Adaptive Curmudgeon

Epilogue: I returned from my trip with a thoroughly filthy motorcycle and a huge smile. It had been a great trip. I slept like a baby.

The next morning Mrs. Curmudgeon shook me awake. “Look out the window.”

A fuckin’ grouse. In our back yard. No shit. Sitting on a little tree branch as if to say “Hi! I’m here!”

Such vast irony in the universe.

“Get your shotgun and nail it!” Mrs. Curmudgeon coaxed. Had I not returned empty handed from an extended grouse hunting trip? Was this not a grouse?

“Nope. I’m not hunting today.” I mumbled as I started making coffee for the work day. It all makes perfect sense to me.

On every trip it inevitably happens, I was out of time. The good news is that one can go into nature, sit under a pine, smile at the pretty birds, and heal from the onslaught of a decaying society. The bad news is that one can only escape the world in fits and starts.

One must return…

So there I was, at the wheel of my roving safe space, planet Dodge; having packed my gear in the back and strapped my bike to its trailer. I didn’t want to return. The pig fence is on the fritz, the lawn is a mess, and my society is killing itself… I can fix the fence and mow the lawn but the rest is too much. And then what?

Fuck it. I took a turn on a road I’d never tried before. This dumped into a gravel pit I’d never seen. Consulting my many maps, I spied a sweet little trail system.

Just one more hit. Then I’ll go cold turkey…

In no time, Honey Badger was off her trailer and I was on a smallish, somewhat disorganized, maze of trails. I planned a short little hop through what looked like pine plantations and thence out to pavement. I’d emerge a mere 10 miles from the Dodge. Using my magic license plate I’d turn into a regular vehicle on a regular road and scamper back to the mother ship. I had just enough time to do it before sunset and a spiffy new headlight in case I outlasted the day.

The trail was shorter than planned but very pretty. I didn’t see so much as a feather of gamebird but I was in motorcycle/scenery mode anyway. Soon I only had a mile or two left. Hungry and unwilling to quit exploring so soon, I stopped in some dense pines. I rooted around in my gear for a self heating MRE. It wasn’t there! I was pissed about this oversight until I remembered that I’d personally eaten it a few days back. Whoops. No worries, I always carry lots of food. I kicked back for a “meal” of beef jerky washed down with lukewarm water from my RotoPax.

Each meal is a combination of the food itself and the alternatives in your mind. Sitting under a pine some 10 miles from my truck the alternative was to gnaw on a pinecone. So beef jerky and water was absolutely excellent!

I drifted off and took a brief nap. Pine needles are soft.

My SpotX pinged. Mrs. Curmudgeon was making steak. Would I be home in time?

Hell yeah! Steak rocks! Beef jerky and warm water is shit!

I sent a message back: “Yes! Only 1 mile from pavement. Long drive but good roads so home shortly after dark.”

Now I was motivated. Also, the rest of the trail was going to be easy. The map showed I would join a giant green line that was totally legal. It was arrow straight and the markings indicated you could drive a Prius on it. After a mile of that, pavement.

I zipped along past a couple clearcuts and made a sharp turn where the forest I was on bordered a wilderness area. I rolled down a gradual slope and… Daaaaamn.

The terrain went from pleasant forest to deadly impassible muskeg. A post was hammered in the ground with a sign “closed to motorized vehicles” with tiny little writing below “except snowmobiles”. I didn’t need the sign to know something was afoot. It was the kind of land that might pull a UTV down to Hades.

There was a clear break from the passible forest. Imagine an endless, chest high, sea of grass on top of wet squishy sod. Ugh!

The map showed a wide, easy, passible, legal forest road. The map is not the terrain. Someone in the GIS department done fucked up!

I squinted and I swear I could see trees just at the edge of my vision. A solid edge within sight. A sea of grass between there and here. If I could get there, I’d be on what the map was indicating. Probably pavement within a few hundred feet of that hazy distant tree. The sign said “no” but the map said “totally legal”… I had at least a CYA level excuse for trying.

I knew I shouldn’t but I knew I’d give it a shot simply because it was there. I sent out a note on the SpotX: “Will be later for dinner”.

I proceeded cautiously. I wanted to see if moving forward was even possible. I’d sip the heady brew before me and carefully re-assess before I might upend the flagon and charge into the breach.

Honey Badger has a big fat tire in front and a bigger fatter tire in back. It weighs much less than most vehicles. It floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee, and sounds like a lawnmower. Being light and ridden gingerly, it rolled across the grass just fine; neither digging ruts nor spinning a wheel.

In a couple spots the wet soil gave way to a hole. Not so much a mud puddle as a water filled hole in the firmament that went to… somewhere. The water was black and the silt beneath was black too. Cola poured over coffee grounds which lay at the bottom of a black pipe. I peered as much as I could but couldn’t gauge the depth. A foot? A yard? Clear to the bottom of existence? If I’d brought a stick with me I’d have done a test. There were no sticks. This is where an Argo would shine.

A bike only needs a foot wide path. I went around these water pits easily. If I weren’t so far north, I’d be expecting gators.

Other people, also ignoring the sign, had been there in UTVs. They, like me, had squished over smooth and gentle… very unlike the usual UTV method of tearing everything up. Good for them.

I was moving at a walking pace. First or second gear. Focusing on the area a foot or two in front of my tire. Just taking it easy and seeing what the bike and I could do.

After a suitable time I stopped. I had to search a bit to find a bit of bunchgrass solid enough to support the kickstand. Then I shut down and stepped off.

Time to survey my new domain.

Holy shit.

Such an alien world!

Aside from a few bugs and small birds it was dead calm. This was a place locked in time. No trees growing and dying and growing again. Not wet enough to be a lively lake, not dry enough to be forest. A perfect endless monotony of grass and water. Too far north for gators and snakes. No indication that deer or moose ever bothered crossing. No rabbits or bears or… really anything. Aside from photosynthesis and whatever decomposing action was slowly eating all this grass and turning it into the deep layer of organic goo underneath my feet, there was no life. A verdant green place of death through stasis. A world completely dedicated to… nothing.

The grass wasn’t as tall as I’d first thought. Once you got away from… here words fail me and I reuse words meant for lakes but appropriate to this watery limbo. The firm footed forest I’d left was “shore”. It was “shore” as much as the word could possibly apply to anything. Once you got a bit away from “shore” the grass was a bit shorter. I could see quite a distance. With the water being tabletop flat, there was hardly any variation in elevation. Hm… “hardly any variation” doesn’t cover it. It was laser beam mathematically flat like God’s pool table.

The tiny hint of pines I’d been heading toward seemed no closer. What’s the formula for the curvature of the earth? I recall something under a foot a mile. Assuming the things I could see were trees, I’d guess a 50′ tree height in this suboptimal place. But that makes no sense. The air was hot and humid and I couldn’t see 50 miles in the hazy weather conditions. But what if it’s not the trees I need to see over but the grass? Standing in my damp slowly sinking footsteps I was perhaps 5′ from eye to sod. But the grass is an easy 3′ tall. So am I looking at a horizon marked by 50′ trees, or one limited by the distance between my 5′ eyes and 3′ surface of the grass? This might be affected by…

OK stop right there.

Once you start wondering statute miles to a horizon you can’t quite identify… you need to rethink your assumptions. What I was doing was pointless, stupid, and dangerous. The best case scenario was to emerge wet and tired at some distant shore… possibly hours from now. I had every indication that Honey Badger and I could creep across a thousand miles of this stuff. Clearly we could do it. But it would be slow difficult motion, and that’s the best scenario. The worst scenarios involve… well, shit. Lets just say it; even in 2021 sometimes a moron gets himself killed in places like this.

I’d been watching my six as I went. I had every visual marker for the way back burned in my skull. I knew my path back was easily retraced. It was the wise thing to do.

I know y’all are going to be shocked… but I did the smart thing. I turned around.

I don’t know how far out I went. (I didn’t check my odometer.) It surely wasn’t far. But it felt like I’d been in there for ages. Nor was there much from which to judge scale. I’d gone anywhere from 300 yards to a million miles.

I settled lightly on the bike, started back up, did a slow careful squishy U-turn, and rolled out. I left behind literally no sign of my passing. A few bent blades of grass. Maybe a footprint where I stood marveling at the weirdness into which I’d ventured. Nothing else.

Soon I was back on dirt and feeling a lot happier. The flat, watery, expanse had an otherworldly feel about it. It was uniform… less the living earth than a theoretical construct. A place unchanging since the glaciers receded and destined to be so until they return. It was a good place to explore and a better place to leave.

Backtracking, on the other hand, was dirt simple. The scenery was just as pretty as it had been hours prior.

I never figured out what paved road I was supposed tie into. Some places are a highway for snowmobiles but shockingly unreachable the rest of the year. I’m too cheap to buy a snowmobile but sometimes I regret that. I sure would appreciate traversing that strange galaxy of reeds while it was frozen; just to say I’d done it. It might be the closest to outer space I’ll ever get.

Back in the Dodge, rolling along on pavement. I had an extra appreciation for the solidity of it all. But no regrets! No trip is complete without at least one “adventure” and I’d checked that box quite nicely.

Steak that evening was served a bit late. It was delicious.

A.C.

P.S. I hope you liked my story. Not everyone has the option of running around nowhere doing nothing for no good reason. I like to share so everyone can have at least a sample. (Warning: I’m starting to save up for a hot tent… but no promises. Damn things cost a fortune! If I do make the outlandish purchase there will be stories of frostbite and daring activities and communing with Chickadees come January.) If you feel like hitting my tip jar please do. If you don’t or have already tipped recently, thanks and don’t sweat it.

That night, after listening to the most beautiful music on earth, I slept like the dead. Such a relief! I needed it. So do you. None of us are living calm measured lives. It’s a goal I once pursued. I’ve done ok in that pursuit. But lately it’s nigh on unattainable. Sanity is hard during a time of universal madness.

I needed sleep because the 20th month of 2020 is on the edge. More edge than I’ve ever seen in my life. I’ve seen edge, I grew up in the cold war fer crissakes. I was told the Russkies could drop the bomb any minute and they certainly would. This would unleash global thermonuclear war; I believed it. Total obliteration from the sky; no place to run, nowhere to hide. Destruction so vast that no man would emerge unscathed and perhaps humanity itself would perish.

That was placed on my shoulders when I was still pedaling a Huffy! Such things should never be done to kids! Yet it happens. Adults force their insanity on the innocent. Children today wear masks to school… if there is school at all… lest they die of statistically unlikely yet socially overwrought pestilence. Poor bastards.

I remember the tension of my youth. Would I ever get to own a car. Would I die in a radioactive crater before I was old enough to get a license? Would Carter simply outlaw cars? (I am ever so grateful I’ve owned vehicles!)

Even so, that time of weirdness wasn’t us doing it to us. When our house was cold from expensive oil and there was a ribbon on a tree in my yard that was inexplicably for the benefit of hostages in Iran and I might get fried by what became the plot of a Terminator movie… it was still NOTHING compared to now. Mutually Assured Destruction was inflicted by far off geopolitical forces and complicated physics. Some boring dude on our black and white TV might blather on about terrible things during the 1970’s but it was distant. Our current collective social suicide is happening right in our own towns and lives. The next step in the cascading shitshow will unfold and I’m going to have to experience it personally. I will be forced to watch society stick it’s dick in yet another light socket. I’ll experience the predictable effects. As always, I will be told it’s either my fault or for my own good. We’ve spent years sitting in the dentist’s lobby, listening to the drill.

This is the first time in my life things have been this unfettered. The local HOA might Karen up with the harpies in the HR department, join forces with the Coke marketing department, and fuck my life for shits and giggles. For them it’s an amusing hobby; a side gig. My fate is affected by something that’s vaguely the same (to them) as their vegan diet.

Unfettered is the right descriptor. There’s no end game. When they run out of the unvaccinated they will not be happy. If, sooner or later, we’ve gone full Australia then what? Suppose the cops are running around with dart guns and a leer… administering medicine and bashing heads filled with improper political opinions… then what? When every unvaccinated bastard is put on a cattle car and that horrific evil action still doesn’t fill the hole in their soul… then what?

Who will be the next target? Humor? Fun? Knowledge? Males? Blue collar workers? The unwoke? The rich? Those who have knowledge that’s non-political?

Zimbabwe fucked with farmers until there was no food. Then they nuked their economy until I bought a 100 Trillion Dollar note as a novelty. We walk the same path. Our stores are already sparse compared to 2019. Introspection and caution aren’t slowing anyone down.

I wish I could ask of every politician in creation that simple question; “And then what?”

But this night… I got a break. I’d had a grand day of adventures. Sure, I’d failed to land a grouse but that’s ok. I’d been out with nature in God… and then had gorgeous music by a little fire. A pinprick of light in a dark empty universe. Everyone needs a good day sometimes.

The fire died down and I clambered into my beloved tent with its oversized cot. I practically collapsed into the soft sleeping bag.

Ah sleep; perchance to dream.

Not this time bubba! I was out like a light, slept like I’d been hit with an elephant tranquillizer, and woke wondering what planet I was on. No dreams that night.

Perfect!

The day dawned cold. I spent the morning crouched with a fire on one side of me and a Mr. Heater on the other. Took a bit to get the blood pumping.

I started thinking of a hot tent. I used to camp in the snow when I was young and stupid. Now I’m old and stupid. The romance of a woodstove in a tent appeals to me. Winter is coming. Is it time for a new form of adventure?

By the second cup of coffee I was fully warmed up and daydreaming about ice fishing. Optimism, submerged by events, was resurfacing. That’s why I went grouse hunting in the first place.

I rolled out on Honey Badger earlier than usual. Why not? I was more rested than usual.

I parked at a likely spot and started hiking. I spent most of the first part shedding warm gear. Dawn had been cold but the sun is mighty and soon it was hot out. I forgot all about ice shacks as the hunt progressed.

I’m not much of a bird hunter. I’ll admit that right up front. I spooked a few that thundered off long before I was in range. I had no opportunities even close to taking a shot.

I slowed to a crawl. If sauntering wasn’t going to do it, I would go full predator.

I inched down a trail like it was laden with landmines and rabid tigers. I watched every leaf, twig, and branch for long minutes before moving.

If you’ve ever done it you know it’s harder than it looks. It’s also exhausting!

It was also totally ineffective.

After a long time of this brutally difficult approach, I heard the tiniest hint of the possibility of a noise. I froze until it repeated.

I departed the trail at 90 degrees; inching into brush that would piss off a rabbit. I had no idea if it was a legit grouse or just a damn mouse. But I was trying hard to get the drop on it.

Whatever I was pursuing moved in front of me. Eventually, ten yards out, tangled in brush that would have deterred anyone sane… I saw it!

A bright little bird. Barely bigger than a humming bird. Just a few feet away. When perched, it looked like a hummingbird but when flying it didn’t have the special “humming bird” flight pattern.

Gosh it was cute!

Near silent and small as a wisp, it was flitting around checking twigs for food. It looked happy. I smiled broadly. I’d gone after this little nugget like he was a tiger. I’d well and truly snuck up on him. Not that he cared. My shotgun was hemmed in on both sides by brush, the barrel was inches from him. He could just about have fit down the barrel. The way he was dutifully exploring every twig I half expected him to try.

There was a time when I was a mediocre bird watcher, that time is gone. I’ve forgotten it all. I have no idea what species I was looking at; but I didn’t care. “Cute little happy bird” is just as accurate a description.

I dug out my camera and waited while the thing booted up. The bird, in no particular hurry, flitted away. All I got was a photo of some blurry twigs; and a happy memory. I stuffed the camera back in my pocket. I don’t need a photo to know what I saw.

Satisfied, I thrashed through the brush back to the trail. I emerged covered in scratches, leaves in my hair, twigs stuck to my jacket, and thoroughly baked from the sun. I was about to reach for my water bottle when my camera made some sore of electronic beep.

“That’s weird.” I thought. I reached for the camera and…

BOOM!

A grouse exploded from the brush. It had been practically at my feet! It gained altitude like a cruise missile, zipped behind a pine, and then blasted, head high, through the forest like a lightning strike. I had one hand in my pocket and absolutely no chance of even hoping to take a shot. I was caught totally unawares! The damn thing about gave me a heart attack!

In a flash, it was over. Birds infinity, Curmudgeon zero.

I know when I’m beat. I sat down on the trail right were I was. I sipped water and gave my heart a chance to come back from DEFCON 4.

I like to think the little microbird and the grouse were in cahoots. But I know it’s not true. The little simply lives in a dimension where I’m irrelevant and the gamebird simply outplayed me.

Damn birds.

It had been a fun adventurous day and a chilly but pleasant evening. The campground was now completely deserted so I decided to give shortwave another try.

I had no idea why my awesome little radio (which had been flawless until Bigfoot messed with it) had gone nutty but I approached it with a needle in hand…

An aside about shortwave:

I own and highly recommend my TecSun PL-880. You can find it here on Amazon.

There are cheaper shortwave radios. In general, they suck. They’re cool as a concept (“I made a radio with two bottlecaps and a pack of Skittles crammed in an Altoids tin”) but in practice they’re a PITA. Unless you just plain like dinking around with crap gadgets, it’ll either sour you on shortwave or you’ll (like me) upgrade. Skip the wasted money of a stupid first step and start with something with decent quality. The PL-880 will set you back about $160 and it’ll probably work very well until the day you die… provided you don’t let Bigfoot get to it.

There are more expensive shortwave radios (which I haven’t owned). They’re awesome but they tend to have a drawback. They feel like work to me. They have so many “features” that you practically need a PhD in electromagnetics to operate them.

That’s why I settled on the PL-880 for the sweet spot of “damn good at receiving broadcasts”, “good quality to last”, and “you don’t need to hit shift/alt/menu/F6 to turn the damn thing on”.

One other note; the original, included, easily replaceable, rechargeable battery works incredibly well. I have mercilessly abused it… letting it go dead, forgetting about it for months, leaving it in a freezing cold truck, etc… It works great no matter what I do. (It recharges via USB.)

The PL-880 has a reset function. It’s one of those little things in which you stick a pin. I’ve never used it (never needed to). Having thawed out by the fire, made a fine meal, and finished half a flask of bourbon… I was in an ideal mood for using fine motor skills on delicate electronics in the pitch dark. I was going to reset the living shit out of the radio!

The best I can say is that the radio knew. I clicked it on and it worked flawlessly; as if to say “Wait! Not the needle! I’ll be good.” Indeed it worked so well (as it always had) that I suspect it was user error (gasp!) that caused the earlier problem. …or Bigfoot.

I put the needle away (much to the radio’s relief) and set it on the dark picnic table. Then I unleashed it to scan the universe. I like the PL-880’s scanning feature. It’s brainless enough that a Neandertal like me can use it. I like to extend the antenna and let it sniff about. I never know what it’ll find.

The world is a big place and it scanned for a while. Sometimes, it would pause on a signal too weak for me to care about. Sometimes it was something that came in strong but I didn’t care about what I was hearing. Occasionally, it would grab a signal out of the aether that was fascinating but I was too slow to find the radio in the dark and click the button to stop the scan. For a while I was listening to music in a language I didn’t recognize using instruments I also didn’t recognize. It was like synth-pop done with a theremin… if you asked a dog to explain it. That kept me occupied for a while. But always I’d come back to that scan button. I didn’t know what I was looking for but I suspected it was out there.

Eventually I found myself listening to one of the most beautiful and sorrowful songs I’d ever heard. I wrote down what the announcer said but I misspelled every damn word. It took a little internet sleuthing to reconstruct my half drunk chickenscratch. I think I was listening to “Alla Pavlova B 1953 Elegy For Piano And Strings 1998”. (Ugh, no wonder I spelled it wrong! You’d think they’d name things in a way I could remember! I never have a problem remembering “Tube Snake Boogie” or “Du Hast” by ZZ Top and Rammstein respectively.)

Anyway, if you’re feeling chill on a level that approaches catatonic you may be receptive to the song I heard as the moon rose over the dead silent pines:

In each day, there’s a moment that cannot be eclipsed. That was the moment.

Utterly relaxed clear to my soul, I turned in. That night I slept better than I have in six months. Sure it could have been the flask of bourbon, or the many miles of hiking in the hot sun, or the very cold ride home… but I like to think it was a moment of peak mellow penetrating the stress caused by 20 months of social madness. If I’d done nothing more this year than listen to that song, at that time, in that place… it would be a life lived well.

Stay tuned… there will be more.

Rather than return to camp like a wise man, I went the opposite way, toward Antler. I did this for the very illogical reason that I’d never seen Antler. Also, I had just installed a new headlight and felt (for some reason) that testing it in the actual dark, in the actual forest, a zillion miles from nowhere, with no alternative in mind, was a great idea. When I test stuff I ‘aint messing around!

The road to Antler was very pleasant but a bit long. It was almost twilight when I got there. Antler is basically just a dot on a map but it has an informal campground I wanted to scout out. It was under tall pines, well maintained, free, and totally abandoned. It had a hand pump that might (or might not) supply water. I made plans to setup base camp here in the future.

Wait a minute! There was no outhouse! I’m a tent camper. How’s a hundred year old campsite without outhouses supposed to work? Daaaamn. It was a great place for a camper trailer but off my list. I should have explored more but it was getting dark and I was in a hurry.

(Update, I couldn’t stand the mystery of no outhouse so when I got home I poured over satellite photos. Turns out there is an outhouse. It was tucked behind some trees. In my haste I’d missed it. Thank God because the situation was otherwise baffling.)

Nearby was a fire tower. I didn’t have time to climb it. I kept going.

Then… the oddest thing of all… a cell phone tower. WTF was a cell phone tower doing out here?

(In case you’re wondering, there’s spotty text level cell service at Unremarkable State Park. It can do voice for a few minutes at a time at most. Beyond that, it invariably drops out. There’s no way in hell I could check my blog from there. Just sending a text is all I can do from that locale. All of which is fine with me. Of course, my SpotX works about the same no matter where I am.)

I stopped and checked my phone. All day I’d had between one and zero bars. My phone plays games and will say one bar when there is no chance in hell of making a connection. That’s why I have a SpotX. This time it was at absolutely zero bars. The phone was like “nope, no service here”. I waved it at the tower as if it could see. Apparently the two devices weren’t on speaking terms.

Whatever the tower was servicing, it wasn’t me. It was near the fire tower so I assume this place has a commanding view. Maybe it services some industrial outfit far away but within line of sight? Either I’ll don a tinfoil hat and blame the illuminati or revisit the mystery again someday.

Meanwhile, I was running out of daylight. My newly installed headlight was aimed terribly. Low beam was too high. The road was nearly invisible on low beam. On the other hand, it would probably go straight into the cerebral cortex of any oncoming driver and so I’d definitely be seen. High beam was pretty spiffy. It hit the ground right where I wanted and I could see road surface pretty dang well. I never saw another car so I never used low beam. 

The temperature dropped and my formerly roasted self was now freezing. I had miles and miles to go. Damn!

About halfway home, I stopped and “adapted”. I put on my hunting gear and then put my motorcycle jacket over that. It was a tight fit but nothing is colder than a bike in the dark. The combination did the job well enough. I rode home chilly but not suffering. 

My new headlight made the road manageable and has officially earned my seal of approval. I arrived well after dark and desperately ready for a warm campfire. It was pitch black. I really ought to learn to get to camp by dark. 

Five minutes later the fire was going. I didn’t bother with the folding stove this time. I was cold and wanted heat ASAP. I dumped some pallet wood into the fire ring and started it up. (Pallet wood lights a lot easier than corral wood.) Soon I had my coffee pot (emptied of coffee) heating up water. It was Mountain House Chili Mac and Cheese night at Chez Curmudgeon! Since Bigfoot drank all my beer, it was whiskey time. I warmed by the fire and happily drank all the bourbon in my flask. Life was good.

The next day I was groggy. I hung around brewing coffee. There was at least one grouse drumming right near camp! Of course, there’s no hunting here. I can live with that. Nobody needs to be sound asleep in their 5th wheel when some grungy freak starts blasting wildlife with a shotgun.

I procrastinated for several hours but finally rolled out on Honey Badger. I have figured out how to easily stow a hunting implement (hereafter referred to as a pool cue) on tiny Honey Badger. It works very well, but deployment is slow… if I see a grouse while riding, the bird will have time to make a cup of tea, lay an egg, and still have time to scamper off into the brush while I’m messing with straps. Not to mention only in fiction can one aim a pool cue while wearing a full face helmet.

Not knowing where else to go, I rode about 10 miles to one of many ghost towns in the area. Call it “Champion”. Champion is now nothing but a picnic table under a pavilion, an outhouse, a collapsed building, and a place to park my truck. But it’s a good marker from which to navigate this area. You can’t help but recognize it.

Champion also has the nicest outhouse you’ve ever seen. Something like “the ladies auxiliary of Champion supporters” maintain it. There’s decent woodwork, a broom to tidy up, plenty of extra fluffy toilet paper, and potpourri! I’m a fan of anything done well and I declare that all outhouses should have potpourri. In fact, if a person wound up homeless, there’s a lot worse places to hang out than this outhouse. It’s just so pretty. If there was a coffee can there, I’d leave a buck as a tip every time I use it… in support of the ladies auxiliary .

I didn’t take any photos. I just plain forgot. Sorry.

I thought about hunting right there but it’s a ghost town. I’d probably fall in a well. So I rode a few miles away and set out on foot. There was a nice trail. Everything looked good. I did flush a few. But in the end, I came back to the bike empty handed. Honey Badger was like “what the hell was that all about?” What can I say, I tried.

It was unusually hot and I’d worked up a sweat. I’d only hiked a couple miles by the trail but I’d beaten the brush all around and was worn out. When some rando on the internet says they’ll ride out social collapse “living off the land”… they have no clue. They’ll be dead in a week. Skeletons in excellent matching camo, carrying two AR-15s and six full mags. Give ‘em a week and they’d trade it all for a Cliff Bar and a water filter. That’s the truth of it; hunting is hard work! Everything outdoors is hard work.

I wolfed down a couple handfuls of gorp and headed for greener pastures.

Ten miles to the east I found a road that specifically bans ATV’s (a rarity in these parts). It took a bit to puzzle it out. I think the land accessed by that particular road is managed by some slightly different agency than the others. It probably applies blanket restrictions written by Yalies in DC. 

“We’re a stiff uptight wildlife oriented agency. We can’t have Deplorables riding around having fun!”

“OK sir, so you want to close every road?”

“Yes!”

“This will reduce our funding to the same as roadless wilderness. It was nice knowing you.”

“Wait, what?!?”

“Nobody wants to fund absolute wilderness at a higher per-acre rate than more heavily used land. Do you want a gate on the road or shall we have excavators dig a hole to block it?”

“We gotta’ protect our phoney baloney jobs! What do National Parks do?”

“They allow licensed vehicles on some roads, ATVs on none, and hassle everyone while they do it.”

“OK fine, do that.”

“Very well sir.”

That’s how I legally rolled past a sign that bans 1,500 pound ATVs but allows a 6,000 pound Ford Truck. This happened in a forest that overall has more ATVs (UTVs) than all the cars/trucks/Curmudgeons combined. Does that make sense? Of course not, it’s the 20^th month of 2020 and nothing makes sense! 

I don’t make the rules but its handy when I can use them to my advantage. The license plate on the back of a street legal Yamaha TW200 sometimes does magic. At the moment I could go places that are denied to mechanically superior UTVs. It’s not fair but life ‘ain’t fair. 

In case you’re wondering, Honey Badger probably weighs 500 pounds counting my fat ass and all the gear I’ve strapped to it. Ridden the way I operate it, my outfit is probably lighter on the land than almost anything with wheels. Not that such things matter to regulators, I’m just sayin’.

I’m glad I took this path. It was such a pretty road! Like every good scenic road, it went nowhere and took it’s sweet time getting there. 

After several miles I found a spot, hopped off, and went hunting. By now it was blistering hot. I hunted my ass off… no dice. Sometimes earnest effort don’t mean shit.

When I got back to my bike I’d had enough. I was roasted and maybe a little dehydrated. When the game is outwitting you that bad you’re not hunting at all, you’ve devolved to armed hiking. I was tired of that!

I drank a ton of water, took a Tylenol, and ate a Cliff bar. I decided the rest of the day was “riding time”. The fresh breeze would cool me down. There would be no grouse dinner tonight but that’s why God created Mountain House freeze dried meals. 

Two miles later a rabbit flashed by Honey Badger’s front tire so close I could see his beady little eyes. No chance I’d get the shotgun out in time. He was gone. Rabbit dinner would have been cool.

The road got gnarly. Any truck could have handled the first part. Now it was lifted Jeep terrain… which my bike shrugged off like it was no big deal. There were deep ruts that might eat a stock SUV. Despite this, I rode like a King on rails; navigating the easy 2’ wide raised center between brutally deep wheel ruts. Sometimes that’s a hard peak to stay on (they get pointy) but this one was flat at the top (probably shaved down by someone’s rear differential) so it was like a highway just for me. I felt smug dodging deep treacherous ruts without much work at all. After the rough patch it smoothed out. I passed some abandoned cabins and a well maintained little graveyard but I was enjoying the cool breeze too much to stop and faff about. Eventually my sweet little road ditched back out on a main system dirt road. 

By now, the sun was low in the horizon. The wise choice was to head for camp. Of course I didn’t do that…

I’d had the most mellow evening I could ever want. However, my night’s sleep didn’t fare well. My injury (which I will not specify but has absolutely nothing to do with covid so nobody in medical fields would care anyway) kept me up. I was comfortable on my cot but the ache kept me awake. Not “eyes wide and screaming in pain” awake, just “you aint getting a lot of REM tonight” awake.

Then the coyotes started a rave outside my tent. I’ve always had the theory that there’s wolf territory and coyote territory. Where wolves prowl coyotes stay quiet. This was wolf territory, but the coyotes were howling like maniacs. 

When that passed I drifted off… gently… quietly…

YOWWWLWLWWYLWLLL

More damn coyotes. Like a million of ‘em and they were out there with Bigfoot who drank my beer and they were just tearing it up out there. It was like a rugby team on PCBs.

So much for quiet forests.

I was near a lake. Maybe a half mile off or less. It’s the fall migration (I guess) because the damn birds got all pissed off by the coyotes. They started squawking like my hens when there’s a raccoon in the feed bin. I don’t really know what I was hearing. It sounded like six million Canadian geese and a hundred coyotes were having their own version of Burning Man.

I did get some sleep, eventually. It wasn’t as much as I’d have liked. Life is like that. Sometimes Bigfoot screws up the settings on your shortwave and the damn geese won’t shut up.

Sometime in the night, after the geese wore out and the coyotes packed it in, my injury flared up and I had to go to the truck to find ibuprofen. A grouse was drumming. I took that as a good sign. I’d bag a few grouse on the morrow!

More to follow.