The Blog
18/01/2023
I don't usually write my thoughts down in anything much less in blogs, but it felt obligatory to have one, so here it is. Remains to be seen if I'll use it.
I suppose you start one of these by saying what you've been up to. I've been planning for a trip to OHKN later this year. Arrangements probably won't be finalised for a while but I think progress right now is good.
Went on a bushwalk up to the dam, it was really nice. It used to be a water source for the region up until the 50s, and it has this cool, smooth waterfall that streams down through the rest of the bush. You can see the piping and stuff poking out from under the soil along the track. There's this one spot that's a dropoff to some boulders. They were probably carved out and dumped there by people when they were building the track.
There were swing bridges and I saw a couple fantails! They were a little different from normal ones, more brown around the head, but really cute when they chirped, like, 'beep beep'. Kinda like a goldfinch but more woodcock-y and less melodic. They were probably babies.
The top of it was beautiful. It's basically this smooth, flat lake that has a gentle flow down the waterfall. I took some photos. There were ducks living there! Just normal mallards and grey hybrids. The mountains behind contrast the flatness of the lake and make this vista. You can see the atmosphere occluding the further mountains more than the nearer ones too. And the lake was glittering like diamonds, it's cliche but it really is like that, it's from these pinpricks on the crests that act like the borders of the facets.
The day before that I fed the ducks. I got one of them to eat from my hand and it stepped on my foot so I felt it; their bills are rather tough and clacky, their bodies are firm but soft, and their feet are soft. They are so cute. One of them has a hurt wing, I noticed it a couple weeks ago but it seems to be doing ok. The only predators around are housecats and there's a ton of canadian geese also living in the area, so cats probably wouldn't bother with the ducks.
That's a pretty good blog I think! Sometimes I think writing things down makes them easier to recall, but harder to remember. Like if I put the sentiments down I'll only know them second-hand. That's the logic of why people vent, to get the feelings out. But people who vent a lot are usually angry again quickly so maybe it's just endogenous. Hurf hurf.
Or to be one of those people who does things explicitly to write about them in blogs. In some ways sounds like good motivation but I think talking about things detracts from them a bit. Sometimes things are presents, and it's for you, and you can only give them on to a person who's actually standing there. But even then what they'll see will be different things from you. Going out and about while thinking about an audience sounds really terrible. There's really only one person I'd like to think of that way.