Archive for March 2010
Adventure is for the adventurous.
Adventure is for the adventurous.
My face is set.
I go to make my destiny.
May many another youth be by me inspired to leave the snug safety of his rut,
and follow fortune to other lands.
Priest Shelter.
A moonless, starless March night near the Priest Shelter on the Appalachian Trail, already settled in and zipped up inside a warm tent:
me: Did you bring your chapstick in?
big village: No, don’t need it either.
m: Sure you do, your lips looked pretty dry earlier.
bv: Nope, I’m good ‘til morning. I’ll tell you where it’s at though if you wanna go get it.
m: You don’t want me going through your stuff, messing everything up trying to find a little tube of chapstick.
bv: It’s right on top, easy to find.
m: Well, since it’s yours why not just go get it?
bv: Nope, don’t need it.
m: But if you had it in here you would use it.
bv: Yep.
m: So go get it.
bv: Don’t need it.
m: Ok, where’s it at?
(waiting until I’m out of my sleeping bag and have already pulled on my camp shoes)
bv: I don’t know, you’ll have to dig around my stuff to find it.
m: You suck.
bv: Yeah, but my lips are gonna feel good in a few minutes.
m: I thought you didn’t need it until morning.
bv: Yep.
(staring now at the zipper dangling from the top of the tent)
m: What would you do if I opened the tent and there was a toothless hillbilly staring back at me?
bv: I don’t know.
m: What would you do if I opened the tent and there was a bear staring back at me?
bv: Same thing as I would if a hillbilly was there.
At that I yanked on the zipper, sprang from the tent, rushed over to our packs, found the chapstick relatively easily and dove back into the tent zipping it closed behind me and welcomed the safety of my sleeping bag. I don’t know why I got so freaked out. Maybe because I had the theme music from Deliverance stuck in my head earlier during the day.
Disclaimer: don’t get mad or offended by the hillbilly reference above. I’m a native Mountaineer so I have permission to call ‘em like I see ‘em. Not that people living in the Blue Ridge Mountains are hillbillies; seriously, just think Deliverance.
[originally posted June 2006]
Into my own.
INTO MY OWN by Robert Frost
One of my wishes is that those dark trees,
So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,
Were not, as ’twere, the merest mask of gloom,
But stretched away unto the edge of doom.
I should not be withheld but that some day 5
Into their vastness I should steal away,
Fearless of ever finding open land,
Or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.
I do not see why I should e’er turn back,
Or those should not set forth upon my track 10
To overtake me, who should miss me here
And long to know if still I held them dear.
They would not find me changed from him they knew -
Only more sure of all I thought was true.
