My first project after college. I was in my barn but it was still a barn! At first I only had a 1500 watt heater I couldn't run when I was trying to solder - the soldering iron wouldn't get hot enough to solder LOL! So I spent many long days and nights working down there at near freezing temps. But here at least I had my wood stove in. Eventually I ran a 220 VAC, 50 amp service down there. And I sized everything for 200 amps if needed. All I had to do was change to another breaker up at the house. The interior was finished off like a regular office and I pretty much lived down there for about 20 years. I literally lived down there for the two years we were cohabiting but separate. What you see is a project for a major museum. I won a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for this idea. Seth, you would know it. It was for OMSI. What you see hanging on my chair is my military issue Arctic Thermal ear
Now You can see a couple of the candles on my headboard. My candle count kept growing and growing. I have about 20 now. LOL! But the ladies seem to enjoy the little ritual of lighting the candles.
Me and the greatest love of my life. This is the young lady I refer to as Number One in my Second Life thread.
The kitty in the photos above was with me back on our property. She loved to catch snakes, bring them into my office, and let them go. And then chase them around. This is a shot I took of a snake I was taking outside after little baby brought it in. That is the view outside my office door. I would take the snake and turn them loose way up on the hill or out in the pasture. Often she would go out and find it, and bring it back in again. She once brought in a gopher snake that was about 6 feet long!
This is another very special young lady I had in my life for a time. We rented ATVs and spend a day riding in the wilds. It was a tough day. Much of the terrain was very rugged. But she was a real trooper and we had a great time.
I grew up at about 2000m and did a lot of recreational activities at 3000 to 4600m. I now live at about 800m. When I go back to 2000m and exert myself it seems high. LOL. I like to see what grows at certain altitudes in different parts of the world and how the morphology of what grows is affected by altitude directly or indirectly. How that changes over time has also interested me. I liked the pic. I love high country.
4000m is high! That's thin air high Yes, high country is fascinating isn't it. We have fantastic alpine meadows here, up above the tree line. Stunning array of flowering plants in spring, and a rich ecosystem. Lots of peaty ground, endless little streams. EG: The same location in winter:
That’s beautiful. It's fascinating your tree line is so different. Where I grew up it was around 3400m. Do you have any edibles that grow up in alpine areas? We had raspberries and strawberries that would grow just above the timberline. The fruit was tiny, but the flavor unmatched by anything else I’ve ever had. I need to dig up my old photos. Developed film from a Kodak 110! Not sure how they will look on here but I’ll try and dig them out and see.
Our treeline is around 1500-1600m. It's not that some varieties of tree won't grow above that, it's that the conditions are too brutal for anything we have here ...even our alpine trees. It's probably more like the Scottish Highlands, where despite the relatively low altitude, conditions can be harsher than much higher ranges in other countries. And yes, we have edibles. Not anything exotic (we're very careful about introduced species in our wild areas), but local stuff.
What is the main driver of the harsh conditions? Temperature, wind, moisture or kind of a combination of all? I think the tree line in the eastern US is similar to yours or lower. When I was a kid I remember finding 30-40 ft tall dead trees (some still standing) several hundred feet above the current tree line. What’s local/native? I guess we got lucky in the native berry bracket as strawberry and raspberry are both native. But you got kangaroo and platypus so I guess we are even! LOL At least you guys learned your lesson from rabbits and cane toads. We keep introducing stuff. It’s nearly impossible not to though in a global economy.
An old friend of mine, we spent a lot of space-time together. Actually this was published in a book in the 1970s. It was claimed to be a real photograph of an alien being held at Area 51. Now that may sound like just another internet rumor. But the thing is, we didn't have CGI back then and the government didn't admit to Area 51 existing for another 30 years.
I saw this amazing young lady for almost 2 years. She was working on her Ph.D. in Neurobiology. This is a photo of her giving a lecture. I wish I could share more photos and her and Number One. They are both absolutely stunning - the two most beautiful women I've ever met!
What happens when you give a physicist a well? The fact is, we had lots and lots of water but it was often high in soda and or iron [depending on the time of year]; and accordingly, iron bacteria. At first we tried to manage with various accepted method but with limited success. So after ruining all of our water appliances and clothes, I finally decided to go all out do this right. I put about $20K into a new building up by the house and essentially a full water treatment system. Firstly, we had a well and submersible pump down in pasture. But the pump could only produce 40-60 psi. I don't remember the flow rate any more but it was also marginal. So I was addressing not only the bacteria, iron, and soda, but also low pressure and flow, and too much change in pressure as it cycles. You see significant pressure changes between 40 and 60 psi Starting from the left front of the photo, there is a pressure tank [a large bladder to store pressurized water] for the primary pump in the pasture. That then goes into a constant-pressure booster pump that kept the pressure between 85-90 PSI. This also increases the flow capacity dramatically. After the booster pump is a second pressure tank for the high pressure side. After that is the bleach tank and pump, which inject bleach into the water as it goes into the large mixing tank. This tank is fed from the bottom and the water slowly moves up. This allows time for the bleach to react with the iron and kill the bacteria. As the iron and any other metals or minerals reacts with the chlorine in the bleach, it precipitates out and settles down at the bottom of the tank. Every night, that tank bottom flushes for about a minute to remove the solids and flush them down the drain. The water then comes out the top of the mixing and goes into a clarifier, which is designed to remove any remaining precipitates, especially iron chloride. After that is a carbon filter that removes any residual chlorine and minerals or other chemicals. And finally there is a water softener that acts as a last stage to remove any remaining calcium or other minerals. The filters all back flushed automatically on a scheduled basis. I also has a separate feeds so the gardens and other outdoors spigots used raw water. The treated water only went to the house and my office. Our water quality was tested from time to time as is required for various things and always tested as perfect. One woman who tested it said it was the best she had ever seen. I know the taste was excellent and it was always crystal clear. The pressure and flow was as good as any. The photo was taken with an early mobile-phone camera and it is skewed for some reason. Cheap camera I guess.
Looking down the other direction from the house, during the winter. Note the location of the little footbridge down at the creek for the next photo. This photo was taken down at the footbridge [just to the right] during a 500-year flood. I was working on a huge project at the time and stood to make about $3 million over a couple of years. But this flood wiped out my customer. I woke up on my delivery day and saw on the news that my customer was under 6 feet of water. All of the water you can see was actually coming from our creek. To the left of the photo the creek over topped a 90 degree turn and flooded the pasture and the entire valley. I had measured our flow and had a sense of scale. I estimated that we had about 400 cubic feet per second entering our property that day. Beyond the fence lines we didn't have any significant damage. But we had 500 pound or more tree stumps in our pasture that made it over a 5-foot cow fence.
The Doctor - he was the one chasing the horse This is a photo of him during his Eastern Mystic phase.
Combination of all those things. It's just an unusually difficult climate. Takes a lot of people by surprise, because by and large Australians are not conditioned for even gentle alpine areas, much less our harsh ones. A significant proportion have never even seen snow, so this climate is frequently underestimated. The following pic shows how that can happen, in a country known for hot weather and beaches:
