Going Solo

8/22/2012

23:58 PST

Woolley Mammoth



It appears as though my affinity to procrastinate permeates even here. I am many entries behind in this blog. Several very cool things have transpired since I've arrived here at The Woolley Mammoth. But you will just have to wait until I finish writing and editing those entries. 

Yes. I'm anal. But hopefully getting the ball rolling on current stuff will motivate me to catch up with the older stuff. The reality is that I've actually been working. A lot. And I'm beat at the end of the day. I plink out a few notes so that I don't forget the details and then I faceplant into LaLa Land.

Until then... I had to write tonight because something significant happened that will dramatically change the nature of my upcoming journey into Central America. I will no longer be accompanied by anyone else as I travel south. Leah is unable to join me and so I will be heading out alone. I'll be going solo.



I spent the majority of the day setting up the new goat pasture. Goats are voracious eaters. They can turn meadows full of blackberry brambles into a stripped and trampled no man's land within days. We have to constantly shift their electric fences to make sure they have plenty to eat.

Goats are creatures perfectly adapted to survive in high desert (steppe) habitats. They eat almost anything that's green, they can climb (sometimes on top of each other) to get to it, and they almost never drink water. Their intestines even extract and recycle water from their feces to be. I learned from gutting one the other day that somewhere around half of their body weight is made up of their four stomachs. Each one progressively breaks down their food into smaller, more digestible pieces. The next time you look at one, notice the bulges sticking out behind their ribs. Those are them, and they're full of chewed up bits of whatever used to be growing in front of them.

Setting up a new goat fence means moving the goats to greener pastures. But mostly, it means bushwhacking. Goats will devour anything you would refer to as underbrush, but you have to fence them in to keep them there long enough. Which means you have to cut out all the blackberry thorns, and swordferns, and thick fallen rotting tree limbs, and nettles and meet face to face all the fun spiderwebs in between.

Tools of the trade include: boots, carharts, a set of sharp but slightly squeaky pruners, ear muffs, a spinning wheel of shrubbery death (metal edged weed whacker) and a trusty, kinda rusty chainsaw. The idea is to cut a swath through the forest in an elliptical manner so as to reunite yourself from whence you came. This is not, always as easy as it sounds. It is very easy to find yourself veering off target and/or miscalculating the previously ordained distance (based on your fence length) into the middle of nowhere. I accomplished both of these things today.

By the time I had successfully completed my misinterpreted instructions from Jeff he had returned from delivering his shirt orders to help me install the fence. Although he was slightly disappointed that I had not placed the path where he had intended, he quickly assured me that it was actually a great placement and apologized for not being more specific. He's a good guy to work for.

The next task required herculean focus not to entangle three hundred feet of plastic netting and poles on any lingering branch, thorn, or itself for that matter while dragging it around to install on the new path. Next, we release the goats to experience momentary freedom while we connect all parts of the fence. We haul their shelter into the new paddock and herd them along before sealing the line behind them. After eight hours of hacking and hauling I'm beat and ready for a nap.

I stomped my heavy boots up the spiral staircase and collapse on the floor. Two kitties promptly purr their demands. So I pet them and then shut myself in my room. On the bed I go. SLEEP!

BUZZ BUZZ! It's a text from Leah.

"Im afraid I have bad news amigo :c"

Ahhhh, man. This is either a joke or she's going to tell me she can't make the trip. The sinking feeling in my stomach tells me she's out of the race. She calls. Something terrible is happening to one of her close friends and they need her pretty badly. Of course, Leah drops everything to do exactly that.

You can never know what you would do in a situation like that until it happens. I don't know what I would do if something terrible happened with one of my friends or with someone in my family. I'm pretty dead set on this trip. I have a lot invested in it. Well. Literally everything, actually. I don't know what kind of paradigm shift I'd have to accomplish in order to alter the course of this comet right now. So kudos to you, Leah! Don't worry, I'm not sad... A little, but more proud of you for taking care of the people you love. Good on ya!

Real talk, though. I was a little bummed. In front of me is this grand adventure. I'm off into Central America in 28 days, with tons of shit to wrap up before I go and now I'll be landing in that airport con solamente yo. No posse. No body. Just this guy. But you know what? It's going to be an adventure. I'm locked in. Nothing is stopping me now. I'm going to step outta that airport and walk smack dab into a whole new world. I'm going to take that world, wrap it up in one giant, Lito sized burrito and eat that baby up. Cause it's on, amigo. It's go time.