Camping Under An Active Volcano For 120 Hours

Summary

CAMPING UNDER AN ACTIVE VOLCANO FOR 120 HOURS
Undergoing an identity change
Recharging in nature
A day in the life camping in the forest

September 2022

Su	M	T	W	Th	F	S
28	29	30	31	9/1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30	10/1
2	3	4	5	6	7	8

Where In The World Was I?

Hood River, OR
Trillium Lake, OR
Hood River, OR

Hood River, OR

I pulled a fast one on ya and headed back into town after just camping overnight near Mt. Hood. Don’t fret, there’s more forest-ing to come later in the post.

It was a holiday weekend so there were SO many windsurfers/kitesurfers out on the river.

It was quite relaxing to walk along the water. And windy!

Heading Into The Forest

Okay NOW I was officially off into the forest.

I took a half day to chill and take things a little slower, waking up with the chipmunks.

Electrical Update

Those following the electrical/battery/solar panel journey (from Some Thoughts While Camping Off-Grid In Carson National Forest)…

Ever since I added the Smart Battery Sense (from Life Update July 24th, 2022) things have been going smoothly charging-wise. The charge controller and the battery now agree on the voltage that the charge controller is charging the battery at, so all the bulk/absorption/float phases now seem to be correct. No more weird float phases too early, yay!

Of course, one issue fixed, another pops up.

Because there’s a voltage drop, in order to charge the battery at 14.2V, inevitably the voltage “upstream” is higher than 14.2V. I’ve noticed my propane heater now displays a fault code quite often. It blinks 3 times, indicating the voltage it’s receiving is either higher than 15V or lower than 10V (most likely >15V).

Turning it on and then off fixes the issue no problem, so I’m not worried… until winter… I’ve only ever used the heater over night when the battery is not being charged and thus the voltage is inevitably <15V. In winter I’ll be running the heater during the day when I’ll also be charging the battery, so we’ll see how that goes.

Oh and I put the panels back in series (series == add amps together at the same voltage) since putting them in parallel wasn’t the issue. I think that should actually charge my battery faster now since I can pump more amps into the battery, but who knows 🤷‍♂️. Electrical engineering was NOT amongst my strongest classes in college, lol.

Trillium Lake

After a chill half-day, I headed towards Mt. Hood and eventually settled at Trillium Lake. What a BEAUTIFUL place.

“Mount Hood in Oregon is one of 161 active volcanoes in the United States.” (source) heh, nice. I feel like CAMPING UNDER AN ACTIVE VOLCANO FOR 120 HOURS would be a banger Mr. Beast video.

Psst, don’t miss the sunset pics later in the post...

I spent the next 5 days (Tues-Sun) there. What followed was an incredibly transformative experience.

An Identity Change

I feel as though I’ve been halfway on self-improvement the last 2 years. I’ve gone through spurts where I was more disciplined and intentional about meditating, reading, working out, etc. Over the past couple months, though, I’ve started to get back into things, but just here and there.

I was listening to a video from Hamza and he was talking about the benefits of meditation. I’ve meditated before, but not in a long while. I think I fell into the idea of thinking “oh I don’t need to meditate, I’m already pretty good about my self-awareness, journaling, being aware of my emotions/thoughts, etc.”

But after watching that video something clicked, something changed in my brain. Maybe it was the fact that I was in the middle of the forest, where I have a whole lot more time on my hands. The barrier-to-entry was very low.

The next morning I decided to download a meditation app and get back into it. But I didn’t stop there.

I felt as though this kind of “halfway” state wasn’t helping me. I decided that I wanted to be more intentional about self-improvement, to be able to lean on the idea of doing things “because I’m on self-improvement.”

So, on Thursday I wrote…

Today 9/8/22 marks the first full day that I’m officially “on self-improvement” for the rest of time.

I’m committing to valuing and being more intentional about improving my education, my mental health, my physical health, and learning skills.

And it was quite interesting because after this decision, I noticed that it changed how I read, it changed how I listened to YouTube videos/podcasts. There was more intention behind it. There was an application to it.

It also opened up a door to an idea that I’d heard and known about for a while but had been too scared to open.

I’ll share more about this idea in the future.

Day In The Life

So, with a new identity, here’s how some of my days went:

Wake up around 8am
(Some days) Quick 0.5 mi walk to get the blood flowing
Yoga/stretching
Meditate
Read for ~1 hr
Work on my laptop (journal, work on some projects, blog posts, etc.)
Lunch around noon
Long walk/run (~4 mi) to the lake (if walking, listen to some podcasts/YouTube videos)
Stretch
Meditate
Some more reading (30 min – 1 hr)
Chill, watch some YouTube
Dinner
Another 0.5 mi walk to help digest
End the night with some more reading or just watching YouTube
In bed around 9/10pm

Activities

Yoga/Stretching

My view every morning, 😌

Meditation

I downloaded and started using Medito, a free meditation app from the non-profit Dutch organization Medito Foundation.

I used to use an app called Headspace a couple years ago which I also liked.

Reading

I finished reading The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey and (re)started reading The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene.

Working

There’s nothing quite like the feeling of being able to work on your laptop, with cell signal, in the middle of the forest, 100% powered by THE FREAKING SUN.

Running/Walking

I ran for 2 days (I haven’t run since Salt Lake City! Life Update July 24th, 2022) and then walked the following 2 because my calves were very sore 😅

I can’t describe how incredibly beautiful, peaceful, and recharging it was on these runs/walks. I forgot how good it felt to just be in nature. Oh and I jumped in the lake a couple times – SO refreshing.

Podcasts

On my walks I listened to a bunch of Alex Hormozi as well as a podcast from Andrew Tate (oop, here come the haters 😂. No, I don’t agree with everything he says. Did I learn something? Yes.)

Also throughout the couple of days I listened to:

And while we’re on the topic of videos, I binged A LOT of Max Fosh’s videos for entertainment. WOW he’s hilarious 😂. I’d recommend NOT visiting his channel so you don’t go down the rabbit hole like I did.