On Friday, February 2, I threw my boat onto Holsten Creek just downstream of the HW58 bridge and I paddled upstream into the forest. Right after I got past the highway bridge, some forestry people were doing something near the creek behind me. I soon discovered they were starting a controlled burn on the north side of the creek (between the creek and Holsten Creek Rd). I was a little surprised because I’m on the forestry mailing list, so I get e-mail notifications when they are planning a burn. There was nothing in my e-mail to indicate that they were going to try to smoke me out.
I kept going up the creek. The reason I added “sort of” to the title of this post is because you can’t just paddle up Holsten Creek. There are just too many dead falls and cypress knees. On my way up the creek, I removed some of the obstructions to make future trips, including my return trip, easier. There were still many places where I had to get out and drag my boat across a log, and a couple places where I had to squeeze the boat under a log.
I was also testing a tiny, new, 9mm lens on my Lumix MFT camera. It was perfect for shooting 4k video, because the G100 crops the image when shooting 4k. I was surprised at how sharp and beautiful the stills were, also. Of course they have pretty serious barrel distortion but it’s not that noticeable in the forest.
Aside from freezing my toes off and choking on smoke from time to time, it was a very pleasant trip. I was outfitted to spend the night in the forest, but I got a call from one of my clients, so I had to return to my office and troubleshoot an e-mail issue. Given that the forest was on fire, I don’t think I would have slept anywhere along Holsten Creek (the original plan), but I might have set up camp somewhere else in the Croatan. Oh, well, I’ll be back out there, soon. Leave a comment if you ever want to join me on an adventure.
