2012-03-20 47 -122

Location

Boggy overgrown thorny deciduous woods on an empty lot north of Kenmore

Participants

OtherJack

Plans

I'll try to take the bus up and get there around 6:3040pm --OtherJack 4:20pm

Expedition

Google maps had the hashpoint in woods on a large, irregularly shaped suburban lot. If there was anything built on this lot, it wasn't visible under the tree cover. I had no idea who owned it, what it was being used for, etc. The point wasn't far from the next lot north, which was more clearly developed with houses, a driveway and what looked like a garden.

After work I took the bus to a nearby spot and started walking. As I started to approach the road intersection bounding the lot, I saw a bold sign in front of the woods reading "NO (long word I couldn't read)". My heart sank, but then as I got closer I saw that it was "NO ANNEXATION" - just another political sign, OK cool! No mention of trespassing or property anywhere, and no fence.

The only problem was that the edge of the woods along the roadside was completely overgrown with an ungodly concentration of thorny shrubs. For all I knew the inside of the lot was no better, but there was no way to see in. So I decided to try and come around via the neighbors to the north, described above. Maybe the side fronting their property would give me more of a chance.

I walked in on the gravel driveway, which turned out to serve three houses; I knew that the hashpoint was a few dozen meters behind the southernmost of the three. I didn't see anyone around, and resolved to cut around the edge of their garden to a spot where it looked like I could enter the woods. This is when things started to get harder.

For starters, I didn't want to actually step on their newly tilled garden, so I walked on the tarp they'd laid around the perimeter. But the forest shrubbery was overgrowing onto the tarp, and so I slid and stepped on their soil a few times. The whole time I was anxiously looking around to see if anyone would notice, but there was still no sign.

At the end of the garden behind the house, I started trying to walk southwest across a small clearing toward the woods, only to find that this clearing was a thorny, sucking mire. I was almost prize poultry, but finally decided to try it. I had to painstakingly make my way on what small patches of solid, muddy ground there were, while smashing away the thorny multitudes, all in clear view of the house and yard while holding a GPS. Thankfully, no one appeared, except for their cat, which could not have been a hashcat due to the intervening bog. At some point the GPS displayed "ARRIVING DESTINATION", which I found rather useless given that I was still about 60 feet (20m) away.

After what seemed like an eternity, I arrived at the edge of the woods, only to find them equally boggy, and massively overgrown with hardwood deciduous shrubs of some sort. There were fewer thorns though, and it looked doable. In fact, I quickly found that many of the smaller shrubs were not just leafless, but dead. Nonetheless, things were muddy and slow until I found a nice fallen log on the bog floor that led toward the hashpoint. Balance was hardly an issue, because the omnipresent matrix of dead woody undergrowth easily supported me from the sides! It was almost like wading through deep water, albeit deep water that loudly snaps into pieces when you push through it.

When this log met another moss-covered log? branch? that crossed over at about chest height, I checked the GPS and now it gave 10 feet (3m). Error radius? page page page... 18 feet! Hallelujah, finally over! I relaxed against the comfy branch, safely out of sight now (and I assume well off their property), took some photos of the swampness, and then got out of there. After re-traversing the thorn-bog I took an easy grassy shortcut by the side of their house instead of trying to slip my way around their garden tarp again.

I did not get shot, yelled at, sucked into the mire, or skinned by the thorns...