Day 802: oh for sheep’s sake

Day 802:

Yesterday I didn’t mention that I chopped down a large dark oak south of my mountain entrance. I didn’t mention it because it shouldn’t have mattered.

But apparently, the leaves and branches of that oak were blocking a mountain spring I didn’t notice when I chopped down the tree, and now there’s water gushing out of this cliff face too.

I’m really starting to worry that this whole planetesimal is going to decompress like a balloon whose water has all leaked out.

Idyllic scene of a waterfall pouring out the side of a mountain.
This would be beautiful and idyllic if I didn’t have to walk over those hills every day. Now it’s just a mess.

Day 801: even more water

Day 801:

Back on the northern edge of the mountains, just north of my mountain exit, and found another pond, lake, whatever.

Seriously, I did a horrible job of scoping this area out when I was out here the first time because I really thought most of this area was dry. In fact, I thought it was a great big grass plateau and was thinking of moving sheep up here.

(Sheep have, by the way, moved themselves up here, but those aren’t my sheep.)

Now if I brought sheep up here I’d have to make a bunch of sheep swimmies for them first.

A shallow pond. Maybe six meters across. Some red flowers in the grass beyond.

Day 800: My Mountain Exit

Day 800:

Remember ages ago when I climbed all the way out into the mountains to see what I could find, and I spotted a village?

And remember how I was like “Oh I will dig that way until I hit the village?” and then I missed by a huge amount to the south, but I still dug a long distance both east and up, so I kept the entrance and planned this mess I’m in now to tame the mountains?

Well, I can honestly say I’ve tamed them to the point that I’ve found my mountain entrance, buried in the hill.

It even still has the granite “x” I placed on top so that I could spot it from the mountaintop. (That failed, by the way, because trees.)

I’m both proud of myself and somewhat disappointed. I’m proud because months ago this felt like it was so so far away from home and I finally made it. I’m disappointed because, well, it doesn’t seem like it was really all that far away anymore.

It’s well-known that even miners have trouble judging lengths and distances from underground because of the totally different types of landmarks. Can’t measure your distance by either the trees or the horizon in a place that has no trees and no horizon. But now that I have both, I sometimes wonder whether this was the big deal I thought it was.

Then again, it could be like gaining strength. When 5 kilos is heavy, it seems amazing that you can pick it up. But then you get used to 5 kilos and 10 kilos seems heavy… etc. etc. until eventually you wonder at the fact that 5 kilos was ever a problem.

Anyway, reaching this location, whether underground or overground, is no longer a problem. I should put down the rest of the brick path though.

A flat roofed building with a granite top peeks out of a mountainside. It is almost totally buried, and surrounded by trees.

Day 799: speaking of springs

Day 799:

Remember yesterday when I said I didn’t like digging into the side of a mountain and finding a spring because I don’t particularly love being soaked in water?

Yeah, about that.

Up by the northern river thing, I dug into the side of a cliff and a pond broke out. An underground pond that I obviously didn’t know was there, but whose water table was definitely higher than the river’s.

So now there’s a seemingly-unlimited waterfall of pond water pouring down my beautifully manicured hill into the river.

And that means I’ll be doing a lot of sandbagging and patching and wading through water the next few days.

I wish I could find a wetsuit tree growing wetsuits out here somewhere so I could keep warm in the water.

At the top of a gently sloping hill. Water is pouring out of the cliffside to the right in a huge torrent, toward the river to the left.

Day 798: hot rock

Day 798:

One of the crazy parts of this Swiss-cheese planetesimal is that any given time I can dig into what seems like a perfectly solid chunk of wall and discover that there’s a sinkhole or ravine or cave on the other side. Today I dug into the side of a mountain and discovered an open pit with hot-and-cold running liquids. (In this case, a water spring on one side and a lava spring on the other.)

The spring will be annoying because I don’t like being soaked in cold water.

The lava spring will kill me if I don’t do something about it.

So add those to the to-do list I would keep if I didn’t value my handmade paper too much.

Looking into a hole in a cliffside, there's a lava spring at the back of the hole.