En Contra

I don't live there anymore, but around 20 years back I was out early on a quiet Sunday morning with my camera, standing on the trail next to my tripod in the Capitol State Forest just west of Olympia, WA. I was wondering what my next shot might be when there was a movement off to my right. I turned my head and looked, and saw a really weird brown dog galumphing down the trail toward me.

It was short at the shoulder, its legs only half as long as they should have been, and its head bobbed up and down wildly like that of a hobbyhorse. Nothing about this made sense. It was an animal but put together wrong. I was totally confused.

After a scant few seconds I took a step back to get a bit of perspective change, and the dog-thing-whatever instantly turned itself inside out in less an eye blink and was rapidly retreating the way it had come, still brown, still too low to the ground, still baffling.

But I saw its tail then. I saw that. The tail was long. Really, really long. Brown. As thick as my arm, with that distinctive cat-tail curve.

By the time it reversed course it was maybe within 30 feet of me (9m), just on the other side of a short little jog in the trail. Good thing I moved when I did. It was almost on me.

The whole episode was so strange that I was confused for hours, even though I did inspect the trail and found one perfect kitty-print in the dust, about 4" in diameter (10cm). I finally had to admit that it was a cougar, had to have been, and couldn't have been anything else. Only two hours later, long after I'd left the forest, did fright set in.

This happened in total silence.

I've also seen two lynx, one from my car in Olympic National Forest, trotting nonchalantly down the side of a paved road toward me, and the other in Port Angeles, around 4 a.m. within a block of the Olympic National Park headquarters. Crazy-wild long legs, relaxed trot, fuzzy beer can tail, headed south. Lynx don't live on the Olympic Peninsula. Officially.

You never know.

 

And, a response from our reader...

 

Funny shaped animals on The Trail
Regarding your cougar encounter...

Soon after I moved to the PNW (from Michigan) in 2000, I was living in a furnished apartment in Eastgate waiting for my house stuff to be packed up and moved out to my new house. I was in the habit of going out for an evening jog up the hill behind my house, on a really nice trail that just happened to be there.

One evening, on my way back home I'm jogging along the trail and see a flash of brown cross the trail in front of me. My midwestern brain says, "deer!" When I got to the section of trail where the brown fur had crossed, I stopped to look for tell-tale deer prints, of which there were none. Which I found odd. I walked backwards down the trail towards home for 50 feet, watching for any sign of anything but couldn't see a thing. So I turned and the instant I turned my back I heard a single branch snap. I whipped back around, looking intently for the something that I now knew was watching me, but I couldn't see a thing. So I continued walking away, backwards down the trail.

As I exited the trail, I paid new attention to the sign, noting that I was indeed trail running on Cougar Mountain.

Matt (Wed, Jan 31, 12:39 PM)

 

And then Dave sez...

Cats - you never know. Stuff is out there. Also, yet another reason I'll never go hiking on Brokeback Mountain.

What I've found outdoors is that if you stay quiet and don't move around too much, you witness a lot of things, just by being there.

Probably the strangest for me was seeing a water shrew as I was sitting next to a stream drying my feet after crossing it.

Something exploded out of the water and ran across the surface, then plopped back in. Did that twice more while I was there. I eventually found some info on what it must have been. Before that I'd had no idea that there even was such a thing.

This is pretty good...
Tiny Water Shrews Are the "Cheetahs of the Wetlands".
Nature on PBS: "A water shrew is an insectivore no bigger than a thumb..."
Video (<= Until the link rots anyway.)

 

encounter (n.): Circa. 1300, "meeting of adversaries, confrontation".
From Old French encontre "meeting, fight, opportunity".
Ultimately from Latin in "in" (from PIE root en "in") + contra "against".
Etymonline

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Have anything worth adding? Then try sosayseff@nullabigmail.com
Me? Dizzy. Call me dizzy.

 

Etc...

so says eff: sporadic spurts of grade eff distraction
definitions: outdoor terms
fiyh: dave's little guide to ultralight backpacking stoves
boyb: dave's little guide to backpacks
snorpy bits: nibbling away at your sanity
last seen receding: missives from a certain mobile homer
noseyjoe: purposefully poking my proboscis into technicals

Who, Me?

(Originally published Wednesday, September 17, 2008 on another blog. Slightly updated here.)

There seems to be a lack of individual responsibility around these days. Or maybe that's just me. Maybe it's always been this way. Probably. Some things I don't notice so good, but I think I'm right on this one.

I've always been surprised by how lazy and opportunistic people are. Maybe that's just me. Maybe I'm not as bright as I've thought, or maybe I just haven't caught on yet to the true meaning of life. Something like that. I haven't caught on to massive sloth and grabbing what's easy.

I noticed during job interviews, or even worse, while on the job, that I scared people when I told them I stood 100% behind my work. Don't know why. That seems like a good characteristic to me, but it's never flown. People get spooked. Someone once asked me if I carry a gun.

Maybe a lot of them are scared to see someone care. Most of my working life was in state government, where, when you swing through the trees, you see a lot of sleepy apes. The entire point of a bureaucrat's life is not to do anything. If you do anything you can be blamed, but you can never be blamed for doing nothing. Everyone in that kind of environment understands the idea of making decisions judiciously. Without question. I.e., doing nothing.

That's why it can take a year to get a stapler unless you steal one from a desk that's just been vacated.

That world works that way because there is never a positive incentive. There is no profit sharing. No bonuses. You don't get big stock options if you bet your job and a lot of company resources on a bold gamble. There is none of that, only the opposite.

Negative incentives.

What is, is. The status quo is the highest good. Muck up and the only option is punishment. Do well and you mess up the status quo. The only option is punishment. Keeping up appearances is the highest good.

I've worked with people who were demoted and moved across town into jobs they knew nothing about only because they happened to work for someone else who lost a turf war. I've seen a talented and experienced programmer given a desk and chair and nothing else, expected to sit there until he gave up and quit, only because he once spoke the truth. I know someone who, as a project manager whose project failed, was given a promotion because she followed the rules as she drove the project into the ground.

No change, no gain. No gain, no pain. A small promotion is about the best you can get, and failure restores a quiet, enduring balance to a bureaucrat's life. A few dollars more a month from a promotion seems like a positive incentive but it's really more of a threat. You have to work harder to keep up appearances, so maybe it's not a good thing to get. And you still have to show up every day for decades until they finally have to turn you loose. No matter who you are, how good you are, if you play in this system you weather and get worn down to the same level as everyone else. You want only to get through today, and live long enough to retire. Nothing more. Trying to actually do something only causes confusion and pain.

I've been a member of two Meetup groups based around web technology. I just learned today that the second one has now also failed. There are 71 members and only nine or 10 have shown up at meetings. The two organizers have been doing the presentations and the rest have been sitting there. People keep joining. And not showing up.

So easy. So clean.

I sort of know a web developer who lost his job when the big bust came a few years back. Henry Shires. In 1999 he hiked the Pacific Crest Trail, using a shelter he made himself. He did it because he wanted to. He didn't sit around waiting for someone to ask, or to give orders. He needed to do the hike for personal reasons, so he did. To help he designed a shelter that was sort of like a tent and sort of like a tarp.

Later he got into web development. I don't know much about this part of his story, but having talked to him a time or two I heard that he lost his job. It was bad all over then. Happened to lots.

Sometime later, after he'd posted his original tarptent plans, then updated them with a new model or two (all free information for the taking), I found that he was in business. Making and selling tarptents.

Now he's one of the big names in the ultralight cottage industry class. Sounds like damning with faint praise but it's really praising with no damns at all. This is tough work, in a small market, and now he has a worldwide clientele and a reputation to go with it.

This is what personal responsibility is about.

First he had a dream, to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. And he did it.

Then he had a job, and then didn't.

Then he created a business and made it work.

This is real web develpment. Henry Shires had a stake in it. He had something to gain. Web development now isn't something for his resume. It is a vehicle for his business. He had a reason to work with that, which was to develop his business, because he liked hiking and liked tarptents. So he took on the responsibility of it all. It gave him a payback. Not like what you get when you decide to become a member of an anonymous group.

Not a big story at all, but nice. Not like clicking a link on a web page and joining a group and never showing up. First Henry showed up at life and then the group joined him.

Now if only I could be so smart.

 

References:

The Olympia Web Design Meetup Group
Tarptent.com
The original Tarptent plans

 

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