Peruvian Nights and Jamaican Days

CITY-FOLK..

I started reading A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson. Actually, I'm about 1/4 of the way through it.

He's a pretty good writer. He knows how to write humor, that's for sure. But I almost couldn't stand all the nervous fretting and fear-mongering that makes up the first chunk of the book. Lots of nimby-pimbying about bears and wolves and stuff. Just silly. It's not even like they're grizzly bears. And a fair bit of whining and nancy-boying about a 40 lb. pack. Come on..this guy probably weighs like 250 lbs. A pack that size should feel like a light vest to someone his size. And then the constant skitterishness about "the woods." As if there is some sort of evil haunting the forests of Appalachia. Well, maybe there is, but it's not the wildlife. Compared to "the city," "the woods" feel like a mother's womb to me. I'll take my chances with the bears, over people, anyday.

Of course, I was nervous tramping through the undergrowth in Banff National Park, where we could conceivably run into a grizzly at any time. But 'bear attack' is way low on the list of things I'm nervous about while backpacking. First on the list: a ruptured appendix. Your outlook in surviving a charging grizzly is positively rosy compared with acute appendicitis in the backcountry (that stupid, traitorous, free-loading, superfluous tube!).

Maybe he should have stayed home. You're always hearing about some "experienced hiker" (read: city folk with lots of expensive gear) who decides to hike to the summit of a mountain too late in the year with dark clouds rolling in and then forces other people to risk their lives rescuing them because they can't seem to get their dumb ass back down the mountain because, big surprise, IT'S SNOWING.

I say get rid of search and rescue crews. Wilderness ought to be a place where, when you venture into it, you have no guarantee of leaving in one piece. Otherwise, it's just a big city park. The last thing I want when I'm wandering through the wild is a group of lard-asses in orange jackets on ATV's looking after me. I never contribute to the search and rescue fund when I buy fishing or hunting licenses. The only guarantees I want are my trusty KA-BAR and my own good common sense.

Our "Wilderness Areas" ought to be off limits to any form of motorized transportation, even in the event of an 'emergency,' and you ought to have to sign a waiver before you enter saying that you understand the risks, and that you are responsible for your own sorry ass once you cross the boundary into the wilderness area. People not comfortable with that should stick to the well-groomed concrete trails and pit toilets of the National Park(ing lot) Service.

I realize this may strike some as a hardline stance, but I make no apology for it. People that make the decision to venture into the wild ought to be willing to face up to the risks inherent in so doing.

And if, someday, I'm tramping about in the woods, and a bear charges from out of nowhere, rips the flesh from my face, and leaves me to be picked over by coyotes and buzzards, then understand that I would consider that a dignified death and after-death. Vastly preferable to a slow death - painful months in a hospital bed with IVs in my arms, tubes down my throat and up my pecker, and final entombment in a concrete sepulchre.

What was I posting about?

-m