Winter in Fast Forward Photo Form

This winter was a scary one.

Tons of snow, tons of cold. Remember the ARCTIC BLASTS?! I remember when it was below 0 for a week. I took a screenshot of what it was one night in Williston, VT, and it was -11, while feeling like -33. I remember walking outside in Maine when it was -14 I think. -14 is cold. 

I'm gonna blast through pretty much all of winter with this post. I don't know why I'm still trying to catch up, but fuck it. I'm still trying to catch up. 

I went to Maine for Christmas and although it was a quiet Christmas, it was nice to be home.

My parents picked a beautiful tree that I decorated beautifully.

This was pretty cool. I randomly went downstairs at one point and saw something moving in the yard. We had a nice little staring contest.

A highlight of Maine was when it rained for most of the 2 days before Christmas, then got cold. It created this:

I took a billion pictures, but that's my favorite. Then on Christmas, it snowed, creating this:

So awesome. 

When I drove from Maine back to NH to do our roommate Christmas, I talked to my boss on the phone. He told me what the "special gift" we had been promised was. Through 5 years of working at Apple, I got an ipod Shuffle one year. After being at Lycos for 3 months, I got a freaking ipad:

so awesome

Our roommate Christmas was absolutely fantastic. I want to post a million pictures, but it's August and I'm trying to catch up. And some of the pics have some incriminating stuff. We had a great night, opening presents for hours, listening to Christmas carols. We got Chinese food. Our tree was absolutely magnificent. 

In fact, our whole setup was. Even Irwin got a stocking!

AWWWWWWW

This winter, I finally visited Stonehouse Pond. It looked awesome.

As did the Somersworth river walk.

I took this from inside my car in Winchester. I love the mess of my car window.

This was taken in the NH house, from the weeks of freezing. All our windows froze. This was looking out at the streetlights:

And this was taken in the back parking lot in NH:

As per usual, I got real anxiety ridden and somewhat depressed this winter. I just can't deal with a world without sun and outdoor activities. But this year was a little bit better because of Blue Job. 

I decided to try to stay active, both to keep in somewhat shape, and also to attempt to ward off said depression. I never really do anything in the winter because I always feel like I get sick as soon as I start exercising in the cold. I still am not great at being able to breathe if it gets too cold, but this year I decided to go with the theory that it's actually staying inside all winter that makes people sick, and I forced myself to hike every weekend that I could, even if it was just tiny little Blue Job, just to get as much fresh air as I could get. 

Through going there in late November all the way until April, I truly saw and experienced all of the winter season. And it helped me mentally in immense ways. Whatever was going on in my life that was stressing me out, I found absolute solace in just walking through snow and cold to the top of Blue Job, smoking a little, and wandering around playing air guitar and listening to pretty much nothing but Gates' You Are All You Have Left To Fear, Dorena's Nuet, and Caspian's Hymn For The Greatest Generation. Those albums meant the world to me all winter and will forever bring back images from Blue Job. 

This winter made Blue Job mean more to me than I ever thought it could, and I plan on hiking it in winter every year and listening to those albums. Here's some of my favorite pictures from my Blue Job treks:

From a small stream, right as winter started to kick in:

From early December I think. I love this little pond:

Once winter kicked in, the trails started getting a bit rough, especially without snowshoes. But I fought my way up every time:

The end of the trail is awesome- it's nothing but stick trees against white snow, and it's quite the sight at sunset.

This was from the top of Blue Job, the one time I didn't make it to the top. This was after I didn't hike for a few weeks and it snowed a lot. I've never had more difficulty hiking in my life. Right away, the snow was higher than normal, and I stupidly went my usual long route to the fire tower, cutting through the woods to the second peak. I shouldn't have done it- nearly the entire trip from the fire tower to what I call the top of Blue Job (but which is really another mountain) was packed snow, which meant sometimes I'd step and sink an inch or two, and sometimes I went to my crotch. Hiking up one section, I ended up just lying down and crawling because my legs were sinking so much. It was EXHAUSTING. I made it up to the last section and the snow had been blown into cool patterns. I thought it looked like mountains from far away. I finally had to turn back at that point. Maybe I need to buy snow shoes next year.

I would often just hike around rocks so I'd have something solid to stand on:

Once the pond froze over, it made for great pics. And a great memory of finally deciding to trust the ice and running around and sliding on it like I used to do when I was a kid. It still felt great. I may have to bring ice skates up with me next year.

There were days where my beard was complete ice. Although Blue Job is small, it gets a LOT of wind, and the top was always a tundra. It's hard to really put it into words, but hiking up here in the winter was truly a movie experience. The feeling I get from hiking alone in deep woods in the summer or fall is great, but it's more about beautiful views and the pretty music I listen to creating a soundscape for a view. In the winter, through the crunching of my boots on ice and the stinging wind in my face, it was truly an epic journey just to hike up to this tiny summit. And listening to beautiful instrumental music made me feel like I was in Alaska, hiking to the top of some grand mountain by myself, the only survivor who made it this far. I'd come back to my car sweaty, face still somewhat frozen with a melted ice beard, tired only the way you can feel after fighting your way through an end of the world frozen tundra, and I'd feel like I was just in a different world completely. 

As hard as it can be and as much as it can hurt, I now see the appeal of winter hiking. Your world really is like nothing else when you're out there.

This winter was big for me because of all of this. It further reaffirmed that outside on mountaintops is where I should be.

My last picture is probably my favorite from this winter. When I left family time in Maine to head back to the real world, I saw what looked like it would be a nice sunset starting to form. I drove down to my Great Aunt's summer house, a place I haven't been in probably 10 years, knowing if I was going to catch it, it would be on their beach. Their road had been plowed, but obviously nobody had shoveled anything around the house. I sludged through a waist-high snowbank and a foot plus of snow past that to get to the beach, and was met with this view:

Maybe winter isn't that bad after all. 

currently listening to: Youth Pictures of Florence Henderson- Self Titled

Fall in Fast Forward Photo Form, part 2: Halloween

Here are the best pics from the later part of fall- the Halloweeny part. I stole a bunch of these from Rich. Thanks, Rich.

I had nothing to do with this decoration since I was at work when it happened, but man I love when my roommates decorate. They do a hell of a job.

I only went to 1 haunt this year,-Haunted Overload, which has always been my favorite. I didn't have as good a time as I did last year, but it was still pretty awesome. This giant skull head was about the coolest thing I've ever seen.

(it's probably 20 feet high and 15 feet across)

We went to Funspot for Buote's birthday. I hadn't been to Funspot probably since college, and it was awesome. We had a great time. Here's Heath trying to get arrested:

hide your kids hide your wife

We hit up that destroyed building in Kittery, where I took a terrifying Screammask shot.

Dustin didn't really do anything for Halloween in Saratoga this year, so I went to Birthdayween. It was probably time anyway, as it had been a few years. Horseman represented. I think this is my Halloween costume forever now.

Half man. Half horse. All justice.

Here's Horseman drinking a BURR while Pat Lane looks on admiringly:

Josh's costume was incredible. He was the made-of-money guy from the Geico commercials.

Bigfoot pose

Ridiculous!

Most of Birthdayween was posing for superhero pictures.

I particularly love this one. Jesse's face is classic.

as is Ahadi's costume

Another good one for Jesse. Nice costume, Heath.

Jesse threw cards everywhere while pieces of money fell off Josh all night. 

Here's everyone. How weird is it that Nintendo put the A and B buttons in that order? I never thought of that before.

Another one. Horseman loves posing.

Oh yea, and this happened.

This is the least incriminating picture I have. Basically, someone loves drinking and getting naked at parties, and that someone decided to put stuff into a certain place in front of a lot of people, then he put something into his mouth from that place. Yikes.

I should do this pose more often:

Here's Rich and I at Art's Halloween party a week later:

And me fighting a fire:

Josh and I, the 3 armed Horseman, after kicking butt at beer pong (pretty much all josh).

So Art's party was a little odd cuz I knew 1 person there other than the people I came with, and that was Art, who I barely know. But I think this was the 3rd time he had done this party, and there was a huge game of Slender Man that absolutely ruled. 

If you don't know Slender Man, he's a character created by someone on the Something Awful forums, a site I used to go to all the time. I think a computer game was created, and somewhere down the line, this game was. It may be done by other people- I'm not sure. At this party, what it entailed was groups of 2 running out into a giant field (this party was at a peach orchard), where you have to find pieces of paper with clues on them. The clues didn't really matter- it was more just about finding the pieces of paper. Each group had 1 flashlight. And roaming the field (and all of Art's property) was a friend of his in Slender Man garb, on stilts. So he looked pretty much just like this:

Other people were dressed as skeletons, and they ran around finding people for Slender Man to catch. Sounds ridiculous, right? Especially after drinking? Let me tell you, it was AWESOME. Rich and I partnered up, and right away, standing in a silent field, Rich says "you hear that? THAT'S HIM!" and you could hear the creaking of stilts in the distance. But I couldn't see him at all. In fact, I'm pretty sure the person dressed as him got dressed without anyone knowing, so nobody would have seen him. I saw him once in the distance, and he was huge and terrifying. 

It was weird how quickly the game got really intense. As soon as you heard Slender Man, you took off, fast. I remember my closest encounter was when Rich suddenly saw him heading towards us and we ran in different directions. I started making my way back towards where Rich had gone, and immediately saw him coming towards me. I had to jump and duck behind a rock as he walked by. Oh yea- and Art was blasting this terrifying music that was essentially a distorted machine-sounding heartbeat with weird eerie sounds in the background. You'd hear people scream in the distance, see people and not know if they were good or bad, etc. And you never wanted to turn on your flashlight, because that would alert Slender Man as to where you were.

I ended up sneaking back to home base where I found out the game was still going and there were only a few people out there. I had collected a few pieces of paper solo, so I realized I could win if I found a few more. Rich had either been caught or had enough, I can't remember. So I headed out into an uncharted area and found 3 more. I was psyched but heard Slender Man in the area, and when I should have called it a night, I headed towards 1 last piece of paper, only to have Art, in full skeleton makeup, jump up out of the bushes like 10 feet in front of me. He later said he thought I was going to walk right into him and had no idea how I didn't see him. I screamed out and took off sprinting towards the woods, where I was told I was safe. But I guess the game was over, because Art followed me right in there. I stood in silence, trying to be invisible, but I was already made. He ran in after me, and, tripping over rocks and smashing my way through trees and very thick (and wet) woods, I got my foot tangled in brush and my shoe fell off. 

I yelled out that I guess the game was over and Art helped me find my shoe. Apparently he only went in the woods to get me because I was the last one out there and they were trying to end the game. So it doesn't count, and I went un-caught. I had 6 pieces of paper, which made me the winner. At least that's how I feel. Woo!

When I got out of the woods, there stood Slender Man, illuminated by the moon glow, and he was absolutely terrifying. It's hilarious how scary and intense a game of basically hide and seek mixed with a scavenger hunt was, but you put on super loud creepy music and send strangers out into a dark field with a giant guy on stilts chasing you, shit gets intense quick. What a fun party. I wish I had pictures, but it was all too intense to even bother. What a cool party though.

currently listening to: Yppah- "You Are Beautiful At All Times"

Fall in Fast Forward Photo Form, part 1

Alright, time to do most of fall in fast forward photo form. These are some of my favorite photos from September-November, with very little commentary.

We went to the Deerfield fair, which was awesome, especially since I missed it last year.

Or maybe it was miserable?

Such a horrible picture:

Steph modeling some protruded cow buttholes:

I hiked Mount Sentinel in the far northeast side of the Ossippee Range right as fall started showing its face:

Right after sitting and enjoying a granola bar, I almost walked right into this guy:

It's a smaller mountain, but with the magic of HDR and iphone editing programs, I got some excellent color:

Love this one:

And here's a little cabin on this mountain that, once darkened, is straight out of Evil Dead:

I visited Maine and golfed among incredible foliage:

Love this one from the dock at my parents' house: 

I hit up West Quarry Mountain, one of my favorites:

And headed over to East Quarry, along one of the most overgrown, untouched trails ever. Look at that color!

I hit up Stonehouse Pond. It was predictably gorgeous.

This was taken on my driveway in Maine. Fall overload:

Another driveway shot. Love me some leaves:

This was from an attempt to get all of the colors of the fall rainbow in one picture, completely ripping off a dude I follow on instagram with like 400,000 followers. I never posted it, but it's pretty cool to see them all together:

This was from the woods in Maine. Yea, there was some editing. 

We hit up the Topsfield fair for my first time. Josh hung out with horses.

and they loved it

Josh pretended he didn't want to go to the Pig house, so Rich and Buote posed awkwardly in this thing:

how big do they think people's heads are?

Rich bought the biggest whoopie pie in history:

And saw his old friend Dan the Candy Man: 

While Josh fed goats: 

The sky made for some awesome HDRs: 

And blood leaves photos: 

I finally visited Willand Pond in Somersworth. I love this shot:

I hiked Rand Mountain and had quite a moment with this view:

Here's the same view a little later, with a different edit:

That hike was pretty memorable, because I wandered through the woods and stumbled across a bunch of bones- this is what I'm certain is a moose skull:

It was terrifying because it was shredded to pieces. Then I heard something walking through the woods near me. It was the first time I've ever pulled out my knife in preparation for something bad possibly happening. But it didn't. Had a nice interaction on the way out with 2 hunters yelling at each other outside their truck while cleaning their guns too. I wasn't wearing orange cuz I forgot it was hunting season. And it was getting late. REALLY DODGED A BULLET ON THAT ONE. (yes, I already used that joke on facebook)

This was taken on a small pond in Somersworth on the way to Rochester. I drove 2 hours home from work, saw what the sky was doing, and b-lined it to this spot, hoping I'd get some fall magic. Working all day and having to earn this view made it so much more special:

And here's Heath, modeling an awesome snack that was made in his image: 

And that's that. Stay tuned for Fall in Fast Forward, part 2- Halloween edition!