{"id":8655,"date":"2018-03-25T14:29:44","date_gmt":"2018-03-25T18:29:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bloggingsam.com\/?p=8655"},"modified":"2021-01-08T21:34:23","modified_gmt":"2021-01-09T02:34:23","slug":"beavers-saffin-pond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloggingsam.com\/?p=8655","title":{"rendered":"Beavers at Saffin Pond"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"rumble\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/rumble.com\/embed\/v9y74b\/?pub=7ub6v\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Oh, hi.  We got more snow again.  If you&#8217;ve read any of my previous posts about my wishful 50K training plans you can surmise what more snow means:  I AM DOOMED!  What did the plan call for this weekend?  18 miles?  <insert demented=\"\" laugh=\"\" here=\"\"> By the way, it&#8217;s officially Spring.  This is bullshit.<\/insert><\/p>\n<p>That being said, my mood improved once I finally got out the door.  Read on.<\/p>\n<p>I went to Mahlon Dickerson Reservation to run yesterday.  I lacked motivation and felt like a loser after not going for my long run that morning&#8230; because I lacked motivation and felt like a loser.  It&#8217;s a vicious cycle.  But my wife came home yesterday afternoon and said, &#8220;Hey!  It&#8217;s really nice out!  You should go for a run!&#8221;  That, in my mind, translated to, &#8220;Hey!  You&#8217;re a lazy fat slob!  You could really use some exercise!  Why don&#8217;t you get off the couch for a change!&#8221;  So, I got up and went.<\/p>\n<p>It turned out that the trails were even more snow covered than the week before, as seen below.  The previous weekend it took me 2 hours to trudge through 5 miles of snow and I took the road back to the parking lot for the last mile because my feet were so cold.  This time I decided to go 2.5 miles and turn around instead of attempting the 6 mile loop.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_8659\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8659\" style=\"width: 700px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/bloggingsam.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/IMG_2841.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"700\" height=\"525\" class=\"size-full wp-image-8659\" srcset=\"https:\/\/bloggingsam.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/IMG_2841.jpg 700w, https:\/\/bloggingsam.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/IMG_2841-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 984px) 61vw, (max-width: 1362px) 45vw, 600px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-8659\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">There&#8217;s a trail under there somewhere.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"attachment_8660\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8660\" style=\"width: 450px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/bloggingsam.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/IMG_2840.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"450\" height=\"600\" class=\"size-full wp-image-8660\" srcset=\"https:\/\/bloggingsam.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/IMG_2840.jpg 450w, https:\/\/bloggingsam.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/IMG_2840-225x300.jpg 225w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 450px) 85vw, 450px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-8660\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">When the only person to travel the trail before you was wearing snow shoes&#8230; lucky bastard.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Since I didn&#8217;t have a lot of motivation and since the snow made my effort to exercise turn into one big suck, I reminded myself that it has often been under those circumstances that I&#8217;ve been rewarded by seeing something cool, like a bald eagle, or a deer up close, or a cool snake.  Though snakes don&#8217;t usually come out in the snow.<\/p>\n<p>I saw a few ducks at mile 2, not too exciting.  Then I was taken by surprise to see beavers swimming in Saffin Pond, which is near the parking lot.  I had seen evidence of beavers in another area of the reservation (see photo).  I had not previously seen any indication that they were in Saffin Pond, which often has many humans about it given its proximity to the parking area.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_8661\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8661\" style=\"width: 450px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/bloggingsam.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/IMG_2484.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"450\" height=\"600\" class=\"size-full wp-image-8661\" srcset=\"https:\/\/bloggingsam.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/IMG_2484.jpg 450w, https:\/\/bloggingsam.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/IMG_2484-225x300.jpg 225w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 450px) 85vw, 450px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-8661\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Looks like there&#8217;s a beaver around these here parts.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Seeing the beavers was truly rewarding.  I could have watched them for hours if it wasn&#8217;t close to sunset and my wife wasn&#8217;t waiting for me to come home for dinner.  So I recorded several minutes of their activity.  The video above is 5 minutes of peaceful beaver swimming with a momentary disruption of an angry beaver slapping his tail.<\/p>\n<p>It took me an hour and 45 minutes to go 5 miles this time at Mahlon.  It was a little faster than the prior week because I just wanted the suck to be over.  However, all the snow we have gotten this month has buried my training plans.  I was supposed to do 18 miles this weekend.  That&#8217;s hard to do when it takes almost 2 hours to just go 5.  It&#8217;s impossible to do when your motivation tank is empty.  I need to get with the program because my 50K is only 4 weeks away.  Here&#8217;s hoping for a warm week and some rain to clear this snow before next weekend!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Oh, hi. We got more snow again. If you&#8217;ve read any of my previous posts about my wishful 50K training plans you can surmise what more snow means: I AM DOOMED! What did the plan call for this weekend? 18 miles? By the way, it&#8217;s officially Spring. This is bullshit. That being said, my mood &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/bloggingsam.com\/?p=8655\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Beavers at Saffin Pond&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100,45,39,38],"tags":[200,201,85,202],"class_list":["post-8655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-naturewildlife","category-new-jersey","category-running","category-videos","tag-beavers","tag-mahlon-dickerson-reservation","tag-new-jersey","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloggingsam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloggingsam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloggingsam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloggingsam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloggingsam.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8655"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/bloggingsam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8655\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10047,"href":"https:\/\/bloggingsam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8655\/revisions\/10047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloggingsam.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloggingsam.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloggingsam.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}