So I just got back from a three day, 50 km hike into an isolated boreal lake. Too many stories for now, but here’s the summary: two healthy paramedics and a young veteran of the Chilkoot Trail were thoroughly embarrassed by a 75 year old man with a fused spine and a pack ten pounds heavier than any of ours, using a 12 gauge as a walking stick. More on ‘Pappy’ when I get to the rest of the story.
1. Fuelled up on the way to a call.
2. Stopped in the middle of a Code 3 run to wipe the mud off the headlights.
3. Burnt out the siren.
4. Packed food to eat on the way to a call.
5. Pulled over for a pee break on the way to a major motor vehicle accident.
Check out the new link section, “The Touchables,” being an assortment of links to divers artisans of all things made painstakingly one by one in complete isolation from the net. More links as I find more stuff. Suggestions, anyone?
OK, guys, the hottest stock on the market right now is Tools. A few days ago, I decided to open my passenger door, a feat that has not been performed in over a year. Instead of taking the truck to the shop, I bought Tools and did the job myself in three hours for about $200, probably pretty close to what the mechanic would have charged. Only now I have a 126 piece socket set, a 1/2″ drive break-bar torque wrench with 3/8″ adapter, and a size 47 star head socket. How many other investments give a 100% return in three hours? Forget Ballard. It’s Tools, gentlemen, Tools.
This morning, my Dad left me the following voice mail:
“Happy Sts. Cyril and Methodius. It’s out. Talk to you later.”
The liturgy is the primary way by which we come to know God. God is three Persons. So go ahead and adjust the language, music and symbolism of the Mass to make them totally understandable on the first go. But only if you have previous experience of coming to know, completely, three people in the space of an hour. If, on the other hand, you’ve found that even your non-divine friendships continue to deepen for as long as they last, then give me a liturgy that I can chew on for eighty years or so.
I once told a couple of city friends about a call I’d attended involving an injured sheep hunter. They burst into mirthful laughter, obviously imagining a guy dressed in camo crawling through the mud of a fenced pasture with a rifle. So here I set the record straight: mountain sheep have about as much in common with their wool-gathering cousins as weasels have with eggplant. They’re so hard to hunt that the locals don’t bother, unless they’re in the business of guiding foolish southerners.
The Sheep are Smart
You see them all the time next to the road, because they know you can’t hunt them there. Off the road, I have found innumerable sheep trails, piles of fresh sheep droppings and even the occasional tuft of sheep hair, but in my whole life only one sheep, gazing serenely down on us from the ridge above the wash-out we were hiking.
Me: “How far do you think he is?”
Geordie: “Too far to shoot.”
Sheep: [Majestically descends the far side of the ridge.]
The Sheep are Athletic
They run up unstable hills so steep that I can’t even crawl up them without getting caught in a rock slide. Several times while hiking narrow canyons, I’ve found myself on the sheep trail and congratulated myself on finding the “right way.” Invariably, I motor along for a hundred feet or so and then reach a point where the standard traffic procedure is obviously to jump fifteen feet over a deep cut full of big rocks, landing on a crumbly surface the size of a dinner plate. I grumble and backtrack.
The Sheep are Cursed
Even after you shoot them, they get even. I know of a sheep hunter who broke a leg carrying his sheep back to camp. Earlier in the same trip, he had shot an elk and then lost it to a grizzly bear. Of course none of this compares to his half of the $15,000 poaching fine, earned partly for the elk he never even skinned and partly for the eternally vengeful sheep.