Commenting on my redhead entry, daughternaught said, "It is interesting to me how many of the people on your list are also on
the lists of famous people with autistic traits.  Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Vincent van Gogh, Woody Allen..."  She provided a link to a list, and many of those listed there are redheads that I had left off my list because it was too long as it was.  This doesn't really come as a big surprise to me.  The autistic spectrum includes ADD and Asperger's Syndrome, and I know more than a few people with those or other autistic spectrum conditions, many of them redheads.  My son and I both are Awesomely Delightfully Different.

Out on the roads, however, there is an ever-changing bonanza of tumbled stones.  New ones turn up when the snowplows and road graders go through.  The gravel used in our roads isn't rock that was put through a crusher, it is what the glaciers left behind when they receded after the last Ice Age.  Between the rivers and creeks around here, the forest has grown up on ancient eskers and drumlins, but we see only their basic shapes under the vegetation and debris.

I walk the roads in the rain because the colors of the rocks show better when they are wet.  Some of the more colorful stones include various agates, and jasper of green, red, purple and many shades of yellow, orange and brown, much of it brecchiated.  Jade is there, occasionally some amethyst, and even a few softer stones such as calcite and fluorite.  I love rocks.

Be_The_Rain wrote:  "do you wear sneakers, not boots?  what about snakes?"

I don't know how far north the range of reptiles extends, but at this latitude, 62 degrees, there are no snakes or lizards.  We also have no chiggers, ticks, scorpions, tarantulas or black widow spiders, and our mosquitoes don't carry the usual tropical diseases associated with them.    There is no poison ivy, poison oak, or poison sumac.

I know of only one plant with a contact poison:  Oplopanax horridus, devil's club, is covered with little thorns that raise an itchy rash if touched.  We have hornets, wasps, yellow jackets and the aforementioned mosquitoes, as well as some tiny biting gnats called noseeums.  We have several species of bees, but no native honeybees.

Coyotes now range this far north, but didn't until recently.  I hear them sometimes, and have seen a few.  The foxes around here are interesting.  There are red foxes, and arctic silver foxes, and a hybrid race we call cross-foxes that are bigger than either the red or silver species, have bushier tails and widely variable color patterns, often spotted, masked, or with contrasting "socks" and tails.  Many of the dogs in this area are hybrids with wild canids.

Several readers mentioned the bears.  That part of the woods where I walked yesterday is the same area where the cat Muffin and I heard and smelled a bear a week or two ago.  I had that in mind as I walked along the trail, and I was singing my usual little, "dum de dum," bear warning song to let any one who happened to be in the area know that I was there.  Some people wear bells for that purpose. 

I have had several close encounters with black bears.  One chased me onto my porch about fifteen years ago, and might have gotten to me before I got through the door, if I hadn't picked up a broom to fend it off.  Brown bears, grizzlies, are less numerous, and they tend to stick to the same denning and feeding grounds year after year, making them more predictable than the black ones. 

I know bears can be dangerous.  I'm glad they sleep all winter.  I
don't see any point in being afraid.  With experience, I have learned
what it means to be careful, to take bear precautions, and that is what
I do.  I took this shot in 1978, up close, no long lens.  I look at this guy's face now and all I feel is affection.  At the time I captured this image, what I was feeling was intense curiosity.  The story of that day is here, and there are more bear stories, here.

The chance of an encounter with a bear won't keep me out of the woods, just as the chance of a wreck won't keep me off the highway.  What might keep me out of the woods occasionally for the next few weeks or months are the insects.  At some times of day, after rains, when the wind is calm, the gnats and mosquitoes swarm in dense clouds.  The skeeters drill in and suck my blood.  The no-see-ums gnaw tiny holes in my skin and lick up the blood that oozes out.

And that's not the worst part.  What I really can't stand is inhaling them, having them down behind my glasses in my eyes, flying into my mouth... *shudder*

When you go for a walk in the woods, do you usually take a path that was made by humans, either a narrow trail worn by feet, or a wider one, perhaps with interpretive signs, that begins at a parking lot in a public park?  Or do you prefer to get off the trails and wander on the forest floor amid the trees where there is no path?

Neither of those options is open to me.  Unless you go into these woods with a chainsaw, or at least a machete, you don't wander off the trails.  The underbrush is too thick.

There are trails, but none of the ones around here was made by human feet.  Most people tend to stay on the roads, and when they get off a road they go on the game trails.  No matter which path I choose, I encounter obstacles:  places too narrow to pass between trees, places where trees have fallen across the trail, holes I must either jump over or find a way around.

The photo above shows one of the trails I followed this morning.  It's not exactly obvious, but it extends from center foreground and curves off toward the left around that hummock of moss.  This trail is what we call a "rabbit run," made by arctic varying hares.  Rabbit runs are identifiable by the narrow, curving course (about as wide as my foot, so that I must place one foot in front of the other as I go), by the small, dry, oblate spheroid droppings, and by the unbroken twigs lying within and across the trail.  The hares hop over whatever they can't go under, and don't crush the sticks underfoot as the moose do.

Within the woods is a system of braided trails.  Sometimes moose, bears, hares, wolves, and whatever else is out there, follow the same path.  When they do, the trail is clear, wide, and littered with crushed bits of fallen branches.  The photo below shows one of them crossing horizontally approximately in the middle of it.  At lower left is a blue-green patch of lichen, with the color in the very corner washed out by a sunbeam.

Near the center of the picture are two small bits of lichen, and just above the big patch is a dark spot from which those two chunks were torn by an animal running through there fast.  I couldn't tell what kind of animal kicked up the lichen or how long ago it had passed, except that it happened since the last rain two days ago, but I knew that it had been going the same direction I was.

Such clear and open trails are never very long.  When a fallen tree, or a dense thicket, or a hole in the ground is
encountered, the various animals take different routes, and the
trails split up.  Bears squeeze under or clamber over fallen trees, while moose make wide detours around them.  At such places, I pick whichever way looks easiest.  There are trails I know well in some parts of these woods, where I know when to go with the bears and when to go with the moose, but today I went a way I'd never gone before, so I did a little backtracking in some places, and a lot of wading through thick brush in other places, to get back onto an easier path.

Above is a hollow where something has apparently been bedding down.  I knew it was unlikely to have been a bear, because their dens are in more enclosed, sheltered places, usually caves or hollows under tree roots.  I also knew it wasn't a moose bed because the twigs lining it weren't broken up by hooves, and there were no moose droppings.  Moose drop nuggets anywhere, anytime, even in their sleep.  This was a clean, soft bed, and I didn't realize what had been using it until I found wolf tracks in some mud a little farther on.

At the edge of the forest by this open marshy area, where a network of trails converge, I found several piles of wolf scat in various stages of decomposition, a territorial marker.  I call these long narrow incursions of muskeg between arms of higher forested ground, "muskeg fjords," just because I need labels to think about things, and I don't know what they are really called.  The part of the woods I walked in today has several of them.

It may look inviting as a lawn, but that is some of the roughest, most impassable ground around.  It is densely overgrown with woody shrubs, riddled with holes, and if a foot slips off the woody vegetation and hits the ground, water squishes up and fills my sneaker.  I stay in the woods, on the trails, wherever possible.

Above is another clear, open, easy-traveling section of the wolf trail.  It is also traveled by hares, bears and moose.  I found signs of all four, and since I know that foxes live in the area, and wolverines, they probably use that trail too, at night mostly.  I will be going back along that trail again, now that I know it is there.  While I was out there, I saw some unfamiliar wildflowers.  I captured some out-of-focus images, so I need to go back and see if I can get them in focus, so someone can help me identify them.

Yesterday evening between 7 and 8, I started hearing sirens going by on the highway.  They came singly and in groups of two or three, over the next two hours.  I knew it had to be something big and my first flash was, "FIRE!"

By 8:30 or so, when I stepped out into the yard, still hearing the emergency vehicles go by, I could see a diffuse smudge of smoke across the sky to the northeast.  I knew that the wind was making the job of the firefighters more difficult at the same time it made it all the more crucial, to keep the fire from spreading.

Doug and I agreed, once again, how great it would be to have a police scanner so we'd know what's going on in the neighborhood.  As it is, the web gives us access from this chair right here to instantaneous world news, but the bush telegraph only works when we go to the lodge, the laundromat, or the community center.  We'd have a scanner already, having had this same conversation many times, but the Dumpster Deva hasn't brought us one yet, and we can't justify going further into debt to buy one.

When Greyfox called after nine, I told him about the sirens and he said he had been seeing and hearing fire trucks go by his place, forty miles down the valley from here, in three separate waves, over a three-hour period.  I knew that his first wave was too early to be coming here, but that some of the later vehicles were probably the same ones I'd been hearing.

He said he'd watch the late news and call back to let me know what he found out.  The version he got was garbled, saying that a, "high school in Talkeetna," had burned down.  There is an elementary school in Talkeetna, and a jr./sr. high school on the Parks Highway at Sunshine, near the Y where the Talkeetna Spur Road begins.  So, I went to bed knowing that one of the two schools that Doug had attended had burned down.

First thing when I got up this morning, I turned on the radio, and the first thing I heard was a brief report saying that Su Valley High had burned, and was considered a total loss.  Doug graduated from there six years ago.  I got online for more info.

Photo from Houston Police Department through story at adn.com

One thing I learned was that the first wave of fire engines Greyfox saw was going to put out a wildfire near Big Lake/Houston.  When they got that under control, those engines came up here, and joined others from as far away as Palmer, seventy-some miles from here, almost ninety miles from the school.

No word yet on the cause of the fire, but traditionally this time of year, end-of-term, sees a lot of vandalism around the school.  Lots of people thought the school should have been replaced instead of spending $5.5 million to renovate it, with a new roof.  Now it will have to be replaced.

What do all the following people have in common?

HINT:

This is by no means an exhaustive list.  I just skimmed the surface.  I left out a couple of legendary redheads, Lucille Ball and Shirley Maclaine, because they have admitted to dyeing their hair.  I have also included one true-born redhead who became a legendary bottle blonde, Marilyn Monroe.  Additionally Joshua ben Joseph, AKA "Jesus" is, "said to have had deep burgundy hair the color of wine."  The list above suggests (but certainly doesn't prove) a generalization I have heard expressed many times:  that as the world's smallest ethnic minority, we have been disproportionately represented among the creme de la creme of the famous, infamous, intelligent, powerful and creative elites.

One of many common redheaded stereotypes relates to our intelligence.  From my own experience, I can supply one anecdote.  While I was a member of Mensa, before they raised the annual dues and squeezed me out, our little local group had about a dozen active members.  Redheads outnumbered all the other hair colors two to one, if we counted our bald LocSec, who was a former redhead.  The sample was too small for statistical significance.   Mensa is not such a sterling example of really high intelligence, either.  They let in the top two percent, one person out of fifty.  At least three other egghead clubs are more exclusive.  The most exclusive of them rejected me on the basis of their own IQ test, which showed that there are about three million people on this planet who might do better on that test than I did.

I have also heard us characterized as exceptionally outspoken and sarcastic.  I don't know where anyone got such an outrageous idea.  But, seriously, all the redheads I have known have been somewhat in-your-face-type people.  One of the more widespread and persistent stereotypes about us involves our legendary violent tempers and short fuses. Through the mellowing that comes with time, and a lot of deliberate personal evolution, I have managed to lengthen my fuse a bit.   It takes a lot of provocation to set me off now, relative to how short-tempered I used to be, but once I snap, nobody, least of all I, can predict where the mayhem will end.

Until recently, we didn't have scientific statistical or genetic evidence to confirm or refute the stereotypes.  Now, some of those things I have been hearing all my life, such as that it takes more anesthetic to knock us out for surgery, we tend to bleed more freely, clot slowly, have high pain thresholds, more than our share of sinus infections, skin disorders, asthma and chemical sensitivities, for example, have been demonstrated scientifically.  Many of us seem to have extraordinary immune systems and powers of self-healing, and also a tendency toward auto-immune disorders, which would seem to be consistent with an overactive immune system.

There is some overlap between that list of physical anomalies common to redheads and the list of attributes commonly ascribed to people known as Starseed, the descendants of extraterrestrial visitors.  I stirred up a furor in the forum at the Realm of Redheads a few years ago when I posted the Starseed questionnaire and asked my fellow redheads how they scored on it.  One faction took the quiz and reported high scores.  Another faction bristled at the very suggestion that they might have ET roots.  I ascribe that latter reaction, charitably, to defective cultural/religious programming, and not to a lack of native intelligence.

No discussion of redhead stereotypes and idiosyncrasies would be complete without a mention of our legendary sexuality.  Discussion threads in the Realm forums indicate that we are a sexy bunch in the aggregate.  My childhood, youth, and adulthood have exemplified that stereotype.  I matured early, masturbated frequently from a young age, and until menopause was likely to place sexual activity and gratification ahead of most other priorities, right after air.  Of all the lovers I have had throughout my sex-obsessed lifetime, the ones who were most sex-obsessed were the ones with red hair.  They were not all redheads.  Some had red beards, red (or orange) pubic hair or chest hair, along with blond or brown hair on their heads.

This brings me to the subject of honorary redheads, and redhead fans or lovers.  Sometimes the recessive redhead gene skips a few generations in a family, and suddenly there's a red-haired offspring or a whole brood of them with parents of other hair colors, but with many of the stereotypical redhead traits.  Some of my own offspring have the traits but not the hair.  We call them honorary or familial redheads.  Redhead fans or redhead lovers are, of course, people who have an especially keen appreciation for our fine qualities, usually just the sexy part.

One of my husbands was an admitted redhead lover.  I was his third red-haired wife. He had done a considerable amount of observation and study of our breed, and he had an alternate theory to the Starseed one, to account for our idiosyncrasies, although it does not necessarily preclude the ET roots.  Back before the recent genetic findings, we discussed his theory with our red-haired physician, who agreed that it was a plausible explanation.  Here it goes (again, for those of you who read a previous post on this topic):

Our legendary braininess, combativeness, and sexiness can be accounted for by simple natural selection as a result of our physical weaknesses.  Being oversensitive to sunlight, allergic to many things in the natural environment, frequently ill and subject to infections at a higher rate than that of our non-red-haired neighbors, we probably experienced a higher death rate and shorter life expectancy.  Individuals who managed to pass along their DNA were  likely to have been those who bred at an early age and/or had the intelligence and aggressiveness to survive long enough to produce offspring.  The dull-witted, easy-going, sexually cool redheads were eliminated long ago.  We who are left are the superior survivors of an inferior breed.

As I said, that's a theory.  Another theory is that we're the progeny of some brainy, sexy and warlike aliens from a planet with a thicker atmosphere or a sun with less UV radiation.  Our allergies, sinus trouble and such could be the result of our ancestors having evolved in a completely different ecosystem.  I don't think those two theories are necessarily mutually exclusive.

I don't know why redheads are so different, but I am convinced that we are.  As a child, I hated all the unwelcome attention I got on account of my hair and resented the stereotypes even as my behavior typified them all.  After all these years, I wouldn't know how to be anything but a redhead, but I had better start learning, because my hair color is fading toward something in the peachy pink range, just like my great grandmother's did.

I closed my recent post about covert or hypersensitive narcissism this way:

Nobody had any suggestions, and 30% of the comments I got expressed the belief that we "can't" do anything for such people, that they "have to" do it themselves.

It's what I get for being disingenuous... or grasping a facile closing for an entry that was threatening to go on forever.  The truth is, I know very well what it would take to reprogram them, or to rewire the head of just about anyone.  I'd say, "anyone," but I'm reluctant to make such a blanket statement.  There could be exceptions.

People are having their minds reprogrammed even as you read these words.  Some of them have even paid big bucks to have it done, but that's not absolutely necessary.  The current government of the U.S. even believes that it is okay to brainwash people, as long as those doing it are working for the government.

The root of all pathological narcissism is fear, and the hypersensitive narcissist is the more fearful type, even afraid to give overt expression to her rage.  Various mind control techniques and therapeutic modalities play on that fear to manipulate the subject.  Presumably, the brainwashers are doing it for their own nefarious purposes, and the therapists are doing it for the subjects' own good, but... you never know what the unintended consequences will be.

Narcissists are manipulative, and nobody is easier to manipulate than a manipulator.  Of course, it is not cricket, not kosher, not ethical by some standards, to do gonzo guerrilla therapy without the consent of the therapee.  From the Batesonian perspective of unintended consequences, it is questionable whether any therapeutic intervention at all is strictly ethical.

Anyone care to continue this discussion?  I'll be back.  For a few days I have been working on a red hot post.  I'm having fun preparing it, hope you can stand to read it.

I am never bored.  If I crave excitement, I can always read a book.  Even here in the peace and quiet of my subarctic suburban neighborhood, there is occasional gunfire, wildfire, and other forms of live-action excitement.  I don't need such intense happenings to keep me from being bored, however.  I find amusement and diversion in watching tadpoles grow, and in taking note of the changing seasons.  In the past week, the violet-green swallows returned from their winter homes, and the gray jays came back from down south in Canada where they spend the winters.  That's interesting, to me.

Saturday, I hauled a carload of stuff into Wasilla and set my yard sale up next to Greyfox's Last Stand on the strip next to the highway at Felony Flats.  I haven't had so much excitement in a single day for several years - at least since the rehab ranch discontinued the van to the NA meetings and eliminated my little volunteer position as driver.  A few miles from home, I passed the smoking remains of a building that had gone from being an auction barn to a video rental store (where I used to go with friends to work out with Jane Fonda), and then became a private residence.  Now, it's just a foundation and a pile of ashes.

I got to Felony Flats just as Greyfox was starting to set up his stand.  He finished before I did, but it's something he does frequently and he has a system. Around 1 o'clock, I was mostly set up and had turned to pricing some china and glassware I'd packed at the last moment, when I noticed some of the dogs around there sniffing the air and looking toward the highway.  The owner of one of the dogs pointed out to me a fresh roadkill out there.  Over the course of the next few hours I saw the deceased dog get flatter and more scattered.

I am not squeamish about blood or dead things.  I felt some relief for the dog's sake that its head got flattened right at the start, so it didn't drag itself into the ditch, and didn't suffer.  It seemed a pity that nobody had cared enough about it to obey the borough-wide leash law and keep it safe, but the incident didn't ruin my lunch.  I walked past the fresh corpse on my way to the other end of the strip for the charity barbecue presented by a local religious cult, and noted its somewhat flatter condition on my return walk with my food.

I didn't begin to feel distressed or anxious until a few hours later when a bald eagle swooped down toward the roadkill on the center line and was scared off by the heavy weekend traffic.  My feelings were a mix of excitement at being within telephoto distance of the eagle, and fervent hope that he wouldn't end up becoming a feathered topping on the road pizza.

Greyfox keeps a hand-held traffic sign, stop on one side, slow on the other, with a short handle and a bicycle handgrip, which he found in the dumpster there. He uses it to slow down cars that speed through the strip past his stand.  I grabbed it and slung my camera around my neck and walked to the roadside, determined to do what I could to assist the eagle.  It had flown to the opposite side of the highway and was perched on a pile of dirt and gravel.

With traffic flowing fast and constant, and the eagle not putting himself in harm's way, I stood by the road and took pictures until a man came from behind me with a shovel, planning to get the dead dog off the highway.  At the next break in traffic, he and his shovel and I and my sign advanced upon the roadway and the carrion pile was tossed into the ditch on the opposite side.

Apparently, the advance of two tool-bearing primates startled the eagle, because when I next spotted him, he was high in a tree farther back from the road.  There he stayed until a noisy four-wheeler whined down the dirt path next to that ditch, throwing up a cloud of dust.  Then the eagle took to his wings and flew away to the southwest.

That was the last of the excitement until it started raining and we had to cover all our merchandise through a brief shower.  After that, there was a brief flurry of sales, and nothing much happened until four teens converged on the carrion in the ditch, coming from three different directions.  The pair of girls was joined first by one boy, and then another.  Then they were joined by the animal control officer, who proceeded to double-bag the roadkill.

 

Before she got out of there with her bag of dog, she was joined by a Wasilla Code Compliance Officer (the citizens' tax dollars at work), who seemed as interested and unamused by the situation as the four teens seemed fascinated (mostly with each other) and amused.  He did not seem at all pleased when he noticed me taking pictures, either.

Then it started to rain seriously.  Greyfox had his things put away long before I was packed up.  I was fumbling around under poly sheeting trying to keep my stuff dry as I packed it up.  That resulted in some broken glass.  Finally, I was done.  We drove down the strip to Greyfox's cabin where he nuked some frozen lasagna and shared it with me while we watched the final episode of Carnivale.

I stopped for gas on my way home.  While the tank was filling, I checked my oil.  It was okay, but my coolant was low, so I went inside for some water.  I came back out, watered the car, closed the hood, got in, started up, and pulled the hose loose from the gas pump.  As I got out to remove the hose and stow it on the island next to the pump, the guy who had pulled in behind me said, "Don't you just hate when that happens?"

I went into the convenience store to confess and face the consequences, but the clerks in there were extremely busy.  The clerk at the liquor store end of the building was standing outside the door smoking a cigarette, so I confessed to her.  Not knowing what to do, she had me follow her inside, where she watched me warily while she phoned someone in authority.  She muttered and nodded and hung up the phone, then told me it was okay.  Whew!  I guess, as Greyfox said when I phoned him later from home and told him the story, they have moron insurance.

I am still tired from yesterday, twenty-some hours after arriving home. I did not even attempt to go back in today to try and sell my junk.  There will be more weekends this summer.  I just hope they are not that exciting.  I'm waiting for my tadpoles to turn into frogs.  That's enough excitement for me.

This weeks photo challenge is hosted by ok123letsgo

The subject is Trees & Sky

A few days ago, I found an old dead poplar tree standing in the woods and did several shots of it.  Here's one with my cat, Jones.

Another day recently, I noticed one little cloud by itself up high in the sky.

While I was taking an establishing shot of it including the horizon and some more clouds, I noticed that it was gradually disappearing.

Then it was gone.

Dirty lens - gotta remember to clean it.

Actually, this is NOT my post for the challenge.  For that, I submitted a page from my Alaska skies photo album.