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the Sisyphean Stone
Friday, August 7 2026
location: 940 feet west of Woodworth Lake, Fulton County, NY
I woke up unusually late by the standards of the cabin, getting out of bed after 9:00am. I then took a recreational 150mg dose of pseudoephedrine just to make the day a little more recreational. It wasn't long after I started drinking my morning coffee that I grabbed the pruning shears and resumed my jihad against mugwort, the plant that threatens to take over every disturbed (that is, manmade) environment I care about. Most of the patches south of the cabin had been hacked back to their roots, but there were some robust stands west and north of the cabin that needed to die. Once gone, the patches where they had stood were mostly barren, as mugwort forms dense monocultures that shade out all competition, and there are no herbivores who want to eat it. Such monocultures are eventually killed by shade once nearby trees get big enough, but that takes decades to happen. And I am a 58 year old man.
When I got around to taking Charlotte for a walk, it was westward down the Lake Edward Trail all the way to Quarterway Brook. Just past that, we turned northward and walked through the Great Hemlock Grove, past that huge boulder that is perched in a gulley at the edge of a steep slope. (I've decided to call it the Sisyphean Stone, since it looks like it might just roll down the hill until some poor schlub rolls it back up again.) I continued downslope from there more sharply than usual, marveling at the cliffs and oddly-placed boulders along the way. In the distance I could hear the hiss of rushing water, and it turns out that this was West Bifurcation Creek, which marks the lower boundary of the Great Hemlock Grove, at least along the easternmost part of its northern boundary. As I drew closer to the part of that creek that passes beneath a chaotic jumbler of large boulders, I caught sight of spectacular cliff just to the south, near the northeast corner of the Great Hemlock Grove. Since in the past I'd only been through this area when following West Bifurcation Creek either upstream or downstream through the boulder jumble, I'd never actually seen this cliff before.
I followed West Bifurcation Creek upstream all the way to Woodworth Lake and, when I made it to the dock, I went for a float on the innertube, helping myself to a beer from the hillbilly beer fridge I'd built last weekend. The Hazy Little Thing was definitely warmer than one would want an American macrobrew to be, but it was a good temperature for a hoppy ale. I allowed currents to push me back to the island were I have been doing my loonification project, and I found more sticks and rocks to place in that gap that I'd worked on yesterday. To most people, the result of all my work would be difficult to spot, but anyone who knows how nature works would immediately note the unnatural oddity of large rocks stacked on top of branches blackened by years spent on the lake floor.
At some point while I was out on the water, I was hassled by a fly I've grown familiar with specifically in that environment. It looks almost exactly like a housefly but produces a painful bite, like a deer fly (which looks very different and has distinctive black markings on its wings). Usually such flies are too agile to swat, but I was able to smack this one and when I did, its rupture produced a mass of blood, indicating that it really had been sucking my blood and wasn't just a housefly that had somehow triggered a pain nerve. I later asked one of the chatbots about it, and it turned out that it is the stable fly, a fly that looks almost exactly like a housefly but sucks blood and produces painful bites. They're often encountered on boats but nowhere else because they are strong fliers and evade patrolling dragonflies by flying low over the surface of the water. Otherwise, they are mostly seen in and around barns and stables (thus the name).
Back at the cabin, I installed an LED indicator on the junction box containing the relay controlling the power to the EV charger so that I could easily see when it was on or off. That's the only circuit where it's impossible to tell from the basement whether or not the ESP8266 Remote Control algorithm has turned it on or not, since you cannot plug anything into it in the basement and nothing in the basement is controlled by it. To show whether it was on or not, all I needed to do was add a salvaged red LED in series with a salvaged 1 kilohm resistor (I keep a collection of old circuit boards in the Catskills and Adirondacks to salvage from) and that was all I needed to show if the 12v to the relay was turning it on or not. I mounted the LED in a little hole drilled in a blank junction box cover and I didn't even need to secure it with adhesive.
Periodically I'd take little breaks from whatever to carry an individual piece of bluestone down the Mossy Rock Trail to place in some location that seemed suitable. The plan is to eventually pave the entire 900 or so feet of it, though this will take years working at the rate that I am doing it. (Right now, only about a quarter to a third of it is paved, with only the first 200 feet of it complete, with occasional rocks here and there as one goes east.)
For the past few days I've been wondering how best to implement a spiral staircase between two decks at the cabin. I'd thought of just making a straight stairway, but that would use too much room. So then I'd thought of how I could perhaps fabricate my own steps to slip down over some sort of stout central pole. Today I did what always turns out to be a good idea, I asked ChatGPT for ideas. It suggested that I search CraigsList to find a used one. For some reason I hadn't considered that option, though in the past I've bought things like old windows and even a Honda Civic Hatchback using CraigsList. I soon found a sprial staircase for $900 just north of Boston that turned out to be the exact height I needed (117 inches). It had been installed indoors and I assumed it was designed for that environment, though I will need to install it outdoors. But I figured I could probably weatherize it. I communicated my find to Gretchen and of course she insisted that I "jew" the guy down to $500, something I didn't feel like doing so late in the negotiations. I'd already arranged to drive to eastern Massachussets to pick it up on Sunday, and revealing myself suddenly to be a cheapskate seemed like it would work against me in a way that was completely unncessary. Why put bad mojo on things that are going well? Not every interaction is a struggle for supremacy. (Had I followed her advice back when I was getting a carload of used solar panels, the seller would've just sold them to the next in a long line of buyers who were also calling him. True, there was nobody else clamoring for this spiral staircase. But it wasn't worth $400 to me to wipe feces on the transaction in the way that Gretchen was suggesting.)
This evening while I was out on one of the decks, some stinging insect who seemed to be in a fury from some other encounter flew into my belly and stung me in an instant and then continued on. I don't know that I've ever been stung by a stinging insect who wasn't actively guarding a nearby nest or whom I was somehow crushing (usually by mistake). The sting produced a plateau of a millimeter in height that was maybe two point five centimeters across, though it faded away quickly. I'd been quick to proactively suck out the venom with a short piece of hard plastic hose.
A helpful map showing where the various things described are located. Click to enlarge.
A fat toad with lycopods along the Lake Edward Trail just a little west of the cabin. Click to enlarge.
A scene in the Great Hemlock Grove. Click to enlarge.
The Sisyphean Stone rising up out of its gulley in the background. Click to enlarge.
That newly-discovered cliff south of the where West Bifurcation Creek flows beneath a jumble of boulders. Click to enlarge.
A tiny cave with a travel mug for scale. Click to enlarge.
Indian pipe looking like the chlorophyll-free poppy it is. Click to enlarge.
This "rock" weighed almost nothing and turned out to be foam from a float that had once kept something buoyant on Woodworth Lake. This was a half mile or more downstream on West Bifurcation Creek. Click to enlarge.
Chunks of rotten wood. Click to enlarge.
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