You
know when you reflect back on something and you’re like “wow, I actually did that” because you’re such a badass?
Maybe you don’t know what it’s like, being totally BA. Allow me to share with
you the golden details from the life of a real, my-right-hand-to-god, 100%
guaranteed Bear Grylls type character. I speak, of course, of myself.
Now
that you really hate me, let’s continue on.
Yesterday
I found myself at the summit of a mountain named Decoeli (aside: if you own a Phone With The i Before It (ie. iPhone,
unnecessary expansion copyrighted to Naomi) now is the time to find the alarm
setting called “Summit” and pump that jam CRANKED TO ELEVEN. We discovered this
beautiful composition to wake us up the night that we camped at the base of
Decoeli, and it was so fantastic that we also blared it when we reached the
top). Well, I didn’t find myself there like oh,
check it out, I seem to be at the top of an impressively high peak right now.
Fancy that. It was preceded by more like 6 hours of suffering all over my
body that made me extremely aware of my goals at that moment. In any case, I
had never hiked a mountain before and it was a really cool experience. We
certainly did it in a wacky, unconventional squirrely way, too. You just can’t
stop the zany out here!
Allow
me to expand on the interesting manner that we approached our hike. First of
all, we refused to miss the weekly rugby game that we attend on Thursdays at
the Arctic Institute down the highway, even though the impracticality of
fitting that particular event was pretty stifling. We wrapped up rugby at 10pm
and made it to the trailhead by 11pm, and proceeded to attempt the two-hour
hike in to the base of the mountain. By this point we were delirious with that
excited exhaustion that comes at the end of a work week, and which possibly is
exacerbated by the knowledge that you’re about to do something ridiculous. As
we jaunted our way into the forest with the sun conveniently setting and
various forest creatures moving in maliciously behind us, we contemplated how
very Beginning of a Horror Movie the situation seemed, and nevertheless
continued to bob our merry way into the woods.
As
we all know, the Beginning of a Horror Movie always begins quite innocent and
joyful. And so things began! What good cheer we were all in as we approached
the rocky creek bed that would lead us directly and succinctly to the base of
Ol’ Dekoley (a humorous mispronunciation of Decoeli – truly pronounced
De-ko-lai, if you’re interested – led to that affectionate title, best said
with a homey Pennsylvania accent). Alas, the creek bed shockingly possessed a
creek that was rather pesky and obstructing our happy direct path. The gang
thought, no problem! We’ll just cut
through these willows on our left and take yonder ridge across to the base of
Lil’ Ol’ Dekoley. Little did we know those willows on our left were a fucking pain and yonder ridge was
actually composed of moss several feet deep that was also unsurprisingly a fucking pain.
So
after quite a bit of fucking pain we
descended back to the creek bed and found that our misguided endeavours had
consumed time, and when time passes the Earth rotates on its axis, and sadly
this movement relative to the sun results in DARKNESS. Getting to the point, we
had to pitch camp. We found a lovely knoll of the grassy variety on the right
side of the creek and commenced to camp and sleep. You know what happens next,
we discovered Summit. Fucking amazing. Anyways, when Summit went off in the
morning we dismissed it noiselessly and slept for another half hour, then
discovered we were completely socked in by clouds. We also discovered that one
of our group had dreamt that he was using radio telemetry to find people in
their homes, which is way creepy. After waffling and being generally indecisive
we finally decided to just hike it anyways, because? You know why! We’re BA.
After completely misinterpreting the hiking
manual – OKAY, the hiking manual. I would do a stylish aside to explain the ways of the hiking manual if I believed that
it could be done briefly, but there are simply too many things to say. First of
all, I believe it is the first ever instructional publication to be reviewed on
the back as “opinionated and irreverent.” Ah yes, exactly what I wanted from
something that is meant to GUIDE me: irreverence. The hiking manual was
ridiculed for this repeatedly on the way up the mountain. It featured such
vague sentences as “the draw next to the brown rocks is not the draw you want.”
WHAT. BAH. Okay whatever. So, after we understandably
misinterpreted the instruction to “pass the three gullies which may or may not
have water in them” and found that we had hiked up the second gully, which we
thought to be a skree (we were finding quite a lot of joy in using words like
gully and skree), we decided to Just Do It – thanks Nike – and Never Stop
Exploring – thanks North Face. Up the incorrect side of Decoeli we went,
eventually scrambling our way to the top and enjoying a cucumbery snack to the
tune of Summit. And lo, the view from the top:
So
in the end, all of our waffling and struggling and incompetence totally paid
off. Take that one home to the kids: incompetence leads only to great success.
Also: plan poorly and don’t budget your time, it works fine every time! Oh, and
lastly: always pee before you go up
the mountain. That one’s for real.
Halfway up the mountain, you get like that.
My three compadres, left-to-right: Erin, PhD
student and resident Amish woman (not actually); Naomi, undergrad from AMURRICA
(really not a defining feature, but obnoxious labeling is necessary); Magic
Sam, graduate and late arrival who came to save us from drowning in work (hence
his nickname).
A rock puh-tarmigan.
The creek bed at midnight. I
guess I failed to re-state that we’re really far north, so yeah, that’s
midnight. But still, c’mon, the midnight hike was BA! Right?
Sarah learns slowly to use the
panorama feature on her iPhone. I guess I could have cropped out my failure,
but that would take work. Anyways, this is the view from the saddle between
Decoeli’s two peaks.
A shot that can only be described as epic. Naomi and Magic
Sam on Decoeli’s smaller peak.
Another shitty panorama! Bet you were missing those black
blocks in the last photo. This is us sitting at the taller peak, with Naomi
looming disturbingly close.
Hoping this tale
brought you a smile, or perhaps a grimace at the writing style,
SENsational
(a much better nickname
based on my initials, thanks LCB!)
