Please don't send any more tenderfeet to Maine.

[turbo]

My nearest neighbor to the west has a lot that's about 1/2 mile deep, just like mine, with a hill on the front, a hill on the back, and a valley with a stream running through it about 1/4 mile away from the road. Yesterday he went for a walk on his property, got "turned around", and was lost in the woods for over 3 hours, until he hit Route 201 several miles away, and his nephew just happened to be driving by and recognized him. Until he retired, he was a life-long resident of Massachusetts, and he is absolutely helpless in the woods. How can you not know that after you have crossed the stream, you have to turn back downhill cross the stream again and go back uphill to get home?

He gardens, and when I told him that a friend of mine was selling 14-yard truck-loads of rotted manure, he said "manure is weedy". Then, he was landscaping his back yard and I told him that my friend would sell 14-yard loads of unscreened loam for $140, he said that he didn't want to have to rake out any roots and sticks. After our other nearest neighbor bought loads of each, he decided that my friend's deals on loam and manure were pretty darned good, after all. What a maroon! Go to a garden shop and buy the stuff by the bag at 10x the price (at least) for inferior products vs giving a local businessman a shot? Home Depot and other big-box stores rely on the tenderfoot market to keep them in business.

 

[Evo]

My nearest neighbor to the west has a lot that's about 1/2 mile deep, just like mine, with a hill on the front, a hill on the back, and a valley with a stream running through it about 1/4 mile away from the road. Yesterday he went for a walk on his property, got "turned around", and was lost in the woods for over 3 hours, until he hit Route 201 several miles away, and his nephew just happened to be driving by and recognized him. Until he retired, he was a life-long resident of Massachusetts, and he is absolutely helpless in the woods. How can you not know that after you have crossed the stream, you have to turn back downhill cross the stream again and go back uphill to get home?

That's pretty bad. He could have covered a lot of ground in 3 hours.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

You should teach him the ways Turbo.

I've gotten lost in the woods when I was younger. When you are used to walking streets with signs everywhere you tend not to think about paying attention to which direction you are walking. I never got that lost though.

 

[turbo]

You should teach him the ways Turbo.

He's too "smart" for that, unfortunately. He doesn't even have a rough appreciation for the topography of our properties, which is pretty sad, since he has been living here for 5-6 years now. It's not like we live in the trackless forest, either. If you took a wrong bearing but stayed on course, you'd cover maybe 2 miles at most before you hit a road.

When I was a little kid (6-7 years old or so), I'd strike out cross-country to the nearest trout brook , follow it for miles to its beaver-bog source and head back through the woods to hit a dead-end secondary road to walk several miles back home with my fish. It's just so puzzling how someone can get lost in his own back yard and wander off. He doesn't seem to have dementia, but if he ever develops it, he's a goner.

 

[lisab]

Getting lost on your own property is a bad sign. Perhaps he is in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease?

 

[Moonbear]

Sounds more like a "know it all." You try to help him out and he thinks he knows more than the locals who have lived there for years. Oh well, he can have his crappy Home Depot bags of manure or loam. I can get manure from the farm, but WISH I could find a good source of other things like mulch for my yard that could be delivered by the truckload rather than in bags. I know there must be one around here, just still working on finding it.

 

[turbo]

Sounds more like a "know it all." You try to help him out and he thinks he knows more than the locals who have lived there for years. Oh well, he can have his crappy Home Depot bags of manure or loam. I can get manure from the farm, but WISH I could find a good source of other things like mulch for my yard that could be delivered by the truckload rather than in bags. I know there must be one around here, just still working on finding it.

So true, MB. I told him that my friend would deliver and dump 14 yards of nice rotted manure at $200/load, 14 yards of fine-screened loam for $280, and 14 yards of unscreened loam for $140. He said that the manure would be "too weedy", and that the screened loam was too expensive (about 10x less [probably an OOM off] than the inferior bagged stuff if you can do arithmetic) and that the unscreened loam would be "too dirty". I stopped in at his place and offered to drop off a couple of tractor bucket-loads of cedar decking (I had my back deck re-decked) with nice old white cedar that he could cut up and use for kindling. He said "cedar is too sparky". I was flabbergasted. Maine families have treasured recovered cedar as kindling for generations. What is "too sparky" anyway? What an idiot.

 

[turbo]

Getting lost on your own property is a bad sign. Perhaps he is in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease?

I think it's an advanced stage of inflated-self-opinion. It's easy to own a little piece of property, and think that you can wander all over it, even if you lack the skills. This idiot runs all over the property lines (that were blazed by the original surveyors), spray-painting and flagging everything (often mistakenly) and claiming stuff that doesn't belong to him. He has tolerant neighbors all around, but he his a real fool and is squandering his good-will.

His son seems to be a pretty nice guy, but I'm thinking that he'd probably be better-served by staying to woods-roads instead of wandering off through the country-side. I'd like to have the time to haul him off to some good deer-country and show him how to navigate, but right now I have a really clingy rescue-dog to train, and we're making enough progress that I will gladly sacrifice my hunting-time to end up with a happier, well-adjusted dog.