Mountain man / Digicam
L looked at me Thursday night and said, 'Let's go camping this weekend.' Even though I had just gotten back from a week in Seattle, this sounded good to me. I haven't done nearly enough fishing yet this year.
We headed up to the French Pete campground on the S. Fork McKenzie--a native fishery that's all catch and release (which the state regs doesn't mention. Not that I've ever caught a fish big enough to keep anyway). It turned out to be a sweltering weekend, so props to L for coming up with a great plan.
I think this is the first time I've ever returned to a campground where I've already been, French Pete being the same place I went with friends from Chicago last summer.
On Sunday morning, we walked up French Pete Creek itself--just recreationally, not a hike or anything. We were mostly looking for a place to sit down by the water. The first good spot was taken by some hike-in campers. We were just about to turn back to an OK spot (I was fearing that we were heading away from the creek at that point) when an older hiker came down the trail. This was one of those people you don't expect to see on a hike: no pack, no water, wearing dress pants and suspenders with a windbreaker tied around his waste. I asked him if the trail went back down to the water anytime soon. "Oh, yes. Just a few hundred yards up there's a nice campsite that you can scramble down to. Here, I'll show you." With this he whips out a little HP digital camera and starts showing us his snapshots on the preview screen. "See, there's a fire ring, and rocks on the creek you can sit on. The scramble's not hard at all."
Now, I've been with people with digital cameras who've passed it around immediately after taking a picture. On a hike or at a party, the dynamic always seemed identical to passing a polaroid around--in fact, eerily like passing a polaroid around. The feeling was almost retro. But this was something different, and for the life of me, I'm still not sure what the feeling is. Documentary evidence? A digitally mediated memory? My first useful ubiquitous computing experience?
Oh: no fish. Not even a bite, despite what the Hoodoo guy said.
We headed up to the French Pete campground on the S. Fork McKenzie--a native fishery that's all catch and release (which the state regs doesn't mention. Not that I've ever caught a fish big enough to keep anyway). It turned out to be a sweltering weekend, so props to L for coming up with a great plan.
I think this is the first time I've ever returned to a campground where I've already been, French Pete being the same place I went with friends from Chicago last summer.
On Sunday morning, we walked up French Pete Creek itself--just recreationally, not a hike or anything. We were mostly looking for a place to sit down by the water. The first good spot was taken by some hike-in campers. We were just about to turn back to an OK spot (I was fearing that we were heading away from the creek at that point) when an older hiker came down the trail. This was one of those people you don't expect to see on a hike: no pack, no water, wearing dress pants and suspenders with a windbreaker tied around his waste. I asked him if the trail went back down to the water anytime soon. "Oh, yes. Just a few hundred yards up there's a nice campsite that you can scramble down to. Here, I'll show you." With this he whips out a little HP digital camera and starts showing us his snapshots on the preview screen. "See, there's a fire ring, and rocks on the creek you can sit on. The scramble's not hard at all."
Now, I've been with people with digital cameras who've passed it around immediately after taking a picture. On a hike or at a party, the dynamic always seemed identical to passing a polaroid around--in fact, eerily like passing a polaroid around. The feeling was almost retro. But this was something different, and for the life of me, I'm still not sure what the feeling is. Documentary evidence? A digitally mediated memory? My first useful ubiquitous computing experience?
Oh: no fish. Not even a bite, despite what the Hoodoo guy said.
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