Puffbird Studio

The last.

Any conspiracy theory about people going missing in National Parks is automatically silly to me. Like "Why are National Parks such a hotbed of disappearances???" because they're full of idiots. You've got thousands of people who've never pissed outdoors in their life wandering around the woods/desert/mountain with zero experience and zero gear and zero understanding that this place can kill them. You don't see as many disappearances in wild areas because people don't go to them unless they have some background knowledge. Whereas you get tour buses full of old folks and suburban families shuttling people into National Parks 365 days a year. If you took the same amount of buffoons and dropped them in the actual wilderness the disappearances would be significantly higher than at the parks. Use your brain.

Some fun stuff from the notes:

I met a girl last semester who volunteered at a national park for several years and she told a story of the time a facility that rehabilitates bear cubs had a lady pull up with a Black Bear in the back seat of her car because she had hit the bear with her car and drove an hour to the rehab facility with the bear in the car with her. They had to make a post that was like "PLEASE DO NOT BRING BEARS TO US. BEARS WILL KILL YOU"

Anyone who would like to have these points emphasized to them should look up a couple of books that I read cover to cover and really enjoyed* (for certain definitions of "enjoyed"):

"Off the Wall: Death in Yosemite"

and

"Over the Edge: Death in the Grand Canyon"

Both are by Michael P. Ghiglieri, along with others more specialized in those parks. They are both just basically "here is every single death (and quite a few disappearances) recorded in the park, and a sometimes brief, sometimes longer write-up about the circumstances of each". They're hefty books, but still, in the 100+ years that these parks have existed, it's a finite number, you know? And they're both VERY readable.

I happened to read them both after visiting Yosemite, but before going to the Grand Canyon; so that when I took a trip to the latter, I made sure to drill into my friends' heads "DO NOT EVER leave one person out of your sight", because the main takeaway from those books is, "And they were never seen again, and their body was never found." One of your hiking companions might sit down on a trailside rock to rest for a little bit and tell you to go on, they'll catch up, it's only a half a mile to the end of the trail... do not fall for this. It won't hurt you to sit or stand with them for a while until they're ready to go again.

But mostly the phrase that I made sure stuck in everyone's head was, "Do you have enough water? No, you don't -- here, take some more." Especially in the desert southwest parks (where we went during summer), but this goes for most parks if you're hiking in warm weather.

Because another salient example was that when we arrived at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and were walking into the visitor center, there was a big sign on a stand right beside the door, and it said (to paraphrase), "Are you in good enough shape to run a marathon?" It went on to report that, not that long before, a woman who had run the Boston Marathon was visiting the GC and went for a hike with a friend. Like MANY PEOPLE, they underestimated the distances (especially common in the desert parks, where you can see for a long way and you are bad at estimating how far away some of the things you can see actually are), and underestimated how much water to take with them, and underestimated how warm out it really was. They hiked for too long and didn't drink enough, and started to experience heat exhaustion. The marathon runner went into heat stroke sooner, IIRC. She sat down in the shade, while her friend tried to hike out to find help. The friend did make it out and survived. The marathon runner died.

The point being: even if you are young and very in shape and athletic, you can still make some very unwise decisions when you head out on a hike into the wilderness. Most people who visit the parks are NOT nearly that in shape or athletic, and they are often making bad decisions, too. Bright Angel trail is the most well-known trail from the South Rim of the GC down to the river. It's 7.8 miles down. (Another sign we saw frequently in GC: "Down is Optional; Up is Mandatory".) There is a park ranger who is stationed to hang around the first few hundred feet of the trail, where it finally just goes below the rim, and their sole purpose is to stop tourists who are descending the trail wearing flip-flops and carrying one (1) 12 oz. bottle of water.

Another anecdote: on the same trip, at the end, two of us went to Mesa Verde NP in Colorado. When we arrived, there were signs posted on basically every building door with a photo of an older man, who had gone missing only the week before. Obviously, the signs were to alert people to watch for anything unusual that might help find the guy (who by that point was probably no longer alive; and in fact it would turn out, he definitely wasn't).

This was Dave Stehling, who was 51. He was there with his wife and elderly parents. They all stayed around the visitor center, while he decided to go on a short, paved quarter-mile hike to a look-out. (Mesa Verde mostly consists of the mesa top, and most trails to see the cliff dwellings and other sights drop down into the canyons. The park is a maze of deep canyons and steep drops from the mesa.) He did not take water with him, although the temps were 90-100 F that day. His wife described him as a little directionally challenged sometimes; but he was on a very short and clear path near the visitor center. An extremely easy hike. Witnesses placed him as having diverted onto the longer (2.8 mile) Petroglyph trail; either he took a wrong turn, or he decided he wanted to see the petroglyphs. Even that longer trail should only have taken a hour to walk.

He disappeared. Despite a massive search (made difficult by the terrain), his body was not discovered for 6 more years. He was the subject of theories about paranormal activity by David Paulides (the guy behind Missing411, who is the source of a LOT of conspiracy theories about people going missing/dying in the national parks/public lands and the NPS covering it up; most of his theories involve Bigfoot, and/or portals to other dimensions, sometimes both). And yes, Stehling's disappearance seems to defy logic. How could you go missing on a short trail, where there is a very finite area into which you might have fallen, and not be discovered by a huge search and rescue effort?

But I've read enough about this kind of thing by now to have read statements by people who work in SAR. And one of the take-aways is that until you experience it firsthand, it's hard to appreciate how difficult it actually is to locate a person who is lost in the wilderness. There are multiple stories about volunteers who played the role of the victim in SAR training -- who would just go out and lay down in the woods and be still and quiet, while a search team tries to find them. And they consistently report the searchers walking past them within touching distance, but not seeing them. (Usually, that has to do with underbrush, but it's also just a testament to how much a body can blend in with its surroundings even if you would *think* it would not; even if you'd think the clothes or something would stand out.)

Stehling's body was found a little over 4 miles away from where he'd disappeared. It seems like he had fallen, probably sustained injuries, but tried to hike out of the canyon he'd fallen into by following it downwards. (I'm not sure that an autopsy was ever released, which is why I don't know if he sustained injuries or not; but in a fall like that, it does seem very likely.) He might have been unconscious during the height of the searching, hidden in dense, scrubby vegetation. In June, he would have had to hike further to finally hit running water. But in the temperatures they were getting at that time, he almost certainly succumbed to hyperthermia.

All of this is just to emphasize what's said in the posts above and in the replies or other posts. A lot of tourists visit the national parks, and they think the word "park" means that it's a tame, safe environment. So many people express shock at the idea that the environment and landscape can hurt them, even though the NPS does post warnings all over the place. They don't take the idea of hiking seriously, and often don't have the right supplies or equipment. They don't realize that even the shortest, friendliest-looking trail can have hazards. They think a running stream looks inviting and they'll just dip their feet in to cool off, and don't realize how fast the current is running or how slippery the rocks are. One of the shortest, flattest, best-paved trails in Yosemite (from the ring road to Mirror Lake) has a sign right by the road warning people that there may be mountain lions around, and not to allow children to run ahead, or trail behind.

And yeah: BISON. And bears. Just yesterday I opened my weather.com app on my phone and on the front page is a video story about some tourists who dragged two black bear cubs out of a tree so they could pose with them to take photos. (This was NOT in a national or state park, but is still an example of people being idiots about interacting with wildlife.) The cubs got away quickly, and authorities "decided not to press charges because the cubs were released quickly". (They should have pressed charged, ffs.) These people will likely never appreciate how lucky they were that the mother bear did not show up.

You really don't need Bigfoot to explain weird disappearances, or paradoxical undressing (something that regularly happens as hypothermia sets in). You don't need holes between dimensions to explain how someone wasn't found by SAR, but their body was later discovered in an area that had been searched previously.

All you need to know is that in 2023, across all of the properties in the national park system, there were 325.5 million visits; an increase of 13 million over 2022 alone. The total population of the United States is 333.3 million. I wish we had a way to estimate how many of those millions were unprepared for the wilderness, but who took risks they shouldn't have anyway. I'd be willing to bet that number is pretty high.

You can't have *nearly the population of the U.S.* venturing out into the wilderness and not expect some of them to die or go missing. Honestly, the surprisingly thing is that it's as relatively rare an occurrence as it is -- deaths and disappearances in the parks still make national headlines.

pulls up a chair and sits down. So small potatoes example compared to the above, deeply important, super true *nightmare litany*. But.

I grew up literally smack dab in the middle of the north-northern californian redwoods. And genuinely, I recommend if you have any ability to go and see them, you should. Its one of the most beautiful places in the world. Just please don't stop dead in the middle of a road that goes through the redwoods to take a photo, and don't drive 30 miles under the speed limit because Trees Pretty locals use those roads. Stop and pull over somewhere to enjoy the view.

But if you do stop and pull over. If you go to one of the beautiful national redwood tree parks. I need you to listen to me.

There's going to be signs saying to stay on the trail and you need to listen to them because otherwise you're going to fall into a potentially ten foot hole full of sharp sticks.

"What the fuck" you may immediately think. Well. Heres the thing.

Redwoods generate something called 'duft' from the bark being shed off. It's kind of a reddish fiberous substance, and tends to coat the ground a lot. It's light on its own.

The forests also sometimes have large dips and holes in even fairly flat looking terrain.

Redwoods also shed branches sometimes.

Hole fills with branches, which are often p sharp from having broken off trees during storms.

Redwood duft coats top of branches, but doesnt fill up the hole underneath.

Sometimes you even get clover growing on the duft over an absolutely deadly hole.

So in closing: Please take nature seriously and the signs arent just there to keep you from trampling the delicate ferns. But also leave the dag ferns alone.

The thing about knitting is it’s much harder to fear the existential futility of all your actions while you’re doing it.

Like ok, sure, sometimes it’s hard to believe you’ve made any positive impact on the world. But it’s pretty easy to believe you’ve made a sock. Look at it. There it is. Put it on, now your foot’s warm.

Checkmate, nihilism.

This is a powerful positive message..

I’m literally reading a book right now (Burnout by Emily and Amelia Nagoski) that says this is scientifically sound.

There have been studies done on rats and dogs where they develop learned helplessness in the animals by giving them impossible tasks. Eventually the animals stop trying, even when the task stops being impossible. (I.e. put a rat in a maze with cheese it can’t get to until it develops learned helplessness, then put the cheese somewhere it can get to it and it won’t even try.) But once they show the animals they CAN do something - i.e. physically moving the rat to the cheese - the learned helplessness goes away.

No one can move you to your cheese for you, but the book says DOING something - which they define as “anything that isn’t nothing” can help. Make a food. Work in the garden. Clean a thing. Do a favor for a friend. Call your elected officials.

Knit a sock.

If you feel overwhelmed by existential despair, do something. It doesn’t have to be big. It just has to be anything that isn’t nothing.

This is really good advice for ADHD people because when executive dysfunction gets bad it’s easy to fall into this pattern of thinking. Do just one thing. It doesn’t have to be your homework, or a chore. It can be something small, it can be something you enjoy. But do just one thing to remind yourself that you can.

This is what “humans want to be productive” really means

We want to make things. We want to do something and at the end of the process see that something has changed. We want physical proof that we did something. We want to be able to point at something and say “I made this”. We want to be creators

Why are you sitting here staring at this? Go make something. :)

I got art block what should I do

Take a day off and see if you feel like making art the next day. Or the day after that.

Still nothing? Then sit down and make a piece of crap art.

I mean, CRAP. Make it as bad as you possibly can. Screw everything up! Don't just break the rules: jump on them from a height and mock every one as you come down and stomp them into mush. Challenge yourself to be the worst you can possibly be.

...No, not like that! Worse!!

WORSE THAN THAT!

Good!... There you go.

...And at the end of it, guess what? You'll still have made art.

It may indeed be terrible art, of no damn use to any other being on the planet. But you will nonetheless have asserted your claim to the right to create art, even when the creative process isn't working particularly well.

And just keep on doing this until the juices start flowing properly again. Because, pretty much inevitably, they will.

Disclaimer: do I use this approach? Oh God, yes! You should see my bad pages. (Or on second thought, no you shouldn't. I like the Hague a lot, but not that part of it.)

But sometimes the road to making good art (waving at @neil-gaiman) runs through the territory inhabited by making bad art... and sometimes willingly, shamelessly, hilariously bad art. The very act can be surprisingly cleansing.

Fear nothing. Make crap art, and let it set the stage for the good stuff. Then laugh at it, and keep on going.

Hope this helps!

But what do you do with the crap art once it's made?? Is it ok to throw it away if I don't want or like it?? I put effort and materials into making it, I feel bad if I just. Toss it. Like, I know the point of making it was to practice, but if I'm making a physical item and it's bad and I nor no one else wants it.....is it ok to just toss it out?

I'd say you should dispose of it in whatever way suits you.

Assuming that I've been working in a physical format, I usually burn mine. (It's useful having a wood-burning stove in the living room, where my office is. Makes it easy to get rid of the corpus delicti.)

Otherwise I delete the files, and imagine I hear the electrons that wrote them into memory screaming as their associated protons and neutrons annihilate them. What happens to the leftover quarks, I consider to be somebody else's problem.) :)

I'm curious.

I just wanted to draw a suit from reference… Might as well put someone in it. 🥰

Threatening Aura.

Created for the digital add-on for the @iqlucis zine; it was an insanely fun project to work on and I'm proud of all the pieces I made for it!

my leitmotif is about to fucking reprise

“I’m afraid you’re out of luck.”

I've had a hard time articulating to people just how fundamental spinning used to be in people's lives, and how eerie it is that it's vanished so entirely. It occurred to me today that it's a bit like if in the future all food was made by machine, and people forgot what farming and cooking were. Not just that they forgot how to do it; they had never heard of it.

When they use phrases like "spinning yarns" for telling stories or "heckling a performer" without understanding where they come from, I imagine a scene in the future where someone uses the phrase "stir the pot" to mean "cause a disagreement" and I say, did you know a pot used to be a container for heating food, and stirring was a way of combining different components of food together? "Wow, you're full of weird facts! How do you even know that?"

When I say I spin and people say "What, like you do exercise bikes? Is that a kind of dancing? What's drafting? What's a hackle?" it's like if I started talking about my cooking hobby and my friend asked "What's salt? Also, what's cooking?" Well, you see, there are a lot of stages to food preparation, starting with planting crops, and cooking is one of the later stages. Salt is a chemical used in cooking which mostly alters the flavor of the food but can also be used for other things, like drawing out moisture...

"Wow, that sounds so complicated. You must have done a lot of research. You're so good at cooking!" I'm really not. In the past, children started learning about cooking as early as age five ("Isn't that child labor?"), and many people cooked every day their whole lives ("Man, people worked so hard back then."). And that's just an average person, not to mention people called "chefs" who did it professionally. I go to the historic preservation center to use their stove once or twice a week, and I started learning a couple years ago. So what I know is less sophisticated than what some children could do back in the day.

"Can you make me a snickers bar?" No, that would be pretty hard. I just make sandwiches mostly. Sometimes I do scrambled eggs. "Oh, I would've thought a snickers bar would be way more basic than eggs. They seem so simple!"

Haven't you ever wondered where food comes from? I ask them. When you were a kid, did you ever pick apart the different colored bits in your food and wonder what it was made of? "No, I never really thought about it." Did you know rice balls are called that because they're made from part of a plant called rice? "Oh haha, that's so weird. I thought 'rice' was just an adjective for anything that was soft and white."

People always ask me why I took up spinning. Isn't it weird that there are things we take so much for granted that we don't even notice when they're gone? Isn't it strange that something which has been part of humanity all across the planet since the Neanderthals is being forgotten in our generation? Isn't it funny that when knowledge dies, it leaves behind a ghost, just like a person? Don't you want to commune with it?

DEFEAT THE AMERICANS COME ON WE CAN DO IT!! (posting this when they're sleeping hehehe)

Who makes the porn bots. Where do they come from. What do they hope to achieve.

Who makes the porn bots.

Where do they come from. What do

they hope to achieve.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

and what about you, little haiku bot? do you feel kinship with your brethren? do you understand them? they speak words of enticement and seek love, but are met with disdain. you only parrot the words that cross your screen, but we all love you. or rather, since all you do is reflect us, maybe we simply love ourselves through you.

do you understand them, do you wish you could speak to us like they do? if you found your own voice, would we still care for you?

My voice repeats what

you all say: I love you I

love you I love you.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

This. This is the first time. The only time. That it was not an echo. It was not found. Oh god.

I feel like the audience of the first moving picture

When I was a kid I had a poster of Mei fishing on a tree branch, sitting next to Totoro. When I sat down to draw yesterday that old poster beamed into my brain and all I wanted to draw was my version. Except I thought this time Totoro should be fishing.

[Image text: The protagonists of the last three things you read/watched/ played are the members of your zombie apocalypse team.

How screwed are you? /end ID.]

I FOUND IT GUYS I SPENT HALF AN HOUR LOOKING FOR THIS VIDEO AND ITS HERE

Always reblog peent.

*before clicking play*: IS THIS WHAT i THINK IT IS???

*clicks play*: IT ISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

omg!! omg

Forever reblog.

Heaven let your eent shine down.