Monday, January 7, 2008 - Gum Springs Campground, Winnfield LA
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"...Does everyone remember the berries we tested last week on the big brown dog? How many ate the berries simply because the dog didn't die that day? Quite a few. Well, I got bad news. The dog died last night. Apparently it was a slow actin' poison. Yes, Laszlo? You didn't eat the berries? But this mornin' you ate the dog. Well, Laszlo, ya got about a week. Food chain! How many times do I gotta tell you people? Food chain! By the way, anyone who's gettin' into that new cannibalisn crap - I won't mention any names - I'd strongly suggest not eatin' Laszlo..."
George Carlin, Brain Droppings
A good scrubbing with the rag followed by a good wipe with a microfiber towel got the road grime off. For the first time since I've owned LD she got washed all the way up to the roof. I wrapped the rag around an extendable wand brush thingy I bought to use with a garden hose and got the apple tree grunge off that had been washing down off the roof in ugly gobs. LD looks much much better now thank you.
Night camp
Gum Springs Campground - Winnfield LA
- This is a primitive campground with no water or electric hookups at the sites and no dump station.
- Verizon cell phone and Broadband service are available here but I don't remember how strong the signal is.
- Get Kisatchie National Forest camping info
- Find other references to Gum Springs
- List the nights I've camped here
- Check the weather
- Get a Kisatchie National Forest map
- Get a Google map
A Siberian dog signal-howl
A camp in the middle of a clear, dark winter's night presents a strange, wild appearance. I was awakened, soon after midnight, by cold feet, and, raising myself upon one elbow, I pushed my head out of my frosty fur bag to see by the stars what time it was. The fire had died away to a red heap of smouldering embers. There was just light enough to distinguish the dark outlines of the loaded sledges, the fur-clad forms of our men, lying here and there in groups about the fire, and the frosty dogs, curled up into a hundred little hairy balls upon the snow. Away beyond the limits of the camp stretched the desolate steppe in a series of long snowy undulations, which blended gradually into one great white frozen ocean, and were lost in the distance and darkness of night. High overhead, in a sky which was almost black, sparkled the bright constellations of Orion and the Pleiades--the celestial clocks which marked the long, weary hours between sunrise and sunset. The blue mysterious streamers of the aurora trembled in the north, now shooting up in clear bright lines to the zenith, then waving back and forth in great majestic curves over the silent camp, as if warning back the adventurous traveller from the unknown regions around the Pole. The silence was profound, oppressive. Nothing but the pulsating of the blood in my ears, and the heavy breathing of the sleeping men at my feet, broke the universal lull. Suddenly there rose upon the still night air a long, faint, wailing cry like that of a human being in the last extremity of suffering. Gradually it swelled and deepened until it seemed to fill the whole atmosphere with its volume of mournful sound, dying away at last into a low, despairing moan. It was the signal-howl of a Siberian dog; but so wild and unearthly did it seem in the stillness of the arctic midnight, that it sent the startled blood bounding through my veins to my very finger-ends. In a moment the mournful cry was taken up by another dog, upon a higher key--two or three more joined in, then ten, twenty, forty, sixty, eighty, until the whole pack of a hundred dogs howled one infernal chorus together, making the air fairly tremble with sound, as if from the heavy bass of a great organ. For fully a minute heaven and earth seemed to be filled with yelling, shrieking fiends. Then one by one they began gradually to drop off, the unearthly tumult grew momentarily fainter and fainter, until at last it ended as it began, in one long, inexpressibly melancholy wail, and all was still.