Tempestuous Fury

Back posts of the latest story.

End of Week 1

09062007T0014:

Well, things managed to go reasonably well in Week 1 despite Bob Sr. being gone and my number two whigging out in the backcountry on the second day. I’m still not sure if I should be irritated at it or laugh at it all, although I am leaning towards the latter. It’s the occasions like these that create the most lasting memories, you know? The ones of adversity that was defeated. I don’t mean Bob being gone; that was annoying and will remain so. No, I’m talking about my number two freaking out.

Basically, we ended up with three guys for Mountain Man, who I found by wandering through all the campsites and asking each Troop if they had someone for Mountain Man. The first day was spent in getting there over three miles with heavy packs for us the staff and a couple of campers who weren’t accustomed to moving over harsh terrain. The afternoon was spent swimming at the Notch, which was quite full from unusual wetness. That night, my second in command built a large fire in a small firering that actually went quite high went I wasn’t nearby. I was of course irritated and told him not to do that again; my oldest camper claimed that it almost touched the tree branches above the fire, which was more than ten feet high. The next day in the evening, I was around while the dummy built the fire: a tepee design with the top level with the center of my chest. This is way too high for our purposes, and I told him to stop putting stuff on. He feeds me a line of BS, saying he’s a volunteer firefighter, he knows what he’s doing, blah blah blah he won’t set the forest on fire. To which I respond that there hasn’t been a major fire here in over ten years, firewood is easy to find, all drowning victims say they won’t drown, and drivers say they won’t flip their cars three times (we’d had such an incident a few days before with some staff leaving camp in a car; it was totaled). About 15 minutes later as I’m doing dishes with the campers I feel a heat on my back; I turn around and there’s number two with a too tall fire going and adding more fuel to the damn thing. I hit the roof, and chewed his ass royally in front of everybody. He was directly disobeying me on a critical safety issue, thus endangering us all and the whole camp; and then I asked him what I was supposed to do now? Have him sit down for a talk with the High Adventure director about fire safety? Restict him from the fire ring? The idiot built a tepee, and then he was worried about it collapsing, which the damn things are supposed to do, and so his solution to the problem was to put more fuel in the fire on one side because the fire “looked uneven.” Total dumbass. Later on I discover the guy is afraid of the dark. Afraid of the dark for chrissakes! Well you really fucked up coming out here into the outback didn’t you, because it gets really friggin’ DARK out here totally away from power and civilation, EVERY SINGLE NIGHT! I couldn’t believe it when I heard it from some others, but it was confirmed by many others since; this guy was scared of the dark. He freaked out when the nightlight in the staff cabin he stayed in was shut off accidentally.

It was the most incredibly stupid thing for this dude to do. And to make it even better, he gets all sulky when I chewed him out. Then he let the fire burn out, and then he tells me he’s quitting and going back to base camp. Then he wouldn’t say another word to me or anyone, which makes it so much better. So not only is he not being smart, now he’s acting like an asshole too, and he gives off a bad vibe now, a “I’m-not-thinking-clearly” one, so now I’m worried he’s going slightly mental. The last straw is when he starts having severe nightmares, hyperventilating and all. And this guy is really quite strong, stronger than anyone else in Mountain Man camp. “Great, he’ll have a panic attack when we sleep in the tent we share, and we won’t be able to hold him down,” I think, and my other staffer agrees quite vehemently.

And so now the guy seems mental and looking like he’s going medical. I’d wanted to delay calling base camp till the morning to see if he would snap out of it, but now it really can’t wait anymore.

10062007T1014

So I called it to base camp, and a powwow occurred. It ended up with a couple of Outback Rangers coming in and having him taken out in the morning, with one replacing him. I’d worked with Toby from a previous year, and he’d been through the program once before, so it was all good. The scouts had a great time. We got through rope making, fire building, knife, tomahawk, and atlatl throwing, as well as black powder. It was indeed great.

Then on Friday a major windstorm knocked alot of stuff down, and tore up some tents. I estimate sustained winds of between 40 and 50 miles per hour, definitely at least tropical strom strength stuff. It was really quite exciting, and there was alot of scambling about in damage control and mitigation.

16062007T0111

Sorry for lack of updates, but time contstaints got in the way. This week was a mix of good and bad. The week started with Mountain Man Bob getting back, and I could happily give him back his director’s hat. The bad was that our food supply was screwed up; the truck didn’t have what we requested and Bob had to make an emergency run to Ft. Stockton to cover the food. We also had 32 people rather than the expected 22 or so. This wasn’t so bad though; Outback experienced a jump from 18 to 42 people. It was incredibly ridiculous; don’t these people know how much money they collected for what? I’d figure it’s simple: collect so much money, so many people. What the heck is this number they give us for planning anyway, the guranteed minimum? If so, then what the hell does it mean for week 4 when we’ve got about 52 people scheduled? And who in the world accepted that many anyway? That’s a wild, crazy big number for our program. Our camp is 3 miles away from base camp on a rocky trail, hell on logistics.

Anyway, while Bob was on his way to buy the extra food, Steve and I got tasked with taking a couple packhorses to the camp with what we did have. On account of inexperience and not knowing all of the wrangler’s little horse bypasses (it’s like work to tell people using the horses, and WAY too much work to document these things), I got my left foot stepped on by one of the goddamn horses. It was incredibly painful, but I was extremely lucky in that: 1) the horse figured out something was wrong when I started screaming and got off my toe after half a second or so, and 2) the leather toes of my combat boots, the Wanderers III, were extremely stiff and thus managed to serve like steel toes, sort of. The rest of it is the fact that I take care of myself, thus my left toe didn’t break or anything. I’ve even gotten to keep the toenail; it didn’t die. But I’ve still decided that I hate horses, and that someday if possible, I shall have them all replaced with something high tech and better which won’t devastate the cow and beef industry. It’s really up there on my list of things to do in life, right after founding my own personal empire. The only reason I didn’t shoot the horse in Mountain Man camp with the rifle and black powder is because the thing is too expensive for me to afford currently. I was really pissed and feeling quite homicidal towards the stupid things.

Mountain Man with Bob in charge was a good deal better; I am now enjoying myself now with him at the helm. The week was very good; the only thing of note was the fact that this summer is turning out to be very freaky. First, the weather has been unusually wet and cold for this part of the season; the creek was flowing when we got here when it’s usually dry. Second, camp has had alot of accidents and medical issues so far. Staff week featured a car wreck, with an idiot on staff flipping his car several times along with all passengers on the ranch road leading to camp. Fortunately, no injuries except for cuts and bruises. Then Week 1 went by without incident, followed by this past week, week 2, which featured a broken ankle by one of the Outbackers, two Outbackers who couldn’t hack their hike and got left at Mountain Man camp to be picked up by another Outback Ranger, and our medic, who got himself a large cut on his hand through an incident which shall remain private on account of how silly it was. It finished up tonight with a guy who injured himself by falling in the amphitheatre and very possibly sustaining a head/neck injury. Last I heard he was being evacuated to a hospital at speed.

The hike I led even had a borderline incident; on Wednesday, one of the guys in the 32 going to the Indian Paintings stopped and exhibited dehydration symptoms. There was talk of turning back the hike, but he snapped out of it after I ordered a 10-15 minute break and that he drink half a quart of water, and we were near the end anyway. You know how they have emergency training, where you’re out somewhere and the instructor just randomly throws a scenario at you? That’s how it was, just out of the blue. “Your second staffer signals to stop the hike, and tells you to ‘come over here now.’ You then discover that one of the people in your party is experiencing nausea and dizziness. It’s a hot day, around 95 F, low humidity, and you’ve been walking for about four hours. Upon questioning, the subject states that he has consumed one quart of water since the start of the walk. He then requests toilet paper, and goes behind a tree to use the bathroom. He appears wobbly on his feet. What do you do when he comes back?” And that’s how it was, that’s all of what happened. Except that wasn’t a training scenario, that was the real deal.

Lastly, the entire Cavalcade staff got sick, puking and fevers and everything, and a bunch of other staff seemed headed that way too. I’m not sure where it came from, but I pretty much had it first after a rough, cold night where I didn’t stay fully warm. I’m just recovering from it now, but at least I stayed on my feet and functional. The wrangler staff was almost entirely shut down by the bug, and I understand the corrals were closed temporarily as a result.

I don’t know what I’ll do this weekend. I’ve got some groceries to try and buy in town somewhere, and a haircut to get for sure. We’ll see what happens.

And as a final note, after not shaving a week, I’ve discovered that I do indeed have white hair in my beard. It’s all focused under my front lip in the center; it might be neat to grow it and just look distinguished someday. For now though, I still like the clean shaven feel.