Product Review: Greenlayer Shirts

Product Review: Greenlayer Shirts

Greenlayer is a brand that boasts an environmentally-responsible ethos in their product creation, "We strive to shift the thought process of consumers into understanding that environmentally conscious products do not mean a sacrifice in performance, style, and comfort." I bought three shirts from Greenlayer: ice blue, royal blue and a long sleeve charcoal tshirt. Yes, they are definitely comfortable, a good-looking style, and they work as stated being of a "super soft moisture-wicking fabric," which honestly is much more comfortable than cotton shirts to wear and work out in, hike in, and generally sweat in, the material doesn't get that wet feeling or stick to you as you move, and it's so light that it feels airy and breathable.

The shirts are made from a blend of 50% recycled polyester and 50% polyester, retail for 24, or 30 for the long sleeve shirts, or substantially cheaper via Amazon. They've got several other styles and varieties on their site, and I definitely feel that I would pick up more of these articles of clothing.

One complaint I do have about the shirts would be that they tend to snare and snag on brambles and briars very easily, causing a run to form in the material.

On the ice blue shirt, the Greenlayer logo on the right chest seems to be peeling away after only a few washes. Not that this is a big deal, but it just makes the shirt look more worn out than it really is.

Another note is that several random strings came out along the stitching in one sleeve.

I bought size small and it is essentially what would be a medium for most other shirts, so I'm guessing all the other sizes run bigger, yet, this actually makes the shirts very comfortable to wear.

 

All in all, despite the above complaints, despite the thorny tears, I am happy with the Greenlayer products. I would certainly buy more, I'd just be careful when hiking through the brush not to get snared on raspberry thorns again. I still do recommend checking out this company, the shirts are really comfortable and worth giving a shot. They're essentially more for running and working out than they are hiking through the woods and brush.

Thanks again for reading!

Campfire Songs

A cicada symphony serenades away as we sway aloft in our hammocks, a secluded hideout in the forest can hold the most breathtaking back and forth, a startlingly fresh call and response with staccato avian trills, legato amphibian croaks, percussive woodpecker para diddles played out in glorious cacophonous, playful, mysterious, purposeful unity. Stopping to appreciate the sounds of nature, silencing our own rustling disturbances to lull the wild into accepting our presence and going about its noisy business can be a joyous auditory banquet. As a musician and music lover and a nature lover, I find myself stopping to hear the roses as much as to smell them.

That said, we have as much right to cause a ruckus as the next bugs. So if you're heading out to the woods this weekend and are looking for some songs to sling across the lob lolly and up the mountain, then allow me to provide a quick list of some fun tunes that you can sing around your campfire.

Top 5 Beginner Campfire Songs: 

This Land Is Your Land - Woody Guthrie
Nancy Summer Wine - Sinatra & Lee Hazelwood
Island In The Sun - Weezer
What I Got - Sublime
Blowin in the Wind - Bob Dylan

I picked these songs for this first installment of my Campfire Songs post, because they are all remarkably simple and enjoyable tunes. For instance, "This Land is Your Land" is simply D G D A7 D, repeat. A great song for a beginner or a song that you could teach a buddy to play in a snap. I included "Summer Wine" because this song is a really fun duet that will give you the chance to get two voices working together, and again, very straightforward and simple, Am G then Dm Am, all the way through. Same simplicity principle with "What I Got," D G, and "Blowin in the Wind," G C D. Pass the guitar around, it's only three chords, let everyone give it a shot!

Or you could just pluck away randomly on the guitar to the tempo of the crickets, while someone taps randomly on a hand drum, nothing wrong with a good old impromptu jam session! I do highly recommend if you take your guitar in the woods, take along a pen and paper as well, because there's nothing finer than taking inspiration from nature. Below, I'm sharing a video of a song I wrote called "Willow," obviously a lot of elements of nature and imagery of the willow tree in it. Hope you like it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYO_m8E-s2o

So when you head out this weekend, whether you're going up to Cohutta National Forest, or sitting around a bonfire in your backyard, don't forget your guitar! Have fun! Thanks for reading and thanks for listening!



Zel Ascend - How It's Meant to Be album
Zel Ascend - Bearing Feelers and Mouthparts album

Hike: Rockdale Park

Last week I went venturing into the area that is deemed Rockdale Park. It appears to be part of a future phase of Atlanta's BeltLine Project.

http://beltline.org/progress/planning/master-planning/

http://beltline.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Atlanta-BeltLine_Subarea-9_Master-Plan.pdf

The webpage promises, "As Atlanta continues to grow, the Atlanta BeltLine will provide the framework for smart growth, enhancing the city’s sustainability and economic vitality. The Atlanta BeltLine Redevelopment Plan and Atlanta BeltLine Master Plans include recommendations for Transit-Oriented Development (TOD), which guides the growth of vibrant, livable, mixed-use communities by applying national best practices for mixing uses, strengthening the pedestrian and bicycle realm, compact development, and managing parking."


The plans look amazing, and I hope to keep an eye on the progress and see what becomes of this area. Even so, in its raw form, the small clear cut area is fascinating to those like me who tend to trod in zigzags, wander well off the trail, hither thither and yon, and since there's not yet a trail laid out here, the whole area is wide open for exploration.

Looking back toward the sign/entrance for Rockdale Park

Jaunting up the hill to the left, I trek amidst the broken glass and debris. The world is a museum gallery, everything placed just so, like wild cascading paint splatters or delicate and graceful brushstrokes, a shoe fading in the sun, a likely home for spiders or a shelter for a shrew, a busted rusted boob tube with its naked capacitors and resistors jutting out toward fallen leaves, Wild Kingdom memories melded with the true force of the elements. I find myself wondering what hand dropped these items in place. Not sure their purpose, but the juxtaposition of the vial, the acorn cap and the shredded tire holds remarkable beauty for my eye. I can appreciate this for what it is, gotta love some disarray; but at the same time, as I look upon the mess, I'm saddened by the carelessness of it all, the work it will take to clean this up, the damage done by whatever chemicals leaked from these paint cans and rubber tire treads.

My walks often include picking up plastic, gathering bottles, cans, attempting to leave negative trace, leave things cleaner than I found them, but this heap would take weeks and trip after trip. I intend to hike back to this space, try to do my part, but honestly, it is difficult sometimes to want to clean up the messes that are scattered here in Georgia.

A few years ago, when I lived in Marietta, I would look at the scattered Chik-Fil-A wrappers, coffee cups, cans, bottles as I drove to and from work and wonder at the state of things. Why? Who are these slobs that just toss their trash out the window of their car? It's not difficult to put trash in proper cans. It's almost like they're making a concerted effort to foul up my world. Beautiful backdrop of a pine forest on both sides of this road, a wonderful little pocket of green before the avenue opened up for a cleared out soccer field tucked behind a church, all that is and could be clean and pretty spoiled by the litter of a careless commuter.

I eventually came to the point where I couldn't sit back and stare at the heaps of garbage anymore. I started taking two large garbage bags with me and walking up the road a ways, then turning and walking back. The first time, my ambitions were heftier than my bags. I filled them both up by the time I'd even gone ten feet, so then I had to lug them, filled with beer bottles, styrofoam and random refuse for a half mile. This cleanup effort went on for quite some time, week after week, but it seemed like I never made a dent. Folks were throwing garbage out along this beautiful street faster than anyone could collect it. Despite this, I was happy to continue my little effort, I figured I'd eventually have a clean roadway to admire on my drive to work.

Now, garbage is one thing, but the truly confounding thing about all of this is the sheer volume of beer bottles, cans and mini liquor bottles I was finding. It is honestly a travesty that there appears to be either many many drunk drivers, which is awful enough, or one very prolific drinker responsible for all of this. My mind runs through the thoughts that these people are out there on the road, day in and day out getting hammered or impaired in their cars, driving past schoolkids, and causing the entire world to not only look littered and fouled up, but also endangering everyone around them. As if that weren't bad enough, several weeks into this cleanup effort, I stumbled upon one, then another, then another makeshift pipes of some sort. One made from pens, one from soldered copper piping used for who knows what crack or weed or whatever. Either way, I had no idea what to do with them. Do I throw them in my garbage? What if they trace this back to my home, will an officer accept that I was just cleaning up the roadway as the excuse to finding drug paraphernalia in my recycle bin? Do I leave them? Now this also appears dangerous, what toxins are leaking into the wild, what if a child finds this? This attempt to clean up my world went downhill from here, as the following week I found a plastic soda bottle filled to the brim with used needles, so now my thoughts race about accidentally getting stabbed with a dirty needle as I'm picking up trash. All in all, an enlightening experience. It opened my eyes to the sheer magnitude of filth that is on the Atlanta roadways and the amount of work it will take to clean this up. That said, it is still worth the effort, every little bit should help, and I intend to continue to do my part to keep Atlanta beautiful.

The next photo is kinda sad, I am going to head out there with some kind of heavy-duty shears and cut this tire off of this poor little tree before it's too late. For that matter, the tire problem is another issue entirely and I'd like to get into a discussion on that topic at some point with my blog. For now, please visit the following sites for more information on cleaning up the tires. Thanks for reading! If you wander out here, enjoy the hike, take some pictures and do your part to keep our world beautiful!

http://greenlaw.org/scrap-tires?mode=p
http://publichealth.gsu.edu/1621.html

Walking beyond the park, the area opens up to a clearcut power line run.

Algae stream at the bottom of the Rockdale Park hill.

Rockdale Park leads to a portion of West Midtown that is still in development.

This entire area appears to be inhabited by the homeless, as there are heaps of refuse and heavily trod paths going along here. What is kind of terrifying is this hole cut into the fence of a playground, cigarette butts litter the area as if someone has crept here daily watching the children play...makes me shudder at the possibility that there could be sketchy creepers roaming about along here. Hope security is beefed up here as they develop this area. Cameras and danger call boxes to deter harm.

Product Review: Hennessy Hammock

Product Review:  Hennessy Hammock
http://hennessyhammock.com/

If you've ever gone on a camping trip and ended up unwittingly setting your tent up atop cold, uneven land or a rock that's jabbing you in the rib when you lay down, you'll likely be a fan of this product. Gently swaying, suspended a few feet off the ground, the Hennessy Hammock is a brilliant, lightweight, comfortable sleep solution. The mesh gives you a beautiful view up at the night sky, or if it's rainy or drafty, the rainfly cover will provide plenty of protection from the wind or the rain.

I purchased the Expedition Asym Classic, retails for $169.95, and it has been a joy to go camping with this tent/hammock. Fits easily in my backpack, small and compact, lightweight, 2 lbs, 12 oz. Very convenient. They've added several new products to their line in the last year, and knowing the quality of this product, one can only imagine that they are worth every penny. As they note on their website, "The Hennessy Hammock is the most innovative solution to lightweight, comfortable camping on the planet." I agree.



The hammock is easy to set up and take down. Stretch it between two trees or equally solid objects and tie it down. The guide lines on each side of the tent can be staked or even wrapped around a large stone to prevent the hammock from swaying, but they're made of an elastic material so you can still have some give to the movement.

I must say that I recommend getting some sort of foam mat, maybe a yoga mat, some kind of roll-up sleeping mat to place underneath your sleeping bag inside this hammock because the draft can really chill your backside in the colder months. In the summer, this will feel wonderful and surely keep you cool. I also recommend being careful not to let your face or arm press against the mesh as you sleep because the mosquitoes will stick right through the mesh and nibble on you while you sleep. All in all, I highly recommend getting one of these if you plan to do a lot of backpacking and camping.




Last fall, I made a journey from Georgia to Wisconsin for a wedding, drove up North, stopped at about the 7 hour mark at Wayne Fitzgerald Park, camped out in my Hennessy Hammock for an excellent evening, awoke with a beautiful view of several deer and a whole brood of turkeys scattered about, then drove the remaining 7 hours onward to Wisconsin.Was a long but excellent trip.

Two Hennessy Hammocks

Another thing I think is cool is that Hennessy Hammock is a corporate sponsor of Leave No Trace.  The Hennessy Hammock is certainly nearly zero impact and an excellent example of a "Leave No Trace" shelter.  The environmentally-friendly design requires no ground leveling, trenching or staking.  When you walk away from your campsite, there will be no tent footprint and basically no evidence that you were ever there. The line of products has received multiple awards, endorsements, and mentions in everything from the NY Times to Backpacker Magazine, and I'd say it's all well deserved praise.

Everything in the bag

Tie straps, bag, hammock, small rainfly, large rainfly

Wood Ear Mushroom

Wood Ear Mushrooms

Knowledge of the world around us, being able to tell one plant from another, or one mushroom from another can cut through what would otherwise be a hazy picture, blindness, deafness, and add distinctiveness and features to a world that, in ignorance, just simply blends together in a blur. I don't claim to be an expert on any topic, but I do consider myself a perpetual student of everything; you can never know enough, there are no masters, only those who know more than most. Striving to soak up more, reaching our intrigue out at the world like tendrils ready to deconstruct knowledge and pull it into our mind and our being. I may attempt identification of wild plants, mushrooms, but I am merely an amateur Mycologist (one who studies mushrooms and fungi) please do your own research and consult resources before attempting to consume any mushroom you may find.



I highly recommend the National Audubon Society Field Guide to Mushrooms. I am a human and we creatures have a history of being wrong or misinformed.

These squishy, springy little growths in this photo are Auricularia polytricha, the Wood Ear Mushroom. You'll find them primarily on dead hardwoods. They differ from Auricularia auricula-judae in that they are slightly fuzzy.Often, you can find a whole lot of them all in one place, look high, look low, they may be on a tree that is dead, but still standing, or on a log that has collapsed, sometimes they'll bulge out from between the bark and the hardwood.

Wood Ears are edible, so when I found these and identified them, the next step was to bioassay, which in Mycological terms means to test upon oneself. Eat a tiny bit of the mushroom, wait a day, see if you have any ill effects, if you do not, they're safe(r) to consume. This serves two purposes, if the mushroom is toxic, you'll only have ingested a portion, and secondly, you'll learn if you're allergic to it. Sometimes, even well-documented, instantly-identifiable fungi which may be known to be edible may still cause allergic reactions to some so you should always take care. Obviously, you'll want to consult a doctor if you end up getting sick from these experiments upon your body, but use your judgement. My bioassay went well. The next day, I cooked them up in beef stew in a crockpot. They have a very strange texture, springy, like gristle, and on their own, they are flavorless, however, soaked in beef and vegetable juices, they become filled with flavors they absorb.


In the bottom right of this photo is Poison Ivy, tends to grow wild and thick in Georgia. I highly recommend that you avoid touching it or touching boots or jeans that have touched it as the oils can remain active long after you've trod through a patch of it. I've had a few run-ins with Poison Ivy in my day and it's bad news. Seriously brutal. A couple years ago I was renting a room in a friend's house and when he told me he'd knock fifty bucks off the rent if I mowed his lawn, I went outside in a rush, pushed his lawnmower all around his 2 acre property and then for the next few weeks, suffered unbelievable pain on my legs from the blisters and irritated skin, leaf-licked lesions. Some people are immune to it, but I am not and suffer greatly. My other experience with this awful leaf was when I was about thirteen. During a long day of fishing with my dad and brother, catching all manner of Bluegills and Catfish, we, at midday, pulled alongshore for a bathroom break. The rest of the summer was spent on a couch recovering from horrible rashes. I was placed on steroids to regain strength, wore oven mitts to mitigate the temptation to scratch anywhere and cause further agony.

Calamine-coated calamity. Price is Right buzzing on the TV and Poison Ivy buzzing through my brain with a call to claw at these itchy knees and ankles, it's a battle to halt your hand from indulging. A shower feels remarkably satisfying, though, if you take the sprayer off the dock and run the water over the area, it's like your nerve endings don't really know what to do, a wild sensory overload, your mind begins to buzz a bit. It's such a relief when the pain and rash and blisters go away and finally heal, though. Part of me never wants to go back into a forest at that point, but once I step back under the canopy, hear the crunch of pine needles and last year's leaves under my feet, hear the birds singing, and see the multitude of wild species, hundred different kinds of trees, random mushrooms poking up next to a fallen log, I feel at ease again, back in the wild where I belong, it beats me down but then pulls me back with a rejuvenating hand.

Product Review: Ruko Knife

Today I want to discuss my experience using a curved-blade pocket knife made by Ruko.

Rubber scale insert folding knife, brushed stainless steel handle, 420A 50/50 serrated stainless steel blade, liner lock design, metal thumb stud and pocket clip. Closed length: 2-3/4".

I really like this knife, small, compact pocket knife, 2 inch locking blade looks cool, very useful and well-made. I take this knife with me primarily on hikes, camping trips, curved blade is perfect for cutting the stems of wild edible chantrelle mushrooms or other wild edible mushrooms because it can hook around behind the stem. Great for harvesting Shiitake mushrooms from hardwood, as Shiitakes have a tough, somewhat woody stem. The blade is sharp, easy to clean. The knife feels great in my hand, blade is a bit too small to firmly grasp in the event of using the knife for self-defense, but could serve the purpose, and the curved blade would really be like a cat's claw scratch, likely capable of doing a lot of damage to an attacker. The metal stud is in a great position for one-handed opening, takes some practice, but then becomes second nature to flip the knife open with my right hand and have it ready for use. Same one-hand ergonomic feel to closing the knife as well. Rubber grips on the side are effective, fits very well. I had to adjust the tension of the blade when I got this knife, but it was easy with an hex key wrench to loosen/tighten it to the perfect tension.

Curved blade also makes it very useful for opening packages, taped boxes and such.

The knife has a bit of a rattle, from the clip, however, making it any tighter and the blade is hard to extend, so I'll take a minor rattle to have the ease of opening the knife with one hand.

Overall, a very worthwhile knife for the price. I picked this up from a local hunting/outdoors store, but it's only $13.78 on Amazon.


http://www.rukoproducts.com/cart/index.php?target=products&product_id=307

RUKO 2-Inch Blade Folding Knife with Serrated Edge Aluminum Brushed Handle

Introduction

Hey everyone! Starting a new blog for the purpose of sharing some of my experiences and posting reviews for products that I personally use. Focus will revolve around the camping world. I'll talk about hiking, backpacking, hunting, fishing, campfires, and may get into some stories of finding wild edible mushrooms, edible plants, gardening, tree identification and so on.

I am 30 years old, originally from a tiny rural Wisconsin town, now living in Midtown, Atlanta. I'm finding that there is an abundance of parks and random green spaces sprinkled in and around metro Atlanta; nestled between the highrise hustle, concrete bustle, there is so much natural beauty to explore!

As a youth, my dad would take us hunting, fishing, foraging in the woods of Wisconsin, my mom would put us to work gardening, growing vegetables. My childhood held a lot of outdoor fun and excitement and I hope to share some of my tales with you! Although my day job is in the telecommunications field, I truly enjoy spending time outdoors and I find nature very beautiful; there is peace in plant life, and learning about nature puts you closer to it and can sharpen the appreciation of all that the natural world has to offer.

I hope you find this information entertaining and/or useful! Thanks for reading!