Awesome Takes a Back Seat to Libation

Hellooooooooo Catskill Mountains New York!  Rumpelstiltskin here, awake after a long nap.  Slapped awake by a family member who noticed an unnatural silence at the family dinner table.  A sort of eye of the hurricane calm in a family that usually operates at a tropical storm grade level 5, or maybe it's level 1.  I forget which one is worse.

This is difficult to admit but it is not easy being clever all of the time.  Especially to an audience of nine.  On a good day.  But having been inspired by another's cleverness, I am ready to snap out of my pitiful self loathing and write words that are worthy of the Anxiety section of the Opinionator column in the NY Times or maybe even Shouts and Murmurs in the New Yorker.  For what are we without unrealistic expectations?  Even my cat understands the importance of over reaching.  He sits there staring at the empty food bowl because he knows that all my will power aside, I will eventually relent and give him a snack.  Begging for attention.  The only reason to write a blog.

Herewith my topic (As inspired by another's histrionic musings on the existential importance of a mountain vista):

So Tammy and I revisited the Grand Canyon the other week to experience it in a more intimate manner.  We had been there two decades ago during our "we must visit every national park phase" but we failed to appreciate its full grandeur owing to the weather and a certain GI condition which did not allow me to fully participate in the "If you carry it in, you must carry it out" ethos.  Unless I intended to carry a back pack full of blue bags to the exclusion of all my other gear.  In any event, we basically car crawled along the Rim Drive like all the other ersatz vista enthusiasts, barely rolling down our windows, let alone actually getting out of the car, at every pull off.  The car door window frame, after all, is the best tripod for your camera.  Pull up to Grandview Point, aim your camera out the window making sure to put the horizon exactly in the middle of the frame like every other philistine point and shoot photographer, and then its off to Zuni Point.... for another picture of the same rock formation from a vantage point one tenth of one degree to the east.

Last month our trip was different.  This time we actually backpacked to the bottom and back up to the top, unassisted by the ubiquitous mule train I might add.  Well, that last pronouncement is not entirely true.  Much like Obama's sentiment  "you didn't build that", we did indeed get an assist by all the mules, helicopters, park rangers, Chinese immigrants, and toothless gold miners that preceded us.  You see, there was beer and flush toilets at the base of the Grand Canyon.  And we  did not carry them in.  But they certainly enhanced the experience.  For after walking downhill for seven miles carrying a 35 pound pack I am not thinking about my place in the universe.  I don't care how grand the canyon is.  I just want a beer, and then a place to piss it into.  And then a good nights sleep before the nine and one half mile hike uphill the next day with a 33 pound pack.  The two pound lighter load accounted for by 2 foil pouches of chunk white tuna, a box of couscous and several handfuls of granola that we inhaled in camp.

Which brings me to my main point about what one thinks about when carrying a heavy pack up intimidating mountains:  Why  did I spend $18.95 on a titanium cup weighing 0.8 ounces, $299.00 on a 15 degree 800 fill down sleeping bag weighing only 32 ounces, and leave behind my 3 ounce package of talcum powder as an unnecessary luxury item, only to be told by the ranger that we must carry 4 liters of water per adult if we are to avoid dehydrating to death on the South Kaibob Trail by mile 4.7?  Four liters of water BTW?  8.8 pounds.  I'll take my chances with the swollen tongue.  If I have to crawl the last 2.3 miles to the Yavapai Lodge and a drinking fountain, that will beat the crap out of carrying a gallon of water next to my precious three ounce, $40.00, titanium stove.  Hell, I don't even buy spring water at the supermarket because I hate lugging the jugs to my car.  That and the BPA thing of course.

And by the way, the 16.5 miles of trail we hiked to access the Grand Canyon in all its magisterial splendor?
A handicapped accessible ramp by Catskills standards. 

A view of the handiramp.