As If I'd Be Done Complaining About This

So. The Beesting.

It occurred while backpacking. Boy and Girl had such a splendiferous time that we decided to go again, and this time take along Boy's Awesome Friend. BAF is sweet, smart, and easy-going. She rules.

The hike itself was great--again, since the kids were so excited, Guy got all excited, and went out and bought them real live hiking gear. They have matching boots, and Boy has an honest-to-goodness internal frame pack. Which we loaded the hell up, let me tell you. BAF marched along, laughing not complaining.

We got to camp, and Boy and Girl ran down to the water to go throw rocks at it. BAF, this being her time camping, stuck around to watch Guy and me set up the tents.

Guy fed me a pole, and as I was inserting it into the sleeve, I felt a poke in my pants.

"Hold on a sec." I reached back.

"Come ON," Guy said impatiently.

"Um, it's a bee." I did not panic. "There's a bee in my pants."

Guy scrambled across the flattened tent and fished the bee out of my pants.

Now, you would think that would be the end of it. But no. Guy is talented. He somehow managed to get the bee out of one pantleg AND INTO THE OTHER. WHERE IT PROMPTLY STUNG ME.

Then I panicked.

Motherfuckerohmygodohfuckowshit.

I jumped up and tried to take off my boots so I could take off my pants. Guy tried to take off my pants. I fell down. I stood up again, Guy got my pants down.

I glanced up to see BAF staring at my bare ass. Stupid thongs. I should really stop wearing the damn things.

But then I felt the bee crawling around my ankle and returned to panic. OFFPANTSPANTSOFFNOWOFFFUCKFUCKFUCK.

BAF elected to go discreetly down to the water to throw rocks at it.

After the pants were off--and promptly stomped on--I calmed down. Our First Aid Kit was somewhat depleted, and we didn't have Benadryl, or really anything at all. But, while it twinged slightly, the beesting felt fine and I was able to walk, sleep, and hike out the next day without a problem.

Until. When we returned home on Sunday, I took a much-needed bath. And it made the beesting insane.


Besides turning red and splotchy, it also became hard and puffy. And over the course of the next two days, it doubled in size. And turned purple and veiny.

And hurt. A Lot.

Suffice it to say, I seem to be allergic to beestings. I have an Epipen prescription in my purse. Which is, you know, almost as good as actually having the Epipen.

Into The Woods

Boy and Girl are new to the world of hiking. Well, new by my definition--my sister learned to walk hiking (and she never wore those yellow socks again, let me tell you), so perhaps my perspective is somewhat skewed.

In any case, they've taken to it surprisingly well for soft, lily-footed city folk, so Guy and I decided to take them backpacking this weekend.

It was an amazing success--barely any complaints, few rest requests, and--get this--they each carried their packs the entire way. For FIVE relatively difficult miles--Guy and I have trouble finding decent hikes in the NJ area, and easy hikes there are none.

Not that Girl and Boy seemed to mind! Boy was off like a rocket--definitely making him carry more next time--and while Girl seemed unclear on the concept of watching where she was going, she got through her spills like a marine recruit and marched up steep hills and never stopped talking for a single second.

And it was quite lovely. There we are, looking over Round Valley Reservoir, eating Nerds Ropes. (Backpacking requires many bursts of sugar. We did bring their toothbrushes).

But I think Boy and Girl's favorite part was probably the setting-up of the camp. I personally love organizing the tent, nesting everything away and creating a little home made entirely out of stuff with brought with us, plus rocks and logs. Boy and Girl were more into their father's millieu--caveman-like demolishing.

They pulled down dead trees and smashed them for the fire, and lit the fire and fed the fire and damn near danced around the fire.

I sat and knit a sock for my sister. Much more seemly.

There was a sad lack of a bear wire in this campsite, however (or, I should say, an Iorek Byrnison wire, which is what referred to it as in order to avoid alarming the small folk. Ticks were Mrs. Coulters (Fuckers. Although there were none! Hooray!)) and Guy decided we should string our food up on a tree branch. A tree branch that was high.

This necessitated shimmying up said tree. Freak.

Success! Well done Guy! And damn, those are some dandy little trousers there, sir.

We didn't remember everything--we forgot a sponge, slippers for the kids, our hiking chairs--but we did remember the most important thing (especially when you consider that we needed to take two tired kids and hustle them back five miles--uphill this time--in time to get back to their mother's by noon):

Coffee. Espresso, to be exact. I gave Boy a sip. Perhaps that accounted for his speediness. Shrug.

Horseys!

For our very first backpacking trip of the year, Guy and I went in search of some warm weather. And a way to use our Golden Eagle Park Pass, because contrary to what my very generous aunt thought when she gave us the pass for Christmas, there actually aren't any national parks within a hundred miles of where I live.

So we drove down to Maryland.

Assateauge Island, specifically.

Backpacking on Assateague Island doesn't really resemble backpacking anywhere else. It has none of the lost-in-the-wilderness atmosphere of our last backpacking trip, I'll tell you that.

It is a little disheartening to be walking mile after mile with a bigass pack on your back while watching people driving on the beach in their cars and setting up their chairs and their fishing poles and their bigass coolers of beer.


And while they were very friendly, I have yet to bum a beer off of someone flying the Confederate Flag.

But after about six miles, we veered off away from the beach, and the scene changed completely. Goodbye Yuengling,


Hello wild horses. We had read that there were wild horses on Assateague, but it honestly didn't occur to us that we would actually see any. But a foal?! A foal seemed like something worth jumping up and down over.
If I actually had the energy to jump up and down, that is.

Much as we loved the horses, they did have their drawbacks.

Ahem. This wasn't quite as bad as the tick-in-pubic-hair incident --by which I mean, no ticks were in my pubic hair. In fact, I didn't get any ticks on me at all. But Guy got, like, fifty. He was freaking infested.






Guy: Ticks.

















Guy: Horseys!





And it was beautiful there. We explored along the marshy coastline, watching cranes and other weird-looking water birds, and more horseys, and picked up more ticks, and drank a lot of wine to keep ourselves from freaking out.


It was so beautiful I was unable to keep my horizons straight.





And in the morning, we came across these:


Little foal prints!



And little foal himself! We got those pictures because the horses, wild though they may be, are trusting souls. That, or they're really lazy. I spent the weekend with "Wild Horses" stuck in my head, and it occurs to me that the guy who wrote that song may have been slightly disingenuous: wild horses couldn't drag anybody away, because they are happy standing still eating their grass and ain't gonna move for nobody. That song just isn't that romantic anymore.

On the way home, we stopped and got crabs. Obviously. We were in Maryland after all.


Yum. And fun. Whatever my calves may say, it was a fun weekend, and we seem to have survived Tick Attack 2007.
Baby horsey!!!!

There's Something Out There

Having spent the last, um, MANY weeks in the company of lots of people besides just the two of us, Guy and I went backpacking this weekend. We turned down lots of fun things in order to do this--including a midnight showing of Buffy's "Once More With Feeling" at the Landmark Sunshine, which should give you an idea of how much we were looking forward to it.

Shoulda just stayed home.

We were both having respiratory problems--me cold, Guy Maud-Allergens, so the climb up Big Indian Mountain in the Catskills caused some wheezing. But that was nothing compared to how my feet felt. I had bought new insoles, specifically designed for hiking, since my boots don't give much arch-support. Sadly, they made my shoes so small that my feet went numb. And thus I didn't feel the blisters begin until after it was far too late.

This is the size of the smaller of the two blisters:

And you can't see in this photo, but there are little blisters underneath the giant blister. It's cool in a really really painful way.

(For those of you asking yourselves why I brought a tape measure on a backpacking trip, I needed it for the knitting project I brought. Duh.)

But really, it was all fun and games thus far. Yeah, I couldn't really breathe, and yeah, my heels hurt like swear words I won't say, but all that's just the backpacking badge of honor.

I neglected to mention a certain sighting early on in the hike: Guy was ahead of me, and he suddenly stopped. And then he began shouting, "hey there folks, we're just walking along here, you know like you do, and you make lots of noise, cause that's what you do when you're hiking in the forest." I caught up, and asked what the hell he was on about. "I saw something," he said. "Something gray and waist-high." "Oh," I said.

We continued walking, and I now wished I was the person in front, as the mysterious gray thing was now behind me.

So, fastforward to the campsite. The blessedly empty campsite, if you consider how badly we wanted to be away from people. It was just us and the river. For miles and miles and miles. We sat, and drank wine, and generally had a nice evening. We went to bed at about 8 because it was dark and what else do you have to when you're camping.

But when I say dark, I don't mean just lack of streetlights dark. You literally could not see your hand in front of your face. It's a small tent, and I was right next to Guy, but for all I could see him he could have been miles away.

I fell asleep quickly enough though--I was tired from all the coughing and wheezing. But I awoke often, and it never got lighter, and I had more and more trouble getting back to sleep. And finally, sleep was impossible. I couldn't see Guy, I couldn't hear him breathe or move, but I could definitely hear noises in the area surrounding the tent. In trying to figure out why all of this would be, I decided that a man had cut into the side of the tent with his knife, slit Guy's throat--all without my hearing--and was sitting outside waiting for me to wake up, so that he could do the same to me.

I lay there attempting to deal with this worst-case scenario (I would grab Guy's car keys from his dead body pocket, put on socks and wear his boots, and run like mad down the mountain, drive the car even though I don't have a license and find civilization. Of course, if the man was sitting outside, this was all a moot point.)

Understand, I knew I was being ridiculous. And I kept trying to calm myself down. But I've been camping my whole life and I've NEVER had this reaction--I've gotten giggly-scared or mildly nervous, but I was quite honestly terrified. I eventually couldn't help myself--I woke Guy.

Who, it turned out, wasn't asleep. "Feel my hand," he instructed. I tentatively reached out into the blackness. There was a knife in his hand. "I haven't slept either," he said. "I'm feeling it too."

The below is Guy, photographing himself a la Blair Witch:

"There's something out there..."

Come morning, of course, there was nothing. But we both continued to feel the "something" the entire trek back.

Guy just did some research, and while I don't hold with feelings and ghosts and spirits and other mumbojumboy foolishness, I will reprint it here so you can decide for yourself:

"The Rev. J.R. Hoag of Windham told the story of the legend of Big Indian in 1862 to the Recorder and Democrat, newspapers out of Catskill. "Mr. Hoag wrote of a monster of a red man who prowled the neighboring mountains in Revolutionary days and now and then swooped down on the settlements to kill and burn the inoffensive inhabitants.

When the Big Indian killed a beautiful little girl, an old settler grasped his death-weapon and notified his family that he would never return until himself or Big Indian was slain. He shot the Indian as he sat beside his campfire and buried him in a pine bower at the spot known ever since as Big Indian." --From Alf Evers, The Catskills From Wilderness to Woodstock, p.524.

The Trip: Part II (The Better Part)

After wolfing down an enormous breakfast at the diner/bar (it had been, after all, quite a long time since we had eaten), we drove over to the trailhead, passing views like this:


That would be Lake Cushman. It's the clearest, deepest, gorgeousest lake I've ever seen. Starting out on the hike, we were smiling.


After all, there were cool log bridges. But the smiling didn't last long. This was ten miles, which is the longest hike we've ever done (well, I've done longer, but that hike was hell, and I don't like to remember it). And after our night of larceny and little sleep, we were not in the best shape. And I packed my pack stupidly in an effort to move quickly and avoid getting arrested.


But the wildflowers were huge and extremely plentiful (did you know lavendar and foxglove grow on the side of the road in Seattle? Lavendar. On the side of the road. I can't even get it to grow in my yard).


And the trees were even huger and even more plentiful.

I'll just skip on through the hike, which toward the end there was pretty brutal. (Guy, you can tell your "ha-ha look she's crossing the river with her boots on when there's a log bridge right there" story on your own time. I run the show here.) Hurrah, we're there!


Nine stream is beautiful. Doesn't that look inviting? It did to us too, especially since it was about ninety degrees in the sunshine (What you say? Ninety degrees? It's true. Washingtonians were shocked and appalled at the lack of rain). Unfortunately, if even a toe was in that water for more than five seconds, it hurt like hell. This is snow melt from only two miles higher. You would be sweltering, walk into the water and prepare to dunk yourself under, and then suddenly you would find yourself scrabbling frantically for dry land, swearing in another language (because English suddenly becomes far too difficult).

Since, not for lack of trying, we couldn't really go in the water, there wasn't a whole lot to do. We collected sticks and branches for fires.

Sometimes I cleaned the sticks.


We read.
We went for very short walks.
I knit. (Girl's birthday sweater is almost done, by the way).

And after a day of this pleasant rest, it was time to leave. The hike out was faster and much easier, given that it was downhill and not immediately following sleeping in a stranger's trailer. But ten miles is ten miles, and we were good and ready for our beers about seven miles in. (Beer at the end of a hike is a tradition among my people, whether you finish at 5pm or 5am.)

About two miles from the finish line, we came upon--how shall I describe it?--heaven? For the most part, the Skokomish River is kind of raging and bumpy. Those mountains are pretty steep, after all. But for about a half mile, it flows gently and meanderingly, while remaining the deepest and clearest river I have ever seen. We found a spot with easy access right near the trail, where this bizarrely flat log stretched out across the water.


Doesn't that look idyllic? The water there, despite appearances, is actually about eight feet deep. It's just that clear.

Unfortunately, eight miles downhill didn't really do much to warm the Skokomish. Right there, I'm panicking. I'm going to freeze to death if I don't get out of that water IMMEDIATELY.


I really cannot stress enough how cold that water is.

Below you will find some general pretty river-pretty mountains shots. Enjoy.

The Trip:Part 1

Walking home from work on Thursday (wearing, by the way, my most comfortable shoes), I got a blister. It started bleeding before I reached Bleecker Street. An ill-fated way to begin a hiking trip, don't you think?

We arrived in Seattle at midnight, due to a 2 hour delay on the Newark tarmac. Hertz gave us a free navigational system, which was recorded by a woman who must have been taking a break from her real job as a phone sex operator.

We named her Betty, and she was very helpful. I asked Guy if we should just stay at a motel instead of braving the Duckabush Vortex, but he must have had coffee on the plane or something, because he wanted to drive on. I called my father to check that it was in fact Duckabush Loop (not Drive or Lane or Street or Culdesac) we were heading for, and he seconded the motel idea, even throwing in a suggested place.

So we reprogrammed Betty to take us to Shelton Motor Lodge, and dependable she is. The Shelton Motor Lodge looked like a place where old hookers go to die. And my father said he'd actually stayed there.

Suffice it to say, we chose not to follow his example.

Betty took us right to Duckabush Loop. None of the following is her fault.

Duckabush Loop is a very short street--only, I'd say, a quarter mile long. And yet we drove up and down it several times, looking for my Grandmother's garage. There was no cell-service, so I couldn't check in again with my family (whose advice, by the way, is now and forever suspect). We finally found a place that looked right--it had a trailer, it had a garage--unlike, it must be stated, any other place on Duckabush Loop. It didn't look like I remembered, but I hadn't been there in ten years and the garage hadn't existed then, so my memory didn't count for much. Also it was 2 a.m.

We tried the keys on the garage. It took a good deal of jiggling to get in, but then that's what I do every day with my bathroom key.

Inside, there is a golf cart. Huh, I think. I know my Grandfather was an avid golfer, but who goes to the trouble of buying their own golf cart? We move along, up the stairs to the small apartment. Only there is no small apartment.

"Wasn't there supposed to be a bed?" asks Guy.

"Um, yeah," I say. I'm starting to feel kind of bad now. When you plan a gift-trip for someone, you generally hope that they won't have to sleep on a splintery floor for any of it. But this must be the place! There are shelves and shelves of doll magazines. No one in the world would read this many doll magazines, except my Grandmother. And the trailer had the exact same layout I remembered, except maybe the shower was shaped differently.

All of this key-fiddling and Duckabush circling has advanced the clock to 3 am. Which made it 5 am our time. On top of being up since 4 am the night before. We have been awake for 25 hours. We decide to just go ahead and sleep in the camper.

Come morning (i.e. 4 hours later), we pack up and go back to the garage to lock up.

"Hey, there's a boat there," says Guy. "I didn't notice that last night."

Hang on a minute. My Grandmother doesn't have a boat. She can't afford a boat.

"Oh my God. This isn't their place."

Yep, folks. I confess. We were breaking and entering. And really, it's surprisingly easy. All you need is a key--any key will do.

Song:
Traffic in the Sky, Jack Johnson

Quote:

Mal: "Well, you were right about this being a bad idea."


Zoe: "Thanks for sayin', sir."

(Firefly)

The Previous 12 Hours

Guy and I are going to be out of town starting this evening--we are celebrating his 40th birthday by going backpacking in Olympic National Park.

Yes, you read that right. I have recovered from The Tick Incident (or anyway I've bought some tick repellent that is NOT approved by the FDA), and I am ready to go forth and walk miles, ford streams, and sleep with the sounds of the wilderness. We're taking our packs, and completely roughing it--no time for Seattle sightseeing; we're only going for four days.

However, somehow this simple get-away-from-all-the-hellishness vacation has turned incredibly complicated. First of all, we're not entirely sure where we're going. We're supposed to go to a road called Duckabush, but Mapquest and I have counted five Duckabushes in a little culdesac, and well, that'll make things interesting, won't it? Also, we're taking four giant bags for four days. Most everything would fit in our backpacks, but then they would be too big to take as carryons, and their strappiness prevents them from being checkable. So, last night we unpacked them enough to make them small enough to fit in the overhead bins, and stuffed everything into a separate, checkable suitcase.

Unfortunately, said checkable suitcase exceeded the weight limit. So we unpacked half the stuff and put it into another checkable suitcase, thereby giving us four bags for four days. See, it makes sense. Really it does.

After we've finished all this shuffling and reshuffling, Guy calls the car service to tell them to come pick us up at 4pm. We do a quick idiot check, and then go to bed.

The phone rings at 4:10am. "Where are you?" the car service asks. "We're here to pick you up!"

I can't get back to sleep. And then some amorous bird (it's the males who chirp, right?) decides to call repeatedly for a mate--you know, just in case some chica from out of town who wasn't quite aware of how grating his voice becomes after ten seconds happened to land on our windowsill. He didn't seem to be having much luck, but he kept trying for a good two hours.

Grrr. GRRRRR. I am sitting here operating on four hours of sleep. This is unacceptable.

And this morning at breakfast, I'm trying to read Boy's writing assignments over the past year (which I've already read, but his teacher has given us homework. Really.) while consuming as much coffee in the shortest time possible, while answering Boy's innumerable questions about what sentence I'm on, while trying to eat whenever my mouth is not talking or swallowing coffee. I'm also trying to get Girl to eat her blueberry waffles, and when I say "Honey, you have to eat your dinner" and this is, of course, wildly funny to the under 5 ft set, I find myself coming dangerously close to snapping at them. So I get up and walk away to go sit in the corner to drink my coffee, and Guy tells them to leave me along for a bit.

Which is, of course, a Gold Leaf Invitation to come ask me what I'm thinking about, or whether I'd like to hold a rock. And when Girl comes to ask me whether I'm thinking about yarn, despite Guy's strict and repeated instructions to give me a minute, I tell her she needs to listen and let me finish my coffee.

Which prompts a flood of tears. Oy. I'm running late, but seeing as I'm going to be away for the weekend, I hug and kiss her back into smiles, and go downstairs to brush my teeth. Which prompts more tears. The yarn issue hadn't been resolved. No Girl, I wasn't thinking about yarn, I was thinking about birdshot. And now I really do have to leave. I say goodbye, which prompts more tears (you're shocked, I know) until Girl comforts herself by saying "I'll see you tonight."

Uhoh. All this, and she doesn't remember that we're going away? I'll leave my exit to your imagination.

As a postscript, I'm so tired that when I was on the train this morning, I saw a man stand up and ran to snag the seat. A far more together-looking woman haughtily said "excuse me!" and elbowed me away. I was hurt and a little miffed (couldn't she see I needed that seat? I was swaying with exhaustion, not train-rockage).

But then I realized she was probably even more hurt and miffed, when I saw that the man in question did not get off at the next stop. He had stood up to offer her his seat because she was pregnant. I tried to steal a seat from a pregnant lady.

I glanced up from her abdomen to her face, and she glared at me. For the rest of the ride.

Song:
You Never Can Tell, Chuck Berry

Quote:
Xander: Dammit. You know what? I'm sick of this. I'm tired of being the guy who eats insects and gets the funny syphilis. As of this moment, it's over. I'm through being everybody's butt-monkey.
Buffy: Check. No more butt-monkey.
(Buffy)

Pictures Lie A Thousand Times

This was pre-hike, so all was jolly and lovely. Tons of falling down houses around there--such fodder for artsy photographs, my father would be so proud. If only I knew how to work Guy's camera to make said photos all artsy.


Pretty, huh? You know why Guy's not in the picture? Cause he's off defecating all over the beautiful treesy-mossy goodness.



Oh, isn't that idyllic? And romantic? And you know what's happening as we're sitting there staring into each other's eyes? A tick is crawling up my goddamn pants!!!


Ahhh, sunset. . .the sign to birds everywhere that it is time to START SINGIN'!!!

Grumble.

Song:
Smackwater Jack, Carole King

Quote:
Richard: Focus, please.
Lorelai: I am a camera.
(Gilmore Girls)