A lone, terrified wolf

I just returned home from an loner over night camping trip in the Uintas. My original plan had been to currently be at this time (10:19 pm) nestled in a tent the last night. Torrential rain however, thwarted my plan. As I was pretending to be a legit camper, I learned several important things.

1st. Also foremost. If you are 10 minutes past Kamas and you realize that you forgot to fill up your fuel container for your camping stove, TURN BACK AROUND.
2nd. A human being can consume a fair amount of ash without any immediately noticeable ill effects.
3rd. Ash doesn't even taste THAT BAD. Really.
4th. The saying that "everything tastes good when you're camping," is at least partially erroneous. Watery Ramen does not taste good, even in the wilderness.
5th. When one must cook food in a blue tin cup next to the fire, instant oatmeal is a good culinary choice. A) because it is instant, and therefore basically cooked. B) because all of the ash and wood chips just accumulate on top, and thus are easy to pick out with a spoon. Assuming you brought a spoon.
6th. When you get to the dregs of your fire cooked Ramen meal, don't eat the dregs. They are mostly ash.
7th. Camping alone when you are a 26 year old man is still scary as hell.
8th. The little red "night vision" light on some head lamps is actually scarier than no light at all.
9th. When camping alone and sitting in your tent, that horrible little red light, combined with a squirrel suddenly going crazy right outside is about the scariest thing ever. Pretty much any noise is about the scariest thing ever.

Turns out that, just because weather has been nice for ages, doesn't mean that it won't suddenly rain all bloody day when you decide to sleep on the earth. I arrived in the dark, and thus set up my camp in the dark. This becomes a bit tricky, when one is trying to tote around a .357 mag/set up a tent at the same time. You see, when you are in the mountains alone, your mind suddenly recalls every horror movie you have ever seen, and you assume all mutants/monsters/serial killers are lurking in the bush. Member that one time you watched that laughably awful movie on the SciFi channel about zombie children? Member how you mocked the poor cinematography, the utter cheesiness throughout? Well turns out they are now in the bushes as well, and not too damn funny anymore. So mostly what I do when I camp, is think about ways I would defend myself from creatures with the aforementioned .357. Then I go to bed, and lay awake in terror until I fall asleep.

But I have a great time during the day. Really I do.

Except for this day started exceptionally early. Like, 5 am early. Sleeping was difficult. I mean, there was the terror. But also, turns out my in-the-dark-depth perception was a bit off and I pitched the tent on a hill. Unfortunately, my sleeping bag is made from a rather slippery material. Of course, so was my pad. So I spent the night constantly slidding sideways. In the end, I ended up sleeping with only really my groin area on the pad. My arms, head, and chest were usually to the left of it, while my legs were hanging off the right. Miserable indeed. Not to mention I woke up every hour like clock work, went through 15 or so minutes of fear/thrashing around trying to find some small manner of comfort upon that god-awful slippery pad.

Hours later, after creating a fire, and consuming some ash/oatmeal/3 sandwiches for breakfast, I passed out in the tent for a couple of hours. Of course, when it is light out and fear is nonexistent, I sleep like baby Zeus.

By the time I got up again, the Universe appeared to be brewing a storm. After riding my bike and almost running over 2 bull moosen, I decided to go climb Bald Mountain. I do this every year. Sort of a ritual for me. I go to the top, erect a small cairn of stones signifying things in my life I am attempting to leave in the dust, at which point I feel as though I have accomplished something significant. As I was driving to the trail head, it was raining pretty hard. I though, "Well no big deal. These are the Uintas. It rains every day for a couple of hours. Really." I sat in my car, waiting for the rains to cease. 1.5 hours later, and 2/3's of the way to the top, I realized that I had perhaps made a rather large mistake, as there happened to be sheets of rain quickly approaching my mountain. I contemplated turning around, but couldn't. This is a big moment of the year for me, you see. I need to climb this mountain and do my little symbolic nonsense. So I pressed on, with a prayer in my heart and a little faith that the storm would turn.

Apparently, my faith was not quite so strong as to turn a storm. However, the Lord saw it fit to provide me with a random bush right at the last second, into which I nestled myself, like a tiny fetus in a womb. A horrible, spiky, sappy womb. A dry womb, nonetheless. I guess really it was nothing like a womb. The storm passed. I continued on. Nearly at the top, another storm was coming in. Except from every direction really. As my faith had previously been insufficient to turn one storm, I couldn't really expect it to halt a super storm raging in from all directions. However that works. So I ran up the mountain. Right as I crested the top, it started hailing and raining like mad. I stood there, freezing with my head tilted back and my arms thrust in the air, basking in the glory of it. I then thought, "What the hell are you doing? Build your stupid cairn and get the hell off the mountain." Cairn erected, I made the cold, slippery trek down in my German shorts and Chacos (luckily I had jeans in my bag, for when I had to climb into the spiky womb. However, they were protecting my camera/journal from rain, so I enjoyed frozen thighs all the way down.)

I guess through it all, I learned this; my car is the most phenomenally gutless piece of carp ever created by the nation which spawned Yu-Gi-Oh! A Honda civic, if you must know. And that exclamation point is inherently part of the Yu-Gi-Oh! name. I didn't add it. Because I hate them. I mean, exclamation points. I don't know if I hate Yu-Gi-Oh!, but by virtue of the fact that part of its name includes an exclamation point, I just might.

The End. I leave you with a little video of myself attempting to take a picture of myself under the bush. I am really rather embarrassed to post it, as I posed up for quite a long time. I thought I set the 10 second timer. I suppose it is your treat for bearing with this ultra long post. If you didn't read the whole thing, and yet you view this video, shame on you. Shaaaammmmeee.

So shameful.

Bear meat

Whenever I want a good laugh, I watch the local evening news. Seriously...the things these people say are outrageous. The movie Anchorman is seriously right on. "Now, here's quite the story (insert ubiquitous voice inflexions, overt smiling, surprised eyes, and fraudulent chuckling throughout.) Now, get this...seriously Maria, this is no joke. A man was fishing. He thought what he heard was birds. But no wait, it wasn't even birds. It was a drowning man! I'm dead serious Maria. A drowning man. So he casts his line, hooks the man (most certainly surprised eyes with a rapid and slight head shake, jerking back just so) and just reels him on in! Can you believe that Maria? Reels him in! What a lifesaver!"

Upon listening to that utter idiocy, I couldn't help but hear..."A La Jolla man clings to life, after being viciously attacked by a pack of wild dogs in an abandoned pool..."

But all of that isn't the point of this post. Amidst all of the obnoxious theatrics, there was a story that really pissed me off. Apparently there is a bear somewhere in Utah that has been "curiously" entering campsites. It apparently chased off several people today. This "curious" bear is attracted by freaking Joe slob and his dirt bag family that A) doesn't exercise enough common decency to put their trash in the proper receptacles and B) are too moronic to pay any heed to the signs blatantly admonishing the fatuous city dwellers that keeping food near one's person upon sleeping is bad because bears will freaking gobble your face.

So, what to do with this "curious" bear? Kill it. Kill the damn thing, because Joe Slob and his little bratty sloblings couldn't care less. They are simply fat and happy that Pappa skid-row could put enough gas in the wagon with enough money left over for chips, burgers, and Shasta, and head on up to the campin' spot, thus commencing a weekend of filthiness.

Here's a novel idea-shut down the campground for a week or two, clean it up, and then make sure the sloven bastards that subsequently occupy it keep their shit together. If the bear is a crazy bear, by all means do something about it. But for goodness sakes, it is only curious because people are negligent. Why must we always bend and mold nature in accordance with our indolence and whims? Let nature be nature.

If a hungry bear wants to eat a fat man passed out with a half eaten hamburger in his pocket and a bag of deep fried pork rinds cradled to his chest, so be it. Maybe the ensuing belly ache will convince the bear to think twice in the future before consuming someone who just ate an entire bag of deep fried pork skin.

Crimes against nature

Sometimes I wake up in the morning and it's the middle of June. Then I put on a sweater and a warm cap, followed by thinking out loud, "What the hell. It's June."

I hope global warming drop kicks mother nature in the chest today.

Please pass the demolition crew

Am I the only person in this wretched valley, let alone the planet that thinks the Y on the mountain is a big, stinking eyesore? Are there more people who would like to look at one of the most beautiful mountain ranges in the west, and not have to see a ginormous man made chunk of glaring white cement in the form of the second to last letter in the alphabet? Seriously, if I am the only one who is annoyed, somebody tell me. And no, it has nothing to do with the fact that it is BYU, or that I attend UVU. I couldn't care less what exactly is up there, only that there is something up there.

The huge "G" on the mountain irks me even more. I love Mt. Timpanogos, I think it is an absolutely stunning mountain. And probably one of the most beautiful mountains in a metropolitan area, if Utah Country can truly be referred to as such. Cruising on the freeway, one can not help but admire the sheer, rugged beauty of said mountain...until one's eyes drag across the festering man made boil heralding Pleasant Grove's superiority for all to see.

Way to go Pleasant Grove. One more reason I hate that town. The first being that it always smells like rotting death/feces whenever I drive by the freeway exit.

Anyways, I think that giant mountain letters should be banned, and those already in existence should be destroyed. Why should anybody have to look at them? Why mar the unique mountain beauty with man made eyesores?

On a scale from 1 to nature, Provo canyon might as well be my back yard

I wonder if there are truly any places in existence where one can completely escape the clutches of humanity. I rode my bike up a mountain yesterday. I have done very little riding during the last three weeks, so I had to stop two or three times before I arrived at the top, in order to spend a few minutes wheezing and trying not to puke. Early season mountain biking always makes me feel like an overweight, arthritic grandmother. I also breathed in some manner of flying creature, which is always an unpleasant ordeal. How in the world, with an entire mountain to fly around on, especially this time of year when the insect population is sparse, does one manage to fly into my mouth? I don't consider my mouth to be overly large. I suppose it is similar to animals getting their lives crushed away on a road. Of all the places a creature could roam, they manage to pick that thin stretch of pavement, and cross at just the wrong time.

Silly animals.

Anyhow, after many such wheezings and near-pukings, bug breathings and muscle fatigue-ings, I arrived almost at Squaw Peak. Such a phenomenally PC name, Squaw Peak. Passing through a stretch of meadow/trees, I felt alone. There was a huge rock off the trail, so I laid down on it and pondered the mysteries of the universe for a while. As I lay there, my heart rate steadily slowing, the desire to puke gradually dissipating, I tried to listen to the nature around me. The rushing wind, blowing through the trees. The occasional creature, meandering through the underbrush, crunching across the dead forest floor.

Thank the lord these little guys are far away from roads.

After a while, my ears picked up on a subtle creaking sound. It was the sound of two dry limbs rubbing together in the wind. I wondered if anyone had ever stopped at precisely that spot on a windy day, and sat there long enough to hear that exact sound. As my ears adjusted even more, I began to pick up other noises.

Distant cars. Planes. Gun shots from a rifle range.

I realize that I was by no means in the deep forest, but is it ever really possible to truly escape? I would postulate that there are very few locations where there is absolutely no plane traffic in the heavens above. Even when hiking to a remote location, one still probably follows a man-made trail. It is almost impossible to be truly alone with our thoughts. There are nearly always man-made distractions somewhere in the vicinity.

I need to disconnect. I need a real hiatus.

Rebuttal to my rebuttal

My dear friend who is aspiring to that most noble profession of Lawyer rebutted my last blog post. So I am rebutting his rebuttal. But with passion, instead of an actual knowledge of what the hell I am talking about. Which makes mine way more valid. And interesting.

I still feel like getting eaten by a bear is an inherent risk one takes upon adventuring into the wild. Not to mention, when people have food in their tents, as ubiquitous warning signs inform them not to, bears want to go in and eat it. And then when they find fresh meat AND potato chips...well you know. So I guess maybe my argument isn't so much as to whether or not this lawsuit is actually legal or frivolous...my question is, is it right? Again, will suing the government, and ultimately you and I, bring back their son? Will it bring them comfort? Will it soothe their angry hearts and take away the pain? Certainly not. Only the Mormons can provide that true release from pain (tongue in cheek.) I guess the question is, when does it stop? When do we, as humans, accept the fact that we don't need a damn baby sitter in the form of the government for every single thing that we do? How much are we willing to degrade the wilderness and tame it until it isn't even the bloody wilderness anymore? Wilderness...lets break down this word. Wild= untamed, uncultivated, unrestrained, uncivilized. Er= the place you go when injured by the untamed, uncultivated, unrestrained, and uncivilized area a.k.a. the wild. Ness= a state of being. And in this case, the state of being wild. Hence, WILDERNESS.

My point is, when the so-called wilderness is completely regulated, it looses that wild quality which makes it truly sublime. I am sorry that people go into the wild unprepared, and do foolish things. I am sorry that wild animals act like wild animals. But really, should bear protection fall under the blanket of government regulation? Here is a novel idea--read that damn signs that the government already put up informing you to NOT bring food in your tent and to NOT leave garbage strewn about your camp and to NOT put your baby on top of a buffalo and to NOT do a myriad of other stupid things that idiotic campers seem to constantly do.

It is time that we take responsibility for our actions, and not expect the government to swoop on in and save the day in every situation. And when the government for whatever reason fails to do so, maybe we should think of distancing ourselves from said over-protection instead of suing and calling for even more protective regulations.