Trucks, SUVs, and tinted windows make life miserable. Today’s example: parking lots. Pulling out of your space you can’t see people walking because your vision is blocked by trucks and SUVs.
When I was young, most people drove smaller, lower cars with clear windows, so you could see through and by the cars around you and know where pedestrians were. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN7mSXMruEo
For #ThickTrunkTuesday, here is a large Sitka Spruce tree I found on my backpacking trip this last weekend. The tree is in front of a battery at Fort Stevens State Park, which was built near the end of the Civil War.
Mood photo from today and our walk along Saltburn (Yorkshire) beach to Marske and back. Bracing for 2nd May but great for creating an appetite for Britain's gift to the world - fish & chips.
Long shoreline survey today round the belly of a big crescent bay. The wind swung to the north same time as yesterday like clockwork, still quite cold. A great nest at the halfway point, eagles circling. Tired legs.
Today I walked a round trip of 13km: up Shotover hill, down into Wheatley for a coffee, up past Wheatley windmill and down into Horspath. I peeked though the windows of the primary school that I last attended a third of a dang century ago, and went back up and over Shotover country park. It was a fantastic hike, made even better by the wood absolutely bursting with bluebells! #Headington#Oxford#Shotover#Wheatley#Horspath#hiking#walking#bluebells#woods#nature#forest
Homeward-bound from #occitanie#France. Very sad to be leaving - have had a fantastic two weeks of #walking orchid spotting, bird watching & just enjoying the outdoors & nature generally (oh & wine 🍷 drinking!). Have also met & spent time with some wonderful people - friends for life.
The adventure is not quite over though…all aboard the #NightTrain. #LowCarbonTravel
Last night when I arrived, I pitched my tent at the hiker biker camp at Fort Stevens and then headed out for a sunset beach hike. Checked out the Peter Iredale shipwreck and hiked a few miles on the beach. Sunset was beautiful. Currently headed toward Seaside, Oregon on the beach.
You did ask for stone circles in my next blog, so I have focused on The Hurlers, a triple set of stone circles on Bodmin Moor, Cornwall.
However, I do venture to a pre-iron age enclosure, a long barrow, a site where a giant and a saint had a stone throwing contest, and the cave of an 18th century mountain philosopher.
For #WaterfallWednesday, here is a night mode and daytime photo of Fairy Falls along the Wahkeena Falls Trail. I took these photos on Saturday morning while hiking in the Columbia River Gorge. I love how the water looks blue in the dark.
I posted a version of the post below last year, shortly after I started on Mastodon. At the time I had maybe a couple of hundred followers. Now that I have more than that, I’d like people to see this who haven’t seen it before…
🚶 🚲 🚋 🚶 🚲 🚋 🚶 🚲 🚋 🚶
If the United States had made walkable and bike-friendly cities a priority beginning in the 1950s or 1960s, or even in the 1970s, and had used federal funding to heavily boost low-cost mass transit rather than spending 💵 billions 💵 on the interstate freeway system, then we could have had a much better world today. CO2 in the atmosphere might still be under 350 ppm instead of at 420 and climbing, and we would have a realistic chance of keeping climate change under control.
Of course, that would mean that the auto industry and the oil industry and the paving industry and the suburban building industry would not have made billions (trillions?) of dollars in profits for their owners, so who am I kidding... The capitalists always win.
Now, it's too late to make a meaningful difference in avoiding a dreadful future. Of course we'll still get lip service from politicians and their pet journalists about the great strides we're making in this direction, but at this point that's mostly just #greenwashing.
We seem to be getting a break from the rain so I’m full stream ahead preparing for my first backpacking trip of the year this weekend. The plan is to section hike part of the Oregon Coast Trail. So excited!
Photo is a view of the Pacific Ocean from Cape Meares, taken in August 2022.
Yet as @DrTCombs shows in this video, many road crossings are designed to make pedestrians wait at least that long before getting a walk signal.
This video shows one such crossing in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, but there are many more intersections like this across North America, Australia, and New Zealand.
Starting a new thread of my significant walks and hikes in 2023 (because posting to the thread started with my previous Mastodon account excludes content from my profile). 📓 👇
The variety of wildflowers is just amazing. So is wildlife, even if I have seen that kind before. These pics are from a neighborhood walk in the last 7-10 days.