June Sweeps - Day 516

I woke up super early from a bad dream, the morning light just starting to creep over the eastern hills.  Marshal Latham seems to get up with the sun all the time (something that astounds me), because he's always taking pictures of the sunrise.  It didn't occur to me to get up and take a picture when the sun came up, and I laid there listening to my heart beat until I fell back asleep.

I woke up again with only the ticking of the clock that I could hear, and got up this time, still earlier than I do at home (I don't know what it is about the cabin that makes me wake up early--even when I'd go in the bedroom where it was absolutely cavern dark, I'd wake up early [I think because that bed was so hard, I couldn't stand it very long], though I'm the furthest thing from a morning person).  I went out on the back deck (it's forty-six degrees out there, which isn't freezing, but is plenty cold for the first of July) and saw the hummingbird sitting in her nest above me.  I wonder if I could go up to the top and get a picture looking down.  Probably not, but I'll try.

Nope, the angle's wrong.  Even if I opened the window, the screen would prevent a photo.  I'll have to take one from underneath and call it good.  Or I could go up the constantly-eroding embankment behind the cabin and try a picture there (but hummingbirds and their nests are so small, I doubt you'll be able to see anything).

I saw the hummingbird zooming around when I went out there.  She sped up to the nest and I raised my phone to hopefully get a picture with both her and the nest in it, but I couldn't focus in time.  I wonder if she sees me as a predator (like the robin did that would squawk and get upset every time I went out the front door--my brother talked about shooting her, and still says he's going to get rid of the nest, even though it's now empty), or if I'm just a curiosity, unable to fly and possibly harm her eggs.  I wonder what hummingbird eggs look like, and if I would ever know once the babies had been born (chicks?  Would baby hummingbirds be chicks, or hummingbirdlings, or what?).

Eventually, the day began, the sun started shining, and the ugly tuba of a chainsaw started up, down the road a ways, but loud enough to hear with the windows and doors all closed.  I wonder if my Uncle Jerry, who was once a Mennonite and tends to eschew the vulgarity of civilization (I always tell the story that when he and my dad were building this cabin, he always pushed that there be no television and no radio and no video games here, that it be some kind of a refuge or preserve, like a dry county in the South) would be as bothered by the irritating growls of the four-wheeled ATVs and the roar of the chainsaws up here.

Of course, my Uncle Jerry has slowed down some, and doesn't come up here very much anymore, and while that may be more due to his wife's outrage that my dad left the cabin to us rather than to him, or even my fault (I keep imagining that I'll take down all my dad's awful John Wayne memorabilia and replace it with Star Wars stuff one day*, but I've never dared), since I now use this place every week--everybody else is too busy--and my foul presence taints everything it nears.  

As prophesied before my birth.

Sit-ups Today: 100

I got a movie from Netflix called LONELY ARE THE BRAVE, a 1962 Western set in modern times starring Kirk Douglas.  It was in black and white (surely by choice, since it had a pretty big budget) and had Walter Matthau, Gena Rowlands, and George Kennedy in it (in an unusual villainous role).  It did this really weird thing by introducing Carol O'Connor early on as a truck driver with a semi rig filled with toilets in it, and would cut back to him from time to time, seemingly without purpose or connection to the rest of the film.  But finally realized that this was Chekov's Carol O'Connor we were seeing, and it was going to pay off in the last scene.

Right now, I'm hearing a big wood-chipper machine down the road that trees are being fed into (unquestionably the same trees being felled by the earlier chainsaw).  My brother, much like my dad, is an outdoorsman, and capable of fixing things and chopping things and building things, and I've never had any talent (or interest) in that area.  Those are important skills to have . . . and I probably have no skills that are useful to society.  In the apocalypse, what use will being able to do the whole "I'm hereby serving notice that these walls will not hold the greatest criminal mind of our time" speech from SUPERMAN in a Gene Hackman voice be to the new status quo?  Hopefully, I'll be plenty fat again by then, and will fill the bellies of those noble men who will turn Priuses and Mini-Coopers into death machines for gladiatorial entertainment.

Sit-ups Today: 100

It is a new month, and I ought to work hard to get some stuff published in July.  I do a Patreon address every month where I lay out my goals (along with some twisted Sunday School topic) for the month to come, and I considered yesterday NOT doing that.  I might just sit down before the sun starts to heat the logs of the cabin and it stops being so quiet, and just talk about something else.

I'm editing the next "Delusions of Grandeur podcast episode, one we did with Big Anklevich.  And I gotta say, most of the funny things in the episode were said by him.  It's a real shame he doesn't podcast anymore, even if there are only a few people out there that would ever hear what he does.  I copied and pasted a big chunk of the show into a new file--when I finish editing that section, I will reward myself by laying down on the couch and reading my book ("Project Hail Mary" by Andy Weir).  And yes, that's probably code for "falling asleep five minutes after starting to read my book."

Push-ups Today: 60

I went outside, briefly, and walked around the cabin (I considered getting my brother's SD card out of his camera and checking for photos I could post here, but I didn't), and figured that the sun is shining, and maybe I will go for a walk around the lake, take a couple of pictures, and get to the top of that SOUND OF MUSIC hill before I can waste another hour.

So, I did it.  I drove over to the lake, a little before one, and parked my car, then walked around the lake toward the hills.  I don't know what the technical difference between a hill and a mountain is, but this thing was a lot bigger than I thought.  You could pick a landmark and walk toward it, and after the amount of time you figured it would take to get to it, you were only halfway there.

Rish's new friend.

I found a big, Gandalf-sized branch while rounding the lake that I picked up to use as a walking stick, even though it was way too long, but I was glad that I had it by the end.  By the time I reached the top, I was really leaning on it, and by the time I was reenacting the first scene in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, I was depending on it to not get hit in the face by branches, or just fall down.**

Maybe I was channeling my Uncle Jerry, because although I had my phone, I chose not to listen to music while I walked around, and just listened to nature (there were occasionally woodpeckers, and I heard an eagle call a time or two).  Of course, that made it all the more noticeable when something large moved out in the tall brush, and once I heard hoofbeats, so I'm assuming it was deer (though it could've been cows, though they tend to be less skittish around human beings). 

Rish and (only) friend.

I talked in-depth about my hike as part of my Patreon address this month, but let me sum up by saying, I went around a big forest of brush (the brush was way over my head) rather than trying to go through it, because I didn't trust that I wouldn't get lost or stuck in there, and went all the way around it instead, and up the hill after that.

I eventually got to the rocky top, then turned around and went down, but on the other side this time (seeing what appeared to be a forest on that side of the hill).  And it looked exactly like the kind of forest you see in the movies . . . RETURN OF THE JEDI among them.  There were tons of fallen logs, sometimes crisscrossing each other, and I foolishly walked on them, using my big walking stick for balance.

It was fun.  Beyond the forest (which had tons of burrows for some kinds of animal--woodchucks? beaver? raccoons? CHUDs?), were a group of ponds, all still and clean, not swimming with frogs and tadpoles as I would've predicted.

I went around the ponds, and then hit the wall of brush again.

The brush was high--ten, twelve feet--and though I tried to make my way through it, the trails ended and I felt like I was stuck in a maze after taking the wrong path.  I ended up, frustrated, just pushing through the branches, using my big walking stick to press things out of my way, and continuing via sheer force.  It was exhausting and slow-going, and pretty darn miserable.  If I had been smart, I would've gone back the way I came and gone all the way back through the woods to get back to where I came from, but that would've tacked on an extra fifteen minutes or so to my hike, instead of the forty-five minutes or so it cost me trying to make it through the brush maze.

I finally made it through, spending twice the time on my hike I thought it would take me, and while I had been wise enough to take a sweater (in case it got cold--which it did not), I had not brought any water along (in case I got thirsty--which I indeed did).

I had been scratched up (thank goodness I'd worn long pants instead of shorts) and sunburned, and my legs ached like crazy the next day.  I can't even remember what I did when I got back to the cabin, except that it probably involved drinking a ton of cold water, then laying down for five minutes (which stretched into an hour once I closed my eyes).

But hey, I'm counting that as my hike.  For last month.

Words Today: 386

*To my immediate left is a 24x14ish black and white picture of a 1930s John Wayne with spurs hung on either side.  It would please me to no end to replace it with a same-size poster of Darth Vader and TIE Fighters bookending it, just for the . . . I guess you'd say "sacrilege" of it.  But honestly, my dad is gone and has no more say in the matter, and the only member of my family who would pitch a fit would be my older sister, and she hasn't come here in years, and proclaimed this summer that she would never step foot in here again.  I guess I don't do it, despite all the kitsch in here (my god, there are four John Wayne images within sight of me, and no exaggeration, forty-one items of cowboy decoration (NOT counting the Duke stuff) ranging from a wood carving of a deer to a button with "Gunsmoke"'s Festus on it my dad got from actor Ken Curtis at a convention.  Would Spider-man action figures and autographed photos of Carrie Fisher and Kenny Baker be all that more unsightly?

**I did actually fall once, just took a misstep, grabbed for a branch that bent instead of held me, and went right onto my knees and non-stick hand.  It could've been a lot worse, of course, but it was still a bit embarrassing.  Jeremiah Johnson I am not.