April 10, 2007

• You Ask, I Answer

  Orlando and butshebites both asked me what a muskeg is.  It is subarctic wetland, but a few pictures are worth gazillions of words.

  
  Muskeg in a dry year, May, 2003.

  
  Muskeg in Alaska under smoky haze from forest fires in Siberia, May, 2003

  
  Muskeg
  in late breakup (late April, 2005), flooded from heavy spring runoff.

  
  Flooded muskeg during thaw, with thin ice crust after nightly freeze -late April, 2005.

  
  Flooded
  muskeg, late April, 2005, mid-day, after ice crust from nightly freeze
  has melted.

  
  Ground-level
  perspective, muskeg’s edge just after last spring frost, mid-May,
  2005.

  
  Flooded
  muskeg during wet spring, late May, 2005.

  
  Muskeg,
  June, 2005, with swamp grass just beginning to show above
  surface.

  
  Wet
  muskeg, mid-July, 2005.

  
  Winter muskeg at sunrise, February
  2006.

  
  Muskeg between freeze-up and
  snowfall, Autumn, 2006.

  
  Muskeg after first snow, Autumn,
  2006.

  I love my muskeg!

  I’m answering this new subscriber’s question here, because it seems to proceed from and fit into the recent series of strange, weird, paranormal and metaphysical topics.

  Posted 4/8/2007 3:43 PM by FortheloveofEnglish:

  Seeing as I have only read this entry, I may be barking up the wrong
  tree, or perhaps I am being too forward or impolite.  Nevertheless, I
  have a story I want to tell you because it appears you may know a bit
  more about it than I do.  This story is true.  It happened to my
  girlfriend (now my fiancee) and I in the summer of 06.  The setting is
  rural, southeastern Kentucky.  Neither she nor I are from the area, but
  our college being there, we knew the area pretty well.  I was working
  at the college that summer as a resident assistant, she was down for
  the weekend, and we wanted to take a little alcohol and go camping.  I
  give a lot of credit to how I “feel” about various things.  If I feel a
  “bad vibe” about something, I usually will steer clear of it.  I had a
  bad vibe about going camping, but I could tell she wanted to go.  I
  acted like I felt great about it, we got some alcohol, and headed out
  to a trail we both know called Dogslaughter.  While en route, we
  stopped to get some gas at a dinky little gas station.  I tried to pay
  with a cheque, and it took about fifteen minutes for the thing to go
  through.  It finally went though, however, and I pumped the gas while
  they turned the lights out on us.  By this time I was feeling like shit
  about the whole thing.  I kept wanting to say, “Let’s just go back.” 
  Like I said, I heed my feelings on stuff like this, and nine times out
  of ten, my feelings are right.  We kept on driving.  Upon reaching the
  illustrious Dogslaughter trail, we saw, much to our dismay, that there
  was another vehicle already there.  We had been hoping to set up camp
  at the first little clearing along the trail because it was late and we
  didn’t feel like walking the mile or two to the next good place to
  camp.  Hoping the occupants of the other vehicle were not at the first
  spot, we got out and proceeded down the trail.  We saw their stuff all
  set up, but it appeared that they were not present at the campsite. 
  This was the critical moment.  I looked at her.  She looked at me.  We
  were carrying all of our stuff in the most awkward manner possible.  We
  had a long walk to the next spot.  It was then that I said, “let’s keep
  going.”  So there we were, in the wilderness of southeastern Kentucky,
  just the two of us, carrying all of our stuff, one mile to go to our
  goal camping spot.  We proceed down this shitty trail that runs
  alongside a creek that runs to a waterfall named Dogslaughter Falls. 
  About half way there, we saw two flashlights coming our way.  My
  stomach immediately tensed up.  Would it be two huge killers/rapists? 
  What should we do?  As the approached, I called out, “Hello.”  This is
  where things get crazy.  The two flashlights continue their approach. 
  The first one gets alongside us on this narrow trail, and it is a huge,
  hairy, beat of a man that has the most evil/crazy look on his face that
  I have ever seen.  My stomach was not in my mouth.  I seriously thought
  the other person would be of the same type and proceed to kill me and
  rape my girlfriend.  The second flashlight was carried by a woman.  I
  was relieved at first, but then I felt  myself hit by something like a
  physical force that can only be described as evil.  The woman was
  wearing a flowing dark dress…in the deep woods.  This was no tourists
  trail.  This was a hard core beast of a trail that no one should be
  wearing a dress on.  They passed us.  My girlfriend was clinging to my
  clothes in a terrified manner.  I was in survival mode, and at first,
  it did not hit me that there may be something “supernatural”
  happening.  I was soon awoken to this possibility.  We had to make a
  choice.  They people were heading towards the head of the trail, where
  their camp and our vehicle were.  There was no way I was going to
  proceed down the trail and attempt to go to sleep, wondering the whole
  time whether we would be murdered in the night.  Furthermore, it would
  be foolish to try to continue down the trail and exit out the other
  side.  This trail was over fifteen miles or brutal climbs and
  plumets…and it was very dark.  We stood there pondering what to do in
  a more or less terrified state.  It then proceeded to rain on us.  When
  I say “rain on us,” I literally mean it did not rain on anything else. 
  It began to do this, and I finally said, “let’s go back.”  It
  immediately stopped raining on us.  There was neither a cloud in the
  sky nor a drop of rain anywhere else.  My girlfriend, in her terrified
  state, wanted to proceed down the trail to its end, fifteen miles
  away.  I said that we would go back the way we came.  We crept down the
  trail toward our vehicle, and we caught up with the two people who
  passed us because the woman was making slow progress as a result of her
  dress.  It was at this time that I honestly felt that we were going to
  die.  We stayed just within sight of them…just where we could see
  what they were doing, yet still make our way toward the car.  They did
  not turn around and attack us.  They continued back to their camp, we
  made it  past, ran to our vehicle, and got the hell out of there.  I’m
  not saying it was a “witch” but… I have never felt/experienced
  anything like that.  What do you think?

  I don’t know your definition of “witch” but from what you wrote here I suppose that one or both of those people might have been some sort of witch.  However, that does not imply that either of them was “evil”.  I sensed no “evil” in what they did, nor could I infer from what you wrote that they had any evil intentions, or that they caused you any harm.  Long before you reached that park, you had primed yourself for a terrifying experience, by setting up the expectation.

  I think you happened upon a couple of campers who didn’t want you around, who preferred to have the place to themselves just as you and your girlfriend would have preferred that.  As to the rest of what happened, it is open to interpretation.

  The rain might have been a natural phenomenon.  It is not unusual for rain to fall in one area and not on adjacent ground.  I have stood in my yard and watched part of it get drenched while the rest stayed dry.  It is possible that there were clouds that you did not see there in the dark.

  I know people with psychokinetic abilities who can manipulate clouds, make holes in them, move them around, clear small areas, or draw precipitation from clouds, but I have never seen anyone produce rain without first producing clouds.  Since you say there were no clouds for them to have manipulated, they might have been manipulating your minds, instead. 

  Alcohol would make you easier to manipulate, and would also tend to make you more unwelcome around sensitive people.  Another factor that would have made them want you out of there was your fear and the anger and frustration you carried from the gas station incident.  You had to have been projecting your fear pretty strongly.

  Alcohol is a central nervous system depressant.  At some stages of
  intoxication it destroys one’s higher reasoning powers and emphasizes
  baser instincts and emotions.  The reputation alcohol has for making people courageous is undeserved.  In actuality, it tends to make them slow and dim-witted, uncoordinated, ill-tempered, irritable, aggressive, abusive, garrulous, and with an exaggerated sense of their own wit, until the drunk becomes sleepy and passes out.

  Your words above express every level of fear from mild anxiety to stark terror.  I would be uneasy in your presence under those circumstances, and I would be trying to put distance between us.  I’m a relatively tolerant and considerate person, but others are not so.  If it was a situation where someone didn’t want to leave, he or she might try to impel you to leave.  It is quite energy intensive to do something like that by rainmaking, so one might try to play on your fear and scare you away.

  I was struck by your focusing on the woman’s skirt and your judgment that it was inappropriate.  Up to a hundred years or so ago, women wore skirts everywhere.  If a woman climbed a mountain, she went in a skirt.  Even now there are some subcultures where women do not wear trousers, usually for religious reasons.  I’m just not clear on why that detail was so important to you.  It strikes me as irrelevant.

  Another thing that struck me about what you have written is the number of internal contradictions, some of which I have highlighted in red.  You would have no way to know this about me, but in my professional capacity, I do not make predictions.  However, I will go out on a limb and predict that if you continue to act counter to your feelings and express things you do not feel, that the relationship with your fiancee will either disintegrate or turn very unhappy.  Healthy relationships require trust and trust requires honesty.

  Oh… and, for the love of English, please learn to write in paragraphs.

  

  • 6:06 pm
  • 8 Comments