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backwards cliffs at Woodworth Lake
Friday, September 2 2022
location: 800 feet west of Woodworth Lake, Fulton County, NY
Today was the Friday before the Labor Day weekend, and, in my industry (in the place where software and local governments meet), there wouldn't be too much work being accomplished. The cabin's cellular-signal-provided internet was working well enough that my colleagues never said anything bad about my audio quality when I made my small vocal contribution to the morning scrum. After that, I had a pleasant feeling of accomplishment, because it was looking like I was finishing out four years of continuous employment that begin the day after Labor Day back in 2018 for a job I'd been skeptical I'd last long in.
A little after noon, I managed to convince Neville (but not Ramona) to hike with me down to the dock. There weren't many chores left for me to do down there, so I mostly stood or sat around reveling in my accomplishments. I'm so hungry for more dock-side projects that I'd brought a couple thin bolts with nuts to replace some missing ones in the collapsible picnic table I'd got at a yard sale back in 2020 and that Gretchen set up on the grassy patch of shore above the dock.
When I left the dock area, I decided to hike straight uphill (which is westward) through the trackless wilderness. I did this knowing that the dock lies almost directly east of the cabin, though our trail down to the dock initially leaves the cabin in a northward direction. I figured it might be useful to find a more direct route connecting the cabin to the dock. Initially I followed the stony bed of an often-dry (and currently dry) brook until I came into a region of poor drainage, where large swaths of fern spread out between widely-spaced trees. And then I came upon a cliff that was facing the wrong way. By the wrong way, I mean it was facing uphill, as if some powerful force (likely a glacier) had torn a trench parallel to the contours in the slope leading down to the lake, leaving a cliff on the downhill side and occasional cliffs on the uphill side as well. I found a survey marker suggesting that these cliffs were divided between our parcel and the one belonging to Shane, the guy with the closest building envelope to our cabin (whose parcel lies south of us along the west lakeshore, just north of Ibrahim's small parcel).
[REDACTED]
At some point this afternoon, I took a bath in the upstairs tub. A bath reliably makes any hangover that much easier to endure.
Later I found it in me to cook up a pot of pasta (medium shells) and a frying pan of cubed tofu with onions and a few mushrooms (though most of the mushrooms had gone bad). Then I poured myself a cup of wine and tried to get the dogs to come with me on a walk. This time, though, only Ramona came, perhaps because she was worried about how drunk I was. We walked out to Woodworth Lake road, took a right, and then went up through the woods from one of the driveways one of the parcel owners had stubbed out. It was another off-trail adventure, which the dogs seem to find a refreshing change of pace. It wasn't long, though, before we emerged out the woods at Shane's little slice of heaven, the clearing in the woods where he set up a single hiking chair and a crude stone fire pit.
At this point I was too drunk to do much other than crawl into bed, which the dogs were happy to do even though there was still light in the sky.
Before going to bed, I'd eaten a sizable nugget of cannabis. This had the reliable effect of startling me awake in the middle of the night with waves of "feeling high," that manifested in uncomfortable pressure in various corners of my forehead. [REDACTED]
Neville as a dock troll today.
Note the white spot on the lake to the right of Neville.
That's the floating buoy marking a quarter mile from Pyotr's dock.
Click to enlarge.
A backwards-facing cliff between the cabin and the dock.
Click to enlarge.
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