Slugs

Moe and I had un-suctioned banana slugs from the dome tent. And then stacked them into a tropical fruit cup. Or more so, this rubbery cairn. Better suiting the clowns act that would follow. Washington state’s Olympic Forest seemed to want little to do with the light. Blotting it out into a perpetual night. That thought only in terms of birdsong and ferns. Some occasional moss. So, Moe and I fired up the gas stove and blue-flamed two mugs of Roastaroma tea. And four packets of oatmeal with dried apples which, once brought back to life, resembled the constitution of the before-mentioned slugs. Then, in the time it took Moe to hand-sign ta-da, it had become gummy and cold. And more delicious than any dream team could ever have imagined. Though, throughout the day, sticking less and less to the story our stomachs had made up for it. When, map-less, we would speedread last year’s laminated literature at the kiosk and prepare to let the trail have it New Hampshire style. No idea that Grand Pass was 60 miles higher than Mount Washington, our tallest peak. Or what the weather would be like. Or that we’d hit snow. Lots of it. Having first encountered it at the beginning of the trip. Flying out to Seattle with promotional airline tickets I’d been gifted for buying my Chevy S-10. A reasonably sized truck that could fit in the glove compartment of most trucks today.

After landing, we thought we’d deactivate with a matinee of a studio-tamed Return of the Jedi. Before slogging out towards the interstate. On the way stopped by a reporter. Who would ask us for our favorite animal. As the city’s zoo was reopening after a lengthy overhaul and they were doing a story on it. Stoned, and feeling jetlagged from what would prove to be decades of overblown, over-budgeted blockbusters, mostly limited to leotarded tumblers and stuffed animals, who knew nothing at all of our suffering, I managed bear, after an eternity of silences. And then when asked why I was only able to snicker, hoist up my fifty-pound pack dramatically and stalk off. Moe not able to come up with the one. If I remember it half-right. Loving all of God’s real animals interchangeably.

We’d be picked up by a Jeep with its top down. Its driver immediately questioning whether Mount Rainier, where we had, in this case, seemingly not planned on camping, had even opened for the season. Dressed in only T-shirts and shorts, it was hard to believe that it wouldn’t be. Or how inept and careless Moe and I could be. Or how forty years later, we’d have swiped it all up on an APP. Tracked our progress by GPS. Or better yet not be troubled to travel all this way and simply re-face another adventurer’s experience. Lucky for us, the National Park had just unlocked its gates, and we’d soon be sightseeing into the bluish white sides of these twenty-foot pipelines, our bare legs and arms, undecided between the sun and its summery come-ons and the near lunar chill of winter’s final betrothal. But not able to pitch our own wares as the campgrounds were weeks from being operational. Leaving us east of the Rockies in the desert-y dry and observable heat without the one and only notion we could engineer. As if stuffed ear to ear with Mount St. Helen’s feathery ash. And so, here I am...

In one photo, flossing. Or learning the harmonica.

In one, Moe is crouched, looking into the tent, noon-blue bandana trying to contain his roof-red afro.

In another, I am doing a handstand. Or sun-dialing the hour.

And in another, Moe is hunched over, scuffing the gravel, branches for antlers, fending off an Auburn Elk in 1808.

Lastly, I am running across a field, in what is left of my elf stage, with the tent lifting off behind me.

And Moe, with his lumberjack beard, being jeered by these gnats, as he sat against the ice-capped font of a Scotsman freezer reading God Emperor of Dune. O, what either of us would have given to have shrugged ourselves into a drug-saturated worm.

Now, the snow holds us up when inclined. Encased in several inches of ice that is crackling and handclapping. Echoing up from where Moe and I had already come. Our footprints, as if they were our past’s itinerary, where the snow was/is sufficiently packed. Soon to be frustrated with civilization’s mass-dashes. Soot-black with shadow and waste. And where we have left off, presently, a-glow with a bluish green sheen, where the light still escapes us, till this day. Alternating between rice paper stepping and attacking the summit, cat-accordioning and skating, sometimes tossed to our backs or fast forwarded onto our shoulders, but more often crashing through the surface, where the sheets that once tolerated us, now sliced through our thighs, cut to us waist-high in nothing but white, our skin embarrassed by its thinness, these red notes being played monotonously out of us. And while one sky’s as clear as one would ever dare ask this one cloud. We are faltering. Too tired to lift our feet. Out these holes we’ve momentarily filled for what seems like a lifetime. We can’t help but nervously provide our own laugh track. Besides, it is dusk. The sun, once secure at the top, is unseeded. Moe and I have two options. One no less dicey than the other. And while we have slowly stopped talking. Nature’s returned. A not-far-off hawk chiding us. A thrush, its tune untouched as for its soulfulness, cussing us out. We can only respond by walking. In every direction at once. Taking leave of all this nonsense. Ironically, the snow is losing its shit. Trickling into sickly streams, small scale lakes. Involuntarily wetting itself. But not surprisingly, it’s the wind, in another of its ways, that decides for us. Then this hiker, our better equipped twin, our polar opposite, who informs us, we have an hour or two more to get where. Though darker, put unceremoniously to sleep. Moe and I will find surer footing. And the late day’s heat trapped in the forest’s memory. Where stupid us will be ushered into the near-hush. And treated to the star’s inarticulate rations. Like all this chalk hailing down slate.

Mark DeCarteret

Mark DeCarteret sang and played guitar for The Shim Jambs. And sings and plays drums for Codpiece.