Shelters

3/12/2013


Shelters

I am awake.  I think I have to pee.  Yup..... I definitely have to pee.  Wonder what time it is ?  Maybe I can wait until it gets light, or at least close to it.   I reach to the side of my sleeping bag.......in the dark.... find it...... and then turn on my phone.  While I wait for it to fire up, I hear "D.B. Cooper", who is plastered in next to me,turn in his bag.   He is a tosser, and turner too....like me.  Every time he moves,  his air mattress sounds like ten clowns are twisting balloons into weiner dogs and elephants.    D.B. stayed at the hostel,  at Mountain Crossings,  in Neel Gap .  I don't recognize him,  but I do know that air mattress.  Two guys toward the other end of the shelter are snoring big time.  one sounds really deep,  like, I imagine, a grizz in its den in winter.  That has got to be "Gar Bear",   a 24 year old,  280 lb. giant. "Gar Bear" wrestled for Concordia up at Morehead, Mn, and played football......and he's a talker too..... so we had lots to talk about earlier, while his girlfriend, "Bear Snack" changed out of her wet clothes, behind the towel he was holding. She was shivering pretty badly, so hypothermia had already set in.  Luckily,  she was able to get dry clothes on,  and into a bag right away.  The rest of us had squeezed together, to make room for them.....to make room for one more than the shelter holds.  Yah.....we are packed in tight.

 The other snoring has a higher pitch, more similar to the whine of an outboard motor.  I remove my ear plugs.  Yup, he sounds like an outboard all right.  I look at the phone...it is 1:00 AM.   Crap.   I can't wait that long.....I gotta get up.   I turn on the amber beam of my headlamp, rather than the white, as a courtesy.....unzip my bag....... and feel the cold replace it's warmth instantly.  While searching in my bag for my Smartwool top, I note that I truly reek.  Wow do I stink!   It's only been two days since I bathed,  and did my laundry at Neel Gap.  The advertisement said 'coin operated laundry'.  It was a single washer and dryer, stuffed into a closet.......hahahaha.  Last time,  because I wore my hiking clothes on the plane,  I went 6 days in the same clothes, and was not this ripe.  Or maybe you just get desensitized?  A little pay back to "D.B. Cooper" for that air mattress!    Find my top and bottoms, put on both of my coats........crawl forward across the wood floor to my shoes.....put my bare feet in em..... and step off the edge of the shelter platform.
   Of course as I am tying my shoes,  it starts raining harder,  than it had been.......  My rain coat is hanging directly over DB, and since I have already fallen on him once,  tonight...... and since he is a sourpus,  I step out into the dark,  the wind,  and the increasing rain.  I choose a big tree 35 yards out.........for protection.   But big drops are falling off that big tree,  and I am getting wet fast .  I move closer to the shelter,  and pee as fast as I can........ undress again......PEEEEEEUUUU! ..........and lay on my side..... breathing directly into DB's face,  for awhile.  Maybe my breath is bad too.
 The Grizz,  and the motorboat,  are going strong...... and now a high pitched wheez-snore,  combo has been added..... maybe the grizz's girlfriend is joining in.   I lie here a long time listening
to the wind , the rain ,  the snoring.   Gradually, I am warm again......It is peaceful here. I plug my earplugs back in, take a sip of water from my bottle..... and pray that I do not have to pee again before daylight comes.
I can feel myself nodding off.....finally.........  I know that I'm going to join the chorus.
It is payback time.  Hawkeye.