I Am Not Dead

No, I’m not dead. I didn’t suffer a horrible injury and lose the use of my typing fingers—all two of them. I haven’t fallen into a catatonic depression that prevents me from communicating with the outside world. I just haven’t written any posts to this blog in some time.

There are reasons for this. One is a lack of inspiration. Let’s face it, North Georgia is not the most exciting area in the world. Visiting Fannin County is not on any thrill seeker’s bucket list. People come here for rest and relaxation, to commune with nature, to watch deer gambol happily in the fields, to see the seasons come and go—if they wanted excitement they’d go somewhere else. While communing with nature and watching the seasons come and go may be good for the soul, they don’t make great fodder for an entertaining blog. To make this blog remotely interesting, I need to see or experience something that has a dash of oddness, a smattering of quirkiness or a bit of the unusual.

Sad to say, not much that is odd, quirky or unusual has happened around here lately. Fact is, life in Fannin County has gotten somewhat boring. What once passed for eccentric or noteworthy has become normal and expected. What was once idiosyncratic is now commonplace and humdrum. Finding subject matter to write about is becoming harder.

Another reason I haven’t written any posts is because I’ve been busy doing other things. Among other things, I worked on a fundraiser for the local homeless shelter, organized a two-day workshop on invasive species, tilled under my summer garden, painted my pole barn and went on a five day camping trip with the men’s group from my church. I’ve also written several anti-Hillary columns for one of the local newspapers. (Now there’s a subject that provides a writer with plenty of material. You can view my columns at http://fannincountygazette.blogspot.com/ if you are interested.)

I’ve written about a camping trip with the St. Luke’s Men’s Group (SLMG) before. It’s not a young group—I’m the baby of the group if you can believe that. Our camping trips resemble a reunion of veterans of the Great War.

We do these camping trips once or twice a year. I think the object of the trips is to build comradery and fellowship or maybe it’s just to get away from the wife for a few days to fart and scratch freely in the presence of other men who are farting and scratching freely.

This year we went to Appletree Campground in the Nantahala National Forest near Topton, North Carolina. It is remote. There is no cell phone reception. To use your cellphone you have to leave the campground, drive a few miles down the road to a fire station, stand on the northeast corner of the porch, face east and stick your thumb up your ass. That’ll get you one bar of reception. Perhaps it’s not the best place for a bunch of older men to go. The EMS response time is measured in days, and the nearest big hospital is probably in Chattanooga.

The men in the SLMG are great guys. All of them have held highly responsible jobs before retirement so they bring some accomplishments to the table. But, as I said, even though they are remarkably spry and energetic, they are not spring chickens. Many of them are hard of hearing so conversations around the campfire at night when they can’t see each other’s lips are interesting. (Phil: “What do you think about predestination?” Harry: “What? I’m not going anywhere.” Tom: “What about my hair?” Bill: “Well, I think the nation’s going to hell.”)

Like most gatherings of men, there is a lot of bullshitting at these camping trips. Bullshitting is a technical term. It describes the social interaction among men in a group, and it consists of an endless stream of antidotes, reminiscences, opinions, one-uppers, jokes, first person adventures, and outright lies usually fueled by alcohal. No useful or meaningful information is ever conveyed when men are bullshitting. If you’ve ever followed a men’s foursome around a golf course you have a pretty good idea of what bullshitting is.

My theory is that bullshitting serves the same social function among a group of men that picking nits off each other serves in a band of chimpanzees—it reinforces group ties. It’s an innately human phenomenon. It probably has its roots in the days when early man sat huddled around the campfire trying to entertain themselves and not think about the loud rustling noises out in the brush.

The highlight of the camping trip was the hike that most of us took the first day. It was intended to be a three-miler. It turned into a five and a half hour, 7 and 1/2 mile Bataan Death March. We started out at mid-morning full of good cheer and bonhomie looking like the seven dwarves in retirement. By the time it ended and we straggled into camp we looked like we had crossed the beach at Peleliu.

The problem was a crappy trail map and a poorly marked side trail. The trail map looked like it had been scrawled by a drunken and dyslexic pirate. All it was missing was a cross with the words “Here be treasure.”

There came a point when we realized we must have missed the side trail that would have taken us back to camp. By then we had climbed to the top of a long ridge, and the side trail was a couple of miles back. We should have turned back, but this group is nothing but optimistic. So we decided to truck on.

A mile or so later, after we descended a long, steep and narrow trail to a poorly maintained forestry road, it began to dawn on us that we really had no frigging clue where we were or where we were going. At that moment every one turned into Lewis and Clark. Guys were consulting compasses and GPS devices trying to determine which way was north. I think one of the guys was channeling Hiawatha and trying to use the sun to figure out where north was. It was a little disturbing when they came up with different conclusions but they eventually worked it out. I’ll be honest, I didn’t feel all that confident in a direction that was worked out as a consensus judgment. Of course, knowing which way is north is of no practical benefit when you don’t know which direction your home base is. But we all felt better for it. If we were going to die on the trail, at least we do so with our heads facing east in Indian fashion.

Several of the guys spent an inordinate amount of time bending over an old trial map disagreeing on where we were. I think they finally worked out that we were still in North Carolina. Actually, they did better than that. They narrowed our location down to an area only slightly smaller than the King Ranch.

Not that it mattered much. To go back meant climbing back up a long and steep trail and walking several miles. No one was up for that. We optimistically thought forging on would get us back to camp quicker and easier. I can’t remember why we came to that conclusion. Why did we think the road would take us to where we wanted to go, much less be shorter and easier, when we didn’t know where we were? I favored following the road but for another reason. I figured there was a greater chance they would find our bodies on a road rather than in the woods.

The terrain on the downhill side of the road was thickly wooded and dauntingly steep. There was no way we were going to make it down that way (not to mention we had no idea where down led to). If we weren’t going to retrace our steps, the only real option was to follow the road and hope that it led somewhere.

So we trudged and trudged and trudged. We knew we had to descend to get anywhere but the road refused to do that. It would go down a little and then go up a little. One of the group had an altimeter, and he started calling out the elevation every few minutes. It was like being in a bad submarine movie: “Three hundred feet and holding, Captain.” Spirits and energy were lagging.

At one point during this long and tiresome march someone began taking stock of how much water and food we had. I think it came out to three breakfast bars, an apple and five bottles of water. We were cautioned to drink sparingly and save the food for an emergency. I began having visions of the Donner Pass party. Fortunately, I had my little .380 pistol with me and was prepared to use it if we descended into cannibalism.

Finally, at long last, the road began to slowly descend. Two of us moved out ahead of the group. As we rounded a bend there, by God, was our campground. Talk about dumb luck.

Needless to say, that was the end of our hiking forays for that camping trip. The rest of the time we sat around the campfire with our drinks of choice in our hands trying to have a conversation. With this group that’s a challenge all by itself.