o/~ I'll be back in the high place again... o/~

I ended up not borrowing Meiczyslaw's book while I was visiting with him and with Jishin after all. The two of them were keeping track of what was up in the Cavern, and it was a good thing for me to take a break from all of my normal life for a while.

That said, when I linked in to Relto last night, and heard the water running down the side of the mountain and the wind through the needles of the pine trees, it felt really, really good. And it's not as if I stopped thinking about D'ni and Relto while I was gone.

For one thing, I realized I could probably carve a little niche out of the back side of my Relto, where most people don't look, and anchor a small water-wheel under the waterfall there. Any noise would be muffled by the stone, and since it's behind the mountain and the hut, I'll still be able to catch a nap inside without having the ambient white noise of the wind disturbed too much.

I need to take some measurements and figure out where I'm going to anchor the pitons to support the scaffolding while I work, though, if I'm going to do this. And I definitely need to test the strata of that area for hardness - it's going to be much, much harder to chisel through, say, granite, than it would be to go through sandstone. (Though really, from what I've seen over the side, it looks like Relto is mostly metamorphosed sandstone and shale - it's just going to be a question of how much it's metamorphosed and how hard it is.)

The other thing is, if the water wheel niche isn't too hard to chisel out, I could run cables around the back of the mountain, and carve another niche in the area between my walkway and my bench - approximately where Atrus kept his batteries for the spaceship on Myst Island - and put capacitors there, so I don't run the wheel full time. Aesthetically, this appeals to me greatly, but it's going to be a whopping lot of work.

And why go to all that work anyway?

Well, because the idea of playing Oingo Boing with the dial turned all the way to 11 on the volume really appeals to me, and in Relto, there's no neighbors to be bothered by the fact that you're shaking the windows with your music. *grin*

(Not to mention, no windows to be rattled.)

Anyway, that's my project for, oh, the next year, I figure. And Yeesha may decide to give us back the page for the music player, making portions of the point moot. But being able to charge my laptop up in Relto, or have a little minifridge in there to keep juice and cider cold, so I don't have to link back home whenever I want a drink other than water? That'd be really nice.

However, Yeesha has given us a new page - maple leaves. Beautiful. My Relto now has deciduous and coniferous trees! (And my pine tree is growing nicely.) A few of the leaves have fallen - they're all in the autumn orange and green - and I pressed them in the back of one of the filled diaries I've left on my shelf in Relto. When they're dry, I'll take them home and hang them in the window, for days I can't Link.

I spent a little while reading Tao koans under the maples last night...hard to beat.

Then Jack, Meiczyslaw and Jishin all linked down and we were about to go explore Teledahn with Jack when...he got summoned back to the surface to deal with computer problems. Argh. (Sadly, this is part of the peril of being somebody who is occasionally on call.) So Jishin and Meiczyslaw and I were all left to our own devices.

We thought about checking out the last Pod age (or Payiferan, for that matter, as I haven't had a chance to do more than link in, look around, and link out) but we weren't sure how soon he would be allowed to come back down, so we poked about the Cavern, collecting markers. I finished the red quest and noted that there's a different hologram in the Great Zero - neither the Shell nor the simple Marker, but the Marker over a shield that looks like it's got a power switch in it...

...when Meiczyslaw found something new.

Down in the Tokotah Alley, where the Shell appeared briefly so long ago, there is now a Bahro Stone. I'd heard of this stone existing very briefly, only once, and that was a long time ago. And I couldn't remember where it linked to, but whatever the old stone linked too, the new one links someplace else.

Tiwah Gahro - the Great Shaft. It a link to the small rest area where we last had word of Dr. Watson. His diary is there, but it hasn't been touched since 2004. (I hope he's all right. He was a bit of a stuffed shirt, but he was at least a well-meaning stuffed shirt...) There's an inactive KI dispenser, an inactive Nexus terminal with no book, and some cots. Poking about, I couldn't find the Direbo book, so either the DRC or somebody else took it, or this rest area never had one.

Otherwise, it's very bare, but it is there. If you look over the edge into the shaft, you can see the barrier floor that's about the 3 mile marker from the surface, but short of getting climbing gear and going down the elevator track, it doesn't look like there's a safe way down to the floor. The ramp down is broken off in several places, and I don't relish the idea of walking three miles up to the surface along an unstable surface.

Jishin took pictures over the edge - we were so small in the distance there. It's really a tremendous feat of engineering. Something humans are capable of, to be sure, but that doesn't diminish it at all.

And more interestingly, there is now a link to the Shaft, which means that if a group of explorers really decided they wanted to know where it emerged up top? It's possible to get there. They'd need hard hats, climbing gear, food for several days almost certainly. But it's possible.

I wonder how long until somebody tries it? I'm curious about it, but I've already taken what time I can off work, so this one somebody else will have to solve.