...out in the back of nowhere, and my phone STILL works.

Funny how with the new 3g system, my phone works almost everywhere. I've always wanted to do the Back Bay bird-watching tram tour. With one thing or other--I never did. My family isn't into birds, and my friends just give me this look. I yell, "Cormorant!" and they yell, "Not again!"

You have to make reservations weeks ahead of time, the entire Back Bay wildlife refuge shuts down in the winter. The tram only runs twice a month. I never wanted to do it during the summer. Too many mosquitoes, and water moccasins big enough to swallow a horse. It's been warm, and I thought--okay, I'm cutting it close. The warmer it is, the more snakes there are, but it was freaking cold out there. I felt stupid rolling up in my down filled parka--until we started down the east embankment and the wind came in over the dunes.



There was nothing, and more nothing.



There were wood swallows and kestrels and whole flocks of tundra swans. Didn't get a picture because they were on the other side. But when we made a pit stop (in the very literal sense of the word "pit") the women just in front of me dropped her cell phone down the privy hole. "No," she screamed, "you can't go in there. I dropped my cell phone, and it's stuck halfway down." (take a wild guess. In what?) She made her husband stick his arm in the hole, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't reach that particular...er, pile? The ranger tried using a stick, but it was too far down.



We finally moved on and did an interpretive hike to a historical town called Wash Woods--





...after almost an hour of slogging through ankle deep sand, in the cold, out in the middle of nowhere, we got to the old church steeple, cemetery, and garbage dump. We scared the hell out of a couple that had hiked in from the North Carolina side. I don't think they were expecting a bunch of birders.

I took a picture of the surrounding peat bog for Jeanna. :)



and we got out of there. We spent the next half hour fishing for the cell phone. The woman's husband took video. The rangers finally sent a man in with a crab net. I think he caught a little too much, because he left the net behind.