Trail Blazer

by MagicS

The Dirt and the Water

The following are excerpts from Trail Blazer’s notebook:

For the past few days we’ve traveled through a large portion of the interior of Equestria. No deserts, no swamps, temperate climate, I won’t say the weather or terrain has been perfect but it’s been a relatively easy going compared to the previous legs of our journey. This central area of the country is grassy and forested for the most part and nearly anywhere would make a fine place to start a town or farm. My only concern is the local fauna. We’ve been careful but this is just the kind of place you find dangerous creatures like Ursa Minor/Majors, regular bears, and so forth. Equestria is still a mostly wild place and I’m not an expert on monsters and stuff but I know there are things like manticores, hydras, huge gators, and all kinds of weird stuff in certain parts of the country.

Settlers will need to be careful and come in big groups. Well that’s almost true for anywhere.

I’m just so tired. I’ve had no alcohol for the past two days and it’s driving me up the wall. There’s stuff I should be doing but my head is so muddled and everything is annoying me. I can’t focus on anything, I just want a drink so bad. Even when I’m just drawing my map I get agitated and I can’t keep my thoughts out of my head.

Lustrous has been watching me closer, I can tell. He doesn’t want to leave me alone for anything and he’s been arguing less with me lately too. He needs to get over it, it’s not a big deal. But ever since that stupid night in the forest he’s been like this and without anything for me to drink I’m about to explode. I’d rather him keep going off about random dumb stuff so I can correct or tease him, normally that would be one of the few things to keep me from getting too aggravated while sober.

And Steel Wing is just flying around like he always does.

Whatever. Pushing that all out of the way. I’m going to write these notes no matter how long it takes to get my pencil down to the paper.

First things first. Although this part of Equestria is predominantly fertile and perfectly good to live in we are now in a part that is most certainly not. The previous few days we were in a good area but this afternoon we ended up walking into a dry and arid part of the country. The ground is cracked and dry and doesn’t look like it would be good for farming.

I could check the soil but I really don’t feel like it right now.

Good thing is that it isn’t too hot and we have plenty of water. I’d trade all that water for a full flask of moonshine though and damn the consequences.

Ugh, I can’t do this right now. I haven’t had sex in too long either. If it was just one or the other maybe I could deal with it, but both? No. I really need something.

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Camping the night in this dry area went pretty well. Ground was level and we weren’t soaked, little uncomfortable but not too bad. We’ve camped in worse spots. There still isn’t a lot to really do in this location, since it’s so devoid of life or anything. I could see it possibly being a place to mine minerals or rare earths. Since I’m almost certain the soil isn’t suited for crops or farming. I still haven’t actually checked it though, can’t get my mind off my recent lack of… you know.

Still not a geologist but I’m sure they could find something useful here. If anything the land is nice and flat and you don’t have to deal with a bunch of hills or rocky areas when building or traveling through.

Since I have nothing else to talk about right now I suppose I can say how the map is coming along nicely. I’ve got a good outline of most of the country’s borders now and we’ve been through a good deal of the interior. I’m going to have pages and pages of notes to go along with the map for our Representatives that I’ll have to organize though. But I’ve done a good job of accurately showing what the landscape and terrain is like in every spot we’ve been to, and where any settlements are. It’s been difficult planning where roads should go but so much of this country is just pure wilderness and not suited for being interconnected in such a simple way.

I’ve decided to make a purely elevation map too, along with a physical one and another general one just showing the whole size and shape of the country. Let Cheese and apple allergy figure out how best they want to combine them or whatever.

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Good thing happened today.

We happened to meet a traveler who had recently been around where Princess Celestia is making her castle and now he was heading northeast cause he heard some towns were springing up in the area. Well for one that’ll be good for us cause we’ll probably end up hitting those places ourselves at some point. And two after hanging out in the back of his wagon for a while I was able to scratch a certain itch of mine.

Thanks to that I was finally able to clear my head of some things.

The soil is unsuited for farming, just like I thought. There’s a lack of nutrients in it and this place is clearly far too dry in the first place. Obviously it doesn’t get enough rain throughout the year. But this would be a good place to make a road through since it’s flat, you just need to remember to bring plenty of your own water and food. No town is ever going to be made here though.

Lustrous and Steel Wing were kind of giving me uncomfortable looks the rest of the day and I threw up after but it’s fine.

I’m used to it.

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Found a lake. We’ve seen a lot of the ocean (on both sides of the country) and gone through swamps and bogs and seen some small rivers and stuff but this is the first actual lake we’ve come across. Kind of refreshing. It was actually fairly lucky too since now we were running a little low on drinkable water after being stuck in that dry spot for a few days previously. The forest we had walked through on the way here didn’t have a river going this direction for us either.

Lustrous attempted to drink out of a puddle of standing water but I stopped him.

The lake or anywhere close to it I suppose would be a good place for a village. Lots of lumber from the forest too. A river flows downhill from the west to make the lake and then flows out again east in a much narrower stream. Maybe you could dam up to the eastern part to expand the lake.

We filled up on plenty of water while we were here. Honestly a lot more than I think we’ll need but it’s better to be safe than sorry in the case of water.

Still need a drink.

The thing is I know there are some things I could be testing the water and lake for but I don’t have the right equipment. It’s something I didn’t think was as important for the trip and I already have so much to carry. I did check the level of erosion around the edge of the lake and where it turns into a stream. And checked some of the trees close by to see if there was any evidence of prior floods. If this was a flood zone we’d have to reconsider some things.

However I didn’t see any evidence of that. So good, one less thing to worry about. And one less thing to circumvent.

Steel Wing hasn’t offered to play cards since that first night. I can tell him and Lustrous want to but they’re worried over some dumb thing. Well I’m not helping them with that. If they want to read into stuff and mope around then let them. I’ll do what I’ve been doing.

It looks like it rains a good deal in this area even without pegasi for the weather. Forest is too crowded for any large farm but you could easily make a family farm or orchard around here. I have so many more things to look at and write about around here than the dry spot we left, or the desert we had gone through. Since with those I could just write “Not fit for habitation” if I really felt like it.

Maybe it’s because Lustrous has been so in awe of every little thing he sees now but I don’t feel like being lazy. Some of that stupidity is rubbing off on me.

He’s been keeping me on track though. For the most part, sometimes I have to convince him to do something because he’s whining about danger. Steel Wing has kept us safe enough. I know they both want me to stop drinking but that aint happening anytime soon. I can’t function without alcohol for more than a few days, even now I’m just writing and writing hoping to keep my head off of things. Gonna start getting more agitated and irritable soon.

Water of the lake was cold. We all actually took a dip in it to clean off and refresh ourselves. So that was probably the highlight of the day. I was really grimy and my mane was in terrible condition. Cleaned my jacket too.

Turns out neither Lustrous or Steel Wing could actually swim, go figure. So they just washed off by the water’s edge. More lake for me. You live on an island, how do you not know how to swim? Now that I think about it I doubt most ponies ever really bothered to learn though. What’s the point for most of them? How many would really need to learn?

I’m still tired now. Too many things to think about. Too much activity. Too many things to deal with. By tomorrow we’re gonna start wrapping around and heading up northeast a little. Maybe find a town since that area is a bit more populated than the rest of Equestria.

I’m tired but it’s been a decent trip so far.