A World Without Dragons

Aspiring world traveller. Scribbler of words and pictures. Freelance sidekick. Here are tales of home and journeys and far off lands, with many Wondrous Things both small and large.

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03.24.2018 Baden Powell Trail, North Vancouver. Pictures from my phone are no good for the Pacific Northwest; everything was darker and greener, the brightness turned down and the saturation turned up. It rained and at one point it snowed. I lost the trail, found it, lost it again and was aided by some friendly mountain bikers. I ended in a different place than I started. A perfect hike.

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Westerly, Rhode Island - 2017.07.04 Fourth of July at the seaside.

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West Highland Way 7.1

2nd June 2017 Glasgow Scotland isn't generally discussed as a foodie destination, but I'm going to talk about the food now. We ate shortbread, of course, buttery and crumbling, a good trail snack; and flapjacks were likewise delicious and compact and saw the insides of our pockets frequently. These were British flapjacks, of course, not pancakes but seeds and nuts and oats and dried fruits saturated in syrup and compressed into an oblong shape, rather like a granola bar. Oat cakes and cheese paired well on the trail, the oat cakes a little bland but with a good toothy texture and the cheese making up the flavor. There were also bacon rolls and sausage rolls; the bacon here is thick, chewy strips, more like breakfast ham or Canadian bacon than the crispy little rashers you get in American diners. Meat pies of all sorts also featured: steak and ale, venison and red wine, steak and haggis, chicken and brie. The crusts varied from flakey puff pastry that scattered with a breath to thicker, chewier stuff mainly held together by butter. We had to try haggis, of course. Controversial opinion: haggis is delicious, especially when served with a helping of mashed potatoes and mashed turnips - or neeps, as the local menus will say. It's a little nutty, savoury-spiced, and the texture is smoother than a classic mince, almost pudding-like on the tongue. Speaking of which, also tried black pudding, and found the sweetness a good complement to the venison burger it was served on. It is just coming on to berry season, so we had crumbles featuring raspberries and blackberries and oats and fresh cream several times, and sometimes hot custard. Nate tried the Guinness at almost every bar we encountered, but my drink of choice was tea, and tea was ubiquitous: strong black tea, always served in a pot, with a jug of milk and a bowl of sugar. I may have had more than I do on a typical work week, and that's a high bar, but it was so accessible. Our last day in Glasgow we breakfasted in the Willow Tea Rooms, sitting in high-backed art deco chairs and taking our tea out of tall teapots, and we had scones fresh out of the oven with jam and clotted cream, and there is not a better way I could have ended this vacation.

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West Highland Way 7.0 1st June 2017 On the first day of June, we finished our walk, a final fifteen miles through persistent drizzle. We crossed the Lairigmor, a mountain pass, and descended through clear cut forest to Glen Nevis before continuing on to Fort William, singing travel songs.

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West Highland Way 6.0 31st May 2017 Kingshouse to Kinlochleven up the Devil's Staircase and through the mountain pass.

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West Highland Way 5.0 30th May 2017 The highlands do not look like this. The colors are more unreal, the mountains are bigger, the yellow gorse and small streams more startling. Nathan and I did twenty miles today, from Tyndrum to Kingshouse. We almost cut out this part of the walk due to trouble finding accommodations, but it turned out to be my favorite stretch so far, along an old drove road so far out in the wilderness I couldn't hear cars, couldn't see power lines, and could spin around and view miles of heath without a sign of human presence except the road itself. Nothing had to be edited out. There were also tiny birds, tiny flowers, and tiny lochs, and for the true Scotland experience, we were sporadically rained on.

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West Highland Way 4.0

Through primrose pastures and moss shrouded pine forests, to the Loch of the Lost Sword and onward to Tyndrum. Loch Lomond is a distant memory. Tomorrow onwards to the highlands.

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West Highland Way 3.0 28th May 2017 Waterfalls and greenery along the shores of Loch Lomond. This is not the moor and heath of Scotland imagined but a dense wet sunlit forest.

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West Highland Way 2.0 27 May 2017 Pasture, moor, mountain, lake: the many environments we trekked through today. No pictures of the rather unpleasant rainstorm that caught us towards the end, nor of me recounting the story of The Hobbit, with songs, from memory, over the course of several hours.

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West Highland Way 1.0 26th May 2017 Roads we walked and friends we met along the Way.

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West Highland Way 0.1 I was wrong to complain. Being stranded in an airport hotel was a gift. We found a magnificent park and wandered it for hours. Wildlife abounded and the willow seeds piled on the ground like warm snowdrifts. Have some photos of flowers & scenery I found there.

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West Highland Way 0.0

25th May, 2017

There were supposed to be three of us on the trip, but, a week out, Julia’s advisor moved her thesis defense up by a month; so she is back in Boston, cramming, and it was only Nate and I stuck in Heathrow after missing our connection to Glasgow.

It wasn’t anyone’s fault, really. The plane arrived in Boston late and left Boston late, and we were still filling out our landing cards at border security when the plane left. That didn’t stop me from being directionlessly pissed off. But as Nate pointed out, at least we made it out of the states, which is more than Kat can say - she made it all the way to Logan before an expired passport stopped her from continuing. Nate and I are just another kink in a long string of our friends not quite getting to Scotland, and the closest to success so far.

We put up in an airport hotel, paid for by the airline for inadequate recompense, and talked about going into London, but we’re too tired for the tube: I came out here to get away from all the city’s crowd-claustrophobia. We have tickets for a flight tomorrow morning, not too late, still in time to start the way.

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Amtrak Lake Shore Limited - 2016.08.26

In my humble opinion, the experience of being on a train is far superior to the experience of being on a bus. Other limiting factors usually cause me to take buses: availability, price, convenience. But this weekend I got to take a train between Boston and Albany.

I love the scenery in New England / upstate New York. The sepia rivers like brewed tea, the mixed wood forests, the occasional burst of wildflower color, and at this time of year, green, green, green. Unfortunately, my phone camera doesn’t take great pictures from the window of a moving train...

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Inktober 2015 Round-up: Critters

I did Inktober last year, with my trusty fountain pen and a small book from @evilsupplyco . I started late and logged poorly, so I can’t say for sure if I completed the challenge, but I’d like to belatedly share some of my pictures, starting with a magnificent cat, a horse with a flower wreath, and an owl gryphon.

The particular pen-in-hand brown-ink animals-and-plants illustration was very appealing to my secret mori girl sensibilities, which I usually don’t admit to because I’m too busy trying to convince people I’m goth.

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2016.08.13 - Providence - Foo Fest

Hello again, blog! Since I’m temporarily disjoint from the nine-to-five grind, I’ve resolved to go on at least one story-worthy adventure a week and shout into the void about it. And so I now present: a tale of rainstorms and wristbands.

At nine forty, I show up at the Foo Fest info booth to check in. It’s warm, dark, and crowded; Arc Iris is playing on the main stage, in glittering lamé and their name in lights. It’s the first time I’ve volunteered at a music festival.

The volunteer coordinator, whom I met briefly on Monday at orientation, smiles and gives me a yellow Foo Fest Volunteer patch. I’m doing bracelets on the Westminster Gate, on the other side of the festival.

I push through a crowd of hipsters and college students and artists. There is some fantastic hair at the festival today: mohawks, undercuts, beautiful dye jobs. The tattoos are, likewise, many and varied, everything from flowers and bees to abstract cyberpunk patterns. I feel underdressed in a porkpie hat and an Evil League of Evil t-shirt, a little self-conscious, as always, about being so tall and stark. The street isn’t very long, though, and soon I make it to the gate.

The girl I’m relieving is coming off an eleven-hour shift. Mine is supposed to last for three, from ten pm until one am, and I was worried about my ability to get through even that since I’m not much of a night-owl. But the position seems chill, at least by 10pm. This is the back gate. People are entering in trickles. We have a tent, lights, and chairs.

There are three others at the tent. We have a bouncer, someone to take money, and someone to check IDs. On the table is a box with two different kinds of bracelets: yellow over-21 bands and red with a penguin print, both that durable paper-plastic hybrid, with one sticky end, that are ubiquitous in concerts, hospitals, and amusement parks.

The first person who comes through pays ten dollars and shows her ID, and then gets banded… by the ID-checker. I am momentarily horrified. Am I completely superfluous? I reach into the box, grab a bracelet, peel off the plastic at the end to expose the adhesive. I’ll be ready for the next one. But once again, the person before me is too fast. I smile awkwardly at the passing festival goer and perch anxiously on the edge of my chair.

Finally, the IDer looks at me and asks, “Do you want to get this one?”

Of course I do. I have ONE JOB.

The rest of the next-shift relief shows up, replacing the original two ladies with two gentlemen. I need to be quicker on the draw. Right there with the bracelets. Ready to pounce as soon as IDs are checked. I still lose a few, the dude checking IDs putting wristbands on them before I can, but, especially when groups of two or more people come through, I seem to be providing utility.

Once, I don’t fasten a bracelet tightly enough around the wrist of someone with even smaller bones than my own. She turns around to tell me it’s going to slide off in two seconds. I’m mortified as I replace it with a tighter one.

The bouncer, who, it transpires, has years of experience working security in venues all over Providence, takes pity on me. He explains how to hold a stack of bracelets in one hand so they don’t fly off in the wind and how to keep one finger between bracelet and wrist when I fasten them, so that they’re tight enough to stay on most hands but loose enough not to catch people’s arm hair.

I listen to the other two people on shift with me as they converse with other volunteers and visitors. Eventually I ask a few questions of my own. The man checking IDs is an AS220 production manager, in charge of scheduling and booking the black box theater and adjacent venues. He hooked the relatively cushy position of ID checker by dint of being TIPS certified - that is, trained for working in venues that serve alcohol. Among other things, they teach you how to spot a fake ID, although there is more to the course than that. It’s required for many bartenders and liquor store clerks.

The guy taking money, who has a smiley-face-emoticon Snitch on his shirt and sunglasses, wears a blue-banded bracelet, which means he’s a performer as well as a volunteer. He’s a member of the band Harry and the Potters. I missed their act, but apparently they’re big names in the wizarding world. We talk briefly about Quidditch, but between taking money for new arrivals, he’s busy trying to catch a squirtle.

Time passes. We fasten bracelets. The day’s heat bleeds off into the night, and a breeze picks up; I put on my coat. I’m an expert bracelet fastener now. Some people fail to show ID or don’t want to drink, so I assure them they’re getting the better bracelet as I fasten on the red penguin wrist band. A family that looks like two parents and a grown son buy tickets; our ID checker asks the parents if they’re going to drink, and as they hesitate, parsing our English, the son says, “they’re going to drink,” very firmly. We all laugh as I give them yellow bracelets.

At one point, a girl tries to show me her ID and I point her to my TIPS-certified fellow. “Show it to him,” I say. “I wouldn’t know a fake ID if it tapdanced on the end of my nose.”

“That would be a hint,” she responds. “Real IDs don’t usually tapdance.”

At about a quarter past twelve, it begins to rain.

The first drops are gentle, but the air has been heavy all night. We know what’s coming. Within minutes, the skies have opened. It’s not raining, it’s pouring. It’s coming down in sheets. This is apocalyptic rain.

The concert, Dan Deacon now, is still going. From behind the stage it’s just a vague ambient noise, but now it’s punctuated by thunder. Soaked festival-goers come running over, and we welcome them to share in the shelter of our tent. We pull the tables into the middle to make more room. Other volunteers join us as well. A pair of soused girls ask to take cover here while they wait for their Uber, and then ask what the address is. We’re at the intersection of Westminster and Empire. Our musician finds it on the map on one girl’s phone while the other tells me how a nice man handed her a poncho. “It was like he was a poncho faerie,” she says, petting the thin blue plastic, which is wrapped around her purse.

A poncho fairy of our own shows up, handing out yellow ponchos to the volunteers. The food trucks begin to leave, heading off into the drenched night. The concert ends. The festival-goers depart. “We’re going to run home,” one pair tells us, and we wish them luck.

By twelve thirty, the rain has slowed. We pack up the program booklets into boxes and heavy duty trash bags, discarding the drenched ones. I insist on dragging the largest trash bag. I’m not quite strong enough, but I stumble along stubbornly and ultimately make it.

We’re done - a little early, but close enough. I contemplate staying to help break down, but I’m spending the night with a friend and I don’t want to keep him awake any longer than I already have. The shift leader sends me off. I head to the front to tell the volunteer coordinator we shut down the Westminster Gate.

“Great!” she says, and gives me a volunteer pass to the next month of AS220 events.

“I only worked one shift,” I am compelled by honesty to say - and technically less than one shift, at that. The pass is the coveted award for two-shift volunteers. One shift was to be incentivized with a ticket for a free drink, although since I’m not crazy about beer, I hadn’t been sure what I was going to do with it.

“We’re out of drink tickets,” she says.

Sweet.

By the time I leave, the rain has stopped completely. I walk away up Broadway, heading to my friend’s house, singing along to my headphones in the damp and quiet night.

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Hammond Pond Park, Brookline, MA - 2016.06.30 A little late, but I went on a tiny adventure to Hammond Pond Park some days back; it's in Oak Hills, in the greater Boston area, where only the green line of the subway system runs. I took this picture from the parking lot behind a shopping center before I figured out how to get in to the wood. The park was too small to get completely away from highway sounds, but there were trees and rocks to climb on.

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Quechee, VT - 2016.07.02

A tiny adventure in Quechee Gorge feat. my older brother.