Ten objects in ten trees -- someone had already done ten stuffed animals (of which I also have about a bazillion) and it seemed like EVERYONE was going to do something along the lines of "ten assorted purchases from Walgreens" (which was of course my first plan), so I thought I'd try to be a little more consistent.

After a lot of agonizing I decided to go with ten playlists, each playlist inspired by the numbers from ONE to TEN. They're distinctly different objects, but thematically grouped. And easy to hide in the midget scrub trees we have around here.

The rules were:

1. As much as possible out of my home library without asking for help. (I ended up needing around ten songs, mostly famous ones in 5/4, like "Happiness is a Warm Gun".)
2. As family-friendly as possible, so if a kid finds this in his favorite climbing tree, I haven't scarred him for life.
3. Very few meandering, creepy, atmospheric tracks, because there is nothing that would make someone turn off a stranger's mix faster than the addition of a number station recording halfway through, no matter how awesome it seems at the time.
4. Puns are hilarious.
5. Ten songs per playlist, at least one of which has the number in the title.

Constructing the playlists was a lot of fun and surprisingly hard considering I've got 4740 songs (most of which I've never listened to!) I'll put more details as I place the CDs, but for now, I'll just say that the straightforward "songs with the number in the title" only worked for two mixes. After that I branched out and followed rule four religiously.

I burnt the CDs and made booklets for them, in big, unscary sharpie and highlighter -- I didn't want it to look like the work of someone capable of writing a virus, because, honestly, I'm not. The songs on the inside went in various creative configurations and each CD case was a different sleeve of brightly colored plastic. Pretty fragile though, so I had to place them carefully!

[I have a photo of this but it didn't upload for some reason. I'll see if I can get it up in a day or two.]

Okay. Finished. Time to set out.

NOTE: if you live in San Francisco, PLEASE come get one of these, especially the Mt. Davidson one! They'll only survive one good wet fog or rain and someone should enjoy them.

EIGHT is my proudest accomplishment because it's maybe the dorkiest thing I've ever done. It had a song for each valency in the second shell of an atom -- groups 1, 2, and 13-18 -- and O, Valencia! to honor rule four. I found out, for example, that group 15 is called the pnictogens because nitrogen forms a choking gas and pnicto means choke, so I found a song with choke in the title, I AM HILARIOUS. There was, of course, only one place to leave this: the trees near the Academy of Sciences.

My little brother & friends wanted to hit up the new Academy today, so this was my first stop. I said goodbye to them on the steps and went down into that little basin where the trees are. There were a bunch of kids and their families wandering through here, so I stuck it where it would have a good view of the Sutro tower but someone could more or less reach it if they had short, kiddie arms.


(view from the tree)

I set out through the park towards the Sunset and ended up on this gorgeous valley of a trail I'd never seen before. The trees here needed a mix, and I didn't have a planned location for FOUR -- which ended up being sort of about dating and sort of about the apocalypse due to the free-association method I used to pick the songs -- so into a tree it went.



Next, the Inner Sunset. FIVE was half made up of songs with 5/4 beats (eg: Happiness is a Warm Gun), which is a joke only musicians would get, and my bass teacher's house was very nearby. Aaaand apparently he was getting cable laid in his house, because there was a van out front with two confused-looking technicians who kept looking at me. The CD went in a tree out front and I booked it before they could make eye contact with me.



I started hiking up towards Twin Peaks, but wussed out at Forest Hill Station and caught the 43 to my old bus stop. I'd been at this stop every day of the week when I lived up around here (on that more later), so it was the perfect place to put SEVEN, which predictably had a days-of-the-week theme.




When I lived up here I would hike up Mt. Davidson -- not as often as I'd like, because I am as in shape as maybe a potato -- and so I climbed it again to plant TWO, which belonged in the most gorgeous part of my second home, at the top of that hill. The sun was low and everything looked lovely, except for, of course, the bulldozers and steamrollers parked at the top of the hill, because apparently they were remodeling the broad flat patch with the trees on it? IDEK, you guys. A friendly drunken homeless man pointed me at where the gaps were in the security fence and I made my way over to the other side of the hill, where I gave TWO the best view yet.




I was halfway done but still about an hour from home.

I climbed down -- my feet were pretty much hating me now -- and terrified a small child who actually lived on that side of the hill. At first I just waved to her and then I realised that she was wearing a Giants jacket and hat, with deeply matching purple pants, so when she wouldn't stop staring at me I decided to 'hide' a CD for her -- NINE, the one that has bad jokes about baseball. [I couldn't find a song with "Pitcher" or "Pitch" in the title, so I showed my San Franciscan colors and stuck "Tim I Wish You Were Born a Girl" in that spot. Tim Lincecum, if you're reading this, CALL ME, WE SHOULD HANG OUT. Sadly I had no songs with "Omar I Wish You Were Twenty Years Younger So We Could Bang Like Bunnies" in the title for shortstop.] I put the CD at the foot of a tree and snapped a shot that just caught her in the edge of the frame.



Then I proceeded to get so lost I almost ended up in Noe Valley, but honestly, I don't even want to talk about that. I will just say that I'm not allowed to do any map-reliant tasks. The 36 and 44 took me back to the Richmond eventually.

SIX has the colors of the rainbow, of which there are six if you don't count indigo and violet as separate colors, which I point out only a failure as a person would do. Seriously, Isaac Newton, what the fuck. SIX and I took a trip to the Frankenartmart on Balboa which is a sf0-like organization that believes in creative commons like the rest of us believe in gravity.



At this point I was pretty wiped so I just found a reasonably short tree to stick THREE, my most kid-friendly, into and skedaddled back home.



Which brought the total down to two CDs left to distribute. ONE obviously had to go to something special -- namely, the tree in our neighborhood that was everyone's favorite for climbing. The epic treehouse in the picture below got added after my time, but it was easily scaleable even by someone my size, although I didn't try to stand on any of the weaker plywood. The one drawback about this location is that everyone in the neighborhood knows each other -- it's fairly probable I'll get this CD back with a confused expression at some point this week. "Emma, why did you put a CD in my treehouse?" "What? That wasn't me." "So you're saying a homeless person wandered into my backyard and gave me a mix." "It happens in movies!" "WHAT MOVIES."



This left me with just one CD, TEN, a greatest-hits compilation of the other nine + one Pink Floyd classic. I decided to give it to my little brother and not upload it online, thereby effectively hiding it in my family tree and giving rule four the love and consideration it deserves.



BROTHER: Why do you have a camera?
EMMA: Uh, I made you a mix!
BROTHER: And you wanted to honor the moment.
EMMA: Yes? No? It's for a scavenger hunt ... thing.
BROTHER: Okay. Can I have a Milano?

CDs distributed, I took an hour-long bath, and happily read "My Side of the Mountain," secure in my knowledge that I had triumphed over those leafy bastards.