kirabug's idea files

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.

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.

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.

Day 797:

Still doing a lot of work outside during the day, and a lot of work in the caves at night. I should probably sleep more, but

1. even after two plus years I haven’t figured out how to adjust my sleep schedule to meet this planet’s extremely fast days and
2. I’m pretty sure i have some kind of anxiety problem because there are a lot of times I try to lay down to sleep and it just doesn’t happen.

Now, that could be because I’m sleeping on a bed I made myself out of ducken feathers and ducken skin leather. It could be because the temperature’s always too hot or too cold or too dry or too damp when you sleep in a cave that’s heated with a coal stove. Or it could be because I don’t have any open windows ever because of the monsters, so the air can get pretty stale.

Fortunately it’s still beautiful outside, not much rain lately, so even when I feel exhausted, being outside doing things is beautiful and relaxing. Well, when nothing’s trying to kill you, anyway, which admittedly only really happens from sunset to sunrise as long as I stay out of the woods.

Here’s a fun picture I took today. I think one of the land squid that carry around blocks of sod  — for fun? because they eat it? because they like redecorating? — stuck one on top of a tree.

Day 796:

Went back out to work on taking down the mountains today. I feel like I’m really making progress, although it makes the environment look really wonky right now. The cliffs were steep before, but now they’re sheer, until you reach the base where they slope gently to the river. Which, I mean, I’m trying to slope them gently to the river, but in the meantime it can be pretty nerve-wracking being at the top of those cliffs.

Speaking of nerve-wracking, that horse I spotted yesterday is going to give me a heart attack. It’s too skittish to go near me, but has zero fear about climbing right to the edge of the tallest cliffs. I’m sure any minute I’m going to hear a horrible noise and find splattered horse all over the base of the mountains.