"This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere: the dew is never all dried at once: a shower is forever falling, vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls."

John Muir

While in the Corps, I spent time one summer on voluntary active duty at Bridgeport, California. I was an instructor at the Mountain Warfare Training Center. This base is high up in the Sierra Nevadas, northeast of Sacramento, waaaay out in the boonies. The base camp there, Pickel Meadows, is over six thousand feet, and the training areas has peaks that reach twelve thousand. Snow remains on them year round.

That's me in the middle...

On the weekends, when on liberty, most of the Jarheads would head for the fleshpots (the closest one was Reno) to soak up some beer and hookers. The company first sergeants would set up chartered buses for the trips. We called them the Poontang Express. :-)

Believe it or not, I never went. :-) Figured I could get enough of that when I got back to Houston.

Most of the time I'd just hike up to some mountain meadow, carrying next to nothing. Just a knife, some matches, a poncho and a blanket for the chilly nights.

The base is thousands of acres in the middle of a national forest, so there may not have been another human for miles.

Up Above The Snowline

I'd hang out, read a paperback or two, and nap naked in the sun. I'd catch little eight inch brook trout on a handline, and roast them on a stick with the little wild onions you could find up there. I drank from the natural springs that welled up from the hillsides, putting my lips right to the little hole in the earth where the water gushed out and sucking it down straight from Mother Earth like a baby hanging on his mother's nipple. Which, of course, in the largest sense, I was.

I took my camera a few times, an old Pentax Spotmatic. I set the delay and took a coupla pics of me up there. Once, on a lark, up above the line where the snow sits all year, I took some nekkid pics in the afternoon sun. Even so, that high up, it was chilly, so the "shrinkage" factor came into play. I've resisted the urge to ummm... retouch the photo. As I said the other day, in my discussion of being totally transparent online, once you're naked on the internet, what's left to hide? :-)

All good things come to an end, though, and it was soon time to return to the real world.

After months of that outdoor life, living at altitude, hiking sometimes well above the treeline to ten and eleven thousand feet, when my plane landed back in Houston, the air felt so thick and full of oxygen it was like I had to remind myself to take a breath every minute or so.

Those days instilled in me a love of mountain country that has never left me all these long years later. Had I not such strong family ties here on the Gulf Coast, I think I would have left long ago to return to them.

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On the spur of the moment, I dropped by a garage sale last week. I bought a coupla old PC's, mostly to use as gifts for folks that don't yet have and can't yet afford one, and a complete set of the FoxFire books.

I'm really happy about the latter. Just last month I was in a used bookstore, and came very close to spending $100 for the set, and picked them up today, along with a half-dozen other books, for the low, low price of $.50 each. WooHoo!

For those of you that don't know, the FoxFire books are a combo historical record/how-to encyclopedia that cover everything from building a log cabin to churning butter to wild medicinal herbs to building a mandolin or flute by hand.

All of the information was based on teams interviewing elderly folk that used to actually do this stuff, supplemented by teams doing things like meticulously taking old cabins apart, and noting the manner in which they were made.

They're sitting on a shelf in my bathroom. It'll be a few months before I'll need anything further to read while I'm in there. :-)

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Friday evening we went to the Crawfish Festival in Spring, Texas, (just a mile or so down the road from our soon-to-be new home) to relax. CG had been waaaaay stressed out that week after our Evile Landlord gave us five days notice to move. (short version of the story - we were month to month, as we've been putting in bids on houses, and they found a long-term tenant)

We had had to scramble to find a new place to live, which we did, just under the wire, only to have been given another week's reprieve.

I wasn't near as stressed. I could give a shit, and told her we could live in a tent for a month or so iffn we had to. At the risk of sounding sexist, I think women get stressed about being homeless. I know CG does.

But before the No Place To Live scenario blew up, we had planned to do the Crawfish Festival anyway, as I wanted to see one of my favorite zydeco bands, , who would be performing there.

They didn't start until late, so we wiled away the time looking at all the crafts, people-watching, and eating festival food (I went off my diet to have some fried boudin - it was sinfully delicious) and assorted other stuff. Since I was blowing the diet, and I've been Berry, Berry, Good, I had a few brews to help wash the boudin down.

The Crawfish Festival is very much a family affair, so there were lots of rugrats ankle-biting and crumb-snatching around. Kids make the best subjects for photos - point a camera at them, and there's none of this stiff self-concious posing you get with adults.

One little girl was getting her hair painted...

...and I took a pic of the butterfly the artist stenciled on the back of her head, just so she could see it in the LCD of the Agfa...

Her brother, evidently a proud Texan, opted for the Lone Star look...

...but he didn't seem to be as excited about the results.

We wandered around, eating and drinking, and ran into the local recruiters for the Army. They had a custom painted Hummer there, which drew kids of all ages to clamber around in in the cavernous interior.

It wasn't too long after that we ran across a vendor selling the chance to climb one of those rock walls.

CG: "Didn't you used to do that in the Marines?"

Me: "Yeah.

CG: "Why don't you try it? It'll be fun."

Me: "Hon, that was twenty years ago. I ain't even looked at a rock since then."

CG: "But you've been working out, losing weight - I bet you could do it."

Me: (sigh)

After strapping on the harness, and handing the dude the required baksheesh, I started on the Mama Bear wall. I didn't wanna embarass myself by only making it up half the Papa Bear wall, and the toddlers, octogenerians, and wheelchair patients climbing the Baby Bear wall shamed me from trying it.

I made it up surprisingly easily. Those things, with their manufactured handholds, are a *lot* easier than real rock, and the hydraulic belay system they were using ends up taking on some portion of your weight.

After a brief rest, I climbed Papa Bear, only to fall about three feet from the top when I tried to switch hands on the only available handhold. Call it a draw in Marcus vs. the Mountain.

A bit later, we saw this contraption. I dunno what to call it, but it looked like that thing Angelina Jolie used in Tomb Raider. Two very tall poles, with lengths of thick what looked like surgical tubing attached to a harness. You strap the thing on, and you can bounce up and down about thirty feet on this pneumatic mattress. Having already been warmed to the idea of strange aerial adventures that day, it looked like fun. I suppose the beer may have had a bit to do with it, too.

And it was, until the end.

I had been bouncing up and down, doing back flips. I got the singles down pat, but I never could get a double landed - I kept hitting on my back after a one-and-a-half.

CG was laughing her ass off the entire time, trying to get some pics with the Agfa. She did in fact, but they're kinda crappy, as it was early evening, and the light was failing. I had tried to give her a quick lesson in using the camera in manual mode, so she could set the focus, whitepoint, and aperture to make it work under those conditions, but her eyes just kinda glazed over and she said, "Yeahright, sure."

So, they didn't come out so well. I had to tweak the hell out of them for this entry, and in doing so, they got all grainy and washed out. Sorry 'bout that.

Anyway, after about five minutes of this nonsense I was pretty blown. (Start jumping up and down as hard as you can, and see how long you last, OK? :-) So, I called out to the operator that I was done, thank you very much. He said sure, as I was coming down.

I hit the mattress, and tried one last mighty leap to nail that elusive double, and started to tuck and rotate...

...as the operator hit the switch that reversed the winch that released the tension on the elastic cords that were connected to the harness that turned my feeble vertical leaps into Olympian two story bounds...

We all know White Men Can't Jump.

It wasn't very long before I realized that something was Very Wrong, as I started back down to Mother Earth. I also knew there was no way in freakin' hell that I was gonna pull off even one flip, much less two. In fact, It looked like I was gonna do a pretty good imitation of a pile driver, and drill a hole in the ground with my noggin. That little mattress on the ground was only a foot thick, just designed to cushion the landing after the harness slowed you up, not to take the weight of a free-falling carcass. I had been able to feel the ground under my feet every time I landed as I bottomed out. Otherwise, there was no way to get a firm foundation to push against as you jumped.

Fortunately, courtesy of my checkered past as a Government Trained Killer and nightclub doorman, I've some hard-won experience in unwillingly and unwittingly contacting the ground at random angles at unusual speeds with various parts of my anatomy. So the reptilian part of my brain that concerns itself with physical survival started sounding klaxons, setting off alarms, shooting signal flares, and sending out panic-stricken little lizard men couriers to run around with their hair on fire, jumping up and down, and waving little scaly arms screaming

"TUCK AND ROLL, TUCK AND ROLL!!!!!!"

So I did. Thus not coming down on the top of my head, but on the back, as I tucked my chin into my chest, and flopped onto my back. I don't know for a fact that I saved myself a broken neck or a concussion, but I wouldn't have liked my odds.

However...

The force of the landing, such as it was, drove my somewhat Leno-esque chin straight into my upper chest, rattling my teeth, and leaving me somewhat dazed.

It hurt to breathe. I have evidently either severely bruised or cracked my sternum.

I had a similar injury in college lifting weights. Trying to bench press a new max, I managed to pull one of my ribs loose where it attached to the sternum. Not all the way off, just loosened it a bit. It hurt like the dickens for weeks. This feels the same way.

I managed to make it through the rest of the evening by walking around like I had a ramrod up my ass, not moving my arms, drinking heroic amounts of beer, and eating Tylenol like M&Ms. Wayne was good, from what I remember.

The next morning was when it really started hurting. I can't lay down on my side or my stomach. I have to lay perfectly flat on my back. Then, it just aches. Any slight movement sends sharp shooting pains across my chest. Yesterday, I had to cough a few times. I thought it was gonna kill me. By today, if I sit in the chair here and type very carefully, it's not too bad, but any twisting motion hurts. I can't pick up anything much heavier than a book.

I had to drive out, give Nonna a kiss for Mother's Day, and tend to my hounds yesterday. It hurt to turn the steering wheel.

If the doctor way back then was right, there's nothing that can be done other than just give it time to heal.

Which I don't really have. CG and I are to do the last of the packing tonight, and I'm supposed to be the brawn in this move hauling all this shit outta here starting tomorrow...

Anybody got any morphine?

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