HUMID!

Well, the DRC isn't sleeping on the job; they said we'd get Tsogahl yesterday, and Tsogahl we got. I love the view from where we link in. Those trees up there are just begging to be climbed, and mountain breezes to appreciate and...

However, I didn't have climbing gear with me last night, nor anyone to spot me on ascent, so I wasn't about to try to climb out of the garden. As it was, I was too busy not fainting from the sudden blast of HUMID that nearly knocked me over when I got in down there. (I was expecting something a little more like Delin, I guess, so I had a sweatshirt on. You better believe I shucked out of that in a hurry! And oh, I was greatful for my hat to keep the sun out of my eyes.)

I don't know what lattitude Tsogahl's at, but the sun was right overhead when I linked in, and it felt about like August - hot, muggy, and green. I saw a single moon in the sky, lower on the horizon. Down in the valley with me, there were little seeds, like dandelion clocks, floating about in the air, and generally rising. I'm not surprised, it was like being at the bottom of a bowl, I'm sure there was a fair bit of convection going on in the air.

And cattails. Lots of cattails. Tsogahl hasn't been maintained in a while - cattails are great for controlling erosion, but when they get into the irrigation system, everything gets much more complicated. And there was water everywhere - not just in the fountain, but in all the low-lying places. I don't know if it rained recently, or if the ground water is just naturally that high.

But Eder Tsogahl is definitely a swamp.

It is, however, a pleasantly insect-free swamp. I don't mind the humidity so long as I'm not being eaten alive by the bugs, and I wasn't. I didn't see a single animal the whole time I was there, actually.

I guess that probably means that the dandelion seeds probably weren't proper dandelions, as dandelions with their bright yellow flowers are polinated by bees, while cattails are polinated by the wind. (See Bio One's article on cattails for more.) There's probably willows (or the functional equivalent) in some of the other low-lying areas.

Some of the trees up top had red leaves, as well as the more usual green ones; I find myself wondering if they are red maples, like the ones from Japan, or if the temparature differentiation is that great from the valley floor to up top. I didn't see any conifers up there, so there's nothing to say that we weren't in the tropics, I suppose, but the flora looked similar enough to places in the northern USA that I'm guessing that's not the case.

I couldn't find the Maintainer's Mark anywhere; I think it must be flooded. This is the first Age outside of Earth and Relto that I've linked to where there wasn't a Maintainer's Mark. Even Delin had one. (I know, I sat on it at one point, just for the heck of it.) Granted, I didn't look that hard for it - I was having over-heating problems.

And...there was another one of those spiral doors. But as I was alone, I left that for another day. However, when we're all running around trying to get that one open, you had better believe it will be T-shirt, shorts, and an awful lot of sunscreen for me.