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Mountains lie all about, with many difficult turns leading here and there. The trails run up and down; we are martyred with obstructing rocks. No matter how well we keep the path, if we miss one single step, we shall never know safe return. But whoever has the good fortune to penetrate that wilderness, for his labors will gain a beatific reward, for he shall find there his heart’s delight. The wilderness abounds in whatsoever the ears desire to hear, whatsoever would please the eye: so that no one could possible wish to be anywhere else. And this I well know; for I have been there.

Gottfried von Strassburg, Tristan and Isolde

Day One

Up the Foss River. Trout Lake to Copper Lake to Big Heart.

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We have packed everything we need for the trip in a backpack. If the backpack is light, we will walk more easily. With a heavy pack, we walk with bended knees, and a slower pace.

Having a lot of belongings takes a toll. Things can determine how we live, requiring monthly payments, maintenance and repair.

When we can carry all our life’s necessities on our backs, we can go where we want.

On a journey, we sleep on the ground. We cook food over a fire. Life is simple. Everyone who pursues simple life, does so by choice.

…

On a journey, whatever we can’t do without is a life necessity. This is the question raised during the journey by actual situations, what is needed for a society based on life-necessities. Is there something better than what we experience in our daily life, and if so, what is it? Why do we practice simple life? Does exertion have any positive value? Almost everything in simple life requires more exertion that our daily life.

Having nice things and being comfortable has become the norm in our society, which consumes steadily more resources so that we can live more and more comfortably. This is characteristic of an industrial growth society.

When we take with us only our life’s necessities, our equipment must last, it must be of high quality.

Roger and Sarah Isberb, Simple Life “Friluftsliv”: People Meet Nature

I gained the pass just before noon. On the other side, the ridge fell to reveal Jack Creek, Mount Stuart and the other paths I had traveled the year before. It’s pleasing to see that country again, and I gaze off into the Wilderness as I recall some of the moments of that past trip. I’m also satisfied that my route finding had gone perfectly to plan.

Last night, camped back beyond Lake Anne, I had taken out map and compass and, while dinner sat in the cozy, planned today’s route. The cross country section was only a couple miles, but I find it useful to plan carefully, whether the route is two miles or 20.

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On our last morning in the Red Buttes Wilderness, Avagdu and I woke up to a very wet camp. We wanted fire, but neither of us had brought any dry wood into our shelters the night before. Everything was soaked.

We gathered what we could — branches from dead fall that were up off the ground, as well as dead lower branches from standing trees — but the trees were so sparse in the area that, even after splitting, much of this wood was still wet. (I should mention that we wanted a fire, but did not need one. I, at least, was not hugely motivated to put a large amount of energy into batoning. So a small amount of our failure ought to be attributed to laziness.)

After failing to get a blaze going with the wet wood, even after using a bit of inner tube to extend the flame, I hit on the idea of using the Inferno.

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Three years ago I wrote a guide to building a VPS web server for serving sites in a PHP environment. That setup served me well for some time, but most of the sites I run now — including this one — are now written in Python. Earlier this year I built another web server to reflect this. It’s similar to before; I still use Ubuntu and I still like to serve pages with nginx. But PHP has been replaced with Python, and many of the packages used to build the environment have changed as a result. As with the last time, I decided to compile my notes into a guide, both for my own reference and in case anyone else would like to duplicate it. So far, the server has proven to be fast and efficient. It serves Python using uWSGI, uses a PostgreSQL database, and includes a simple mail server provided by Postfix. I think it’s a good setup for serving simple Django-based websites.

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