Okay, so this summer I have been doing a lot of "outdoor" things. You know, things outside that don't involve Facebook, Texting, Ipods, and other electronics that make life worth living. It has taken a tremendous amount of discipline to distance myself from the convenience of having a screen to stare at, but I must admit, getting outside, breathing fresh air, rolling my ankle on uneven surfaces, blistering my toes, and chafing in the area right next to my ball-sack and my inner thigh has been really therapeutic.
People operate under the false pretense that they are adequate in nature. I am one of those people. Though I admittedly have no sense of direction and often turn 20 minute trips to Safeway into 2 hour expeditions to find the goddamn strawberry jelly already, I have this impression of myself as an above average navigator. Like if I REALLY needed to, I could locate the North Star, meet Sacagawea and discover some new land. It's just I haven't been confronted with that situation yet.
Through the combination of a few confidence-building hikes, and recently watching "127 Hours," I was feeling relatively confident. 127 hours made me wonder two things. One... why is James Franco so much better looking than every other male on the planet? And two...after watching him hack through his right arm, I thought to myself, "so what? I could do that. Give me a pocket knife and a handsome face like that, and I will saw all of my limbs off. For FUN."
I never got around to decapitating myself, but I did decide to play Lewis And Clark and lead two of my friends into a nature-walk from hell.
Hart's Cove trail-head is just East of Lincoln City, and is supposed to be one of the most beautiful coastal hikes Oregon has to offer. It is also open seasonally from July 15th to January 15th. If you go in the fall, you can hear Sea Lions barking, if you go in the Summer, there's a beautiful waterfall and breathtaking view of the oceanfront, if you go during the Winter, you're an idiot, and if you go on July 4th, you are an unpatriotic asshole who doesn't wear underwear and will get fucked up by thorn bushes, sent by Uncle Sam himself.
We decided to brave the warning sign that read "This trail is closed from January 15th to July 15th, you idiots. Go home. Seriously. Or find a different hike, you dumbasses. Violation of this is punishable by 6 months in prison, a ton of annoying little cuts on your arms from those thorn-bushes, and fines up to $30,000." And by "we," I mean, "me," decided that we drove all this way, and might as well have a horrific nature-walk to write blogs about.
OBVIOUSLY, we decided to proceed, park our car at a turn-off down the road, and walk on the road until we hit the trail-head.
Throughout the 16 miles of walking with good friends, we said things like, "I fucking hate you," "whose god-damn idea was this?" "Sean is such an asshole," "Sean is such an idiot," "Sean is so ugly," and "Why does Octaviano have such nice calves?" and "is it CALFS or CALVES?" We debated this for a solid 20 minutes, which served as a nice distraction from how much we all hated each other for pretty much the entire hike.
Other complaints that surfaced were various joint pains. Knees, hips, and backs "Fucking hurt," and emotions like pride, ability to navigate, and a general feeling of competence were completely obliterated. However, above all of these things, one underlying fact remains:
I was not wearing underwear.
This is a horribly ironic fact. The reason I was going commando was NOT because I enjoy the freedom of having my privates throw a parade in my boardshorts. No, I do not derive some weird joy from the absence of friction. Yes, I may receive unbridled joy from the feeling of air circulating around my MAN PARTS, but that is BESIDES THE POINT.
The point is, I was wearing boardshorts in hopes of finding this so called "ocean" that the sketchy paragraph write-up I read online promised me. The write-up also promised the hike to be about 5 miles round trip. Not 3 times that amount.
DO YOU GET IT? There was supposed to be an OCEAN that I could SWIM IN, but we never got to it, because the trail was overgrown and ugly and hurty and pokey and dumb, so instead, we just got to walk in mud for 16 miles and talk about who the biggest idiot in the group was, which was both unfair and true because I not only ruined the 4th of July, I also happen to be considerably larger than most human beings.
The strangest part of the whole ordeal was not the time where I admitted to my hiking partners that "this chafing is seriously going to make my tinky fall off," or the time Laura said, "You guys are seriously so fucking dumb, why am I friends with such idiots?" Or when we got to the end of the trail that was supposed to be a beautiful waterfall, and Octaviano said "I would literally rather be dead right now than walk back. I am serious. I never want to see another tree, a fucking fox-glove, or a shitty blade of grass for as long as I live."
No, the strangest part of the excursion was the fact that we were all in extremely high spirits at the end. On the drive back to Salem, cool breeze streaming through my fingers, salty trail mix crumbs coating the sun-soaked leather seats, hot air steaming off to remind us there's much more summer to come.
We made it back to Salem barely in time to see our fellow Americans light shit on fire to show how much they love their country, but amidst all the joy of fireworks, glow-sticks, and crushed keystone light cans, I found my return to civilization bittersweet.
Besides the fact that you can fart in nature and blame it on a weird plant or the rotting raccoon you just passed, I really missed the beauty of the random forest service trail that seemed to never end.
A small part of me missed my bleeding arms, sweat dripping into the cuts like wounds salted twice-over. A tiny bit of my soul missed the collective misery shared between new friends...blazing trails and wondering why the hell we didn't just stay home and check our Facebooks.
There's a unique adhesion that takes place when you can all hate something together. Which sounds awful, but is true. For the day, mother nature was our enemy. For the night, she was our best and most missed friend. Undoubtedly, we will meet her again...hopefully this time with underwear, and an in-season trail. But if not, it's all part of the adventure, right? Even the chafing thighs, random insults, and abundance of cuss words. Fuck that trail, but the experience was fucking cool. Fuck yeah.
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