elfs | Camping, Day Two: Monday

Girls at Sulphide Camp.

After a morning breakfast of Omaha's famous breakfast muffins and coffee, we made chicken salad sandwiches (the trick is to make the salad before you leave) and discovered that the dry ice trick might have worked too well-- some of the milk was partially frozen. We re-arranged the icebox.

We headed up through a light drizzle to Baker Ridge, but the trail was unpassable. The ranger station had had posting warnings that many of the trails had been damaged in last year's floods and this trail had not been maintained in a long time; in fact, it was mostly used by daring climbers for a quicker access to Mt. Baker's eastern flank. At the trailhead, such as it was, we found a burned out bonfire and a note reading "Party Pyro Losers."

The weather was wet and cold, and my body was feeling it. My left wrist hurt something awful, and I suspect I did something to it while loading up the clamshell. My right knee is likewise dubious about any strange torsions. It all seems out to remind me how old I am.

We drove over to the Sulphide Camp trail and did a hike. It was only about four miles round trip, a good warmup for the week to come. Yamaraashi-chan found a root that looked an awful lot like a dead turkey, and that's what we nicknamed it. We finally got tired of her swinging it and told her to pitch it into the river. Kouryou-chan called out "Slug alert!" and "Poop alert!" whenever we passed a slug or evidence of horses on the trails. At one point we came across five slugs crossing the trail. Yamaraashi-chan said, "Look! A slugfest!" The GPS system was only marginally useful; it kept fading in and out

A Dragon!

as the ravine blocked satellite reception. We also spotted this burned stump, twisted and black. In the distance, it was Lovecraftian and frightening, and even getting close didn't make the unease it created go away completely.

After the hike, we went home and had pizza, made by slicing open garlic bread and slathering the insides with cheese and pizza sauce. The girls made it all vanish, then practiced the fine art of roasting marshmallows.

I think the latrines here are what Nietzsche had in mind when he wrote, "Remember: when you peer into the abyss, the abyss also peers into you."