kirabug's idea files

Day 136:

I’ve been harvesting sand all day. I melt it down in my furnace to make a weak but functional glass, so that I can see out and get some light into some of the areas where I work. The intertidal zones around what I’m assuming is an ocean are  mostly sand and the occasional blob of clay.

Here’s an oddity: I haven’t had to filter the sand. There are no animals, no bugs, no crabs, no beetles, no mussels… the sand here is empty. Sterile.

There should be bugs here.

There are no mosquitos. No ants. No bugs of any time. The animals all eat plants.

There should be bugs.

Day 135:

A hundred and thirty five days.

I’m covered in mud and ducken feces. I’ve lost a lot of weight. I’m bruised most of the time. But I’m healthy.

I’m lonely. This notebook is the only “person” I have to talk to. The cows are nice, I mean, Bessie loves me as much as a non-earth cow probably could. But it’s not the same as people. It’s certainly not the same as people who speak your language.

I want to go home.

Sometimes I have to say that out loud, or it feels like I’ll forget it altogether.

Day 134:

Trying to shore up the landscaping here, I’m doing my best not to have too much of an impact on the environment. Part of that is replanting trees when I harvest some. There are enough seeds that I generally don’t have too much of a problem accomplishing this, in fact I have more problems because I’m overplanting than that I’m stripping the plants.

It helps that the trees sprout and grow to full size in 3 days. Even on the rainiest of days we don’t get enough soil erosion that the environment changes irrevocably from the deforestation before the trees go back.

I’m pretty sure that environmentalists on Earth would be jealous.

Day 133:

There are a couple different kinds of trees here. There are huge thick trees that produce a wood the color of a dark oak or mahogany. There are thinner trees that definitely represent oaks. And now today, there are white-barked trees that remind me of birches back home.

None of the leaves for any of these trees are anything like on Earth. They’re mossy  and much more fractal in every direction, like a bush with a skin condition.

But they make good firewood and they make decent handles for tools, so I’m happy with them.

Day 132:

Digging holes, collecting rocks, still puzzling about my cliff.