Back from Belise, with lots to say

Belize was terrific. One of my sisters wondered out loud why anyone would ever want to go to such a hot, humid place, ever, but I loved it. I love being in a place where houses don't need windows, where birdsong pours into your bedroom when it's time to arise, and where you know exactly what to wear for the day because the temperature/humidity in your bedroom is exactly the same as it is outdoors. Also, because it's warm in winter and I can go outside, hike, and sketch any time I want to!
That's me, emerging from a tomb in a Mayan ruin. Only a little sweaty.

Since the last blog was about packing, first I need to put closure on how things I packed and took with me worked, so you people who are interested in the packing and use of the packed items won't have to wade through my blog to get to the details:

Tripbook: I make tripbooks containing all my important paperwork to use when I travel. This tripbook contains:

1. pertinent pages from a purchased and downloaded Lonely Planet book on Belize, printed out on my office computer.
2. printed copies of online confirmations and reservations I made.
3. copy of my round-trip airline itinerary
4. internet gleanings about sights and sites to see in Belize
5. TripAdvisor reviews about lodgings I had reservations at, so I could make sure I did or avoided doing things they mentioned
6. general advice on traveling in Belize
7. directions on how to get to my lodgings from the airport and point-to-point in the country, including taxi and bus information and advice.
I took the loose pages to a printshop where they punched and rolled a plastic spiral onto them for $1.80.
Tripbooks keep all your papers in order and are an invaluable travel aid. I referred to it regularly. It tucked nicely into the side of my fanny pack, alongside my re-built spiral-bound bird guide (discussed in the previous blog).

Travel Gear: I was able to tuck my fleece blankie (which came in VERY handy at night in the mountains of Belize, by the way) into my pack, but I wanted the neck pillow to be more available while I was traveling. Two carabiners (the metal D-shaped things attached to the corners of the pillow in the photo) made it easy to clip the pillow to my pack or fanny pack when I wasn't using it. You can find carabiners in camping goods stores or Walmart. They are useful for things around the house, as well, being practically indestructible.

Pills: When you're traveling, you need to keep any pills you take handy, and I was using the plastic box shown at right. The little sliders pull out so you can dump the pills into your hand, but it only holds a 14-day supply for me (I take quite a few vitamins). So for the pills I couldn't cram into the box I used a long skinny plastic bag, put in a day's supply of pills, partitioned it off with a rubber band, put in the next day's supply, etc. (see photo).

As it turned out, the plastic bag was a far better solution in the 100% humidity of Belize. The pills in the box, which isn't airtight, got moist and were almost impossible to get out (they stuck to the sliders!). They may also have become degraded from the moisture. The pills in the bag stayed dry and easy to extricate. Next time I'll just use a plastic bag.

Things I Carried Around On My Person in Belize: In addition to the camera, I carried a sun hat, which tended to pull at my throat when it wasn't on my head. Half-way through the trip I discovered the tiny clip on the strap that let me clip it to my shirt so the string wouldn't chafe my throat. This hat shades the neck and is extremely light-weight at 2½ ounces.

I never went out without my binoculars, smallish ones, but decent quality. I think, though, that I need to replace them with waterproof ones if I plan to do more travel in the tropics. I really worried about them getting moldy!

And I never wandered out onto the beach or into the jungle without my sketching kit, shown here at right. It contains my sketchbook, binoculars, eyeglasses, ballpoint pen for sketching, and watercolor pencils (sometimes). It also has a tiny bottle of pain relievers, an energy bar, a pencil sharpener, and clipped via carabiner to the zipper tab, my sitting pad which I cut from a ½" foam camping pad.
At left is the sitting pad opened out on a hard rock. Sometimes I don't even disconnect it from the sketching kit ~ I just doff the kit onto the ground beside me, spread out the pad and sit. The attached strip of white ribbon with red polkadots helps me find it if I walk off without it (don't laugh ~ it happens!).

Camera: I had been saving for some time to replace my old camera gear, which weighed slightly over a pound. When you are tired or have a headache, this is difficult to carry. I was finally able to afford a little point-and-shoot the size of a deck of cards, which comes with a dedicated battery and charger. I ordered two extra batteries so I could always have a charged one in my camera bag and one in the charger back at my lodging.

In the photo above is all my camera stuff, and a nylon "id packet" I got once at a convention. It is about 5"x6" and hangs from a nylon cord. It has a large pocket which the camera fits into, a zipper pocket that holds a battery and photo card, and a place to slip in a business card in case you lose it. Fully packed with the camera, an extra battery and an extra photo card, it weighs only seven ounces. The photo at right shows the case packed, with the charger beside it. At seven ounces, I sometimes don't even remember I'm carrying it, and have to pat myself down to locate it. I'm wearing it in the opening photo. The business card is essential ~ I lost my camera bag in Kauai last year, and it arrived in the mail a month later from some kindly fellow who picked it up in a parking lot!

Dry-bag: I planned to do an inner tube trip on the Macal River, so I took along a dry-bag, available in a camping goods store (or Walmart) to put my camera into between photos. I could have used a slightly bigger one and put in my sketchbook, too, but I seriously didn't want to get that sketchbook wet. The camera can be replaced ~ the sketchbook can't!
The other essential part of this set-up was the 4' length of nylon cord I always carry along. One end tied to the dry-bag, the other end was tied around the innertube. I was really glad for this when I went over a riffle in the river and it fell overboard. It bobbed along beside me until I could snatch it up again. If you fold the dry-bag over the wrong direction, it will leak, but I experimented beforehand and had no problems. In retrospect, I think a large dry-bag might be nice for keeping clothes dry in a humid climate. Hmmmmm.....

So that's the report on gear. I've beebled on so long that I'm going to have to hold off on the trip details until tomorrow.

I sent out a letter to my family and selected friends when I returned, briefly outlining my trip and the high points. I told them I was going to just put that letter up with some nice photos on my blog, but when I started looking through the photos I found so much I wanted to share that I simply can't limit myself.

Tune in tomorrow or so for the next installation. If you leave your email moniker in the little box in the right column of this page, you'll be notified when I blog and you can come read it. Those are my toes, by the way, pointing to the Ak'Bol Yoga platform on Ambergris Caye, Belize, my first stop in Belize.

So, 'til next time...

Gettin' Ready for my trip

On packing for the tropics.....just a little update.

Since I've packed for the tropics before (Hawaii, Costa Rica, etc.) I have by now gotten my packing list nicely honed down to essentials. I've also got a good To-do Checklist of things that need your attention during the week before you leave, such as calling the credit card company to tell them where you're going and when you'll be leaving so they won't cut you off during your trip when they see activity in a foreign country. That could be disastrous.

Although you will have different interests and focus, different needs, pets, house-sitter arrangements, etc., you can use my list as a useful jump-off point for creating one tailored to your personal needs.

Since I pack for carry-on only, so there's less chance of losing luggage, I keep the weight around 25lbs. And since my focus is on sketching and journaling nature subjects and hiking on beaches and in the jungle, I don't pack an evening gown or heels.

Obviously this wouldn't be the trip packing list for, probably, MOST people But if you're reading this blog, you might be the sort of person that can appreciate the way I pack ~ and make use of the lists I'm offering.

In my last blog I was trying to figure out what to do with five pounds worth of field guides to Belize birds and mammals ~ well, I have now sliced the picture pages out of my two books and I'll take them to the print shop next time I'm in town to get them punched and spiral bound into a MUCH smaller book that will fit in my pack. It weighs ten ounces now instead of five pounds!

I'm making another thin book, also, printing out and binding together useful pages from the web about my accommodations, how to get around (taxies, buses, water taxies, ferries, bike rentals) in Belize, maps to places I want to go, plus interesting places mentioned on web pages. That's about 12 ounces, and that should about do it for my reference materials. Oh yeah, I bought and downloaded Lonely Planet's guide to Belize and printed out pages (for my little reference book I'm building) that refer to things that interest me. That's a lot more to my liking than cutting up lovely printed books, but those books weren't offered as downloads, so I didn't have any choice.

At the moment, I have the bags roughly stuffed to make sure everything will go in (and to weigh them to make sure I can still carry them easily). My goal is 25lbs, and I'm guessing I'm going to make that goal. Remember, clothes are washable, so I have only two changes of clothing for the whole trip (and I'll be rinsing out things to dry overnight ~ that's where the travel undies come in handy, as they really DO dry overnight, even in humid climes).

So feel free to use my lists if they will help you pack for your vacation. If you don't plan to be traveling soon, you still might print them out and stick them in your bucket-list bucket. When opportunity strikes, you want to be ready!

p.s. In case you were wondering about that purple fleece blankie, well, I have 12 hours of layover in Miami/Atlanta both coming and going, and it's nice to have a fleece to ward off the air conditioning, block out bright lights, and/or use as pillow or padding to get comfortable. I think it will stuff in the pack, but I won't know for sure until I have the pack ready to go. If it doesn't, I can fasten it to the pack with the velcro strap, as shown in the photo.

A new sketch/journaling trip in the wings!

Summer is over, alas, but I made it last as long as I could after it got chilly, going out to sketch and journal in my fleece hoodie, long underwear, leggings (the longies inch away from the socks sometimes so I cut the feet off an ancient pair of knee socks and bridge the incipient gap with the warm tubes), sitting on my canvas chair swathed with a fleece blanket.

I can get an hour's worth of sitting and reflecting, observing and sketching outdoors at 40° with this set-up if it's calm and sunny. But it's a stretch, and to be honest, I guess the daily sketches are a thing of the past for this year. I'm inescapably a fair-weather pleine air sketcher. Foo.

Well, that means I will be eager as a spotted pup to get outdoors in the spring, and when the morning sun shines through shooting stars and fawn lilies (above) out my window in April, I'll be out there, too.

Yesterday I finished uploading my most recent set of Oregon forest-life sketches, the October-November set. You can get to the others by scrolling down to the links below the images on that site.

But in order to try to keep the spirit of summer in my studio, a couple of weeks ago, before it got really cold, I bought a 5-gallon aquarium (that's 16" wide, 8" front to back, and 10" tall) and positioned it in a spot where I can belly right up next to it to observe. I poured about a gallon of coarse sand in the bottom, and placed three lumpy 4-6" rocks along the back side to give it some character.

Next I took a bucket and a yogurt container out to my little pond and my wildlife water tub, and dipped up about 3 gallons of water, various pond weeds, and several containers full of mud and goo from the bottoms of both, making sure to dig down deep enough to collect whatever might have burrowed down a ways.

Bringing this slop back into the house, I dipped it all into the aquarium being careful not to disarrange the sand in the bottom. What a dirty mess it looked, all silty brown water and gloomy water plants lost in the murk. But by the next day, it was a gorgeous little miniature pond, with the lamp shining down into it, all green and yellow from the light passing through the plants, and alive with little animalcules zipping through the water.

I often stop and observe it for a few minutes as I go from my studio to the kitchen for a cuppa, admiring the way the duckweed is sending down long roots to try for the bottom, the strap-like valisneria sending up leaf blades, the coontail growing like crazy (I'll have to start pruning in there soon or it will be packed solid green!).

And all the crazy creatures! Rising up out of the mud are little 2" worms which wave back and forth like cobras. There are limpets on the glass, and if I search carefully I can find them moving snail-like on the rocks and plants, their soft innards protected by a conical lid. A large (1/8") water mite zips around in the water like the energizer bunny-cum-schoolbus, a nearly-square bundle of frenzied activity. It gets its food by sucking the juices from little waterfleas, which sometimes come to rest on the glass ~ I saw it happen! If you sit back and squint a little, the aquarium looks like a little forest scene with lots of little waterfleas, ostracods, amphipods and copepods buzzing around like insects.

There are also CLAMS in there. I've no idea where they came from, but they're about the size of my little fingernail, and they move along by sticking a foot out of the shell and hunching along. The water is pretty cool since I only heat the part of my studio that's under my computer desk, so they're not very active, but it's neat to watch how they move from spot to spot, day by day.

Of course, I can't sit and watch the aquarium all day every day, and I'm already tired of this cold weather outside, and Christmas is a'cumin in (a good thing to avoid if you aren't with family) so I am in the throes of planning for my next sketch-journaling foray ~ this time to Belize.

Choosing Belize was an accident. I was planning another go at Hawaii, to try another island. I've been on the Big Island now, and Kauai, and I was aiming for Maui or Molokai, but I didn't start looking until November when the prices had already started going up. Way up. So with some consternation I started checking airfare to other places of interest, and finally snagged a flight to Belize for only a little more than half the price to Hawaii. It was a freak price, and was gone within a couple of hours, so I was lucky to find it.

So now I am starting to pack. This time I have gotten smart and ordered a wheeled pack, so I can carry it or pull it. In the past I have exhausted myself hauling my pack around on my back. Sometimes in airports with slick floors I would end up dragging it behind me (that's hard on packs and really tacky-looking to do) because I just couldn't carry it another step. It's not that it's so heavy, it just gets heavy after what seems like trotting miles from one terminal to the next when one has already been traveling for 20 hours with not much sleep. FedEx just brought the new pack this morning, and it appears to be the luggage of my dreams. It's considered a kids' schoolbag, so it's fairly small and lightweight, but although it was inexpensive, the online reviews were good and it looks like it's well-constructed. Now I can begin to get ready in earnest.

It's time to line up the house-sitter/s, get my clothes and sketching gear in order, and I'll be ready. I've already chosen and paid for my accomodations: four days on Ambergris Caye and eleven at a jungle lodge in western Belize on a calm river near Mayan ruins.

This is another bold jump for me, so it's a little scary. When I went to the Amazon last year, I was cared for from the moment of my arrival in Peru ~ picked up at the airport in Iquitos by my eco-lodge hosts, carted off down the Amazon to the lodge in their launch, and later returned by them to the plane for my trip home. I felt very safe. This time, I have made all the arrangements and have to find my own way to my lodgings via ferryboat and bus. It's daunting, but I'm sure I can do it.

Belize is a good choice for this: the official language, if you can believe it, is English. The Belizian currency is 2BZDollars = 1USDollar (simple!), and there is a good solid tourist industry infrastructure which makes it easier to get around than in more remote places. I plan to rent a bike for my stay on the Caye, and I won't need a vehicle at the jungle lodge. The hosts will pick me up on arrival in the nearby town and take me back at the end to catch my bus

So my sketching is preordained: four days doing beach things on the Atlantic right next to the world's second largest Barrier Reef, which is less than a quarter mile off the Caye where I'll stay. Maybe I'll TRY snorkeling again (after my embarrassing debacle on Kauai last spring ~ read this journal page for the gruesome details) in the shallow waters if I feel brave.

I have been assured that I'll be able to wander the jungle trails alone, sketching and journaling and keeping an eye out for snakes, howler monkeys and jaguars, of course. I wonder if I can take my pepper spray in my carry-on luggage?

I'm going to close down here now to start pawing through my summer gear for things to take to Belize. As always, I'll pack for carry-on only, so there's less chance of losing luggage, and I'll be trying to keep the weight around 20-25lbs. That means I'll have to rip up the Belize bird & wildlife books I just got, extracting and binding the pictures into a lighter-weight book, because the books together weigh 5lbs, a quarter of my goal! Also, I plan to take a dozen energy bars so I can skip expensive lunches and still make it through the day. The rest of my gear will be a change of clothes, my medicine bag (sunscreen, travel ailment remedies, mosquito repellent, etc.), a rain jacket, and my sketching kit.

I'll try to write more later, to keep you clued in as to how this is all going, in case you're planning (or dreaming of) a similar trip. Maybe you can learn from my mistakes!

Big hugs to all my followers!
Irene

My Sketch/Journal is now a Slide Show!

I didn't get eaten by a bear although I thought I might at one point ~ read my journal entry here! (you should be able to read the pages if you click on the image).

It's been a fantastic summer, but as one of my blog readers pointed out, I haven't blogged since the end of August (!). Sometime around then I figured out how to create a slideshow and I got sidetracked. Now I've put my Sit Spot Sketch/Journal entries on my webpage as a series of slide shows (although I'm not quite up to date).

They're in two-week clumps, with links to additional slide shows in the series just below each slide show. If you haven't seen them yet, I'd love some feedback!

But in the process, I got way behind on blogging. My apologies!

This has been a momentous summer for me. I have lived in this woods for thirty-one years but this year, for the first time, I have begun to get really acquainted with it. Every day from July 22 until just this week, I have gone out for an hour or more nearly every day and observed, journaled and sketched what I discovered around me.

Now the weather has turned cold and I'm in the process of fetching in wood from the forest for my woodpile before the rains set in, so I'm in a time crunch and my sketch journal has to take a back seat until I get my winter preparations taken care of.

All summer, sometimes I found things to draw, sometimes things to draw found me.

Upon completing a page (sometimes I added color on the spot, other times I worked on pages in the evenings) I would bring my sketch/journal pages into my studio, scan them into the computer, and tweak them to make them legible. The text I tweaked quite a bit, correcting ballpoint ink blobs, misspelled words, and wobbly letters, but the pictures I left as I drew them. Improving the art would be cheating, in my opinion, but you have to be able to READ the things, so tweaking the text is okay.

As I got the pages finished, I joined them together into the slide shows. So come see what I have been doing ~ and consider trying this yourself. If you live in the southern half of the U.S. your weather should make it possible to do it year-round.

For the rest of us poor souls, up here in Winterland, well, maybe y'all can go out before it gets too much colder and collect cool things to draw in the warmth of your living room or art studio over the winter: pinecones, leaves, beetle-chewed sticks or bark, oak galls, feathers, seedpods, shed insect or snake skins, etc. (the oak branch drawings here came out of my woodpile!). I've collected a few such specimens for myself to draw later, and I can also sketch the scene out my windows, as well. And hey, a few minutes drawing out in the cold air won't kill me this winter.

It's okay to draw from photos, too, so maybe a quick tour around your yard, local park, nearby woods or fields, etc., can give you some good subjects for your winter sketching. If the idea is to explore your local vicinity, your own photos would probably be your best source of subjects.

And if you are thinking your skills aren't up to such a project, you can very likely get yourself up to speed using my little workshop workbooks, designed to take you from your own personal skill level to wherever you want to go. To find a workbook that would suit you, click on a cover below to visit the workbooks's page.

The Mosquito Solution

Mosquitoes really know how to ruin a perfectly lovely outing. They're masters at it. I'm a total mosquito wimp, and in many locales that's a very good thing to be due to Lyme disease, [oh dear! Kathy Walker has corrected me on this ~ see her letter below and substitute "West Nile" for "Lyme disease" above! ] etc. (to say nothing of the problems engendered by scratching your arms off at the elbows ~ it's SO hard to sketch and journal, after that...).

I first wrote about my problem with the mosquitoes on this page:

So whilst being plagued by the little beasties as I sat in my sit spot one day, I dreamed up the perfect solution. It required a trip to the garden shed and an additional trip to the camping goods section of Bi-Mart, plus a few of those paper clamps (see (d.) below.

Oh yeah, wire cutters were needed, too, and six of those "twistems" ~ the wiry things that fasten loaves of bread and clumps of celery shut.

When I was done, I journaled the results in my journal. Since I'm not certain it's totally clear how it is constructed, I've also created some diagrams to make the directions easier to follow.

You'll need:

• wire cutters or pliers which will cut heavy wire
• a cone-shaped wire tomato frame (see a. below)
• a 5'x7' piece of mosquito netting (it comes this size in the package, but you might want a bigger piece)
  
• 6 pieces of light wire, twistable by hand
• 3 or more paper clamps, clothespins, or some other fastener
• a comfy chair to fasten everything to.

Cut the middle and bottom hoops of the tomato frame open, next to one of the legs (b.) and spread out the cone until the legs are in a more-or-less straight row. Fasten the wire legs to the chair, and bend the frame as needed to make the top hoop level (c. and e.). You can bend up the cut ends of the two wires to make hooks ~ I hang my glasses on one to keep them inside the net (f.). You could hang your false teeth on the other hook, mebbe...

Fold the mosquito net in half and put clips along one side, starting at the fold (as shown in d.) . You don't have to clip the entire side, as gravity will cause it to fall down and close itself.

Open up and drape the net over the frame, with the corner with the first clip above the center of the top hoop (f.). The drawing isn't perfectly accurate, because there's a bit of a corner splayed out on the ground on each side of the chair.

Even with this size of netting your feet might not be totally covered. So you'll need to wear socks if the beasties are biting your ankles. I was wearing 2 pairs of socks on my final day in my #2 sit spot, which I think is what finally did me in there, since I had simply SWARMS of mosquitoes around my net ~ so many that I could feel their tiny little vibes yearning for my blood. It was unnerving. But for lesser visitations, it's great!

This only takes a few minutes to make once you get the tools and supplies together, and it is so light that you can carry it in one hand from one spot to another. Sitting inside your little haloed dome, there will be no netting dragging against your face or head or hands or sketchpad, and you don't have to wear stinky repellent. You'll need to wear pants, though, since your knees will be against the netting and the little boogers will notice this right away (oops!).

I hope this turns out to be useful to you, if you live in a skeetery place. If you make one and try it out, I'd love to hear your experience with it. Mine makes it possible to sit out on the deck on a warm summer evening in perfect comfort, reading sketching, etc.

Of course, it's not nice to sit on the lawn under your net to chat if your chatee doesn't have a net, though, so you may need to make nets for everyone to be polite.

Let me know if you try this, okay?

BTW, I've replaced, moved, and changed the box where you ask for notifications when I blog ~ now it's on the right near the top when you first enter the blog. If you signed up for but haven't been getting notices, enter your email again now.

Madrone trees and shiny beetles

Have you ever visited a nearby spot and discovered something major you've never even heard of? For instance, the first time I traveled through the South I was amazed to see the miles-wide blankets of kudzu draped over the trees like green quilts. I'd never even HEARD of kudzu before.

A similar thing happened to me when I moved to southern Oregon. I'd previously lived in various parts of Oregon: Hood River (on the northern edge by the Columbia River), Corvallis (west-central Oregon) and Eugene a bare 120 miles north of my place) and I'd neither seen nor heard of the magnificent red-barked madrone trees with their green skin which tans just like human skin during the hot days of summer.

Since my house is nestled deep in a madrone forest, madrones are now a major part of my scenery, and I thought I'd share their fascinating beauty with you, writing from my sit spot underneath and beside their glamorous trunks and branches (to say nothing of the midsummer leaf fall now descending in glorious golden cascades).

There's an actual piece of bark glued to this journal page because their color is so obviously impossible I thought I'd better prove it. But as you can see, I didn't even go as far as reality in my painting. The bark comes in many shades, though, so the color I chose is accurate for many of the trees.

What about the green? It's true! The skin is really that green on many of them at this time of year, while others have a more subdued tone, and all of them tan with age until they're the deep orange or red of the peeling parts ~ the red bark is LAST year's green skin.

And then, of course, I discovered some little black beetles so shiny that when I looked at them through my magnifying glass I could see my reflection looking back at me from their polished black backs!

I hope you like this journal page. There are lots more to come, including a journal page about my invention of a mosquito net contraption that's easy to make and could allow you to sit on your lawn or deck in the worst of mosquito times ~ without slathering on stinky insect repellent.

Stay tuned.

Sit Spot Ear Envy

Humans have such duh ears! I am really jealous of wildlife who have decent sound detectors. In fact, I spent one whole session meditating, journaling and sketching about our rotten ears and my Do-It-Yourself invention to put us humans on a slightly more level playing field.

Here is the journal page for your enjoyment. I hope it gives you a giggle, because I had a lot of fun creating it.

Of course, as I was sitting out in the woods at the time I did it, I looked up (and listened up!) frequently to make sure I wasn't missing anything. And since it was a VERY quiet day, without any passing-through deer or brouhaha in the bird world overhead, and with nothing but mosquitoes pestering me, I had plenty of time to devote to this important page.

So, click on the image to get a readable size, and I beg of you, experiment with your ears for a few minutes to find out what I'm talking about ~ and then maybe even make yourself a decent 'Earing Aid as shown. NOTE: If you are a Grown-Up, abandon your dignity and try this.

All you need is one or two yogurt containers or paper cups, a pair of scissors, and some glasses ~ an old pair of specs without any lenses in them will work just fine. If you (or your kid) wear glasses, you have an instant advantage.







Cut the cup as shown, flatten it on the side that will go next to your head (a paper cup would have the advantage here, but you can just lightly squash a plastic yogurt cup with pretty good results) hook it over your ear, and slide the glasses on, poking the earpiece THROUGH the big end of the cup and out the "bottom."

And then, go outside and play. It's a lot of fun, and if you have kids, they'll have a blast with it! Especially if you do it with them. Try whispering to each other across the yard. How far away can you hear a whisper?