guess who's back?

“After some much needed aid from Matt The Supreme Web Guru Birch has been revived. Rad has hounded me enough that I can no longer resist. His powers of persuasion have beaten down my will...actually I just wanted to change and lost my old password. Now THIS thread is truly useless...”

“Ok, but gimme a hint...since I assume you've been posting under a different name...help me connect the dots.”

“I thought Matt was supreme Web God. Has he been demoted?”

“Sorry Fritz, I was originally Birch,then became hyperpacker and now have come full circle...as it were. Though I reckon hyper will return when I lose my number again.”

“check the archieves Fritz”

“After having met you, Hyperpacker is the better name for you.”

“You are probably right dude.”

“How about Hyperbirch?”

“How 'bout Packin' Birch?”

“I thought it was lizs' little toenail.”

“I like the name birch better, but then again, I've never hiked with you.”

“He's like Rad on speed if that tells ya anything.”

“LOL,..Dude!

I like the name Birch!”

“Birch is a more Michigan oriented name - I like it. If I had it to do over, I'd call myself eriehiker.”

“Well? How does it look on me?”

“Go Birch, Go!!!”

“For a lurker, shouldn't it be eerie-hiker? LOL. Go for it erie.”

“"Birch"

it's noble and strong.

and it can spaz out, on a windy day.”

“I still say Hyperpacker is best for ya.
What if Gojo would have called himself Sarabelle?”

“he does, on friday nights.

he looks purty good, too!”

“Why don't that suprise me?”

“eriehiker...you're freaking me out! So on the next TT trip you come on you will introduce yourself as an "eerie-hiker" not a "reformed lurker"...YIKES LOL!”

“BIRCHES
When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay.
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-coloured
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground,
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm,
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows--
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
>From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
-- Robert Frost”

“In Victorian erotica, "swinging birches" had a bit more sting to it. Let's just say it wasn't an eye that was getting lashed.

Now, in a milder form, in the Finnish sauna, flogging oneself with a leafy birch branch is part of the cleansing process.”