The Cinema Obsession Pipeline (Silverton Style)
August 30, 2012
Competing Hypnotizability Scales (Short Story) {Part I}
September 14, 2012
Today’s essay was one that the local newspaper published in September of last year. I’m sure you’ll get as much of a kick out of reading as I did writing my recollections of the event.
Word Count 1070
Pack Mule Imitation
In the San Juans
I recently helped a good friend by shouldering some supplies up to a mine/boarding house site he and another buddy of mine were doing the finishing carpentry work on. Being the naïve, individual that I am (somewhat brain-dead too in the eyes of certain people), I agreed to do this out of a bizarre sense of duty, and a desperate need to put more cash in my bank account. The money thing having to do with a perverse habit of mine whereby I tell the girls at the bank that there’s a law on the books forbidding me to carry actual dollars in my wallet.
The experience turned out to be a good one with the possible exception of the actual transport of supplies up to the boarding house. It was one of those glorious type days with a pleasant, but not too chilly breeze whiffing through the Aspens, and an unreal cobalt blue sky. The drive up to Animas Forks almost didn’t feel like we were in the real world either. The fall colors were intensely beautiful, and the commentator on the radio was blathering on about a slight, but actual miniscule drop in the unemployment rate last month. All was right with the world at that exact moment, and I kept wondering to myself why couldn’t things always be this way?
Then we got to the spot where we parked the truck and prepared to hike up to the work site. My buddies lifted the doors they had to carry up to, and then hang at the boarding house. Meanwhile, I grabbed the bucket of tools they’d need to do the job. As we started walking up the road, the bucket felt a bit heavy, but it was too nice a day to let that bother me. Reality has a nasty way of rearing its ugly head in these situations, and this particular moment was no exception to that bizarre little rule.
We started bushwhacking our way up the hill to the boarding house, and all of a sudden the bucket started feeling like some sick, perverted, entity had placed extra stones inside. I shifted into another equally uncomfortable way of transporting the materials, and my buddy suggested I carry the bucket on my shoulders. Immediately after shifting into this mode of carrying, my mind transported me back to a Far Eastern trip I’d embarked upon some years ago. Those Nepalese porters didn’t have too many smiles on their faces as I recall. In fact, they all had morose expressions, and one can safely say that the day I ran across them on the trail, was a year’s worth of grief and suffering packed into a single moment.
We continued up the hill like ants climbing to the top of the pile, and I managed to ascent to just above the portal of the old mine workings. When I’d gotten within fifty yards of the boarding house, my buddy who’d already reached the work site with his door load, walked back down to where I was trudging up, graciously grabbed the bucket, and carried it the remainder of the way to the work site. My sense of relief was almost palpable.
My momentary elation was just that, momentary. Upon reaching the boarding house, taking a pull from my water bottle, and catching my breath, the sudden realization hit me that I’d have to walk back down the hill and make two more trips up. More fun than most people have in a year, this wasn’t.
Upon making it back down the hill to the truck, I was pleasantly surprised when I slid the two sets of floorboards off the rack. Turns out they were actually quite light when compared to the bucket of grief I’d just trudged up the slope with, and I was also able to transfer carrying positions numerous times during the climb. It wasn’t all that uncomfortable either.
Only problem was, the floorboard trips gave me lots of time
while walking for my mind to wander. A very strange position to be in if one happens to be a daydreamer like myself, and similar delusional thinking like the Nepalese porter faces began to worm its way into my thoughts.
Does that Sound Democrat mill off in the distance have some sort of political connotation to its name? I wonder if that peak to my right is Tower Mountain? All that Yoga hasn’t really kept my shoulder from getting sore. Why is this? Wouldn’t it be cool to fly over this terrain in a helicopter someday? Boy it’d be great to ski into this drainage on a day when the snow is bulletproof, and avalanche probability is non-existent. Did miner’s horses look as physically drained as they must have felt? Am I as hunched over as a human pack mule? Damn, am I as tired as I feel? Why am I doing this?
I finally managed to make both floorboard trips, and had only emptied out just over half of my water bottle in the process. Our remaining time at the boarding house consisted of my buddies finishing the carpentry work, sweeping up, and me eating lunch while continuing to stare blindly into the distance and daydreaming. Just before leaving, the three of us took a set of photos with the digital camera that would soon be ignored or deleted for posterity.
While riding back down the hill we enhanced our position in
the cosmic karma queue by stopping to assist a group of people change a flat tire. The weather continued to be an intoxicating testament to the concept of Indian summer.
Was the adventure worth it? You bet. In fact, I probably wouldn’t trade the experience for all the ice cream produced at the Ben-n-Jerry’s factory in Vermont.
ThePlacer Gulch Boarding House and Pacific Mine workings is an amazing example of our ongoing efforts to preserve this area’s mining history and heritage. Special thanks to the BLM for providing the matching funds to receive this grant from the State Historic fund. Dave Singer for doing the Structural Assessment Survey to carry out this work, and to the incredible construction skills of Loren Lew and Steve Wolff.
The author used to tell people he never did humorous writing about actual human suffering. With this essay, that maxim gets emphatically thrown out the window.
