Exploration, and meat

So, um, how was your night last night? Really. That’s cool. Oh wait, I wasn’t listening because I just won an awesome bugle on ebay.

Now then.

As I’ve been spending more and more time with the handbook, I’m increasingly impressed with what an artifact of an agrarian society it is. Simple things: the agriculture badge’s request that one grows an acre of corn, the poultry farming badge’s requirement that one raise a brood of at least ten chickens, or the gardening badge’s criterion for cutting grass with a scythe.

Equally interesting is the pathfinding badge. This one is a maze of complicated steps, and it’s going to be one of my first badge projects.

Now, the first requirement is that the applicant scout must learn “every lane, by-path, and short cut for a distance of at least 2 miles in every direction around the local scouts’ headquarters in the country.” This seems like a great idea, but I’m not sure how tenable it is in New York — I’d like to point out, after all, that an absurdly huge number of people live within 2 square miles of my house.

(I found a population density estimate for my neighborhood of 68,000 people per square mile. A circle with a radius of 2 miles has an area of (roughly) 12.6 square miles, or 853,000 people. Now, of course, that circle would also contain Prospect Park, whose population (one hopes) is 0, so we’ll subtract the area of Prospect Park (585 acres, or 0.9 square miles), so there’s actually a population of (maybe) 795,600 people. But still.)

The point is, those people necessitate a whole lot of roads. So maybe learning them all is both absurd and (a little) unsafe.

I discovered for myself an alternative task. Instead, I’m going to learn all the pathways of Prospect Park.

This is actually kind of a decent task — according to at least two people I just spoke to at the Prospect Park Alliance, no one seems to know exactly how many miles of trails there are. There appear to be about 4.5 miles of paved roadways/sidewalks, and I’d estimate at least 2 times that many miles of trails (take a look at the runners’ map for more details). This would mean there are maybe 12 miles of trails in the park — this seems like enough to learn in order to qualify for the badge. Right?

So, today, I set out.

It’s a gorgeous day, and some areas of the park were absolutely absurdly beautiful — I’d never been to Prospect Park Lake, and it’s shockingly lovely.





Of course, you can’t forget that you ARE in a city.






There are also some really surprising architectural bits, like a Greek-styled pavilion which, try as I might, I can't find labeled on any maps. I'd love to know its history. Can anyone help me out? (PS: I've had these shoes for ten years. Yikes.)


On the way back, I made friends (I guess) with a woman who told me all about how Swedish and Norwegian people are the most beautiful in the world. (I’m neither. However, my husband is, so I didn’t fight too hard.)


Also, the badge requires me to know the location of all the meat markets within a 1/2 mile radius of my house. Fortunately, there’s only one. I’d never been inside before (I’ve been a vegetarian for something like ten years), but man, I’m glad I went. Gorgeous gnocchi, tons of nice bread, all kinds of good stuff. If you’re a carnivore, stop in. (The bread is extra good news! I wanted to make bruschetta the other night but couldn't find a nice-looking loaf of bread. I substituted in a pizza crust, partially baked, from a pizzeria on my block, and while the whole thing came out nicely, I really would have preferred the bread. So yay!)