 just got back from a couple hours of battling the jungle again today I got stung right here and on the back of my leg luckily after I got stung the first time I realized what it was and quickly looked up saw the swarm of bees or horners I don't know what they were turned and ran unfortunately I was in a swamp and just imagine taking all of the furniture in your house piling it into one room not standing up just jumbled all over the place and then flooding that room to like three feet deep and then try to get across that room without falling in the water that's what it's like walking through the swamp and I was trying to run I was running along this log that had been there for I don't know long super slippery and everything holding my machete away from myself so I don't fall and land on it of course I'm not an idiot but then I came to this tree that I just come across so I was trying to like hurdle that without breaking it falling in the water I did manage to get over it and land on the other side of the log but then the next step my leg went off the side and I fell in the water I didn't totally fall I didn't go up to my head or anything but I jumped out and kept running around and got away from the bugs they only stung me one more time anyway I think I'm making progress starting to figure out where where my border is on that property yesterday I got lost in the the same swampy area man that swampy area is so confusing because it's not only like like a bunch of piles of furniture where you can only step in some areas you also can't see anywhere because there's there's trees everywhere so you can't see very far so yesterday I found my my corner post like the edge of my property that's the corner and I was like going along this side and I was like okay let me find the the marker that's over there and it was about 50 meters away according to my GPS thing now the GPS thing doesn't work that well because there's trees everywhere blocking the signal so it kind of the signal kind of goes in and out so I'm going that way and checking every once in a while on the GPS and at some point I realized oh I've passed where I'm supposed to be I've gone past the marker so I try to turn in and go toward it but then I'm like oh there's some dry land let me just get on the dry land because I've been slogging through not slogging through so much but kind of slogging through some swamp staying on the you know the lumps of ground as I go but I was like oh there's some like 20 foot high dry ground let me just get on that and then try to go to where I'm going well the the high ground did not know did not go where I needed to go and it was I was trying to kind of curve around anyway very quickly I got to a point where I was like where the I don't know where I am which direction I'm aiming I don't know how to get back wow at one point I walked about I don't know 50 meters like straight into the jungle hoping I was going out of the jungle luckily I kept my wits about me didn't lose my marbles and I knew that I wouldn't get super lost because I have the ocean on one side a stream on the other side and then a friend's property over on the other side so I was hemmed in by those things and then my neighbor started his generator and I was like oh now I have something to hear that's that's a known direction and I can keep listening to that because when you're walking through this swamp like you can't walk in straight lines you have to kind of walk like this and it's you just you know 10 steps go by and you're like I think I'm still walking west and it's like you're walking southeast it's kind of hard to explain to someone who's never experienced like being in a forest you know they say you can get lost in the forest like that and one of the things I did when I first moved to the forest like 15 years ago in Vermont was you know I had my my camp set up where I was building a dome and I had a spring and there was a cliff face there so all stuff I recognized I knew that area very well but then there was this hill that went up into unknown forest and I was like I want to test this out I want to see how easy it really is to get lost in the forest I'm gonna walk up into that forest just for like a minute so I walked up into the forest for about a minute maybe less and I turned around and I just got this like sudden like mild panic like where the f I have no idea where I am I don't even know which direction I'm aiming now and I thought about it and I was like I just turned around did I turn around and make a 180 or did I turn like just partway or I don't know so I tried to look back to see I was just going that way I should recognize something now everything looks the same it's all just trees and they're all the same obviously they're not all the same but it's like they're pretty much all the same so anyway I picked the direction I thought was was gonna get me back and I'm walking along and I get to this cliff face and I'm like ah okay this is gotta be the same cliff face as the one I know that means I should be somewhere near the path and I look around I'm like oh I'm practically standing on the path that goes to my house so I walked out and I came back like 45 degrees off course just going out for like a minute and that's what I that's when I learned how easy it is to get lost in a forest or a jungle because like in a city you always have you always have streets and you can see really far so there are landmarks you can see and everything's everything's on grids except in Boston where everything's a spaghetti street but generally speaking in a city or any kind of suburb or anything like that you've got grids so you can you can walk straight but take away just imagine you're in an unknown neighborhood and take away all the street signs you don't know where you are right you know do I go down this street that street that street okay now make it so you can only see like 20 feet ahead of you and any or in any direction and then you're like I don't even know is there a street up there is your street behind me then take away the street and the houses and then make it so you can only walk on certain fights so easy to get lost in the jungle just just like that anyway scouting out the jungle is going well despite you know getting lost and stung and stuff it's all part of the adventure to me in my opinion but yeah I'm starting to get an idea of the the layout and where where might be a good place to build a build a house workshop stuff and where more importantly where I want to start growing food because that's like the biggest reason I want to start doing stuff over there is because there's a really good area along this stream that's very fertile land where I can grow food and I want to build some buildings over there so my family can come hang out I don't want to just go by myself and you know be farming all day just by myself I want those guys to come and hang out so I want to build like a place a cool place where they hang out yeah all right I think I need to go have some dinner it's exhausting slogging through that forest