Not Like The Olden Days

The future has arrived. (Illustration based on the work of Clifford Jago).

 

So when was the last time you used an elevator driven around by a human? By a human whose job it was to operate the thing. Never, maybe? Never? Do you even have trouble with the concept? I don't.

I remember when. Really.

I has been decades since the last time, and that was when I was in high school, which was a while back, but I do remember, and though that system was hardly ever used even then, it wasn't completely unusual when I was still young to walk into an elevator car and tell the operator which floor you wanted to end up on.

Yes, things have changed, and it's not letting up. (By the way, I was around 10 by the time we got dials on our telephones and could make our own calls without the help of the other kind of operator. I also remember life before television, which was indeed better in some ways.)

I started thinking about this sort of thing last night after seeing the beginnings of a discussion among van dwellers about what self-driving vehicles would be like. Some people thought they'd be nifty, some were afraid, and some doubted that there would ever be such a development. I disagree, with all of them.

We won't know what the future is like until we get there, and when we do get there we won't realize that that's where we were headed. Things will happen but until they do, no one really knows in detail what we'll end up with or how things will have changed.

What we do know is that things will change, and it's like elevators all over again.

First there was muscle power, then combustion engines, then electric motors, and then they eliminated the drivers. So think — when was the last time you took your own elevator to a multi-storey building? When was the last time you even owned an elevator?

Have you even heard of such a thing as owning an elevator? No. You go somewhere, get inside something, push a button, and go back to daydreaming. Then you arrive at your destination and that's it. It's even free.

How about cars then? Are electric cars far off in the future because there's no way to get electricity out where you're going? Nope. Electricity is available in more places than gasoline, let alone diesel, right now. Electricity is everywhere. High-voltage, high-amperage connections need to be installed in thousands of locations for electric vehicles to be practical, but there's no trick to that. It's only a matter of doing it powered by a feedback loop of demand and supply. It will happen.

Electric vehicles are simpler and cheaper to:

• Design
• Manufacture
• Operate
• Maintain
• Repair

That part is inevitable. So is the rest.

Electric vehicles will make self-driving vehicles possible, and machine intelligence will make them happen. We'll live in a different world by then.

Two tidal waves will sneak up and sweep us away. The electric vehicle wave will be the first.

Electric vehicles are already flowing into our lives but we hardly notice because they are still expensive, and imperfect, and rare. Look up in a few years and they'll be everywhere. See the 5th Avenue link below for a view of history. No one will be able to imagine how or why anyone put up with combustion-engine vehicles, composed of hundreds of moving parts, having a constant need to be serviced, requiring toxic and explosive fuels, and emitting even more toxins as exhaust. Just as no one now can imagine how or why people once put up with whole cities full of horse manure and flies.

Combustion-engine vehicles will first become impossible to sell, and then impossible to buy, for good reason. Electric vehicles will do everything better, cheaper, and more simply.

When machine learning becomes adequate, and after machines prove they can do the job, which they will, they will steadily take over the work of driving. Because electric vehicles are already computers on wheels, the navigation and control systems will virtually drop right in. Before long, human-driven vehicles will become impossible to sell, then impossible to buy, and then illegal because it will be recognized that it is far too dangerous to let humans remain in charge. And besides, insurance won't be available. And no one will want the expense of actually owning a vehicle. And it will be too much bother, like taking your own elevator along when you go downtown and want to get to the 37th floor. What?

This makes me wonder what all those van dwellers out there will do. Can't afford/don't want to live in an apartment, won't be able to just drive around the country and park in the woods here and there any more. Then what?

And backpackers, not to mention other rural people — what about them? It'll be hard (probably) to summon a car to drive you around when you're 50 miles out, somewhere, but mostly nowhere, and you have to get elsewhere.

It's certain that:

• Things will be radically different than they are now, and
• Things will work, even though they'll work differently than now

It's likely that:

• A lot of things will be easier than they are now
• Most things will be pre-programmed
• Life will be less spontaneous
• Epiphanies will go extinct

When everything becomes possible, everything becomes ordinary, and that "illuminating realization or discovery, often resulting in a personal feeling of elation, awe, or wonder" will be reduced to a blinking light reminding you to either put another coin in the slot or get the hell out of the car.

Nowadays, right now, it looks like we're seeing some other things fade away. Because population continues to grow, and we are all getting relatively richer in capabilities if not in actual coinage, there are more people "getting out there" and doing things. If it's not hard to get "there", and is no longer awkward and dangerous once you are there, then "there" becomes ordinary. The backcountry becomes another city park.

Need to go somewhere? Query the internet, download an app, read some blog posts, see what your Facebook "friends" think. Need stuff? Click on those handy affiliate links, peruse eBay, order shiny things from Amazon. Get news of somebody doing something? Add it to your "bucket list" and do a "me too", or formulate a plan to be faster, louder, more outrageous, and gain more followers by going crazy on YouTube. Start your own channel. Shoot for a world record — maybe the most selfies in the most dangerous places done in the least amount of time, or something.

Not like the olden days.

No, not like the olden days.

I was in my 30s before I made my first backpacking trip. You couldn't find a tent under six pounds (2.7 kg, whatever "kg" were supposed to be). My first pack weighed four pounds, 14 ounces (2.2 kg) all by itself. Boots were big and heavy and leather. Waterproof/breathable promised salvation and was still so new that it wasn't yet considered a joke. The Svea 123R, whose roots go back over a century, was the height of liquid-fueled stove technology. Frostline Kits were still being sewn in the thousands.

Not all that many people did, but if you wanted something, needed something, and it wasn't out there, you made it. You could. You figured "Why the hell not?"

Along around 2000, some ideas began circulating and some new technologies became available. Silicone-coated nylon was one of them. It promoted huge changes. People went nuts, and internetted everything. Sudden experts appeared everywhere. You know the saying, "When the seeker is ready the guru appears." Like that. Everybody had ideas for what you could do with simple, ordinary materials, some ingenuity, and time. It seemed like you could make anything you needed, if you could imagine it, like stoves from used pop cans.

Odd little web sites popped up everywhere. Every week or so plans for some previously impossible thing, mostly things you had never even thought about at all, got published, and then right after that, someone else published their own directions for making an improved version that cost nothing and weighed less.

Gone now, most of it. Lots of ideas have been incorporated into commercial products, most of which are OK, some of which are OK+, and some of which are not anything but still cost money. The watch-phrase is "Buy it and try it", and never be happy any more, because if you set a world record for Fastest Known Time run-walking the Pacific Crest Trail, then someone else will do better next week and you'll be just another random, washed-up loser again. And if you buy the lightest, most experimental, trickiest whatchamacallit today, then tomorrow, if it hasn't fallen apart already, it will be replaced with the Super Double Plus Good Most Trickiest Thing-A-Ma-Bob Ever, and not only will you be a loser once again but you'll be out all that money and people will keep laughing because you're so lame and carry 0.75 grams more than they do.

So maybe when things were harder and slower and backpacking was something you did because it was interesting and not a competitive sport, maybe in a way it was sort of better as well, no?

 

Some web sites of the Ancients

Ray Garlington

Risk's UltraLight Hiking

Just Jeff's Hiking Page

Penny Wood Stove

Zen Stoves

Frostline Kits

Thru-Hiker Projects

Thru-Hiker Articles

Sgt. Rock's Hiking HQ

Gearskin

Homemade Outdoor Gear

Wings: The home-made stove archives

Rainmaker and Brawny

 

Other relevant stuff

The future of photography is code

5th Avenue, 1900 Vs. 1913

Epiphany

Svea 123

Ride transit to the trails with Trailhead Direct

 

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Comments? Send email to sosayseff@nullabigmail.com

See if that helps.

Definitions: Boulder Hopping

(1) Hiking from rock to rock without touching the ground in between.

Dangerous. Tricky. And small rocks don't count.

They should be too big to step over. Boulders. Got it?

(2) Somewhere in the deepest wilds of ancient, uncharted Scandinavia there was once a large stone. A very large stone.

There are many there still, the stones, and there are stones in other places as well. Stones are common, but this stone was not. This stone was completely different. This stone had a voice.

It used its voice to sing.

It sang not well as the short, evanescent lives of humans tend to judge these things, but you know what they say about talking dogs. Anyway, the stone sang.

People came from every farthest corner of the known world to wonder at this stone, as it sat centered in a small, vigorous stream. A stream that any man could throw his sword over (and some children as well), but yet too fiercely, aggressively vigorous to cross.

So there sat the stone. Solid. Unmoving. Endlessly singing to itself in one warbling roaring bass note.

The "Bullra Sten", the "Noisy Stone" it was named. So it was called. So they called it. And it sat for ages, just there, unmoving, in that one solitary place.

For ages. And ages untold.

And whenever a few gathered and drew near, or even one alone it seems, the stone sang directly to them, or to that one person, in its profound deep voice. It sang of the day and it sang of the night. Of the seasons, and of the snow, and of the rain. Of the light and of the darkness. Of eternity.

The stone sang of loneliness and of lost love and war and of the peace that follows death.

The stone sang to no one, but yet it sang to all — to itself, by itself, and all who came and heard the stone were certain that it sang for them alone, to them only.

And when these people returned to their homes, many returned not always buoyant, not always cheerful, not always smiling, not always feeling awash in sunshine and light, but reassured somehow. Always reassured that no matter their fate, no matter what the stone had told them, still it was ultimately for the best, and that all would be set right during the final tally at life's end.

Tales of the stone, the Bullra Sten, the Boulder Rock, the Singing Earthstone, the Fate-stone, the Divider of life and of death, these tales spread far and wide.

Many wished to visit the great stone but few could manage the difficult journey to such a remote location, or even could manage to learn where it lay. In any case the stone seemed to take notice of none. It did not care who came and who went, many or few, or when. The stone sat, through the ages, and only sang its song.

And then one day, one day seemingly like all the others, the stone was there no more. No one had seen it go. It had not rolled. It certainly had not walked. It was too massively great to have been carried off, and no one would have dared try.

But it was gone, and its voice as well was gone. The stone's massive throbbing voice filled the valley no longer, leaving a great empty void.

The voice of the stone was now silence itself, if there can be a sound emanating from a thing not there, and perhaps there can, for the silence itself became a great looming presence.

But people still came.

People came to the very same spot that they had always come to, and they stood, reverently, and gazed at the place in the stream's bed where the stone had sat. Where it had sat since before the forefathers of their forefathers or the mothers of their greatest great-grandmothers had walked the earth.

The people came, and stood in reverence, and it seems, at whiles, that some, the quietest and most reverent, could still make out the distant echoes of the stone's now silent song. So they honored the stone, even in its absence. They celebrated.

At midsummer, in the farthest reach of the coldest wasteland where once had stood the singing stone, a few gathered and celebrated even in the midst of their sadness for the missing stone.

And on the very peak of the arching forehead of a nearby stone, a stone almost - very nearly - a sibling of the original but yet some distance from the stream, they hung garlands of hops, and bathed that stone with flagons of ale, in worshipful memory of their lost singing stone. This then, this ceremony came to be called Boulder Hopping.

In recent years, boulder hopping has become a major party-time blowout and Trans-Euro televised sporting event.

Hot babes in bikinis, motocross races, championship soccer, and scores of food stands fill the valley for two crazy, fun-filled midsummer weeks every June. Get two of anything on a stick for the price of one, and any tattoo imaginable While-U-Wait. No problemo, come one come all. Bring cash.

Come early, stay late. Day and night, 24 hours without end. All partying all the time.

Toke up on local herbs and chill out in the neon green fiberglass pagoda (fully climate controlled) built exactly on the spot where the original Big Mutha Rock used to sit, and wait for word from the Other Side, thru your own ear buds. (And there's an app for that too. Great!)

Buy your admission by the day or get a two-week Full-On Full-Throat Event Pass and save big. BIG!

You won't live forever so Don't Miss It Again This Year!

Even bigger, even better than ever before!

More babes!

More food on more sticks!

More of everything!

Don't miss the greatest next, greatest ever EuroVent! You Will Not Regret It!

Definitions: Bog Hole

(1) A bog hole is, of course, a typical bureaucratically-determined sleep feasibility site. Look for the telltale sign that says "Designated Camping Area". Prepare your bug defense perimeter. Accept the damp. Keep your official permit at the ready in case of a snap inspection.

(2) A bog hole is the preferred habitat of the plant known as bog myrtle, named after the famous and rugged (though some say mythical) female backpacker, Bog "BM" Myrtle, "The Honkin', Stompin', Stoopin', Poopin' Princess of the Backcountry", who had a soft spot for soft spots and also left liberally fertilized pocks scattered throughout each of the moist landscapes she traversed.

"BM" was the granddaughter of, and possibly gained some of her energy from, Josephene Myrtle Corbin, the Four-Legged Woman and noted dipygus dibrachius tetrapus, who was born in Lincoln County, Tennessee in 1868, and had two of everything from the waist down, including pairs of legs, but was otherwise pretty forgettable, though an intimidating square dancer in her day.

Not so for "BM". No. She was different in a different way.

"BM" had only the one pair of legs but she used them like nobody's business, though only outdoors. (She wasn't a great dancer.)

But she was big. And she was strong. She ate like a lumberjack, and possessed a fearsome speedy digestive system that kept her hopping at all hours.

Because of this physiological quirk she was unable ever to remain still and so managed to cover huge sections of trail in short order, setting several land speed records for foot travel during her short lifetime.

It could be that her unnatural hiking cadence did her in, or the toxic effects of the excess vitamins and minerals contained in her enormous lunches, or that, as is sometimes said, she was pursued one day too far into the wet, peaty, acidic reaches of a forb-infested quivering bog by pestilential clouds of savage biting midges, and was ultimately sucked deep down into the soft damp darkness, to expire there and at last find some peace.

No one knows, but to this day such landscapes are favored by bog myrtle ("sweetgale" or "myrica gale") a pleasantly-scented traditional enemy of midges and horseflies of all descriptions. Does that sound believable? (Say yes!)

(3) And finally, a bog hole is Town (any town), where zero days happen, where zero days form, collect, pile up, and spontaneously glomerate one to another, tending to mire and restrain you, the thru-hiker, from ever getting back on the trail and finishing anything, at all, ever, especially if there is ice cream. To go with your beer.

Definitions: Amenities

Amenities were prehistoric sea creatures belonging to a Swiss Protestant group of the subclass Ammonoidea in the class Cephalopoda, phylum Mollusca.

Now extinct, they were related to the modern genus Nautilus, which inhabits a chambered shell that is curved like a coiled snake, and were influenced by the teachings and tradition of Menno Simons (1496-1561).

Members of the Anabaptist tradition, they could pump air into empty chambers in their shells and float at different ocean depths, possibly at will, while desultorily scavenging for descending bits of organic matter, upon which they subsisted.

Committed to nonviolence, nonviolent resistance, reconciliation, and pacifism, amenities died out during some especially testy religious conflicts accompanied by the celestial bombardment known as the K-Pg extinction event, though a few small groups are rumored to have survived and migrated to America by way of Alsace, England, and Russia, and to still be living quiet, discreet, and inoffensive lives in shallow ponds.

Another definition of this word is simply Fun Stuff — anything that enhances your experience or comfort. Anything usually referring to legal or mostly legal or at least partly legal substances, events, foods, or people. This includes but is not limited to clean underwear, regarded by some thru-hikers as only a sissified affectation.

Things you might do alone while naked are not discussed here.

Zipper History

Pull me — see what happens.

Time for some general background info.

A zipper consists of two strips of fabric tape, each permanently attached to one of the two flaps that it joins together.

Each zipper has from tens to hundreds of metal or plastic teeth.

The slider, the part that gets pulled by hand, rides up and down the two sets of teeth.

Inside the slider is a Y-shaped channel that pushes the opposing set of teeth together (forward) or pulls them apart (reverse).

Friction of the slider against the teeth produces that characteristic buzzing sound. (And it may be where the name zipper came from.)

Some zippers have slides on both ends, which allows for varying the size and position of the opening.

Elias Howe, the American inventor of the first practical sewing machine, developed an early zipper-like device he called an Automatic, Continuous Clothing Closure, which he patented in 1851, but it was never commercialized.

In 1891 (or possibly 1893), Whitcomb Judson patented a similar Clasp Locker, for fastening shoes, and marketed it through his Universal Fastener company.

Both his and Howe's designs used hooks and eyes rather than the now-familiar teeth.

Today's design, based on interlocking teeth, was invented in 1913 by one of Judson's employees, the Swedish scientist Gideon Sundback.

It was originally called the Hookless Fastener, though patented in 1917 as the Separable Fastener.

The B. F. Goodrich Company coined the name Zipper in 1923, and used it in tobacco pouches and on boots.

It wasn't until the 1920s that the zipper was first used in clothing, specifically for men's trousers and in clothes for children.

And here we are.

Smith Creek May 2001 - Part 4

Last installment in a four-part series.

Little anonymous stream coming off the mountain. There were several of these gems along the south side of the valley.

Doofus (me!) coming back down the trail — the old logging road.

Another creekside view.

Looking back west toward Ape Canyon. Later in the day — the shadows were beginning to lengthen.

Looking right or north-ish toward Smith Creek. You can see the stained stones, but the water was clean, clear, and good.

Mid-valley with a view toward the south side across the 21-year-old debris from the May 18, 1980 blast.

Racking out the camera's little lens to the max, in the same area.

In the streambed there's always some kind of life.

Given half a chance, it bursts into bloom and hopes fore the best.

And again — it's no fluke. Life advances.

Meanwhile, back on the trail, or the road if you prefer, the alders were busy putting out fresh bright green spring leaves.

All over.

One of my favorite-ever sections of trail. Too bad it didn't go on for more than a half-mile (0.80 km), but it was always a great treat, especially early in the year.

As a reminder of how lush parts of this area were, another creek came off the mountain to greet me.

A last look west up the old road toward the mountain.

And at your feet, if you bother to look, more beauty and hope.

But, taking a peek downstream to the east, you get yet another kind of reminder — this area was handled roughly, and it showed.

Actually, early on during my first few years of scouting the area, it was pretty nice. Everything seemed to be worked out. A whole lot of it was even moss-covered.

As time went by, though, winter storms and floods began to feel their muscle. Then they washed out roads, blasted away highway bridges, scoured streambeds, and the scars spread across the landscape.

Last peek at the top of St Helens from the Smith Creek flats.

Another glance at the place the footbridge once was. Not washed away, but carted upstream by helicopter after winter floods isolated it from the land at each of its ends, leaving it disconnected.

A bit later, back up top, above Smith Creek Valley, above Muddy River and Lava Canyon, at the foot of the lahar on the mountain's east side.

Tufted grass, waiting for summer.

Up here, it was near sunset, with a darkening sky reaching out to cover everything.

And sun dogs to end the day.

All images are from my first digital camera, a 3 mega-pixel Kodak, long obsolete and discarded.

Smith Creek May 2001 - Part 3

Third installment in a short series.

Continuing to move upstream — more of the same.

Dry, crumbly ground, and the remains of the burned and blasted.

Getting near the end of the usable trail.

Remnants of the former logging road peter out about here. No telling what it's like in 2014 — I haven't been there for well over half a decade.

But there are some nice spots along the way. This is the grove that I chose for my group to camp in the following weekend. Shaded, watered, level, and clean. Can't ask for more than that. Oh — private too.

Crappy, severely cropped shot of a vulture or buzzard.

This is about the end of the hikeable trail. After a stream crossing there's a bit more on what amounted to an island, and then the trail returned on the other side of the valley.

Turning around, I got a look back downstream. The notch in the forest in the upper third of the photo, off toward the right side, held a magnificent waterfall. I'm sure it still does, but these days you may not be able to walk over to it due to undergrowth.

Edge of the streambed. Just chock full of colorful stones, endlessly.

Sand and slime.

Colorful, though.

Just two or three years earlier, most of the streams were crystal clear. Then suddenly they filled with algae. Probably the sign of an enriched ecosystem. In other words, a good sign for the area's recovery.

At that time, this was the point to cross Smith Creek and get onto the "island", located between two branches of the creek.

A nice jumble of various kinds of of geology — some fresh and sharp, some water-smoothed, with wildly mixed mineralogies.

This branch of the creek leads up to two canyons on the south side of the valley, both of which I had explored in previous years, while they were still open and not choked by alder groves and shrubbery.

Here the water was faster and still clear.

There must have been an abundance of iron in the water to stain the stones so boldly.

Yours truly. I still have the pants and the shirt, and gained a beard.

From a bit back downstream where the two branches of upper Smith Creek merge into a single thread.

Lupine. Always nice to see.

A few more sprigs of vegetation amid the colorful stones.

South side of the valley. Most of the original trees were knocked over, but a few snags remained, later to be surrounded by a continuous thicket of alder scrub.

And back again to Ape Canyon on the way out. I also explored this several times, and led a group up there the following weekend. Probably completely choked off several years ago, though it used to be pleasantly open, and hopping full of elk.

More to come in a bit — one more post.

All images are from my first digital camera, a 3 mega-pixel Kodak, long obsolete and discarded.