Rant-Man's Notebook

By Jim "Rant-Man" MacQuarrie

Nature Boy

I went on a hike last weekend. Normally, I view hiking as something you do when your car breaks down, but I went on a hike. I blame my son for that. Monkeyboy is a Boy Scout. He would have preferred to stay home and watch Yu-Gi-Oh (lord knows why; it's a ghastly cartoon), but this hike was on the schedule, and the more he told me he didn't want to go, the more I decided he ought to. That's because I'm mean. Anyhow, there was a woman scoutmaster going as one of the leaders, so that made it a co-ed event, so my oldest daughter got to go as well.

We went over to the only place around that rents backpacking gear and got ourselves backpacks, loaded them up, and early Saturday morning (at the ungodly hour of 6:30; so that's what it looks like) headed out to meet up with the other scouts. Where else would we meet up but at Starbucks? Turned out there were about as many adults as scouts on this hike, including a couple of dads whose kids didn't come. Some of us were never involved in scouting as kids (okay, I was a cub scout for a while, but we never went on hikes or camping trips) and so we're doing all the cool stuff we missed out on; others went all the way to Eagle and still enjoy it, so they still go on outings even if their kids have lost interest. Takes all kinds, I guess.

There were about 25 of us, I think. We drove a few miles up into the foothills above Azusa (they claim the name means "Everything from A to Z in the USA" but it's really an indian word meaning "gathering place of the skunks"), piled out of the cars and put on our backpacks. That's when I discovered that the rental place had given me a pack with a missing buckle on the waist belt. That store was a zoo, with a half-hour wait to get to the counter; lots of people renting skiing equipment. They looked surprised when we asked for backpacks. The place was too crowded and hectic to give the packs more than a cursory inspection, and I missed the buckle. Improvising quickly, I secured the belt with a bungee cord, and we headed out on our grand adventure exploring the wilds of Bear Creek.

The hike was only about two and a half miles, and the total elevation gain was only about 200 feet. Sounds easy, right? Remember I said we were hiking in Bear Creek? We've had some rain recently, long overdue, so there was water in the creek. We had to cross it. Six times. About the deepest it got for me was up to the knee, but it was cold. Really cold. The instant the foot hit the water, there was total retraction of the gentleman parts, that's how cold it was. Most of us were wearing those convertible pants with the zip-off legs, so we stopped before the first crossing and converted them to shorts mode and put on sandals or "water shoes," which are basically slippers made of wetsuit material. Thus outfitted, we faced the treacherous, foot-deep rapids and successfully made the eight-foot-wide crossing. Five more to go.

Eventually, after a soggy eternity, we arrived at our campsite, pitched tents, prepared lunch, cleaned up, and then entertained ourselves during the free afternoon hours. Some of the kids occupied themselves by hitting each other with sticks. Others took another mile-long, stream-hopping hike up to the ruins of an old stone house. I took a nap. Sorry, nap trumps all.

When I came to, I found myself on dinner duty. My job was cooking the fry-bread, which is lumps of dough pressed flat and fried in butter, then sprinkled with spices of uncertain derivation. Really tasty, but probably really fattening. We also had some kind of soup made of beans, chicken, and I'm not sure what else. It was pretty good, but in the middle of the night it sort of backed up on me. I rolled over in my sleep, then suddenly found myself sitting up, wide awake, with stomach liquid spraying out my nose. Not a lot of it, but just enough to make me miserable until I went back to sleep several years later.

Morning came too bloody early again, and we discovered that we had not been alone in the night. Remember I said we were camping in Bear Creek? We'd already seen the Creek, and apparently the bear had made his presence known as well. The night before, the kids on K.P. had washed all the dishes and laid them out on a plastic dropcloth to dry. In the morning, all the dishes were exacly where they had been before, but the plastic sheet had been somehow yanked out from under them. It was pretty much shredded, with lots of teeth and claw marks. We assume it was a performing bear, escaped from a circus, and the tablecloth-yanking trick was just one of its skills. Some suggested it had enterd the campground on a unicycle, juggling pinecones as it went. Anyway, the bear didn't get into the bear-bags, so our trail mix and snack bars were safe.

We packed up, cleaned the campsite, shouldered our packs and faced the evil stream again. With steely determination and total numbness of the feet, we traversed the frigid waters and made our way home.

I took the backpacks back to Sport Chalet, bitched a hissyfit, and got a full refund on my rental. I throw a mean hissyfit.

We get a patch for making this hike. It's all about the patches, man.

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