MAR-B-6
A GOOD EARLY SUNDAY RUN WITH JOE,
WHICH REVEALS FIRST BEAVER SIGN AND TREE
DAMAGE ALONG ROCK CREEK, WITH A SURPRISE LATER FINDING
OF A LARGE DEAD BEAVER:
A LATER “PACKING PARTY” IN DERWOOD
FOR THE COMPATRIOT TRAVELERS TO MALAWI
March 23, 2003
I got out early with Joe, and we began our run at 6:30 AM before any other runners appeared. It was cold at the time we began, but we stripped to shorts and tee shirts knowing it would warm up after we had run long and the promised temperature rise to mid sixties. This is the morning in which I would have been running the DC Marathon canceled only 72 hours before. So, Joe and I took off at a brisk pace, going about four miles further than Joe had planned to go and about four miles shorter than I had planned---but at a brisk Marathon pace of just over eight minute miles for the twelve miles round trip. I had pointed out to Joe along the way that we were passing large trees with fresh piles of wood chips around the bases with a couple of girdled trees killed apparently by beaver. I had seen the fresh sign along the Needwood trail again when I had taken the snowy walk with Christian Elwell when we saw dozens of major trees as beaverkill. I had expressed an interest with these largest rodents entering my woods up the streams to make for havoc in my woods, suggesting that they would make rather nice pelts if they started chewing on my trees.
Having said that I looked to the junction of Knowles and Beach Drive and I spotted a large brown body along the road. Despite our clock running (twelve miles in under 1:51) I pulled off to see what I was almost sure I had detected. Sure enough—I had spotted a fresh roadkill—a large beaver, that had been struck on the road and I moved it off to the shoulder while it was still limp. I knew that people pressure had made these diurnal animals nocturnal in their habits, and this large 45 pound webbed foot flat tailed rodent with the rich brown coat was probably wobbling its way back to a daytime retreat in a lodge as yet unknown in location when it was hit, just before when we found him. I took several pictures. I had been reluctant to abandon this beautiful pelt, but I did not have someone nearby to pass this large animal off to for processing. It is a beautiful animal pelt.
I had come back to Derwood to shower and change, and then went to DCCRC. As I headed home, I got a call from Kevin Bergman, who had rounded up the early leavers for Malawi, and they will all be coming over tonight for the “packing party” we have made plans to lighten the two or three truckloads of medical supplies in my warehouse living room. I will get ready for them and the packing party along with a picture show of last year’s Malawi mission to familiarize them with what to expect.
I listened to the Iraqi propaganda on civilian casualties which turn out to be the fifty mm antiaircraft shells that they had been caught by fall out of their own fire against the precision munitions being dropped. But accidents and attrition of the massed allied forces are colliding and intercepting friendlies, probably less than at any other time in warfare, but now notably reported since there is such promise of precision as to allegedly make this impossible. But, there are no cost free wars, and it seems that the inexorable advance and inevitable outcome will be soon—and random actions by the leaderless Iraqis can still cause a lot of damage, so there is a watch on the news, including the capture of an ambushed supply convoy. Progress is being made, but the usual exploitation f American POWs and the exaggerated claims of the Iraqi resistance, which will be well advertised and still doomed. Public expectations are for an easy war, but there are few such objectives worthwhile that are easily achieved.
MALAWI TRAVELERS
Amy Hayes and Kevin Bergman, both GWU junior medical students who are veterans of previous Ladakh trips with me, came over to Derwood with their vehicles, which went home with them, filled up with medical supplies. I had bought some stuff for our “packing party” and baked up a couple of pizzas. They toured Derwood, and went over the albums of the last Malawi mission before we packed out a big bunch of boxers and bags of our medical supplies for them, the two pediatric residents and John Sutter to carry, as well as George an Betty Poehlman, now leaving from Raleigh rather than DC. There will be three of us traveling from DC to Malawi. Just how we get it all out there is as yet unclear, but even with all the stuff packed out, two thirds of my medical stock still remains. So, the first wave leaves next week, with the second wave going out as I am traveling form Gainesville to Ohio—then, I will be the leader of the third wave as I return from all my domestic travel—which starts with the fifty miler Bull Run Run and ends in the 107th Boston Marathon.