Mosquito

Thursday I took off in my canoe to do a little camping in the Miss. River backwaters. The water was up so I had a limited choice of campsites...but I found one...a damn good one too if I do say so myself. It was on a small island that would have been bigger except during this high water the water on the south side of the island was higher than it was on the north so, as is the case with water, it flowed downhill. The upshot of this was that the water flowing past this little island was moving pretty quickly and was gurgling and generally making water sounds. It was nice. Especially when trains went by...they were covered some by the water noise which, I think, are much more pleasant than the sound of a train rumbling by. Actually the sounds would have been pleasant even if there were no trains going by.

This trip of mine was the first this year that involved many bugs. The mosquitoes are back. [Last year I was fortunate enough to go canoing when there was a pretty major mayfly hatch going on. It was cool. There were an unbelievable number of them. Good thing they don't buzz in your ear and don't try to suck you blood. Heck, they don't even have mouthparts. I'll put a picture on that I took last year during the hatch.] I don't like using bug spray if I don't have to, even though I have some non-DEET spray, so I wear a nylon windbreaker (unless it's hot, then I'll deign to put on bug spray...the main reason that I don't like bug spray is that I'm sort of a bone-head and forget bug spray sometimes and want to know how to protect myself from bugs in those cases) that they can't bite through and sometimes a headnet if the bugs are bad, though they weren't bad enough to warrant the headnet this time. The water sounds at my campsite were good for drowning out the sound of buzzing mosquitoes. (Later on I actually did put on some bug repellent to test the stuff and see if it actually worked and I think that it was mainly the smell of the stuff that did the repelling. At least the smell would have repelled me.) I cooked my meal on a stove that my dad made out of a coffee can (my meal was rice and black beans). I like the idea of using stuff that other people would pass by in search of something better...and in this stove you burn little sticks of wood, twigs really, that most people would think weren't enough to make a meal. So I didn't have to spend half an hour gathering wood. Since I'm lazy this worked great. I just walked 10 feet away from my “kitchen” and broke off a few branches and presto! I was done gathering wood for the night. I'm definitely lazy. Even the little island I was on (it was about 40'x100') had WAY more than enough wood.

Oh yeah, I took a few photos on the trip too.

Today (I'm writing this on Sunday the 25th) I left to go out for a trike ride. About 10 minutes after I left I noticed that there were some pretty heavy duty rain clouds rolling in. They covered the whole western part of the sky so I thought, “there's no way in hell those are going to blow by.” I had left the windows open in my house so I had to come back and shut them. I got back, shut the windows and then went out to hoe weeds in the garden until the inevitable rain started. Well you guessed it, the clouds blew by and it didn't rain. So I resolved to go for a little walk with my camera and see what I could photograph. By the time I was ready to go some more clouds had rolled in but by that point I had made my mind up to go...so I went, and besides the last set of dark clouds had blown by so I was not trusting my skill (or luck, as most meteorology seems to be) in predicting weather. I took a few pictures before it started raining and I had to head back to my house. My neighbors probably think I'm an idiot, they were having a get-together on this Memorial Day weekend and were all out playing that toss-the-beanbag-into-the-hole-in-the-plywood-thing-that-is-40-feet-away game on their lawn. They saw me ride by and then a few minutes later ride back and then after a bit I walked by again with camera in tow only to get rained on and trudge back again.

Anyway, here's what I would caption the pictures with if I was smart enough to figure out how to put captions on them:

The one with green background and maroon leaves: this was taken after my ill-fated ride and after I decided to take a walk. This was taken while standing under a tree while it was raining.

The one with all the bugs: they're mayflies and there were alot of them.

The one with red leaves and green veins: this was taken on a bluff above the Miss. River at Nelson Dewey State Park near Cassville.

The one with the purple flower: taken while field testing out the foul-smelling bug spray at Nelson Dewey State Park.

P.S. I haven't really been a big mushroom fan my whole life...but I must admit that those morels tasted good after they were fried in butter.