plans, approvals, and remediation. Remediation is trying to clean up all the toxic waste. Not sure what they do there, except maybe push it into Flushing Bay. 

Walking in the woods or a swamp is good for the mind. Must have rained recently because it's pretty wet down by Willow Lake.

Who thought lawns were a good idea. Leaves should compost into the soil, but in modern times, you create a lot of noise pollution with leaf blowers, and then put all that good compost into plastic bags. 

It's the equivalent of a Taylor Swift ecological disaster (source: "Taylor Swift’s plane was identified by the report as the “biggest celebrity CO2e polluter this year so far,” racking up 170 flights since January with emissions totaling more than 8,293 metric tons."). She moves her family around like chess pieces with her private plane. What an ecological disaster. 

To say we're out of whack is to put it lightly. As the glaciers unfreeze, and old bacteria become revived, we're in for a multi-aspect shitstorm.

In this latest study, they found that average sperm counts all around the world had fallen by over 50 per cent over the past five decades.

"Data from 1973 to 2018 showed sperm counts dropped on average by 1.2 percent per year. Data from after the year 2000 showed a decline of more than 2.6 percent per year." (source) Nature is correcting herself.

I've got a potential backpacking trip to look forward to. 

Rules

 

Rules are needed. The wilderness is a place where teenagers go to party and there’s a lot of broken glass on the path into Willow Lake but if you can’t party in the woods where can you party? 

Saw that there is a rule that you can’t take unleashed animals and I thought that was interesting because I never saw a feral cat or a dog. I know they had them in the Rockaways until they killed someone, and they they hunted them all down.

The people that used to come up Willow creek, the original people who lived her were a branch of the Lenape, a branch of the Rockaway. They cultivated the three sisters, they hunted and fished. The Matinecocks were the ones in Flushing bay. 

Chief Sachem Tackapousha lived 1598 to1697, and he was the son of Sachem Mechoswodt. Mechoswodt, the chief sachem of Marossepinck, Sintsinck and its dependencies, signed a deed on January 15, 1639 with some early Dutch settlers that conveyed the entire western half of Long Island to the Dutch.

Swung by the library which is the other place you can go for free these days. Seems in New York City they want your money before he can use the bathroom. 

Opened the door when I was leaving my apartment building for a woman who lived downstairs. I like opening doors. Opening doors is kindness. I’m looking for even small ways to be kind to others. When I got to the library and open the door for a woman with a hijab, she declined to go in. I had to go in before her. I don’t mind it when people reject my politeness because you know I’m just trying to be polite and so if they don’t want it then they don’t want it, it’s not something I need.

Started reading Heavy by Kiese Laymon. He wanted to write an American memoir, but it turns out he has to write a black memoir. Life is filled with disappointments and contrary cultural forces, and gender, sex, sexuality, race, class and many more things factor into what you get. The question is still what do I want to invest my attention, empathy, willpower and discipline into. 

Wikipedia on Willow Creek and Willow Lake

"During at least three glacial periods, including the Wisconsin glaciation around 20,000 years ago, ice sheets advanced south across North America carving moraines, valleys, and hills. In particular, bays and estuaries were formed along the north shore of Long Island. During glaciation, the meadows surrounding the Flushing River were formed just north of the terminal moraine that runs across Long Island, which consisted of sand, gravel, clay and boulders. The moraine created a drainage divide, with rivers north of the moraine such as the future Flushing River emptying into the north shore. The Flushing Meadows site became a glacial lake, and then a salt marsh after the ice melted. Prior to glaciation, the Flushing River valley was used by the Hudson River to drain southward into the Atlantic Ocean.[88] Through the 19th century, wetlands continued to straddle Flushing River. Species inhabiting the site included waterfowl and fiddler crab, with fish using water pools for spawning.

The area was first settled by Algonquian Native Americans of Long Island (referred to erroneously as "Mantinecocks"). They consisted of the Canarsee and Rockaway Lenape groups, which inhabited coastal wetlands across Queens and Brooklyn.

The town of Flushing was settled in 1645 under charter of the Dutch West India Company. Both the town and the creek were thus named after the port of Vlissingen, in the southwestern Netherlands. The first European settler to move to the vicinity of Flushing Creek was Robert Coe, an Englishman who built a house near Horse Brook (now the site of the Long Island Expressway) on the creek's western bank."

"In 1930, New York City parks commissioner Robert Moses released plans for numerous parks and highways in the city, including a Flushing River Park. Five years later, Flushing Meadows was selected as the site for the 1939 World's Fair. Work on the World's Fair site began the next year. The project primarily involved leveling the ash mounds, with the leftover material used to fill other areas of the meadow. Two parts of the river were excavated to create Meadow and Willow Lake, while much of the rest of the Flushing River was diverted into underground culverts. The Tidal Gate Bridge was built at the park's northern end to prevent tidal flow from flooding the lakes. In addition to recreation, the lakes would serve as repositories for excess storm runoff. By then, Horse Brook had already been covered over, while Kissena Creek was in the process of being covered over. Dammed and reduced in size, the Flushing River became navigable only north of Roosevelt Avenue. At its southern end, the Jamaica subway yard reduced some of the flow coming from the headwaters. The central portion of the Flushing River was repurposed as part of the World's Fair's Court of States."

-Wikipedia

Rockaway Tribes

Lenape People They were matrilineal!

Canarsee

Former ash heap

 Friend told me this is where the ash heap mentioned in Great Gatsby was.

Water is low

 

When I don't have my daughter, I need to exercise. So I walk down to Willow Lake. It's less than 6k steps and I've read you need to do 8k a day, but my doctor told me to walk for 20 minutes a day, so it's more than a 20 minute walk.

I have all kinds of romantic notions about a connection to a pond from Thoreau. My eyes aren't good enough to spot if the bald eagle is still there. I couldn't identify the birds that fluttered away from me. Willow Lake is a man made lake they made for the World's Fair in 1964. Even so it's green and a good place to walk to. Sometimes I meditate. Sometimes I reflect. Mostly I just walk around.

It's been raining today but the place isn't very swampy. I'm not sure what the swampy season is, but the path is dry and there was lot of planks so you can walk above the soggy ground, but they're not needed right now. 

I imagine when the water raises a foot or two (at least), it might become real swampy. I thought about the droughts all around the world. I wish I could go back to a pre-climate change world where extreme weather wasn't a sign of doom, just a variation, an oddity, not ominous in it's meanings. I won't be alive for much longer, 20-30 more years would be good enough for me. I have children, and I hope they have children. The Cylons pointed out to the humans that they never really asked if they should exist in the excellent show Battlestar Galactica, and sometimes I'm so disappointed by some of the things people say and do. But I do sort of hope my species can continue to live on earth, and don't destroy themselves.

Willow Lake

 

There's a dark spot in that willow, and that's an eagle. We saw a tortoise, eagle, and mallards. Lots of great flowers, reeds, bark and green.

Eagle

There's an eagle, actually a family, a mother and father and juvenile, on Willow Lake. I was talking to this nice couple, they showed it to me. What do they eat? The fish in the lake. She said someone put an invasive species in the lake, but she wasn't sure which one. She says the eagles usually go upstate this time of year. There were also warblers and red wing black birds. Nice couple.

I sat in my meditation spot, and a drake type fowl popped out of the water. When I walked close to the water, there was a big splash. Not sure if it's a muskrat or what. I've seen tortoises.

Walking out I saw a blue shell. Life is fragile, shells represent that fragility. 

Moss

I'm listening to Gathering Moss by Robin Wall Kimmerer.

Backpack

 The frame of my trip is the movie The Prom. I started watching it before I was picked up and as I wolfed down the bowl of noodles, I watched some more. What a great move. Not great music, I'm not going to memorize the songs like in Rocky Horror Picture Show and Hamilton or Encanto. I kept breaking into song on the trip, I guess I had my musical hat on to express myself and I'm in the woods, so there's only my friend to laugh at me.

More photos:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CcslG_TuDKL3R_LI-AFxrWsj2ivDfSV4P55OfM0/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

https://www.instagram.com/p/CcskyKjOSCKbHm3WRF1VDjzkUdFdPW5JErcWGQ0/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

https://www.instagram.com/p/Ccsgb8VO_ZfnmafrGcE0-osAW5IxzoFs-8urtc0/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

Going backpacking, just a day in, overnight, and out.

But that got me thinking what blogs are out there? Usually a rum game.

You can find articles with lists of blogs. They're basically all selling something, which I guess is the whole motive of the internet, but I'm not selling something, just expressing ideas. I didn't really connect with any of these blogs before I gave up. Even the New York Times. You read a paragraph and there's an ad. You have to fight your way to get any meaning out text today, the way the press has been monetized. Nobody watches commercials on TV any more. My daughter has grown up without being force fed commercials. That's a good thing.

I opened up the camping gear closet. Usually I go car camping with my ex, but for 30 years I've gone backpacking, canoeing and hiking with my good friend, and we're going! I'm so psyched to spend time with my friend. 

My friend is a gearhead, and I always borrow something off him. My ex was an organizer, and really like to plan for trips, created reams of list paper. I'm the spontaneous guy you take with you for fun. That's my role, but I can plan too. The spirit of backpacking is to be self reliant. I try to remember all the things I would need. I move my car to the other side.

My sons declined. They're teens, want to play video games. 

My ex declined. "Not with a 6 year old." And to car camping, "I don't have any money."

My new friend from Vermont who grew up on the other side a mountain used to camp she says. 

I'm honestly really out of shape, that's a factor. I've got a knee brace. So what. We'll go slow. It's not a huge hike in, so you know. Take twice as long if you need to. 

I'm looking forward to just not having the stimulation of the computer and phone. I'm looking forward to nice views, and good conversation. Music in the car. It's going to be awesome!

What will I miss from civilization? Coffee. Take a caffeine pill. I might have watched the baseball game this afternoon. Part of the allure of baseball is a huge open field. 

I'm going to feel so free tomorrow morning not to surf the web to begin my day. I know this is a good thing because I'm chomping at the bit for my friend to get here.

Some chop

 When I used to row, I loved flat water. Willow pond isn't very big, it's man made in 1964, but it was gusty today on my walk down to the pond.

I didn't sit and meditate, today my goal was just to get the legs moving. I was thinking about what a loss it was for Margaret Fuller not to be part of the suffrage movement because of the tragic shipwreck hundreds of feet from the shore of Fire Island. Has anyone written a what if novel if she would have joined the suffrage movement?

Willow meditation

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

I'm reading Walden, and I'm going down to Willow lake for a marsh bath, to be outside, and mediate for 20 minutes. Bodhidharma faced the wall, but I like facing nature like the Buddha did.