Beginning of Fall

I'm calling this one done.  It's pictured with an explanation in the August 2012 post but I thought I'd go higher with it, above the branches at least.  But when I returned in late September many of the rocks at the top had fallen.  So now they're back up there, but if you visit it's probably a good idea to stay back at least ten feet judging from where some of them landed.

Beginning of Fall

Here's a high tech post, I've somehow managed to put up video of the final inspection. 

Beginning of Fall

Over Labor Day Weekend I took care of two ambitions I had for the summer.  One was to spend a night in the lean-to on the section of the Finger Lakes Trail that Gail and I maintain with our neighbor.  Despite living within a few miles of it for 15 years and taking care of the trail for several, I'd never camped there.  I also wanted to create something with a rock pile along the trail.  Way back in 2003 I made my first cairn about a quarter-mile from here and it's since been labeled the "Unusual Rock Pile" in the Cayuga Trails Club guidebook.  For this one I decided on another thing that Andy Goldsworthy had done and went ahead with another cheap knock-off.  Originally it was just going to encase this nearly horizontal tree, but then I decided to extend it and ring the clump of red maples.  When I returned this weekend with friends Connie and Andy, Connie suggested a slight change to make it look like a dragon or serpent (I can never keep the two straight).  It's still got some work to go.

Beginning of Fall

Connie wanted to green things up a bit so started finding moss-covered rocks.  Her other idea of adding spikes down the spine didn't work so well but Andy figured we could use glacial erratics for the same effect.

Beginning of Fall

More perspectives.  Ultimately, it will rise back up before getting to the tree and then drop down to a low point again.  Or the design might change again.

Beginning of Fall

Here's how it looked after the initial work and before Connie made the suggestion to turn it into a serpent, I mean dragon.

End of Summer

Since Gail had her hip replaced last spring, we didn't do a big bike trip this summer, in fact, what we ended up doing was a 12-mile trip to Trumansburg and back with an overnight at Alan and Marylin Vogel's house (see previous Crossing the Finger Lakes post). Let's be clear, 24 hours in Trumansburg can be pretty amazing, and we didn't even make it to Taughannock Falls. We did make it to the Farmer's Market where I saw the office/kids store I'd worked on earlier in the summer at GrassRoots set-up, we went to Cori, Andy, Orion and Ozzie's house, I played golf for the first time in a few years (consistently boggied most holes with one par). But two of the amazing highlights were the stops at the shops of John Gurche and Bob Potts. Richie Stearns tagged along to John's as he and Alan needed to inspect the engine on a van, but we all took in the tour of his shop and saw his current projects.  I'm not sure The Smithsonian or National Geographic (both of whom John has done projects for) know there's a drum set in his shop or that it's just a garage, I guess it's the quality of the work that counts.  In the picture John is holding on Gail's shoulder the cast of a skull from a body he's recreating. The bones were found in South Africa and are older than Lucy, but more recent than Astralopithecus, I can't even begin to explain the complexities in the painting. Bob Potts was kind enough to show us some of his kinetic sculptures, like this one that's in progress which will be a "fish" that looks as though it's swimming.

End of Summer

Later in the day we drove past Richie's caboose and stopped in to say hi and inspect the progress there. I had gone last spring to help do a little work (ditch digging and ditch filling) so it was nice to see the updates and that it's pretty livable. He'd just taken delivery of a new banjo from Johannes Bonefaas and I got a chance to try it out, after a tuning demonstration shown here.