Bruised and confused
The summit of Mount Lincoln is quite beautiful. Large rocks are scattered here and there like decrepit Irish fortresses, and the view reveals an endless stretch of varying shades of green, bleeding together in polychromatic harmony. At least, this is what my boyfriend told me as we reached the summit, unable to see even each other, entirely and utterly engulfed as we were by fog. Just fog. No view. Our entire purpose for climbing a goddamned mountain in the first place. It was upon this summit that it began to hail, teensy chunks of ice that flew at us like angry bumblebees, piercing our clothes with their sting. Judging from the menu, it seemed as if I had mistakenly ordered a steady course of the plagues.
I spent the longest hour of my life on top of that mountain. The rain made it impossible to see, the biting hailstones hindered our speed. I can’t even count the times I slipped and fell as we stumbled toward the safety and shelter of the tree line. (Later, counting the number of bruises on my ass gave me an approximation.)
It was somewhere along the ensuing six-mile trek to shelter that I realized I had to pee. Upon making this known, Mountain Man wordlessly unzipped his pack and handed me . . . the plastic trowel.
“You have to dig a hole,” he told me. A fucking HOLE. “You have to dig a hole, pee in it, and then throw your toilet paper in there and bury it with your pee.” And your dignity.
I never in my life would have been so happy to see an outhouse. Hell, a Lollapalooza port-o-potty. Sure, that, too, is peeing in a hole, but at least this one has been dug for you — not to mention the benefits of the whole “seat” concept. But here, in my New Hampshire (hell)hole, after taking care of business, I had to “flush” by tossing in a handful of mulch.
The rest of the weekend was more of the wretched same: hiking and camping, falling and bruising, whimpering and cursing. Sometime on Sunday afternoon, we finally emerged from the forest, or, as I was now calling it, my own personal Deet-scented Inferno.
God, I sound like a whiner. I really don’t want to think of myself as a complainer, a quitter, or a girlie girl. Maybe I’m being too harsh. Maybe the woods aren’t so bad. I mean, trees are, like, important, right? Without them, we wouldn’t have paper. Or paper money. Or chopsticks.
Perhaps I’ve judged backpacking too harshly. I do love to judge. Not jurist judging, with guiltiness and stuff. But judging people, for, you know, wearing bad clothes and having bad hair and such. And, after all, some of those skinny, well-dressed bitches from college turned out to be among my best friends. Anyway, the point is that I suppose it’s not really fair for me to swear off the outdoors forever just because of one bad — albeit traumatically bad — experience.
