I was looking through my pictures looking for materials to include in my ACIS album, when I came across this:
It makes me giggle a bit to think about what my readers' reactions(!) might be when seeing some of the things we relied on to find our way in the bush. 
Some have more artistic value than practical use, while others of historic value
Modern ones tend to carry more information
[Updated]
In this photograph, you will find (if very careful) example of the old practice of track blazing with a slasher:
And please do visit the linked album photos and see the larger picture. I've also put some extra information there including actual account of trips where the pictures were taken.
Ooops sorry losing my way, I was in France and suddenly .. :spock: … coming back to read
The second looks like an old sign you can find in desert trail ! You mentionned "A simple indication to make a route change for those traveled up or down the stream to reach this point", but was it centuries ago, or less. Those old signs can stay a very long time especially in desert where they indicate a route from well to well. I would'nt say the same for the others !!
Damn! I'll have gps thanks! :lol:.
In the U.S., trails are typically marked by painting a splotch on a tree near the trail. For instance, the Buckeye Trail is marked by blue blazes. Here's a photo of one that I photographed while hiking in Tar Hollow.
Yeah, but add hock paint sploches would be so much easier and perfect Hollywood fair for a slasher movie. :devil:.
Do you mean by painting trees to lead people off the trail? If you were evil, you could create a lot of chaos with any system. 😉 I mean MM (that's Mimmi's Mum's new name :up:) is showing us homemade signs. An evil person could make homemade signs that were totally misleading.
You could create a lot of chaos with that system! :insane:.
Originally posted by debplatt:
Being lost with a lot of MM is not a problem !! 😀
Originally posted by qlue:
They are literally thousands of miles of blazed trail all over the U.S., and yet I've never heard of anyone trying to mess with hikers by painting fake blazes. It could be that evil people are too lazy to paint stray splotches. First they would have to drive to remote regions, then they'd have to hike for miles into wild areas. There are probably more convenient outlets for their evil tendencies in the city.
Originally posted by arduinna:
M&Ms? Mmmmmm.
Originally posted by arduinna:
Originally posted by debplatt:
A "blaze" is the splotch of paint on a tree to show the direction of a trail. A "blazed trail" is a trail whose path has been marked by such paint splotches. For more, see the Wikipedia article on Trail blazing.
Originally posted by debplatt:
:confused:
Ah, thank you Deb 🙂
Goodness! 13 responses while I was in the dreamland! That's a way better than I'd thought when I wrote:
😆 :lol:Originally posted by arduinna:
Don't worry, Olivier. I'm planning to post another one called "We were never lost" soon.Originally posted by arduinna:
It's a very rudimentary cairn. Basically when you've been traveling this stream with very steep slope on either side, and come across a sign like this, you will know one or either side is less steep that you can climb out safely. Originally posted by qlue:
GPS may tell you where you are, but you still need to know when you need to make the direction change.
Originally posted by debplatt:
Interesting. Here, locally in my Tramping circle, "blaze" is the term used only to describe the notch(es) made by a slasher on tree bark. This was the practice in old days, but some still do it today. Putting paint spot on tree or tying something on tree branch is called "route marking", and the paint spot or the object itself is called "marker". To me, "trail blazing" has a connotation of opening up a new route where there was none before, while "route marking" may be putting markers may be done on an existing route with no, obscure or misleading markers.
Over here, opening the trail and placing markers to guide others has sort of merged into one over-arching concept.
Originally posted by qlue:
I had a couple of long retired tramping friends whose hobby is/was exploring new routes in relatively well tracked areas (what we call "off-track routes"). One of them occasionally got it wrong and we had a couple of "lost in another dimension" experience. Nothing too serious and we could always get back to the point where we started to go wrong. And considering anyone come across the wrong markers would have gone off-track on purpose to get there and be experienced in bush-craft, those mistakes were harmless, IMO. Originally posted by debplatt:
To do that, the evil person has to get lost himself, doesn't he? :DOriginally posted by arduinna:
MMMMMost likely. 😀
Originally posted by mimi_s_mum:
copyright: © Chappatte – http://www.globecartoon.com/dessin
@DebI've just uploaded a couple of forest interior photos and updated the post accordingly. Can you spot the blazes in there?Those pictures were taken in Eastern Tararua Ranges, which is relatively dry and has open forest interior. But in the wetter west, the forest interior can often be hard to walk through, even on flat ground.Will go temporally off-line. Back soon. TTFN
Originally posted by debplatt:
I suppose the historic back ground is also quite different? And differences in natural environment may have played some role, too. Here we often have relatively thick under-growth inside forest. The old time "trail blazers" literally had to cut route through the thicket. There was no need to put paint marks/blazes because if you tried to go the wrong way, you'd be caught in the tangle! 😀
😆 😆 Thanks, Olivier.
Originally posted by debplatt:
Thanks for the picture, Deb. Reminds me of the woods back in Japanese hills. 🙂 The trees are deciduous aren't they?Here in NZ, trees/shrubs are generally evergreen and those that develop ground floor of mature forest are tend to be very hardy and resilient. They wait patiently for years until a big tree, often in some distance, falls and let the light in through canopy. Once getting the sunlight, they surge into growth and compete with each other for more light, resulting in the thickets. Often old blazes and markers placed before the surge goes straight through the tangles, which creates a big problem for the hapless off-track trampers.
Originally posted by mimi_s_mum:
It's typically a young forest that has thick undergrowth. Like in this photo:In Ohio we have a lot of forests like this because at one time almost all of Ohio was farmland, so the forests are developing anew in former farmer land. However once the tree canopy gets think enough, the underbrush clears out of its own accord because not enough sun makes it to the ground to support it.
Originally posted by mimi_s_mum:
Yes, they are. :)Originally posted by mimi_s_mum:
This sounds so different from what I'm accustomed to. Here's a photo I took while hiking through an evergreen forest in Ohio. The ground is relatively clear of undergrowth, but as you can see it is pretty dark inside.
Originally posted by mimi_s_mum:
Over here the blazes are typically a vertical rectangle that is white or a primary color. In your photo, I believe I see a horizontal, white line on one of the trees. Is that a blaze where you live?
Originally posted by debplatt:
Originally posted by debplatt:
It is very different from the Japanese deciduous forests I used to hike through, too. Took a bit of getting used to.
Just the envy to show you my beloved place where I stayed 25 years in the Ardennes (a forest too, no blaze trail though, we knew the trail by heart :
Originally posted by arduinna:
Thank you very much for the pictures, Olivier? 🙂 Are the native forest trees ever-green like here in NZ?
Originally posted by mimi_s_mum:
Oh you can put her/his/it … she, he,it at will … you have not make your decision yet 😆
Originally posted by arduinna:
Well your scheme worked. I am envious. Originally posted by arduinna:
I love autumn. :love: Originally posted by arduinna:
:eyes: Don't you have pine trees in some areas of France?
No they are deciduous trees mainly beeches, oaks … a normal forest that change of colours in autumn . "trees ever-green" : I learned that before ( from Darkest, it astonished me.
Originally posted by arduinna:
It's called the gender neutral writing style. I used to read a quite few works of the feminist Sci-fi writers and have been influenced by them. The most prominent of those, Ursula K Le Guin, created the gethenians, an androgynous humanoid species that turns randomly into either male or female only a few days every month, while being asexual for the rest of the time. She also wrote an essay called "Is Gender Necessary?" (later published in her essay collection "Dancing at the Edge of the World" as "Is Gender Necessary? Redux") questioning European languages' use of gender, especially the practice of using the male singular pronoun (and article in most non-English European languages) for generic expression. FYI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Left_Hand_of_Darknesshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_at_the_Edge_of_the_World
Originally posted by mimi_s_mum:
It brings some wealth, the relationships woman/woman woman/Man and man/man bring much more than only an it/it relationship. English has already suppress the "thee" and the "you", if we are all a "it", this won't be close to become "numbers" .
Coming from a culture whose language does not actually have or need third person pronouns at all (Japanese use person's actual name, or term that literally means "that person" or "that woman"), and to a country whose indigenous language has truly non-gender specific pronoun (ia in Maori can be he or she), I still fail to see the necessity of gender in language. Of course, I could also take a step further and adopt the real feminist style of using "she" for generic third person singular pronoun. Everyone has her own way of prioritising what is required in her language. 😉
You guys? You two? Yous? :p
:bye:
I propose "its language" and we are quits ?
You keep "his language", I keep "her language", and the goldfish keeps "its language". How about that? 😉
That seems fairer, doesn't it?
Thought you (second person singular)'d gone to bed, Olivier! :eyes: Or gone swimming across the ocean (singular)! (Wonder if gold fish (plural) survive in the sea water?)Darn, looks like I missed him. A slippery fish he is.
Originally posted by mimi_s_mum:
hum hum, his language for me :rolleyes:
I don't care about the gender of the pronouns all that much. But I wish English had a real, second person plural pronoun.
Night, Olivier 🙂
Originally posted by mimi_s_mum:
:eyes: I don't want to be a goldfish !! … just going away … across the Ocean… :bye:
Originally posted by mimi_s_mum:
> You guys? : Vous les gars (male plural) (second person)
> You two : Tous les deux : (plural, male or female, or mix) (first or second person)
> Yous ( Vous ) : (plural, male or female, or mix) (first or second person):faint:
Gosh, you sound American! 😆 (I noticed DH said that, too. :lol:)Thanks, that was very interesting. Your "younz" sounded very cute. But "yakking"? :eyes:
In western Pennsylvania they have a second person, plural pronoun (yinz). Although where I was from, it was more common to hear "younz".
I actually posted a voice sample. 🙂 If you'd like to listen to it (and don't feel that you have to), it's located here. I just looked at this old post myself, and for some reason the flash audio player no longer works. But most browsers will play an mp3 file, and there's a direct link to the mp3 file below the non-functional, flash audio player.
I've never heard of yinz or younz, but according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yinz those usages have quite long history. How interesting! 🙂 Here in NZ, historically the Southland is said to have strong Scottish influence. (rolling rs and pronouncing h in wh for whiskey, etc) They use something like those down there?
G'nite, MM!
They may. But I haven't picked up. (Remember I'm not born English speaker.)Well, I've just bing'ed "yakking" and "Show all" said there are 243,000 results while "Only from NZ" returned only 368. So seems it's not common expression in NZ. Interesting.Thanks for the "yak", Deb. TTFN :)[update]Just before I really go. I often hear "hard yakker" used to mean "hard work". Not sure if this is really related to "yak"="chat". Still interesting.:bye:
What? People don't yak in NZ? (Its definition is listed as yak2).