Saturday, September 6

Sunday, September 6
Sitting in the dark on the cabin porch at Sand River, a really nice place to be. Spent the day playing on the river and now I’m watching lightning and listening to thunder. And listening to frogs. They’re liking this rain. And listening to coyotes. Not so sure they’re liking the thunder and lightning.

I came up to the UP to remove some bat monitors from the Hiawatha National Forest. Between teaching and a symposium next week, this is the only time I could get up here. So I threw in an extra day or two to play a bit.

Mating spread-winged damselflies. Not sure of the species without field guides.

Spread-winged damsel eating what I believe is another spread-wing species.

Green frog. Because frogs are almost as cool as dragonflies.

I tried a little food experiment today. My brother and I are planning a backpacking trip for next June. Been a long time since I’ve done any self sufficient hiking. I had an old dehydrated backpacking meal laying around. Noodles and vegetables with Parmesan according to the package. I bought this thing sometime before Molly was born. Maybe quite a while before Molly was born. Reagan may have been in office. So it was a good quarter century old. Not sure what the half life of a dehydrated backpacking meal is but I think this is pretty close. Adding to the fun it was made with wheat noodles which I’ve quit eating. When I eat wheat now there can be some pretty dire digestive consequences. At least up here there are fewer people to be harmed.

Mostly I was interested in finding out if a two serving dehydrated meal fed two people. Well, it doesn’t, at least not two hungry people. So that part of the experiment was successful. I don’t know if my tastes have changed, or the age of the meal was a factor, but I really don’t remember these things being that nasty. I cooked it a long time and the noodles never softened up much. The vegetables didn’t fare much better. Eating this thing would be better than starving, but I’m not sure how much better. You would be better off throwing it in a lake and waiting for the dead fish to float up. So now I’m waiting for the wheat effects to kick in and hoping the next thunderstorm can mask the consequences. Probably get the coyotes howling again.