Hi all

Bad new friends: it’s a Life Update, coming to you thru the magic of mass-email-o-vision. Sorry about that. But I did want to make contact with my friends family and comrades one last time before I sank under the radar into another distant locale.

Briefly then, treeplanting went well this year. Ups and downs of course, and great intensity of each, of course, but the balance was positive. Good people, decent weather and some good planting contributed to my best economic and mental season yet. I suppose I should be getting too old for that sort of thing, but I still find satisfaction in fighting the daily dirty battle of the clearcuts and the dinner lines alongside people I enjoy and respect (or am at least entertained by). I am worried I may be more content in it each year.

Most of you know I have since been on my way to work in Virginia from BC. I made it. Approximatley 4000 miles – I still haven’t added them all up – and 12 states/provinces later, my trusty machine died literally in sight of my new house. The trip was by turns magnificent and tortuous. The magnificent parts included all of the Rockies and their country-sized “foothills”, and the first hours of the rolling gold and blonde and green of the plains, and the soft huge bluegreen of the Appalachians and Alleghenies on the far side of the continent. Constant unfolding variety of socio-geographic glory. The tortuous part was mostly the reality of riding a windscreenless small engine bike across three full days of headwind-heavy agricultural plains in Nebraska and Iowa. Plains are called that for a reason. Even that had some fascination – there is nothing so wildy rural as the tiny, utterly forgotten farm towns that scatter along US20, and it was theoretically mesmerizing to watch the scrub desert of central Wyoming morph oh-so-slowly into the verdant green farms of Illinois. On the whole though, it sucked almost as much as the mountains and hills didn’t. America is a rich and wierd place, and it’s geography is a marvel. I’m still a little saddle sore.

Photos soonish at hughstimson.org/gallery.

All told it was 9 full days, 11 if you count a couple of days of ferries to/from Vancouver island, and 17 if you add in the halycon days I spent waiting in Victoria for more paperwork to arrive from the US after my first failed effort to get a work visa at the border. Victoria and her residents were as charming and relaxing as ever – thanks to those who took the time and offered the couches to make me welcome.

Here I am now. The Smithonian Conservation and Research Center “campus” is a trip – 3000 odd acres of cloud leopard pens, red panda enclosures, mongolian horse stables, open fields and forests populated by roaming foriegn species of deer, lots and lots of barbed-wire fence, and a small village of nerdfilled laboratories. First impressions of the lab are good. I like the director and the research staff. I don’t know any radio telemetry tracking and don’t speak spanish so of course I spent the day instructing a group of Latino researchers in the use of radio telemetry tracking. My home away from the lab is an old farm house on adjacent land willed to the Center by an eccentric farmer. It’s the size of a small barn and surrounded by acres of forest and grown over fields and abandonded civil war era outbuildings. From a peak summer population of 13 (as big as my whole camp at Little Smokey this summer) it’s down to 5 residents and dwindling. It has a huge front porch, big empty rooms, and a Civil War/Grand Prairie Nightclub ambience. With it’s surrounding ring of green hills, night symphony of insects and wildlife and it’s tiny population of biology geeks, it feels like a cross between the moonshine hamlets I rode through in West Virginia and some remote research station in the amazon. If anyone is looking for a place to crash in the eastern US I have the mattress for you.

Take note motorcylists: this is good riding territory. A network of two lane blacktop spills through the braided green valleys of West Virginia, just a spectacular mountain pass away from here. I haven’t even seen the “Sky Line Drive” through Shanandoah National Park, 10 minutes from the Center. But I will. My chain stretched out enough that it finally started spinning off the sprockets 100 feet downhill of my house, but I will be back in the saddle soon enough and there are least two riders reading this and at least two more good prospects.

Greetings, salutations, farewells and hope-to-see-you-soonishes to everyone. Now that so many have moved west I have of course returned east, but there are still some of you hanging around here and hopefully we can make contact in the coming months. I hope everyone will come, phone, email or at least make solid plans to do so. I will continue to do so as well and life being more or less long we will all eventually talk to each other again. In the meantime

Be well, love,

Hugh

current contact:

Hugh Stimson
1500 Remount Rd
Front Royal, VA 22630
USA