layla | The autumn marches on

The explosives storage facility at the end of our little dirt road is gone. Apparently the mine lost its lease to use the university land (we have an amusing mental picture of the university going "You do WHAT on that land?!") and they've pulled up stakes and left. What makes me overjoyed about this is that now, the entire valley is empty, (relatively) undeveloped land, and we can go whereever we like -- in the past, we avoided the powder storage depot for obvious reasons aside from the whole trespassing issue. Now it's gone -- just a big clearing -- and there is absolutely nothing back there, no residents, nothing of any sort. This weekend we walked all the way up the road that used to go to the powder depot. Beyond the big clearing, the road continues as an overgrown dirt track with old, abandoned cabins along it. There's a boggy valley carpeted with blueberry bushes that were absolutely COVERED with berries ... unfortunately, they were kind of shriveled up and nasty, or else we'd have had to go back and pick them. It's fairly evident, however, that we must not have had any bears around lately, or the bushes wouldn't be so untouched. Eventually it all petered out in a swamp -- the swamp from which First Chance Creek comes -- and we rounded up the dogs and headed back. It's so amazing that all that stuff was up there and we never knew.

Good thing we did it last weekend, because the forecast tentatively calls for snow this weekend. I'm hoping for a couple days of sun so I can gather leaves for mulching.