If you subscribe to this blog you’ll be familiar with my enthusiasm for Alastair Humphreys’ popular book, Microadventures: Local Discoveries for Great Escapes. Published in Great Britain in 204, years before COVID-19 caused border closures, social distancing, and self-isolation, Humphreys was way ahead of his time.
I’ll explore some of these suggestions right away: spending a night in a hammock, cooking outdoors in cast iron, fishing, Strava art, building a tiny hut or treehouse, and the weekday overnight bivvy challenge, but the one that I’m most excited about right now is Every Single Street.
The Every Single Street challenge is to run, walk, or bike, or bike single street in your city or town. Popularized by ultra-runner Ricky Gates in 2018, Gates ran every street in San Francisco, registering 1,300 miles in 40 days.
This is an excellent, doable challenge for those of us living in small towns.
For example, my town of Lincolnville in Maine maintains 76 miles of roads. This will undoubtedly lead to additional mileage, as there are numerous discontinued and unmaintained roads as well that can be hiked or even biked with the right choice of wheels.
I just purchased a custom topographic map of Lincolnville where I’ll draw in my rides. My riding buddy Andy Hazen is interested in joining me on this caper, even though he’s ridden every single one of them already. Andy told me that he’s already covered the challenge on a tractor with a mowing bar when he was contracted to trim brush from the sides of Lincolonville’s roads way back when.
If you need any inspiration on what can be gained from exploring all the corners of your own town, watch this 17-minute video of Ricky’s grand adventure!
I’m headed out at 3 pm today to begin my Every Single Street challenge of Lincolnville, Maine.
Note: play arrow is inactive. Click red link below to play
As I experience a restricted life under the spectre of Covid-19 I am being led to a doors that appear to be more expansive than restrictive.
Yesterday I was one of 15 folks who took part in a free Transcendental Meditation group meditation Zoom session. I enjoyed taking the time to further hone my technique and started to explore some online course offerings in the practice.
I feel I have some history in common with Dr. Kitchin: I also grew up on a small dairy farm, have a service career, and although I am not into skating, I experience a similar spiritual elevation from riding my bike through the forest.
Slowmo appeared to be speaking to me when he explains about the sensation of flying that he achieves while slow skating. Pay attention to the audio that begins at 8:15, where Slomo explains the allure and physiological basis of lateral acceleration.
I had a lifetime history as a gym rat, dating back to when I first entered the Fall River, MA YMCA when I was 16 years old. I left the gym in September of 2013 after I felt flat and unsatisfied after engaging in yet another 45-minute treadmill session, where I elevated the pitch to the max and ground out three more 15 minute miles.
Now, I ride bikes and hike instead- outdoors, all year round. It’s much more satisfying to me and feels more genuine, and is sort of like flying.
Daily I Ching Reading Hexagram #57-The Sun (doubled)
Hexagram 57
In consulting A Guide to the I Ching ( Carol Anthony) regarding today’s six tosses of three coins two surprises presented.
The essential learning from today’s practice was, “Only consistently firm, yet gentle inner thoughts penetrate to others with good effect. This influence occurs through maintaining a ceaseless correct inner attitude in which we are balanced, detached, and independent through all the changing events”.
Two identical trigrams are stacked today, each presenting as roots, penetrating through cracks in boulders that eventually break them apart. In a similar manner, the influence of consciousness penetrates our subconscious until one day, in a flash of insight we understand with amazing clarity.
Anthony writes, ”Receiving this hexagram indicates (1) that the truth we perceive has been penetrating to us over a long period of time, and (2) that our dependence on the truth must be consistently maintained if it is to penetrate to others with dynamic effect.
Today’s hexagram is concerned with self-correction and is often received together with hexagram 18-Work on What Has Been Spoiled. The specific self–correction most often needed is to cease striving to influence, which inhibits others from finding their own way as well as to prevent any deeper insight from intervening in the situation. As I flipped back the page in my journal to yesterday’s I Ching reading, I was very surprised to see that I had thrown my coins to receive hexagram 18!
Looking out my window to the expanse of fields, trees and stone walls extending to the Camden Hills on the horizon I see a pine tree on the ground that I cut down two days ago. We had a very powerful combination of wind that followed eighteen inches of heavy, clinging snow that toppled many thousands of trees throughout Maine this past week, and the pine suffered from numerous limbs broken of in the storm. I wanted to remove the tree for some years now. Transplanting it as a young tree was a mistake, as the thick masses of green needles began to obscure the winter sun from warming my south-facing windows.
Anthony’s interpretation of today’s hexagram relates here as well.
“We should also cease reacting to shock. We need to bands like the bamboo, without becoming bent or broken through rigid resistance to the situation. Through nonresistance, the wind passes and we returned the upright. We need to ask why we keep reacting after the shock has passed. Do we like clinging to negative possibilities? We need to remember that when we insist on what is correct during times of challenge, and wait for others to go through the learning experience, giving them the space they need to find themselves, the boulders of entrenched evil and hardness Will be broken by the penetrating power of truth.”
Perhaps everything will work out better than expected?
While many of us are frustrated that our favorite trailheads for hiking are overused right now, fresh options are available.
There has been enough rain that has fallen that streams are swollen and flowing strongly.
Maine is a very wet state. It’s been said that walking here for a straight-line mile in any direction will lead to water of some type, be it a river, stream, pond, lake or at this time of year vernal pool. One of my favorite activities the time of year is to follow streams in my neighborhood to trace their source, as well as walk them until they reach the sea.
I invited my friend Craig to join me in one of these microadventures after a strong rain. We walked out of my driveway and only had to venture a few hundred feet down the road until a large culvert was underneath us, swollen with clear, cold rainwater that came down off the South face of Moody Mountain. We both had on boots and gloves as it was a bit cold. Up we went, beside and in a meandering stream that passed along ancient stone walls, bordered by a lichen and moss encrusted forest floor that was alive with color and textures.
Wild walking is often punctuated by a shocking amount of fallen trees. This was an area where the only other visitors are hunters who venture these parts during deer season. I really enjoy the problem-solving of how to advance uphill, as we weave our way from one side of the stream to the next, moving around fallen giants and avoid thickly grown shrubs that would tear our clothing if we pushed through them.
At one point the stream took a 90 degree right turn as it fell through a gap in an ancient stone wall after the stream ran the length of the wall for fifty or so feet on the uphill side.
It was uncanny that the crumbling wall held the water so tightly for that length.
As Craig and I went further up, the stream began to peter out as it exited a large bowl-shaped ravine that was covered with a thick mantle of decades-old decomposing deciduous leaves. We couldn’t see it, but we could hear it trickling underneath our boots. There was still higher ground above so we continued up. Eventually, we spotted small pools that punctuated the increasing elusive stream bed, as we reached the high point of the ridge. We walked across an old logging road and then there it was- an actual pool that I thought was the source of the stream.
I was wrong. Craig pointed up to a adjacent massive wild blueberry field that gradually continued uphill to a higher point above the forest. As we walked up to a ledge that was the viewpoint of the expanse of Penobscot Bay, Craig pointed to numerous small depressions filled with rainwater and said, “This blueberry field is the start of the stream!”
The source pool below us was likely filled by water seeping down from under the thin mantle of organic material that was itself atop the igneous granite bedrock, which served as an impermeable layer that funneled it to our tiny pond.
This kind of natural history analysis is a form of forest forensics, a term I picked up from the work of Tom Wessels, from his book, Reading the Forested Landscape.
Also, this stream exploration idea was not mine. It’s actually from a chapter in Microadventures: Local Discoveries for Great Escapes.
Note: Be sure that you seek permission from landowners to pass through their properties if there is any question at all about possible trespass. And do wear tall rubber boots, as it is often easier to just walk right up a stream rather than stumble along through impassable thickets.
If you decide to explore the source or reach the mouth of a stream, post it up !
Happy microadventuring!
In my next post, I’ll explain how the hiker can use heat maps to seek out places where there is more dispersed social distancing.
Hard times for sure. I’ve been out of work since March 16, with no pay until October at best. At least I can hike, but not everywhere. My local Camden Hills State Park is still open to the public, but there are too many folks walking there for me to be comfortable now. Last Sunday the Stevens Corner lot there was full, with cars parked on both sides of the road like no one has ever seen before. A few days later the same scene appeared on the Barnestown Road parking area for the Georges Highland Path, where signs are posted prohibiting overflow parking on both sides of the road.
I listened to a public radio call-in show this week about accessing the outdoors in this COVID-19 world. I learned that as of Friday, March 27, the following Midcoast and Southern Maine coastal State Parks and beaches are closed due to overcrowding until April 8: Reid State Park, Popham Beach State Park, Fort Popham, Fort Baldwin, Kettle Cove State Park, Two Lights State Park, Crescent Beach State Park, Scarborough Beach State Park, Ferry Beach State Park, and Mackworth Island. (Note that the closure could be extended depending on the spread of the potentially deadly virus.) Read Full Press Release
Where have all these folks come from? Part of the glut is due to gyms, health clubs, and yoga studios being closed. It’s understandable that when these supports in our community are not accessible, people who have been in the habit of regular indoor exercise think, “I’ll go out to public exercise areas”.
I’ve had a head start on dealing with no gym. I was a faithful gym rat for at least 30 consecutive years until I came back from my 2013 Continental Divide thru-hike. While completing one of these half year-long total immersion in nature deals is thought of as a grand mindfulness vacation where past traumas are resolved, in reality many of us have found it difficult to embrace our old ways and for some foks even those we love. For me, one session back on the treadmill was all it took for me to walk away from the YMCA and never return. It didn’t feel right to load up a bag of gear, drive 10 miles, look for a parking space, and breathe the stuffy stale inside. I was perennially plagued by fears of athlete’s foot in the shower area. Nature reeled me back.
Since September 2014 I’ve exercised outdoors, year round-on bikes or hikes. It’s been going well. I’ve also permanently dropped 15 pounds over my gym days.
After logging hundreds of hikes in Camden Hills State Park as well as many steps on the Georges Highland Path I offer a suggestion to those who are looking for ways to move your body outdoors.
From the dustcover-“What’s a microadventure? It’s close to home, cheap, simple, short, and 100% guaranteed to refresh your life. A microadventure takes the spirit of a big adventure and squeezes it into a day or even a few hours.”
I’ll lay out just one of the 38 microadventures that Humphries offers the reader: “A Journey Around Your Home”.
The microadventure takes an hour or two hours to a few days and leaves the method of transport up to you. You basically make a circular route around your home, the length only limited by the amount of time you’d like to spend out there and away from it all.
It is a brilliant idea of imposing concentric circles around my house on a paper map. Here are a couple of examples, using my own home in Lincolnville.
This features Map Adventures’ Camden Hills Maine Hiking and Biking map
Here’s the same data but from a differently scaled topo map
You need to look at your map’s scale which is usually on the bottom on the map, near the compass declination image:
Then you decide if you want a tiny microadventure or a more robust one. Humphries has done all the calculations for you and has a little chart to assist the reader, but it’s quite a simple equation for your specific map: 2πr+ 2r = circumference (the symbol is pi).
For example, for a radius 1 mile from your house, you do this: (2 x 3.14)1 + 2(1) = 8.28 miles. You scribe a circle with a radius of 2.25 inches on your map and can see close to where you would walk. In reality, you are not walking in a pure circle, but zigzagging a bit on gravel and/or paved roads, snowmobile trails, woods roads, hiking paths, and can even throw in a little bushwhacking! It works out that for every mile added to your radius, your circumference is increased by 8 miles, so a two mile radius would give you a 16.57 mile circumference , which translates to long day hike or a moderate 1-2 hour bike ride.
Give it a go. Let me know who decides to try this, please. I suspect that even with an 8 mile route encircling your place, you may go past places you’ve never seen before, or have never been to on foot.
I’m heading out on another Humphrey-inspired microadventure in 10 minutes and it involves water, lots of it. Stay tuned and consider subscribing to this blog, which is now in its 12th year.
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