So, no pictures. words will have to suffice
A hike is in line - the leaves are starting to turn and a sunny Sunday afternoon begs us look to the forest for entertainment. And we submit joyfully. 8 in all, 2 on two wheels and 6 on four. I lay in the back of Laura's SUV accompanied by a bag of charcoal among other camping supplies which are less substantial and therefore unworthy of mention. Jeff is waiting for us at the dam along with two of his friends, Shaika and Julia, wagging, happy to be out and about like us humans. The truck and motorcycle make the first trip to the knob, but only one comes back. Meanwhile, the rest of the group starts walking. Nate and I linger on the other side of a grassy knoll and relieve ourselves just out of sight...A man, a motorcycle, and a bag of pretzels.
(pointing to a bag on the ground) would you like to buy some pretzels?
no thanks (avoiding eye contact)
just tryin to break even, here (still avoiding eye contact and pretending not to listen)
...and when we catch the rest of the group we realise they have found the civilized way. and we continue on. And we wait for the motorcycle to return from the summit. While we wait, we improvise. rock throwing, target practice, tree destruction, tree climbing, stickball, and the like. The motorcycle returns and we are set to go. We blaze a trail (we follow Jeff) and are fairly certain that somebody at the lead knows what they're doing. We realize quickly that it's actually a he-man guessing game. Yeah, I figger if we head in that direction we'll ventually hit a trail or a road...we'll know what direction we're going as long as we have sunlight. All this sounds very promising. and we continue on. Nate and I set the pace as we climb a moderate to a difficult to a downright ghastly terrain, but it's a shortcut and we'll hit a trail eventually. We make it to the top and sit down and take advantage of our ten minute lead...the ringing of a cell phone sounds out of place as Nate realizes he has a full four bars and his friend is on the line. and we wait. Now that we're at the top of a ridge, we can simply follow it until we hit something. and so we continue blazing, tramping our way through low-level brush that keeps us hunched over, praying away the ticks. And you know, we did find a trail. After the laborious trailblazing, the trail is welcome relief - we can actually fit about four wide on the path. We see bike marks, and horseshoe marks, and horseshit marks among other things. After a good deal of hiking we finally see some signs. It's four mile out and four miles forward, so we keep on forward. Along the trail we find a man and his son out looking for water. They are camping and hunting and the man recognizes Evie. and it's a small world after all. And we continue. Further on, a pile of rocks and a clearing gives a nice panorama of the mountains and I stand and stare and wonder. It's getting cold and we move on. A pair of men are holding a tracking device and are looking for their AWOL bear-dogs. we haven't seen dogs, but good luck. and we continue on. the sound of cars is welcome to our ears and we find a road and we are almost there. there are some men there that tell us that the dogs have been found.
seen any bear?
oh yeah, they're in there
any luck?
well, we haven't been hunting since we lost the dogs
I'm glad you found them, good luck
...and we stumble upon more familiar faces and we try to make connections - ridgeway volleyball. We make it to the top right as the sun is going down and it was absolutely worth the eight mile hike. We also observe, with not a little pride, that the lake that we started from is quite a ways from where we ended up. good game out there. but the familiar faces don't end. We also get the pleasure of meeting the parents of BC track and field star Chrissy Rhodes. Mildy and Cleo are holding hot cups of coffee and I don't hide my envy, but I do rid myself of a rock with an insignificant thud. The cold gets to us and we climb in the truck. This time the passenger to wheel ratio isn't as friendly. We plan to squeeze 5 in the back of the cab and 4 in the front. We enjoyed the challenge so much that before we knew it we had 6 in the back and a confused Laura and Marcus wondering why they were enjoying so much room in the front with Jeff. and we continued on. Limbs fell asleep and shins got squished, but we were warm. We looked forward to food, and it was dark by the time we got to Hone Quarry. We fired up the charcoal and put some fire into the place and soon enough we were hot-dog stuffed and quite content to rest and eat and warm. But, we were also ready for bed, so we returned home before too long. the fire was put out with some excess bodily fluids and we left. and the day was taken advantage of. let's do it next week...seriously, lets.
D
