Indecision and Mount Erie

Through some bumbling trying to find a way from Commercial Street in Anacortes down to Whidbey Island at work one day, I wound up driving through Mount Erie’s Community Forest Lands in my work van. (I usually use D Avenue for this but there’s roadwork everywhere seemingly.) Trying to outrun the heat but still winding up mired in my own indecision on the weekend, I had to force myself out of my apartment (later than I had hoped) with just a 100mm on my X-T4 with the thought of returning here.

My indecision still wandered even on my way out, with a feeling like I should have been turning to go to La Conner or braving the really narrow road shoulders to get to where eagles and waterfowl often cross paths closer to Edison. Limiting myself to just the 100mm kept me going to Mt. Erie, and given how much I climbed I was happy to not be wearing a pack. (I could have used a pouch with a water bottle, though.)

This is a bit of a dud, but this bird (a warbler if I’m not mistaken) was only briefly visible and ran into me not long after the trailhead. I only managed this blurry shot.

More birds and wildlife could be had at about 3/4 of the way up, but I had trouble with lighting and focus. There was an open area with very bright light, but the wildlife wouldn’t stay in it. One thing I saw but didn’t get on camera was a fat chipmunk climbing a bush that looked too weak to support it, grabbing a berry, then running off.

Make no mistake, despite the main trail being very well maintained this is still a steep hike. As far as I know I did get up to the secluded summit, and looped around back to a junction about 2/3 of the way up. Shorts were a must for comfort, but I wound up with bug bites on joints that jeans could have prevented. There’s an unmarked viewpoint not far from the summit, and I also get the impression there’s a more developed viewpoint up the access road that I was too worn out to drive up to. The funny thing is my favorite picture of the whole trip was this viewpoint with my phone, which is the title image for this post!

I only took about 68 pictures in total with my X-T4 on this trip; but I was too interested in sightseeing on the way up to notice just how high up I had gotten. At the 2/3-Up point I thought I was all the way at the bottom when I was trekking back down. My feet were complaining from too much braking at about 1/2-way down. There were still a lot of still things to get pictures of as well, too!

At the end of the day, it seems like any time I do anything on my own anymore I wind up in so much indecision I hurt myself mentally. This has been a problem almost as long as I have lived up here, and may stem from my work dictating so much of what and where I go to on any given day with plans changing at the drop of a pin. (To be more technically accurate, it tends to be a flake of paper about the size of a pencil shaving; but that’s getting off topic.) Publishing also catches me in an odd balance, I’m often my harshest critic right when the pictures are fresh; only to find output from a month prior I previously detested to be inspirational again.

While it’s not the time of year to think about it, I am thinking about scaling back or closing down the site eventually. I currently pay for a tier that lets me host video, but other than a small circle of friends and family the only attention I get is ads for running ads. That wasn’t the point of this site, the closest it comes is to serve as a rabbit hole to tie to a resume (and I don’t work in an industry related to what I tend to publish here). I’ll probably just step down to a tier that doesn’t attract monetizing nor allow video uploading, but there is a certain appeal to moving back to just distributing my output physically at a slower pace (perhaps quarterly).