#but I've spent the last two days feverishly working on it

[snotsloth]

Hey y'all,

So, as you have all probably seen, I've been participating in NaNoWriMo for the first time in like a decade and having a fantastic time. I've written more in the last 15 days than I have in a very very long time.

But some stuff has happened. Unbeknownst to me, while I was having a grand old time writing my little (irresponsibly long) Baldur's Gate fanfic, the NaNoWriMo forums were on fucking fire.

And for good reason! Apparently, for basically an entire year, moderators and staff have been stifling dissenting voices of forum members who brought up legitimate and serious concerns such as, but not limited to, official sponsors who were scammers that had been previously identified and called out in the forums, inconsistent forum moderation (including favoritism and special treatment for people they were close with), and inadequate protections for participants under the age of 18.

It got so bad that the Board of Directors had to step in and closed down the forums on Nov 12. The posted a statement, and did leave a few specific threads open to collect community comments and answer questions. You can read what they have to say on the primary statement (CW for talk of harassment, mentions of transphobia and racism, and talk of child sexual abuse) here. That thread also has a helpful list of links at the bottom of the initial post that will help you get up to speed if you wish, though it is a lot of reading and potentially traumatizing if you've dealt with issues like this before.

I'm not going to rehash all the details here because even though I've spent a good chunk of the last two days reading up on this mess. I'm not a direct participant in any of these events and I would rather you read what happened in their own words if you're interested.

What I will say is it looks like the NaNoWriMo organization suffered from chronic under-staffing which resulted in employees working excessive hours at jobs that they lacked adequate skills, training, and support to do effectively. In an attempt to make every donation dollar count, they over-promised and under-delivered on programs and services offered by the org, and fundamental safety parameters were just never put in place.

It does appear like the Board is taking things very seriously and they are working on an action plan. However, none of those actions will be taken until at least Nov 27. So, for me, this is where my NaNoWriMo participation ends for the year. I am still working feverishly to meet my personal goal. I just won't be tagging any updates with NaNoWriMo or Nano2023. I will probably still be doing my daily word count updates because they entertain me and help keep me motivated, but it will just be tagged with generic writing and BG3 tags.

I hope that the Board of Directors is able to get things under control and that we see a new and improved NaNoWriMo organization rise in 2024. This annual challenge and the community around it has been a terrific influence in the lives of many writers. Until then, I'll just be over here, scribbling about blorbos.

[theghostpinesmusic]

Desolation Wilderness Loop (1/4)

There were times when this trip felt like an exorcism first and a hike second.

Lindsey and I's 2022 hike of this same loop through the Desolation Wilderness features prominently in the second chapter of the actual book I'm currently working on, so I've already written a lot about it elsewhere and I don't want to make this trip report excessively long by rehashing the story in detail here. For anyone who's interested in the full story, though, I'll likely share some bits and pieces from the book here in the near future anyway, and I'll be sure to include that story.

For now, suffice to say that we'd had a hard couple of COVID years coming into the summer of 2022, but had had a lot of reasons to think that things might finally be getting a little better. On the top of the list for me was a trip to Ohio and Arkansas that we'd planned for late August. Though I live far away from my family (me in Oregon and them throughout the south and midwest), I've usually been able to travel to see them at least once every year or two since 2005, but of course COVID had put a stop to that. What had made it worse was the fact that my brother and his wife had had their first daughter a few weeks before COVID lockdown had begun, so by August of 2022 she was already two-and-a-half years old and I hadn't met her yet, except over Zoom. This trip was meant to "fix" all that, and help get things back to "normal" after the craziness of the previous few years.

Of course, Lindsey and I got COVID for the first time two days before our flight.

Once we were done spending a week staggering feverishly around our house in the August heat, we spent some time trying to figure out a way to reschedule the trip before work started in September, but there wasn't a way to make it work. Hoping to end the summer on some kind of high note, at least, we ended up planning a week-long trip to Lake Tahoe instead, with a four-day hike in the Desolation Wilderness bookended by a few days spent relaxing in South Lake Tahoe and Truckee.

To make a long story short, unbeknownst to us, the soon-to-be 85,000 acre Mosquito Fire started just west of Lake Tahoe on the night we arrived, and so by the time we were two days into our hike, we were choking on noxious wildfire smoke that made it impossible to see across to the other side of the lake we were camped at. For the next two mornings, we had to wake up and brush thick piles of ash off of the tent and the rest of our gear before we could start our day. We hiked like that for most of three days, and it was one of the most miserable experiences of my life. We spent two days afterward in an AirBnB in Truckee, and it wasn't much better, though we were at least able to sleep inside of a building.

In theory, Desolation Wilderness was and is a beautiful destination for a backpacking trip, and its granite blocks and deep blue alpine lakes are basically my ideal hiking environment, so I left that summer hoping to come back as soon as possible to "redeem" our exceptionally bad experience. "As soon as possible" turned out to be the middle of this past August, when I'd had to pivot at the last second after cancelling hiking plans elsewhere due to wildfire smoke (for what felt like the hundredth time in the last ten years). So it was that I found myself parked for the second time at the Echo Lake Trailhead, just southeast of the Desolation Wilderness boundary.

The Desolation Wilderness requires you to reserve a permit that specifies a particular "zone" that you are then required to camp in for your first night in the Wilderness. For our 2022 trip, we'd spent the previous night in South Lake Tahoe, a few miles from the trailhead, so we'd gotten a permit that allowed us to camp at Clyde Lake, a granite-enclosed pond ten miles and one crossing over Mosquito Pass away from the trailhead. This time, I knew I'd be getting to the trailhead after a nearly six-hour drive from Klamath Falls, so my itinerary couldn't be nearly as aggressive. Instead, I'd gotten a permit that would allow me to camp at Lake Of The Woods on the first night, partly because it was a short hike from the trailhead, and partly for sentimental reasons: camping at that lake was one of my few fond memories of our previous trip, as we'd spent a lazy afternoon swimming among its weird granite islands and then watched the smoke-smeared sun set behind Pyramid Peak before settling into the tent for the night amidst another rain of ash.

This time, the air was clear (if a bit cool for August) as I stepped out of the car at the trailhead and walked half a mile down a paved road to the trailhead at the edge of Lower Echo Lake. Here you can take your first look into the heart of the wilderness area from a dam at the east edge of the lake.

It was hard to stand here again and not remember our excitement at the beginning of a new adventure back in 2022, as well as how quickly that excitement had curdled, how twenty-four hours later we'd been choking on wildfire smoke while climbing up to the Fontanillis Lake basin, with two more days of traversing a landscape straight out of Dante still ahead of us.

But, as I said, this was supposed to be an exorcism. I took a deep breath of clean air and started down the path, traversing above Lower Echo Lake to the north. The first two-and-a-half or so miles of this lollypop loop aren't technically in Desolation Wilderness. This becomes clear very quickly, as the north shore of both lakes are dotted with small cabins and the sounds and smells of boat motors fill the air. It's a gorgeous hike nonetheless, with the lakes spreading out blue beneath you to the south and the granite cliffs that make up so much of the wilderness already towering over you to the north, but the character of the landscape definitely changes noticeably as soon as you leave the Echo Lakes behind and climb briefly up to the wilderness boundary.

There's actually a water taxi you can pay for to take you from the trailhead to the boundary to cut out this bit of the hike, but I'd driven six hours one-way to exorcise some demons, and I wasn't going to do that by riding on a boat.

Above the Echo Lakes, beyond the boundary, the wilderness very quickly starts to look, well, desolate. Shortly after the boundary, a use trail descends to Tamarack Lake and, for the enterprising bushwhacker, Ralston and Cagwin Lakes. This area is awesome, and would be a great first-night camp spot for anyone starting very late in the day. I bypassed it on my way in, though I would drop down and explore it a little on my way back to the car three days later, as I'll write about eventually.

You climb slowly but steadily once past the boundary, and as you climb, there is less and less shade to be had; however, in spite of it being mid-August, the temperature was unseasonably low and the wind was gusting, so the sun didn't feel as oppressive as it might have otherwise. I passed through the Haypress Meadows, dotted with the remnants of wildflowers that must have been vibrant just a few weeks before, then struck a left-hand turnoff toward Lake Of The Woods. This is the sharpest climb yet, as this side trail climbs and then descends down off the northern shoulder of Ralston Peak, but it's over quickly.

Switchbacking down into the lake basin from the east, I was suddenly overcome with emotion as Lake Of The Woods came into view. After a moment, I realized why: we'd descended this exact same way in 2022, but the smoke had been so thick that the lake had been obscured and nearby Pyramid Peak had been rendered invisible. Now, looking down on the lake glittering in the sun with the silver mountain hanging over it under clear skies, it felt like a weight had been lifted off of my chest. As silly as it might sound, I felt like I was seeing Desolation Wilderness as it "should" be for the first time.

I dropped down into the lake basin to find it much busier than I'd expected for a weekday. Since the area requires you to camp in an established, numbered site, I worried for a moment about finding an available spot: I wasn't sure where else I would be able to camp near a water source that was also in my permit area if every site was already taken.

I needn't have worried, though: appropriately enough, the only spot still available on the north shore of the lake (clearly the best side) was the same site Lindsey and I had camped in last time. I gladly took it and set up camp. There had been a strong, cold wind blowing all day, and it continued blowing from across the lake as I settled in for the night, but I tried to angle my tent in such a way that would minimize my exposure throughout the night.

With a few hours until sunset, I somehow got the idea in my head that I should reprise my 2022 swim amidst the granite islands. I'm not going to say this was a mistake, but it was...let's just say it was an experience. For one thing, it was much colder this time than it had been last time. For another, once I psyched myself up to jump into the water, it felt (at least temporarily) warmer to be in the water than to be in the cold, wind-chilled air. So I went on a bit of an expedition, not only swimming out to and around what Lindsey and I had decided was "my" island two years ago, but also swimming into and out of a number of weird little inlets and bays formed by the tumble of granite that mazes the lake.

By the time I pulled myself back out of the water, my arms and legs were completely numb from cold, and the sun was just getting to the point where it was threatening to disappear for the night behind the mountains. I spent a few minutes sitting on a dry rock, trying to avoid putting on (and thus soaking) my dry, warm clothes until the wind had dried me off, but eventually I came to realize that the wind was going to freeze me to death well before it dried me off.

On the heels of that realization, though, I also remembered that even if the sun wasn't shining on the surrounding rocks anymore, it had been for the last twelve or so hours. So I spent fifteen or so minutes moving from rock to rock like a lizard, laying belly-down on each one until I'd sucked all of the warmth from it before moving on to another. Eventually, I'd warmed and dried up enough to put my shirt and long pants back on, and then I waddled up the hill back to the tent and curled up into my quilt (this was the summer of discovering the backpacking quilt for me) until I could feel my hands and feet again. By the time I crawled back out, it was almost night.

While the sunset wasn't nearly as spectacular as the fire-mottled one Lindsey and I had watched two years before from the same spot, I still enjoyed watching the alpenglow slide across the top of Pyramid Peak before heading back to camp to make and eat dinner.

Often, when I eat dinner just after sunset on a backpacking trip, one of two things happens: I either fall into a deep sleep pretty much immediately, or the warmth and calories imparted by the food wake me up to the point that I spend another hour or two messing around before grudgingly climbing into bed. This time, the latter thing happened. So, I spent awhile taking some night photos of the lake, the trees, the stars, and Pyramid Peak.

These were "marred" a little bit by the moon rising brightly behind me in the east shortly after full dark had settled in, but even if the photos aren't that great, the real-life effect was gorgeous.

Eventually, after I'd gotten tired of rock-hopping and photo-taking (and the neighbor's dog had finally stopped barking at whatever it'd been barking at for the last three hours), I settled in under my quilt for the night. Blocked from the wind by my tent's fly, it wasn't really that cold, and the wind itself trailed off significantly as the night wore on. I slept the sleep of a guy who was reasonably sure that his luck was going to hold this time around.