a fun afternoon
Jul. 27th, 2020 10:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
asakiyumeYesterday, Wakanomori and I climbed Mt. Sugarloaf, a loaf-shaped little mountain overlooking the Connecticut River.
Here is the pretty view of the river that you're rewarded with:
Doesn't the river look like such a great way to travel? All smooth like that. And the sumac in the foreground are as close to palms as New England gets.
After doing all that climbing, we rewarded ourselves by going to a little place right down on the river that Waka had discovered the other day:
The rocks stretch out into the water, and in some places, the water right beside them is shallow and silty (walking there is a very strange feeling--unnervingly soft, and each footstep sends up sparkling clouds of the silt, and you can see your footprints underwater), and in some shallow and smooth-pebbly... and then in others deep! You could dive in.
There were two groups of people enjoying the water besides us--some were Spanish speakers and some were South Asian looking, and everyone was very, very friendly and very relaxed, and there was music and just general pleasantness. One guy was walking on a rock near the deep part, and I said, "You should dive in!"
"Only if you ask me to," he said, which I thought was terribly gallant for a guy in his twenties to say to someone his mother's age.
"Oh, I couldn't--only if you want to," I said.
"How can you disappoint me like this?" he exclaimed.
"Oh, well then--do it!" I said, and he obliged, and came bobbing up afterward.
"Looking good!" I said.
"Lucky for you! My lawyer was already to be in touch if something happened," he said. I wasn't sharp enough to come up with a good comeback on the spur of the moment, so I just laughed.
Over where the water was shallow, there were underwater grasses growing. So beautiful. I didn't get a picture, but Waka did:
There were also little shiny-shelled beetles whirly-gigging around on the surface like tiny speedboats, and freshwater mussel shells, some of them practically nacre only.
We finished off the afternoon with an ice cream at this roadside establishment:
Their social-distancing exhortation signs used the special roadside-ice-cream-and/or-hot-dog-joint fonts that give off an old-timey vibe. It made me feel as if we'd fallen into a timeline in which the mask-wearing and social distancing started back in the 1950s. Alternative history.
Here is the pretty view of the river that you're rewarded with:
Doesn't the river look like such a great way to travel? All smooth like that. And the sumac in the foreground are as close to palms as New England gets.
After doing all that climbing, we rewarded ourselves by going to a little place right down on the river that Waka had discovered the other day:
The rocks stretch out into the water, and in some places, the water right beside them is shallow and silty (walking there is a very strange feeling--unnervingly soft, and each footstep sends up sparkling clouds of the silt, and you can see your footprints underwater), and in some shallow and smooth-pebbly... and then in others deep! You could dive in.
There were two groups of people enjoying the water besides us--some were Spanish speakers and some were South Asian looking, and everyone was very, very friendly and very relaxed, and there was music and just general pleasantness. One guy was walking on a rock near the deep part, and I said, "You should dive in!"
"Only if you ask me to," he said, which I thought was terribly gallant for a guy in his twenties to say to someone his mother's age.
"Oh, I couldn't--only if you want to," I said.
"How can you disappoint me like this?" he exclaimed.
"Oh, well then--do it!" I said, and he obliged, and came bobbing up afterward.
"Looking good!" I said.
"Lucky for you! My lawyer was already to be in touch if something happened," he said. I wasn't sharp enough to come up with a good comeback on the spur of the moment, so I just laughed.
Over where the water was shallow, there were underwater grasses growing. So beautiful. I didn't get a picture, but Waka did:
There were also little shiny-shelled beetles whirly-gigging around on the surface like tiny speedboats, and freshwater mussel shells, some of them practically nacre only.
We finished off the afternoon with an ice cream at this roadside establishment:
Their social-distancing exhortation signs used the special roadside-ice-cream-and/or-hot-dog-joint fonts that give off an old-timey vibe. It made me feel as if we'd fallen into a timeline in which the mask-wearing and social distancing started back in the 1950s. Alternative history.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-29 11:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-07-29 12:05 pm (UTC)But the ethicist guy was saying that signaling (like everything really) has a good side: it's how we establish norms. And while putting on the mask outdoors when you're 20 ft apart is probably pointless, it establishes, ostentatiously, that this is what we do for each other, so that hopefully people are in the habit all the time--because what's also hard is estimating a precise 6 ft.... and does it matter if it's 5.9? How about 3? How about 1? How about 7? ... If we're always whipping out the mask, then the habit's there, and we don't have to engage in faulty estimation or wonder if we'd be okay without the mask at 5.6 feet, etc.
[ETA: the "like everything really" refers to having a good side, not to establishing norms]
no subject
Date: 2020-07-29 12:19 pm (UTC)Signaling is important to me because I don't actually agree with a lot of the things we're being advised to do by the various health agencies but I do believe in being civic-minded! 😀 So, I'm actually signaling to myself as well as to others. If that makes any kind of sense. 😀
no subject
Date: 2020-07-29 12:22 pm (UTC)