Adaptive Curmudgeon

As soon as I got out in the breeze, the reduced sail inflated and it didn’t look so bad. It pulled me forward but much more gently. Also I began to plow sideways through the water! After a second’s head scratching I put down the daggerboard and it “bit” the water. Viola! Like magic, the sail above and the keel below balanced out. The boat moved forward. A few seconds later I remembered to drop the retractable rudder and steering went from “basically a suggestion” to “laser focus”.

I left my little protected area and entered the lake proper. The first few lessons of a sailboat are “make it move” and then “survive” but the next step is “make it take you somewhere you want to go”. This is a big ask but I diligently pursued the new goal.

Maps told me there was a campsite far across the lake; accessible only by water. When planning this trip I’d considered sailing out there with all my camping gear. I’d bailed on that idea and camped within sight of my Dodge. Oh how glad I am that hadn’t been overconfident. The launch had been messy and the sail across the lake had been anything but dull.

At the middle of the lake, the waves were choppy. The wind was uncertain. Also, the lake was bigger than I’d thought. Regardless, I crossed and approached with the wind blowing me into shore. There was a little dock there. I wanted to practice “approach a dock without banging into it”. As I got closer I noticed a tent. I veered away.

If some canoe camper was there, I’d harsh his calm just barging in like that. (These spots were meant for canoes and kayaks. Very few motorboats were out there and only one maniac had a sailboat.) So I swooped past the dock with what I like to think was a semblance of control. I was 6’ off the dock, moving at about 2 knots, and more or less in control of events; call it a “touch and go” practice landing.

No sign of the camper though.

A quarter mile later I found him. There was a wide muddy reedy bay and the wind was pushing right into it. Stuck in that mess was a fat fiberglass canoe with two paddlers. They were arguing. Clearly the wind had blown their ass into the mudpit and they were weighing options. Or rather, they’d chosen the option of bitching at each other.

“Need help?” I shouted, despite having no idea how I could sail into that mud, toss them a rope, and then sail back out against the wind.

The woman looked hopeful but the man scowled. (Need I mention who was bitching at whom?)

“Nah, we got this.” He grumbled.

Relieved, I turned to tack into the wind; narrowly dodging my homicidal boom and also smartly starting the passage away and back upwind. I might have looked pretty cool. I like to assume so. I can’t see myself sail so how would I know?

I didn’t know about this when I made a sailboat but yes, they can indeed sail towards the wind. Not well though. You go against the wind by taking it at an angle, using the sail above and the keel below to harness the wind to go precisely where the wind doesn’t want you to go. (This is absolutely unlike the reliable solution of using a motor.) It’s a skill I didn’t initially have. I’m starting to get the hang of it. I tacked into the wind for a bit then flew downwind to start the process again. Each repeat was a change to improve.

With a few nautical successes under my belt I was feeling like a pirate viking. I did a triumphant orbit of the lake (which took an hour or more) and then headed for the direct center of the lake. I saw some fishing boats (motorized) out there and thought I’d do a fly by. This didn’t end in tears… but it did tempt fate.

The wind was strong and unpredictable, as always. But the waves got much higher. I had no idea why. Then I realized my daggerboard and rudder were plowing through a sea of submerged weeds.

Shit! It must be shallower in the middle than the periphery of the lake. Who plans for that? Hastily, I retracted both daggerboard and rudder, but only partially; I still needed control. This did wonders. My boat has a “shallow draw”. (Meaning it needs hardly any water to float.) This allowed me to zoom right over a mess that would mire a deeper keel sailboat. I also squished across stuff that would hopelessly tangle a motorboat’s prop. Cool!

I zipped right across the little Sargasso Sea happily peeking over into the water looking for fish. I saw a few and desperately wanted to invite them to lunch.

I really miss fishing! I haven’t yet gotten so bad ass that I can sail and fish simultaneously. I thought about my anchor. I could drop it and then pull down the sail. Presumably, the anchor would hold me in position. Perhaps, I could somehow cast a line from within the wet crowded laundry basket of an 8’ boat filled with sail. With luck I could catch a fish, reel it in, re-hoist the sail, and head for camp.

Suuuuuure.

I could also spin a top on my nose while riding a unicycle.

On the other side of the Sargasso Sea the fishermen were reeling in gobs of weeds. They looked disgusted. Also, they looked a little harried. The wind and waves were beating them pretty hard.

I emerged in deep-ish waters and immediately put down the daggerboard and rudder, causing the boat to behave a lot better. Then I tacked into the wind, dodged the boom that tried to kill me, pointed back across Sargasso Sea, and managed (barely) to retract most (but not all) of the daggerboard and rudder. Slick! (I take no credit for the design. I just followed the directions. But it is fun to enjoy the smug feeling of having built retracting stuff in advance. It saves my bacon every time I use it and I’m like “man, I’m glad I built that!”)

As I came crashing back into the shallow stuff the wind picked up and things got messy.

The fishing boat cast right in my path. (I was still a long way off.) I wanted to veer away so as not to spook their fish. However, with shallow rudder and daggerboard the boat was like “huh?” and just kept doing whatever it was already doing.

The wind picked up more and now I was going almost sideways. Whoops.

“Sorry if I disturbed the fish, I can’t steer too well in this wind.” I apologized.

“It’s fine. Neither can we.” The fishing boat people replied.

Indeed we were both going sideways, more or less playthings of the wind.

“This is bullshit!” One of the fishermen complained. The other was busy with a knife, cutting weeds off a hopelessly bound prop.

“Yeah, it’s a challenge.” I agreed.

By this time one fisherman’s cast had reeled in another harvest of weeds, while the other was angry at the prop and swearing. We passed, both of us sideways and out of control. I shrugged my shoulders; at least it wasn’t just me.

Once outside of Sargasso Sea, having arrived there mostly by chance, I dropped the daggerboard and rudder. Once I’d regained control I pointed for my inlet/safe space and tried to outrun the treacherous wind. Not long after, I heard the motor fire up and the fishermen tore off for the safety of the nearest bar stool. I never saw the canoe again.

The first thing about sailboats is that sails are not motors. Mine has tremendous (for the size of the boat) square footage. When the wind is strong, all that area is pulling too hard. I believe the word is “overpowered”. Overpowered may look cool on the label of an energy drink or some dude’s GoPro video but that’s not my game. An intelligent sailor reduces sail area until the power provided by nature matches what the boat (and in my case, its chichkenshit operator) can manage.

There’s a way to do that. A “reef point” is a series of tie points you use to make the sail smaller. The sail, once it is “reefed”, is smaller, and thus produces less power. Depending on where you manage the boom and an array of other ropes, this lesser area can be balanced lower in height above the hull. Thus, reducing the force trying to tip (“heel over”) your boat. Thus, reducing the risk of a capsize. Win, win!

A wise sailor would’ve read the conditions and “reefed” before leaving the dock. A skilled sailor would “reef” right in the maelstrom. A schmuck like me looks for a good place to hide from the wind and ideally beach somewhere safe for an epic bout of knot tying.

Like a social justice warrior overwhelmed by reality, I needed a safe space. The lake was oddly shaped with a very narrow inlet (or outlet, depending on your point of view). The narrow spot was crosswise with the wind, which was good. If the wind was blowing into it, it might shove me into a spot from which I can’t return and I’ll run up against rocks at the shore. It the wind was blowing out of it, I’d never be able to get in there. Instead it was just right. I shouted “hard a starboard” (there was nobody to hear but I earned the right to say it), shifted my weight to the opposite side of the small boat, yanked the rudder, brought up my arm to catch the boom which would certainly try to guillotine me, and pivoted the boat in its own length.

I’d executed not just a 90 degree turn but more like 120 degrees. I’d done this in a fluid medium with the speed that usually involves screeching tires, yet the boom just sat there. WTF?

Only then did I realize the wind had stopped dead calm. Off like a light switch.

“What the…” Crash!

The wind reappeared, the boat lurched wildly, the sail reinflated in the exact opposite side it had been before I executed the maneuver and the boom came at my lead like a Louisville Slugger.

My arm was still extended. I had no idea what was happening but the lizard brain knew what to do. On instinct I caught the boom like a boss. Wasting no time, I ducked a bit, flipped it over my head, and the sail inflated behind my back. The boat charged into the outlet.

I had no idea where this would lead. It was a long sinuous affair; a couple hundred yards wide when I entered but narrowing to 60’ in a matter of seconds.

Lucky for me it was deeply wooded on both sides. This cut the wind and now my boat wasn’t overpowered. In fact, it was perfect. I flitted about like hummingbird, circling great rocks in the narrow passage like a barrel racer. Sailing in thin (shallow) water that would eat a deep keel boat is risky but fun. Nothing was affecting my 3’ daggerboard (“retractable keel”) so it might as well be a mile deep to me. For about ten minutes I zipped back and forth like a fool; whooping and laughing.

Of course, the narrower it got, the more I was playing with fire. With less room to maneuver, the odds I’d Titanic my ass into a glacial erratic began to increase. (A glacial erratic is a big ass boulder sitting where the ice left it. Picture a boulder the size of a garbage truck sitting in 4’ of water in the middle of the lake where there is no reason for a rock to exist. Also note, there have been big swings in climate in the past. Chicago was once under a mile thick sheet of ice. This is why I don’t lose sleep when some global warming headline announces the sea is now three millimeters higher.)

Eventually, I pulled up the keel (“daggerboard”) and also the retractable rudder and drifted into the dead calm in the lee of a little granite cliff. I was in a foot of water a mere 10’ from shore. It was a gorgeous spot. It smelled of pine and adventure. I glanced at my fishing gear but the boat was already pinwheeling out of control. No keel and minimal rudder will do that!

Bravely, I untied the halyard (“a line that lifts the “yard”) and dropped it and the boom and the sail, on my shoulders. (The “yard” is a mini-boom that supports the top edge of my sail. In my case, the sail is a quadrilateral, the yard holds the upper edge and the boom the lower.)

No longer a sailor in a tiny but wickedly exciting craft, now I was a chump beneath a pile of wet laundry in a floating box. It was time to reef the sail.

When you “reef” a sail there’s the extra fabric that can no longer be free to catch the wind. If it catches the wind you screwed up the reef! You are supposed to “flake” this material in an elegant zig zag pattern and tie it up with the ropes at the “reef point”. I tried to “flake” but I really just wadded it up like a cheap sleeping bag. Nonetheless the reef point knots (several of them) seemed to hold it secure.

Some boats have no reef points (God help them!), some have one, some have more. Mine has two, which is (in my humble opinion) NOT too many for my diminutive craft.

After doing all the hassle of one reef I did the next. I don’t think you have to do it in two steps but I did. Now my boat was “double reefed” and the formerly massive (in my eyes) sail was a tiny little table cloth strapped to a beefy boom that looked like I’d tied a messy fabric anaconda to it. I hoisted all this back up the mast but not (as I initially expected one would) to the top. I’ve learned I can keep the tiny reefed sail much lower. This means any wind is much less aggressive on the boat’s tilt (“heel”) and also I preserve the delightful option of getting walloped by the boom. Wouldn’t want to lose that feature!

By my reckoning, I’d cut the nuts off my own boat’s power source and it looked pathetic; like removing a mighty flag and replacing it with a pair of underwear. But the goal is control not speed.

Deep breath, sip some water, and back at it. I used an oar to shove off and drifted back out of the little safe zone I’d been using. I hated to go. There might be fish there!

Did I mention I don’t know much about sailing? I’m living proof one can build things which they cannot operate. (Though I’m improving.) This wasn’t obvious at first but now I understand it deeply. Building a boat (even a small one) is one set of skills but operating a boat (especially a small one) is a totally different set of skills. The two are utterly unrelated! I barely managed the former and I’m still working on the latter.

But that’s why I was there. Nature would provide. I’d just signed up for an advanced self-taught pass/fail course in sailing tiny things.

The winds were awful. They’d appear out of nowhere and shit would get crazy. In a flurry of incompetence I’d pull lines and shift weight and fiddle with the rudder. I’d finally get boat, rudder, and sail all configured at whatever angle was right. Once that happened I had lightning in my hands. The tiny boat would surge with far more power than a sheet of fabric ought to harness. It would zip over the water like a skipping stone while I mumbled obscenities and clung to the tiny hull. Well before the boat was on its ragged edge, I’d be on mine. I’d let off the sheet to reduce power and that’s when things got fun. I could settle in, grin like an idiot, and wonder what would happen if and when I hit the opposite side of the lake.

Then, the wind would die. I’d sit there like a crouton in soup… wondering what it all meant. Until it appeared again without warning from a random direction.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

My start had seemed competent. I’d rigged and untrailered (if that’s a word) my boat like a boss. Things went downhill after that fine start. I’d launched into a dead calm and faffed about like a moron; tracing hopeless circles until I got taken by surprise by a sudden gust and wound up charging across the water like a human avalanche.

Power is a relative thing. I don’t need much. I don’t want much. My boat is tiny, it needs but a hint of an idea of a breeze to make it move purposefully. That’s exactly what I wanted in a boat. It will sail on the blown kiss of a faerie; perfect.

Unfortunately, the boat’s a bit aggressive. In my eyes, it punches above its weight class. It sticks a large (relatively) sail into the sky as if the entire planet’s atmosphere is its plaything. This may very well be true for the boat, but not so for it’s sailor. The boat can and will do shit that scares the hell out of me.

Well into that first run, I did the sailor’s version of “cry uncle”. I gave plenty of slack to the mainsheet (that’s the line (rope) you hold to keep the sail’s boom where you want it). The boat’s fully capable of riding the surf like a flea on a charging bull. I’m not leveled up for that and I don’t like the premise of the game.

In theory the slack puts the sail in a less advantageous angle to the wind… wasting energy as wind slips past, or in my case giving me a change to catch my bearings because there’s less energy pushing the boat toward its (my) limits. It helped but wasn’t a full solution. The sail took up that slack, billowed just fine in its new suboptimal but still mighty position, and kept on truckin’. I, the dipshit clinging to the boat beneath the sail, was nowhere near the kind of control I’d like.

The boat was still surging ahead but at least I had some confidence in it. I was fairly convinced it wasn’t near it’s capsize point. (Honestly, the boat is stable as an aquatic brick shithouse. It can capsize, as can any craft, but it would take a whole lot of stupid to get it that far. Well before that point I’m squealing like a scared rabbit and trying desperately to get to shore.)

Under the new conditions I had a lot better control. In fact, the rudder, which was ineffective only a few seconds ago, gave me precise control. It’s the first rudder I’ve ever made and it took some learning to make a nice wing shape. I’m rather pleased with how well it came out. Even if it’s not perfect, it’s awesome for its intended use. I pointed in a direction and the boat was happy to comply. I pointed to an angle that gave plenty of lake to think about my fate.

“Curmudgeon you crazy bastard,” I thought in third person. “learn to sail. NOW!”

And so I did.

[Warning: This and ensuing posts have nautical language when I do nautical things. This is necessary. There are things on a boat which simply don’t exist elsewhere. Sorry if the vocabulary is weird. It simply has to be. Outside of universities and socialist economic theory, one must use the right words to describe things as they actually are.

Rest assured, I’ll do it as little as possible. If an audience (or I) cannot picture the meaning of “a tender craft on a broad reach”, the story dies. Nor should we get pedantic about technical verbiage. I’m trying to share my experiences; not maintain a concise Captain’s journal. I’m a novice. I only know the words I needed to know to have built what I’ve so far constructed.

So let’s all chill please. If you’re a true sailor, please forgive that I use “rope” and “line” interchangeably and sometimes mistake a “tack” for a “jibe”. I know it hurts if you’re a pro, but either remark in helpful kindness so we can all learn or pack that shit up and flush it so the rest of us can have fun. As always, thanks for understanding.]

It’s true that I woke up shaky, but it’s also true that fire heated, percolated, coffee cures all. My little folding campstove simply shines at this task. It was my first test of the secret fuel which would never cause me trouble in a State park; pallet wood.

State Parks frown on importing wood for the very good reason that you’re hauling all sorts of tree pathogens to the camp along with your firewood. Pallet wood, being kiln dried, is pathogen free and perfectly acceptable. A note about pallet wood: process it first so you’re not filling the firepit with nails and shit. Show some damn class!

With kiln dried wood, cut to length and placed lovingly in my fold up campstove, I can regulate the percolator’s temperature like a boss! If I do my part, my percolator never makes bad coffee.

Three cups, sipped slowly and with great relish, cured all that ailed me. I made and sipped a fourth for good measure. I refused to hurry. I was there for a purpose and the purpose was not served by faffing about. It was a fine morning to sit still and let the soul heal.

Then came the fun part; sailing! It was a true adventure. They say “small boat = big adventure”. I don’t have much sailing experience so I don’t know for sure. I default to assuming I’m a whiny little bitch. Regardless, every time I sail on my tiny homemade boat I have butterflies in my gut as I leave shore, there are invariably a few moments of near terror, and I return feeling like I climbed Everest, flew to Mars, and fought an ice giant! Adventure indeed!

The boat ramp was empty; which is good because I took my time. As I sorted ropes (lines) and fretted over my lost bailing sponge, I was approached by a husband and wife. The fellow had been pondering building a “Puddle Duck Racer”. Mine was the first and only one he’d seen in real life. I sympathize because the first one I saw in real life is the one I built.

People who build boats are an odd breed. I have barely scratched the surface of this particular madness and I can see the rabbit hole goes deep.

I’m a loner in the hinterland. Fate has kept me isolated from the like-minded madmen with whom I’d like to share my halfwit novice theories. Yet here one one such fellow. Happy to have met one of the species, I shared all sorts of ideas about epoxy, wood selection, and the curse of “brightwork.” He was having fun too. Eventually his wife looked bored and we quit talking. Shame, because I was ready to break out the campstove, brew up a pot of coffee to share, and settle down to talk all day. So was he.

They left, him reluctantly and her eagerly. I returned to my efforts. This was the springtime shakedown cruise for my little boat. I critically assessed the cumulative effects of four year’s wear and tear. I was pleased. I’ve beaten the hell out of this little ragamuffin of a craft and it looks more or less fine. I’ll do a bit of sanding and painting sometime soon and she’ll be “like new.”

I mounted the mast (“stepped it”) and rigged everything that needed rigging (mostly that means dragging the sail out of the roof mounted sewer pipe I use to carry it on my truck and trying it to the mast). I backed my old utility trailer into the water, floated the boat off the trailer, tied off to a little dock, and parked my truck. That alone encompasses like 200 ways you can fuck up. I did it all with a minimum of fuss; though slowly.

There was a mild breeze as I launched onto “Soon To Be Renamed By SJW’s Lake” so I had high hopes to sail right off the dock with some level of style. I kicked off hard but all of the sudden the wind died.

You might not know this but sailboats are a fuckin’ mess without wind. No wind… no no force. No force… no control. They don’t just stop moving, they stop making sense. You might as well be a leaf in a pond. Almost uniquely, I sail completely without a motor. Most boats are motorboats and even most sailboats have motors; which would graciously restore motion and therefore steering. It must be a very handy crutch. I hoisted the sail but the boat just spun around in circles 50’ from the dock.

I cursed and reached for the oars. (Oars will propel the boat well but deploying 7’ oars in an 8’ boat with a sail/mast/boom in the way is a royal hassle. Try to build a model train while sitting in a bathtub that’s slowly spinning. It’s like that.)

Drifting in dead calm water, I pondered “I wish I had a better oar plan.” Then boom! Poseidon whacked me like Mohammad Ali slipping a jab to the ribs. The sail inflated, the whole boat pivoted wildly. I dropped the oars to grab the mainsheet (that’s the rope that controls the boom which controls the sail’s position). I got that under control but the boat inexplicably went into a wild spin. Eventually I realized my ass was pushing the rudder hard to port.

For a moment I thought I’d lose it. The boat had a grip on the wind and was trying to tear a hole in the lake. However, once I got the rudder under control with one hand and adjusted the mainsheet with the other, everything came into focus. The boat blasted across the waves like a charging rhino.

Jesus but what there’s a lot of energy to be had with a simple sail! Accustomed to big trucks and motorcycles, I’m no stranger to managing pure power, but a sail is a whole different animal. Power doesn’t come to you like the controlled throttle of a motor… it comes at you cold and hot. Silence, the chirping of a bird, then you’re teleported into a Metallica concert that’s trying to drown you.

It took all my point headed skills to adjust to a very fluid situation. Sometimes the air is a slippery cube of ice sweetly chilling your drink. Other times it’s a blast furnace coming for your face.

Eight feet is a small boat. Shit gets wild.

There is a theory that’s popular among physicists, writers, and lunatics. Supposedly, we inhabit just one of an infinite arrays of universes. Multiverse theory serves more purposes than a device for sci-fi writers. It’s a way to make sense of the insensible.

I feel like we passed from a tense but logical world into a new and far more illogical one. Do you feel it too? This universe, where I seem to have landed by chance, lacks the bounds within which I grew up. Did an unfortunate phase shift send my presence from a stable Republic to a chaotic oligarchic mess? What really happened at roughly at 3 am EST on November 4th, 2020?

How often has this happened; both for good or ill? Haven’t I benefited from the occasional shift from one inescapable path to another, entirely unexpected, new world? Who, mired in the mindset of the Cold War, expected it to end with the dissolution of the mighty USSR? Hardly a shot fired to resolve a stalemate that had been dragging us all, inch by inch, toward total thermonuclear war.

Mutually assured destruction didn’t happen. Rejoice! It was a bullet dodged!

What about the karmic balance? If a bullet can be dodged, can’t we also stupidly leap into the path of one? We certainly have done so. Is that not what vexes me?

Yet, is the balance worthwhile? Who am I to fret that the universe tilted on its axis? It put a potato in the big chair but in my youth it let us duck the noose on complete and instantaneous radioactive annihilation. Not such a bad bargain.

Furthermore, didn’t we know this was coming? Who didn’t glimpse this reality on the horizon? Wasn’t it always at the very least a possibility? I feel like I was thrown bodily into the pit of sketchy votes and a puppet president run by God knows who, but I should have seen it coming. The hints were always there. Nobody has believed vote counts in Chicago since Al Capone walked the earth. More recently, didn’t we go through a trial run on this very thing with words like “hanging chad” and “determine voter intent” in 2000? Didn’t Hillary scream bloody murder and agitate for “faithless electors” in 2016? Everything flows downhill into 2020.

Nor do presidents emerge from the mess looking clean. Didn’t we have an impeachment process in 1998? Why wouldn’t this lead to two or three more shots at the same thing in 2019 and 2021? Nixon’s issues are minor compared to the stink of the last few decades. We have chosen as a society to deliberately obfuscate the voting process. We have chosen to resolve political differences with lawfare. Was 2020 when it really hit the fan or just the moment it was so tainted that nobody seriously denies it. Polls say roughly half of Americans have the same concerns as I. There aren’t enough deplatformed Twitter accounts to put that genie back in the bottle.

As you can tell from my writing, I was still out of sorts. I’d barely ventured from my remote homestead back into a sliver of multiverse assigned me and it had been both good (happy people at a bar) and bad (a rough night’s sleep).

I imagine a loop and I’m in it. A reliving of past misery. Carter’s Malaise Version 2.0. The year dawned with inflation, Iranian expansion, and gas shortages. The parallels abound. Will Kabul become Saigon? Will there be price controls at the pump? Why the fuck not? Might as well start listening to disco, revert to making gutless cars that rust out before the payments are done, and turn all video games into pong. Yuck! All that stuff sucked. I don’t want to do it again. Then again I’m not in charge of such things.

I reflected on my bad, jittery, unsettled night. Somewhere there’s a Curmudgeon in another universe. That fool never left the bar. He went for it. He didn’t coyly take a mere sip and then slide into his tent like a cautious exhausted geezer. He was full on dancing on tables and getting into fights until he was kicked out at 1:00 am to vomit in the grass by a desolate ATV trail. He crawled off to lay in misery until the dawn found him; human wreckage lying in the grass. I know that guy. I’ve been that guy. He’s a damn maniac.

That was my explanation! I had a bad night because the son of a bitch in another universe drank so hard his hangover bled across the cosmic realms! Somewhere he was sleeping it off the mother of all hangovers! I, having carefully chosen the path of a milquetoast, was suffering indirect second order effects of his wild indiscretions.

Asshole!

My defenses were low. Civilization, or want of it, had worn me down. Lest I overindulge, I fled the happy bar and arrived at my campsite 10 minutes later.

I loathe reservations. I loathe online reservations. I’d much prefer free dispersed camping. But I had to admit reservations were handy this time. I rolled past the unattended gate booth, ignored a complex self check-in kiosk, and drove straight to “Tent Site 11B” on the “Forgettably Named Campground.” It was one of two campgrounds in “Generic State Park”; nestled in the embrace of “Average National Forest.”

It took me a bit to back my huge truck, with it’s tiny trailer, into the spot. A kid on a bike pedaled down the road I’d blocked. “I can wait.” He cheerfully offered while I maneuvered.

Such patience! Would that all adults emulate such civility.

By now I was really dragging. I felt like lying on the dirt right then. The mosquitoes would’ve liked that!

12:26. That’s pretty good! As an experiment, I timed myself setting up camp. Just under twelve and a half minutes to setup a Gazelle T4 tent (full rainfly installed, staked every possible point) and furnish it with a Teton XXL cot, Teton XXL mattress, and a sleeping bag. That’s “no bullshit” setup time. It was prepared like a hotel room, with a pillow and everything. I could have done it faster if I’d been in better condition.

Essentials managed, I stumbled down to the lake. En route, I found potable tap water and marveled at the ease of “mellow camping.” I was a bit embarrassed that I hadn’t imagined on-site water. I had a water filter in my pocket. I’d been planning to drink lake water like a fucking animal.

The lake was gorgeous. Sunset was nigh and it was “smack me on the forehead and call me uncle Mike” pretty. I sat there until it was dark.

Back at camp the mosquitoes were heavy. Of three Thermacells, only one functioned. Luckily, one was enough.

I took one sip… I mean it, just one sip of whiskey. Boom! I was done. All the accumulated stress was coming out at once. 2020 was a bad burrito I can’t digest.

It hit me like a baseball bat to the head; 2021 is five months into not being any better than the shitstorm that proceeded it.

This isn’t getting better.

Sitting on my chair, watching a little fire of processed pallet stock I was like “come up or go down, but do something.” I ditched dinner plans and opted for a self-heating MRE. It tasted fine and I even liked the enclosed lemonade mix. Nothing came up. Nothing went down. I turned in soon after.

The campsite was silent. Loons on the lake cried in lust. My cot was pure luxury (as always). Yet, I suffered. Stress worked through my system. Mind racing, stomach weak, sore back, aching legs, knotted shoulders… all of it simply the stress of a shitty experience. It started when “two weeks to flatten the curve” unleashed witch hunters in my world and it hasn’t yet ended. The nation didn’t just fail a “Jews in the attic” experiment; it gleefully ratted them out and shot itself in the head during the celebration.

Uneasy rest led to uneasy dreams which led to a quiet dawn. I hadn’t slept well but I awoke with greater peace. Perhaps I’ll never digest the whole thing but I suppose every dawn is a new life. At the very least, I’d seen joyous mask-free revelers and subsequently laid still. A bad moment had passed.

I spent all morning percolating coffee over pallet wood and thanking my lucky stars I wouldn’t have to return to “society” for a while.

[This post (or rather series of posts) was composed several months ago. It made it to the ‘net after a long period of gathering dust; first on paper and then on a hard drive. Seasons later, I resurrected it and brought it back to life in its current form. That’s OK. Not all things are “breaking news”.]

Life is always beautiful on Instagram, or so they say. So too, bloggers downplay their stresses and highlight the positive. At least that’s what I’ve heard.

I don’t discuss it much on my blog but 2021, the second iteration of an infinitely disappointing 2020, wears on me. I’ve got my shit together quite well compared to average. However, today’s baseline has declined in ways that would be unthinkable only a few years before. My relative serenity only means I’m the smartest kid on the short bus.

In short, I was stressed out. I turned to nature; which is rarely a bad move. I packed my camping shit and…faced one emergency after another for days. I finally departed several days late, out of sorts, and in the wrong State. I’d packed dirty clothes instead of clean, I was wearing pig shit caked boots, and my arms were sore from manhandling air conditioners. In the truck’s mirror, I was haggard.

The long drive was a good thing. After a while, things began to look up. I stopped thinking of gasoline shortages. I packed away concerns about our geriatric potato of a president and his statistically improbable record breaking vote tally. (There will be a lifetime of second order, “unexpected”, denied, derailed, and obfuscated effects to watch slowly emanating from that particular event. Like ripples in a pond after some lunatic hurled a huge rock into it, the pond itself becomes the chaos. What was initially encapsulated at a single origin will not remain so.)

I began to smile. So long as I kept the truck’s radio off, a society of monkeys faffing over COVID was invisible. In nature, our stupidity is nowhere to be seen. I forgot it all. I was looking at the trees.

By chance I was in a deciduous forest. All these leaves…dead at Thanksgiving, green now. Ten thousand little photosynthetic miracles per tree. A thousand trees to the acre. Six hundred and forty acres to the mile. Mile after mile of hope. Life is beautiful. It’s easy to miss if you aren’t looking. I was glad to be looking again.

I trundled through lands you could legitimately call uninhabited; or at least barely inhabited. Such are the places I prefer.

My intended restaurant for a well earned afternoon burger was closed. Many places are closed now. Many places are closed all over the nation. Many places are closed in many nations. Maybe the lights are going out in Rome. Maybe they’re already gone. Hard to tell. There’s a lot of ruin in a society and you never officially know the seed corn is gone until you can’t plant on the tilled fields. Whomever serves as our barbarian Odoacer is well beyond the breach. He’s busy trampling the rich complacent naive society that let him in the door. I, a dweller in the hinterland, only interact with his madness when I interact with our damaged society. Buying a cheeseburger in Provincia Britannia is nearly impossible. I’d have to try the next town; in 60 miles.

Sixty miles later I stopped at the only possible option. In the interest of anonymity, let’s call it “Lost Canyon Bar and Liquor.” There weren’t many cars in front. I had my doubts. Luckily, I had plenty of camp food. If this didn’t pan out, I’d still have all the calories I need. There are worse fates.

I almost turned away. I’m glad I didn’t.

As soon as I entered, I was hit with a great, chaotic, loud, wave of pure joy. The place was packed! Young and old, fat and slim, men and women… everyone was either drunk or working on it. The stereo was blasting crappy classic rock. There was a great deal of consumption going on; cheap beer, microbrews, shots, sketchy vodka based concoctions, and (surprisingly) Pepsi.

Everyone was jovial. Kids were threading through elders, who moved at such a different speed as to appear immobile. The kid’s game was a combination of tag, Calvinball, and “Steal Uncle Mike’s Potato Chips.” Dogs trailed the kids, stealing potato chips secondhand. Uncle Mike, completely sauced, was complaining about the cost of chips while everyone bought him drinks that cost more than the chips.

A harried waitress took my order.

“Busy day?”

“Sure is!” She beamed. She went on to explain that COVID had “fucked her” (her words not mine) but that lately fishermen and trail riders were trying their best to drink two year’s worth of beer in one. She was the owner.

The mystery of the empty parking lot was solved when I saw a couple dozen ATVs parked out back. The reason for the Pepsi was that most ATVs are now multiple seat UTVs. Designated drivers is a thing well accepted and now expanded to the off-road realm. As long as you can strap uncle Mike’s drunk ass in the passenger seat and find one sober person to manage the wheel, everything will be fine.

I sat at a picnic table in the sun. Some lady circulated among the tables with a basket full of money and slips of paper. For a few bucks she’d hand you a slip with a number. When she sold enough, she’d head to the bar and spin a wheel.

“Meat Raffle! Who had number 12?”

Someone would cheer and hand over their slip of paper. Soon this evolved into players too tipsy to walk handing the ticket to a random kid. The kid would stampede to the bar like they were on fire and return, eyes gleaming, with a big packet of steaks and brats and chops. I didn’t even have ice in my cooler on this trip. Also I have two full freezers at home. Even so, I wished I could participate. God bless American flyover country where 20 pounds of meat is a glorious win.

I decided “Meat Raffle” would be an excellent name for a bluegrass band.

A couple guys started gathering horseshoes. I was sitting near the end of the horseshoe pitch. (Is it called a “pitch”?) “Horseshoe Concussion” would be a good name for a death metal band.

Sensibly, I moved.

After an adequate hamburger, a delicious cold beer, and joyously watching several Meat Raffles, I started to rethink my plans. My destination camp was seven miles away. The bartender announced a special on Jaegerbombs. Uncle Mike lit up a Marlboro. It smelled delicious.

Red Alert! When I start thinking “I’d like a Jaeger and a smoke” it’s danger time!

The waitress could tell. “Want another drink?”

“When do you close?” It was 4 pm.

“We close at 1 am.”

DEFCON 1! Incoming missile sighted on radar!

If I was still there at 4:15 pm I’d be there at 1:00 am. Unlike Uncle Mike, I had no way to get to the campsite once I was mentally immobile.

The waitress read my mind. “Tempted?”

“God yes!” Mustering every bit of self control, I left a huge tip and fled.

It is -30 Fahrenheit and a snowstorm is raging. These are conditions when you silently think “this is not a drill” and then (if you’re prepared and this isn’t your first rodeo) go about the humdrum business of living in a brutal environment. Curmudgeon Compound is secure. The pipes are thawed, the lights are on, the driveway is cleared of drifts, and the woodstove is roaring.

The current cold snap is nearly a week old. I’ve barely left the house and have no plans to do more. There are blustering fools who’ll say “-30 ‘aint that bad”. They are wrong.

It’s officially winter; not far away a truck went through the ice. Bummer. Of two occupants, one is among the living and the other is something of a punchline. That was a few days ago. This cold will improve the ice; too late to help for the first explorers of course, but subsequent ice fishermen will surely approve of the updated ice conditions. This is why it’s wise to stay put near the warm fire; possibly have a nip or two of liquor. Don’t play on lakes in -30 blizzards unless you know what you’re doing. Hint: if you die, you didn’t know what you were doing. God gave us January in the north as a mini vacation from the frenzy of warm climes. Here we can hibernate with a good drink and a hot fire. No need to tilt at windmills during a maelstrom.

The extra time at hand became an opportunity. I decided to sift through a dusty old hard drive. I found half a story written in the spring of 2021. I never finished or posted it. As I read it, I remember the winter-weary, Covid stressed, feel of the ebbing winter of 2020-2021. Shall I call it week 52 of a few weeks to flatten the curve. Shall I call it “winter of death Mark 1?” Whatever it was, I was exhausted.

So much happened in the second year of Covid madness. We are pushed and shoved toward the panicked feel of “immediacy”; not by accident, but to make us more pliable. It’s easy to forget this is a multi-year panic now. Each step forward and each step back was treated, at the time, as if it mattered. Yet almost nothing actually changed. Things got so much better. Things got so much worse.

Regardless, in the midst of a society crawling up it’s own ass I sought solace. I had a lovely sailing trip on the cusp of spring. Some of this was typed at the time; the intent was to share the fun. I’m going to fill in the gaps with memory so you get the story too. My recollection might be a bit hazy, but then again what’s the purpose of a bitter winter storm if not to reminisce about springtime past?

Enjoy…