It’s Been a Long Hot Summer

August 13, 2018 A Pugmire

Winnie the Pooh is a hero of mine. He gets to spend all that time outdoors and he sees the world through the eyes of one who doesn’t overthink things, as I often do. Pooh once remarked that “people say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day.” Clever bear. And August is the perfect month to do nothing. Most of Europe agrees. This is the month when shop owners close up, pack up the family and disappear to the coast or the mountains for a month, – somewhere with a breeze and less heat. The industrialized world hasn’t fully caught on to the wisdom of this logical and civilized practice. As long as there is electricity and internet connection we slog on through rain and sleet and alarming three-digit temperatures. The grass dies back, flowers wilt, mud bakes hard as cement, but still we haven’t the good sense to know when to come in out of the sun. And in recent years August also marks fire season, – that time when things have become tinder dry and it only takes the tiniest spark to ignite a catastrophic conflagration that alters our landscape and our lives. Summer is getting hotter too. Meteorologists announce new record temperatures, new record acres of burned land, new record meltings around the world. The great Northwest Passage is open because of it. I lay awake worrying about our future sometimes, but we’ve weathered extremes before. The world will probably go on, just in a different way. When things change too much for our delicate carbon units to withstand we are forced to consider the biologist’s mantra, “adapt, migrate, or die.” After a lifetime of corporate migration I’d rather adapt than take on yet another move, and if it is getting warmer all over the globe where is there to move to anyway? To quote Winnie the Pooh, “Bother!” The day is reaching the apex of its revolution around the sun. There are a million things I should do, but there is a popsicle calling my name in a rather appealing sort of way. I know that fall will eventually come and then I will be complaining about the cold again. It’s been a long hot summer and all too soon it will be gone.

– World’s highest motorable road – Umling La or Umlingla Pass in Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir – at 5,883 meters or 19,300 feet above sea level.

– World’s lowest motorable road – Route 90 in Israel passing along the western bank of the Dead Sea at a -423 meters or 1,388 feet below sea level (Note: there are lower elevations but this is considered the lowest motorable road.)

– Straightest Road – The Eyre Highway in Australia that is a 90 mile stretch of road without a single curve – which pales beside highway 10 in Saudi Arabia – 140 miles of straight blacktop with only a slight bend near the Emirati border.

– Most crooked road – Lombard Street in San Francisco still retains that honor according to the Guinness World Record Book – it’s 8 hairpin turns equal 1,440 degrees of curved road in only 400 meters, and it has a mandatory 5 mph speed limit.

– Longest road – the Pan American Highway that links both North and South American except for a 100 km distance called the Darien Gap – the approximate length is 48,000 km or 29,826 miles.

– Oldest road – a stone paved road in a desolate corner of Egypt linking a basalt quarry to a waterway for transportation – estimates put it at 4,600 years old.

The Roads

I stand on the windy uplands among the hills of Down
With all the world spread out beneath, meadow and sea and town,
And ploughlands on the far-off hills that glow with friendly brown.

And ever across the rolling land to the far horizon line,
Where the blue hills border the misty west, I see the white roads twine,
The rare roads and the fair roads that call this heart of mine.

I see them dip in the valleys and vanish and rise and bend
From shadowy dell to windswept fell, and still to the West they wend,
And over the cold blue ridge at last to the great world’s uttermost end.

And the call of the roads is upon me, a desire in my spirit has grown
To wander forth in the highways, ‘twixt earth and sky alone,
And seek for the lands no foot has trod and the seas no sail has known:

For the lands to the west of the evening and east of the morning’s birth,
Where the gods unseen in their valleys green are glad at the ends of the earth
And fear no morrow to bring them sorrow, nor night to quench their mirth.

C.S.Lewis

Create a backyard treasure hunt using clues that require compass readings or rely on cardinal directions – north, south , east, west.

To make a map for players to follow print out an online Google maps picture of your yard (or park – wherever you choose to do this). Use a colored pen to mark compass points on the map so that players can orient themselves to their surroundings.

Keep instructions simple.

You can create a map for each player, leading to an individual treasure, or divide players up into teams for a team treasure hunt.

Players can use a compass, a GPS device, or phone to point them in the right direction, or if they are especially observant, their own observations of the sun.

When the treasure has been found, challenge the players to create their own treasure map. Trade maps with another player and follow the clues to a new treasure.

Favorite treasures at our house have been edibles packed in Ziplocs, but a close second was a plaster of paris turtle my mother painted in garish colors that could be buried and reburied a hundred times without altering its appearance.