ERIC AND DYLAN GO TO SNOW-CAVE CAMP

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ERIC AND DYLAN GO TO SNOW-CAVE CAMP

“This sucks.”

“Yah, you said it, bud.”

Eric and Dylan begin the trudge to snow-cave camp. Required P.E. class at Lake-of-The-Woods High School. Wintertime survival. About ten years back, the enlightened majority of the school board decided that this was a good idea. The likelihood of being stuck outside in a sudden snowstorm was more than remote. Happened to some folks in the county every year. Forward-looking, proactive, that particular school board.

In a parallel universe Eric and Dylan lived in northern Minnesota. Same parents, same sense of isolation, and an affinity for the same wardrobe.

They still had access to guns, but things were different. The allure was not so bright. Guns were readily available to everyone. Most everyone hunted. Amidst the prevailing gun-toting uniformity, Eric and Dylan had to channel their mutually-felt sense of alienation into a different venue. But it certainly wasn’t snow caves.

“Be nice if we could bring some booze.”

“Yah.”

“It’s probably just as well a coupla teachers are with us. Otherwise, we might hafta kill the jocks.”

“I’d like to kill that basketball chick.”

Laurie McGinitty, all six-feet three sinewy inches of her, had little tolerance for the likes of Eric and Dylan. They didn’t accord her the respect her position in the school warranted. “Slacker weenie losers,” she muttered to Karen Nyquist, the only other female student on this field trip.

“They told me about their website. I made the mistake of actually looking at it!” admitted Karen. “Pictures of heavy-metal band freaks with pages of their gibberish philosophy.”

They both giggled, and refocused their conversation towards the desirable males in the group.

“Hey kids!” “Campers!” “Gather around!” the instructors shouted. Ms. Nyquist (Karen’s aunt) and Mr. Pendleton addressed their troops.

“As you know, this is the final exam for ‘Winter Outdoor Survival.’ Each group of four will construct and spend a mid-winter night in a snow cave. Of course, nothing can go wrong. We’re here, with cell phones and emergency-dispatch numbers just in case.”

“Thanks for those of you who helped with the toboggans,” added Mr. Pendleton. “You’ll get extra credit.” Two toboggans with supplies had been hauled in. There was firewood and charcoal, food, camping equipment for the teachers, blankets for everyone, and a metal saucer-like fire pit.

“Okay, pick your groups,” said Ms. Nyquist. “Then each group will decide on the location for your cave. Once you’ve found a good spot, start digging.”

“When we’re all done, we’ll have dinner over a big campfire Ms. Nyquist and I will make.”

All the boys except Eric and Dylan wanted to be with the girls. Eric and Dylan stood by themselves, smirking at the jockeying and posturing of the others. The teachers decided:
“Laurie, Karen — you’re with, um, those two guys. Eric? And … Ryan?”

Everyone groaned. Laurie and Karen protested the most, but the teachers were adamant. The three boy four-somes, still muttering unhappily, shuffled out onto an open clearing. Beyond, past two stands of skinny trees, lay the grey and hazy expanse of the Lake-of-The-Woods.

Laurie initiated group interaction. “Let’s get it over with.” She turned to follow the others.

“No. We’ll build it up there.” Dylan pointed half-way up a small hill below a dense wall of trees. Laurie shrugged. She thought it best not to argue. She and Karen could sneak out and visit the others when it got dark.

Their shelter was pretty good. Eric and Dylan were survivalists at heart, and their partners were robust farm girls. Eric and Karen lay on their sides, rolling and tamping down an area of snow, while Dylan made a valiant effort to match Laurie’s trenching, digging, and then packing the inside walls and ceiling.

The teachers unrolled a tarp upon which they put a tent. “Cheaters,” muttered Eric. The other three snow caves, resembling igloo-like mounds arising from adjacent trampled snow, were nearby.

Surveying the scene below in the middle of the clearing, Dylan scoffed, “Looks like a demented Eskimo village.” True, the other shelters were arranged in a circle, in the middle of which smoke from the upcoming dinner-fire was beginning to curl upward.

Dinner in the gathering darkness. Hot chocolate, chili, hot dogs on sticks. And another of Mr. Pendleton’s failed attempts to engage the group in a guitar-accompanied sing-along.

“Nighty-night,” intoned Ms. Nyquist. “You should all be tired. Everyone has a blanket, right?”

The two girls and their cave-mates wriggled into their blankets. Laurie had made sure that there was sufficient space to separate Karen and herself from the other two. She was surprised at the care Dylan had taken to ensure that the entrance was located well below the chamber — so that their combined body heat would rise and remain trapped inside.

Nevertheless, she and Karen whisperingly plotted their escape. If word got out back at school that they had spent the night with the school’s geekiest slacker-nihilists, their prestige would suffer. Perhaps irrevocably. Dylan and Eric muttered continually at their side of the cavern. Karen was just starting to crawl toward the entrance when a loud crackling noise split the blackness. Screaming. Watery splashing sounds.

They all struggled to get outside quickly. Eric and Karen jammed together in the entrance. Laurie and Dylan pushed them out. They were in time to see the still-flickering embers of the fire pit sizzlingly extinguished. In the near-total darkness they could only imagine what was happening. Screaming and yells for help amidst the unmistakable sounds of splashing water.

“Those idiots were camped out on a bay of the lake!” exclaimed Dylan.

“The combined weight of all of them together must have broken the ice,” added Karen.

There was little they could do. The four of them made their way to the edge of the water, but by then all was quiet.

“I think we are the only ones to pass the final exam,” said Eric after a long stunned silence. Karen stopped herself from slugging him in the stomach, and, instead, giggled nervously.

Eric and Dylan and Karen and Laurie began the trudge back from snow-cave camp.

If I died & went to … Heaven?

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pillow_woodCat

Yeah, right. With my luck, I’d end up in Mormon Purgatory. Continue on in Jewish limbo? (Oh why, Lowered, does this pschidt always happen to me?) Be banished to being an alimentary-canal bacterium in the Boddhisatva’s stomach?

Well, probably.

But if I wuzz, you know, to abide after the body’s demise, in some pre-ordained boundary set of conditions for the next “go around” — it’d be like today (Satyrday, March 30).

We slept in late. How indolent is that?

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kitDoolButt

We drove up into the hills, to the south (and upper) end of Cactus Park — where Betty rode the bike around the CP loop and I ran up Gibbler Gulch (see “x” in photo).

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The south end of Gibbler Mountain — Gibbler Gulch goes west, eventually into the Dominguez Wilderness Area. We parked at a BLM park-lot at the yellow circle. Betty rode her bike back and around the “Cactus Park Circle” while I (& dawgz) went up the valley, through the red “X” … after a mile of ATV-churned sandy trail, we were in the forest, the stream was flowing with ice in places, with fresh canine footprints (fox and coyotes?) on top of the faded ATV tracks. Chattering of squirrels and various birds in the trees. The cerulean canopy overhead, punctuated by billowy cumulus.

Back home, as the Beatles might’ve sung (had they been Spanish)
Hacer el jardín, cavando las malos-hierbas, ¿ quién podria pedir por màs ?

el_jardin

dewwinThGarden

I was fatigued, Betty was on a mild exercize-induced high. What better way to hydrate and sedate whilst “puttering about the yard” than …

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A Stone Brewery offering, in the “odd year” 2013 series — a barley-wine style ale, with 11+% ACTIVE INGREDIENT!
And a 60-ring gauge Cubano, now that the lungs were cleared out and better able to appreciate it …

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( knock on wood ) It appears winter is over, time for Bruce to move back outside, soak up the vitamin D (not a lot of THAT in the basement).

rickyPerea
Friends just drop by and catch up …

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My kind of day — with, of course, good food (JonnyCarino’s!) & muzyk (we werkt on some new sawngz) later …

The WOMBAT-ARCH INUKTHINGY, or The Dorsal Indifference Of The Beast

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This is a post, mostly pixures, about THE INUK-THINGY NEAR WOMBAT ARCH. And, of course, there will be other, random, unrelated observations. And ruminations.
Take a look at the Betunada site picture at the top of this ‘page.’ Rosco (me) is atop ‘Wombat’ Arch — and the photo is by Benjamin George (Eddie’s dad) from a few years back.

As you can tell, it definitely IS an “arch.” It helps to have day, or sky-light visible as the backdrop. So … these photos (below) are from ABOVE the arch, and the “arch-ness”, or archeosity, or arch-essence, qualities, character, whatever, is/are not as obvious. And there’s an INUK-THINGY nearby. Enjoy … and just wait ’til dessert …

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Looking west, from the arch, past the Inuk-Thingy. A typical west Colorawdough high-desert turbulent spring un-settled sky.

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Two dogs (RockSea and da Slevv) are on top of the arch. I was leery of doing same, as it seems to have possibly crumbled a little from the prior visit, and the integrity (not to mention ‘safety’ factor) could be in question. Probably silly of me to have thought this, but it WAS windy. Never-the-less, there are several hundred pounds of rock being held up. There will, eventually, be a return visit and opportunity for goofy portraits …

sleven arch
Sleven on top of the arch.

inuk lookin north
What, if anything, do I think about when rambling through the high desert? One pleasant and happy thought was that I considered walking across the arch, but being alone (the only ‘human’) it would be my luck for the thing to collapse, and the good chance I wouldn’t be killed, but would be horribly and painfully mangled. So, if there’s someone(s) with me, I’d do it (walk across, stand there), so whoever could report to whoever one reports to if the thing collapsed.

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This little sentinel-cairn was in the valley below the arch.

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View back towards the Grand Valley, sun at my back. Turbulent sky, unsettled and transitional — I usually like this kind of day.

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The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali tell us that connection to and realization of the unity among and behind and around all things is always close. Within. If it was a measurable distance to get to it, it would be less than an inch. But … the barriers, what keeps each of us, me, you, from that realization must be daunting. Intertwined. A thicket. A large overturned semi-truck blocking the road, hazardous waste spilled and ankle-deep in places. The Haz-Mat crew out in full PPE mopping and sopping and bagging it up. No, IT AIN’T THAT COMPLEX. It should all be so very very simple. I tell myself that, and try to clear the mind, stop the infernal dialogue, concentrate. Sometimes I manage to try to hold this thought for … oh, maybe ten seconds. I am so, very … deep.
HA!

archdawgs

I wuzz deriving to werk a coupla daze back, feelin’ paranoid. That old familiar feeling. Doom, more gloom, around the corner, under the bed?, through and within the forest, never far away. And then another thought put it all in perspective. A line from the movie “Men In Black” (Part II or III, I think) spoken by the Tommie Lee Jones character: THERE IS ALWAYS A KIRILLIAN DEATH-CRUISER ABOUT TO DESTROY THE EARTH.

valleybottomcairn

BEATLE’S SONG BIRTHDAY

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Cancíon de los Beatles por mì cumpleaños BEATLES SONG BIRTHDAY (with unrelated Gunnison River Escalante overlook mountain-bike sojourn accompanied by the dogs) Rosco’s cousin, Ricardo Cabeza, entered the seventh decade of, uh, I was gonna say decadence, but no! decade … Continue reading →

DEATHSLALOM 2020

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area closed2

DEATH SLALOM

Two men enter, one man leave.

Mad Max, Beyond Thunderdome

It started innocently enough. While entertaining my sixth or seventh stout on-tap, the women at the nearest table began pelting me with popcorn. The primary attacker, an auburn-tressed Viking goddess, had caught my eye when I entered the tavern two or three hours earlier. But I decided to treat all four women equally – flicking ice cubes from my friend’s bourbon-on-rocks glass at each one in turn. The popcorn barrage escalated, and Xavier acquired more ice quickly.

My last under-handed projectile found the goddess’ cleavage. Surprised, she jumped up with a shriek. Another mystery factor in the equation – she had a boyfriend who instantaneously lunged from the shadows in a direct beeline to my position. Fortunately, the goddess’ friends, Xavier, and a waiter materialized between us.

“Sorry,” I blurted. “We were just having fun. She started it.”

That didn’t placate Mr. Seething Boyfriend. “You dissed my girl! We gotta settle this.”

Sounded like unnecessary trouble to me. I have lived here for many years and had presumed all Neanderthals were extinct. “Death slalom, buddy,” the trogdolite muttered.

Duels with swords or pistols were a thing of the distant past. I had read that in the 1950’s disenfranchised young men and teenagers faced off in vehicular duels. “Chicken” was a later day version of horse-back jousts of medieval times. I then remembered an old movie, Rebel Without A Cause, in which two guys ‘settled their differences’ by driving cars in parallel off a cliff. The winner was the last one who bailed from his car before sailing off into oblivion. Or was the winner the one who bailed with the car?

The last Deathslalom was alleged to have occurred more than 30 years ago. Quite similar to the Rebel’s gunfight at whatever corral, the duelists hurtled on skis down a steep slope in the ‘back bowl’ area of the nearby Dos Cerebros ski area. Whoever schussed the furthest, without going over the three-hundred-foot drop at the slope’s bottom “won.”

It was the stout which accepted the challenge. I certainly wouldn’t have. If my BAC had been anything less than 0.1, reason would certainly have prevailed, and Mr. Trogdolite’s challenge gone unaccepted. “See you at the Back Bowl Boundary at nine,” he growled.

According to the legends of Deathslaloms past, the ritual began at the Back Bowl parking lot. Stepping groggily out of Xavier’s car, I hoped that the other guy wouldn’t show up. I hoped no-one else would, either.

He was already there, his Kniessels jauntily over his shoulder. Maybe two dozen people standing around. The somber could be cut with the proverbial knife. I pulled out my old Head rock skis. No big loss if they made the plunge.

“We go now, buddy.” He had either done some homework or actually knew how this was done. In the past, only the slalom participants made the trek up a short slope to the ridge above the bowls. I turned, scanning the other people present. Perhaps someone would talk me, or him, or both of us, out of it. Darn. Things were pretty quiet. A woman in a green parka pushed up her sunglasses. I looked into her equally green eyes. It was the Norwegian princess. Her face betrayed no emotion.

The edge. The mid-morning updraft had already established a miniature standing rolling cirrus cloud of ice. We both deeply inhaled.

“Robert.” The cave-dweller had a name. Caught off guard, I almost fell over in grasping his extended hand.

“I don’t ski much,” I confessed. “Do we just go straight down or do we make turns?”

“We’re supposed to try to stay sorta close together. Until the bottom.”

I should have asked him where that was – the bottom. I squinted at the scraggly timberline trees along what appeared to be the bottom of the hill some fifty yards distant.

“That ain’t it,” Robert chuckled. “It’ll be four or five stretches. I don’t remember. ”

Re-assuring. He either means it or he’s stringin’ me along. He snapped on his skis, looped pole straps over his gloves, and re-positioned his sunglasses. I tried to act natural in doing the same, but felt like my motions were echoes of his actions bounced off distant peaks.

Robert turned and gave me a brief intense stare – as best as I could ascertain from beneath his opaque eye-shields. Planting his poles, he pushed off.

When I was four or five, my parents took me skiing for the first time. I could feel, at first my father, then my mother, holding my back from behind, each hand under my underarms, their skis outside mine. I wouldn’t realize it for several seconds, but from time to time they’d let go, and I’d be skiing on my own. When I realized this, I would start to fall but usually my mom or dad would catch and hold on to me again. I could feel them now.

We passed the first false precipice. The next pitch seemed twice as steep. I bent my knees, locked them, and tried to pay more attention. Robert skied upright, whistling an unrecognizable tune.

I tried whistling too, but a peak across the way told me to stop. No more echoing, it seemed to say. Mom and/or dad held on tighter.

We got a bit of air as we segued onto the next pitch. “This one’s really steep,” I marveled aloud. Any steeper than this, we, or I at least, would be in serious trouble. I managed a quick glance his way, tried to penetrate his concentration with an arrow of my focused attention. He was in his own zone now.

Twenty yards from the edge, I started to brake. If I fell, the momentum would carry me over. I dug the ends of my skis into the crust, bearing down on my heels like I had never done before. Robert seemed to accelerate. Without a sound, not even a whisper nor a whoosh, he glided over the edge.

I stared at the ski tracks to the edge of the precipice. Unseen ice crystals borne on the updraft from below cut my cheeks like tiny razors. Continued silence. I began the weary trudge back uphill.

Mountain Bike Green River? — the “Poor Man’s Moab”

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I have been accused of not making much of an effort — at anything — more and more as time goes on. And I make little or no effort to go or do or be anything/anywhere/anywhatever resembling “the in crowd.” … Continue reading →

Debajo de la luna loca

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Estuvo una luna loca este semana pasada. Y lleno. Nuestro gatito, “Wall-dough” (el gato-nieto) estuvo loco. Es posible la luna, o algo mas extraño, hizo el gato un poco loco. Fue a ir de atacar un perro mucho mas grande … Continue reading →

STAIRGATE, or STARGATE?

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Sg1stargatefront[1]

Eddy’s coming to visit. Betty (and I) have to make some effort to re-arrange our house so as to (1) make it more safe for a wandering curious 1-year-old (2) make OUR STUFF less likely to break (3) … I’m sure there’s a third concern but we’re focused on #s 1 & 2.

We decided that a “stairgate” is probably warranted. You know, a device which fits in the space at the top of the stairs, fitting tightly and snugly against the walls so as to prevent baby from tumbling down (along with jack and/or jill, broken crowns and all).

20090829153813!Babygate[1]

But I couldn’t get the idea of a StarGate out of my head.

There’s a movie (“Click”) wherein Adam Sandler plays a married man who goes to Bed, Bath, and Beyond to buy I-don’t-know-what and ends up at the back of the store, going into the section called BEYOND. Christopher Walken plays the part of the employee back there, and Adam buys a sort of television remote which can SPEED UP (or slow down) TIME, among other things. And … if you can purchase a time-travel/twisting remote at “Beyond,” so I reasoned, it isn’t a stretch that they’d have a STARGATE.

So, I’m considering going into the BEYOND section of the store and purchasing one. You know, a StarGate. Which I can put at the top of the stairs. Yes, there could be problems. Like, if Eddy goes through, where and when and why and how will he end up? Will he be okay? I assume so. I think he’d end up in a place where not only does he have bowell- and bladder-control, heck, he would have CONTROL over any- and everything he encounters. He’d be able to WILL what- and whoever there to do whatever he wants. He’ll master the beasts. Breasts, magnificent breasts of heaven, will appear whenever he so desires, with sustenance of divine (and sometimes playfully diabolic) attributes and taste.

Well, stay toond. At least we’ll buy the stairgate. But the idea of the StarGate got me thinkin’. The doggzenkatz would probably go into it, too. And if not they, something(s) else might come back.

Liven up a dull day, eh?

Un Sueño de Bailar

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This gallery contains 10 photos.

Tuve un sueño de bailar. Yo hice un danza. Fue mi creaciòn. La danza se llama YINTY YINTY DADA WADA. Asi es. Verdad. Fue un poco mas temprano esta semana, y estuve dormiendo. Y tuve un sueño. Creo èsta danza … Continue reading →