[at-l] "The Rest Stop" or, how last weekend went.

[ThatSloetoe <sloetoe@yahoo.com>]

Hitting this particular rest stop has come to mean different things over the
years.

At one point in time, it was the marker designating "the last rest stop from
the car" -- kind of like "beyond this point there be dragons." Colin Fletcher
described a  similar reaction of people looking out over the landscape at
some overlook, reached by a winding path, having left their car "far away" at
the parking lot, and in front of them, as far as they knew, a trackless
wilderness. They're imagining themselves at the limit of where people could
possibly go, when suddenly clump-clump-clump, out of the bushes there whisk
by two hikers, "backpackers" really, chatting away, and oblivious to the
tourists' lonesome reality just shattered. The hikers had come from
InBackOfBeyond.......

This rest stop used to represent InBackOfBeyond. Over time, as the hikes went
further out on the Grubb Ridge trails, it became a kind of final
starting/stepping off point. The rest stop is the middle point of a
northwest-facing wye, situated on the edge of a dropoff with a lonely arm of
Lake Monroe visible through the trees to the northeast, with one leg of the
wye going north-northwest, one leg going almost due west. The northern leg
continues out two or three more miles to the end of a peninsula, with three
gentle hills thrown in to interrupt the descent to the lake. The western leg
heads off to a confused and rumpled hardwood landscape so typical of southern
Indiana and the Hoosier National Forest. Taking the correct turn from this
leg (a feinting right where the main trail turns left, with some skinney
pines on the left interior corner) will take you, after 10 minutes of slow
north-then-westerly descent, to Patton Cave.

The boys and I reached this point via the northerly leg about 18:00 Sunday
afternoon, having left the lakeshore "promptly" at 16:30 fresh from a nap and
a last relaxing swim. We made great time -- the boys seemed to have been
greatly energized by the nap. We were looking for this landmark a bit early,
though, and the three of us breathed an audible sigh of relief when it
finally heeled into view.

But sitting there, talking with the boys, my mind went back to a conversation
I had with O'Henry about the boys and rest stops and how they'd tend to rest
for all of about 33 seconds before jumping up and bounding from rock to rock
or flipping every log in a 30 yard distance to discover what lay
underneath... Active little boys, sure, but what of "rest" at the "rest
stop"?

At this rest stop, the two boys were seated on a log, and I was seated on the
ground in front of them -- our faces at the same height. We passed water,
fruit roll-ups and M&Ms back and forth, and talked of hiking and talllll milk
shakes. And then I got this snapshot: We're all three talking to each other;
Connor's leaning forward, forearms hunched on his knees, attending to his
fruit roll-up; Cole is studying a beetle walking from one hand to the next as
he alternates them. The boys might have been 26 instead of 6 years old -- we
were just three trailhounds enjoying sitting on our butts and dreaming of the
yummies to be provided soon in town: our just rewards for a job well done.
Life would have been complete just then with the addition of a milk shake.
Does it really get much better?

So I took that little mental snapshot, and I just started laughing. Here we
were at the "InBackofBeyond" rest stop, and no bouncing around, no burning up
the fresh retank of energy; instead they were sitting quietly enjoying the
buzz of exertion in the woods, and looking forward too to the joys of
civilization later (in the form of a milkshake). We were essentially three
equals. The boys became the little trailhounds I knew from before, in form
again after just a coupla' days on the trail....
I tried to explain this to them through stifled hoots and chuckles, but they
just gave me these embarassed "Aw Shucks!" looks that cracked me up more.
What a moment. Smell the pine, see the boys, laugh like hell....

Then they tackled me and sat on my chest. Ahhhhhhhh.

So the walk from there back to the car went quickly. We talked of food some
more, sang Grandma's Feather Bed and 6 Pence, and laughed a lot. And we were
tooling right along when we came to the "last" rest stop -- a campsite about
10 minutes walk from the car -- a raised flat spot situated on a corner of a
ridge. Connor wanted to rest; Cole wanted to keep on to the car. (Cole,
however, had made considerable use of the
little-boy-mountain-climbing-pulling-thing, whereas Connor had been
completely self-propelled for most of the day.) We compromised and had a
short rest stop.

When we rose to go, the boys took off at a trot, whispering back and forth,
and "poof" they were gone. I saw them about 200 yards ahead on one long
corner, but they were looking back and trotting forward even then. I almost
caught sight of them again as someone outbound was telling them of a
rattlesnake (highly, um, unlikely) guarding the inside of a log somewhere
ahead.....

They jumped packless from behind the car as I got to the parking lot --
terribly proud that they had "beaten" Daddy. "But guys,..." I protested. "We
don't measure hikes like that." I was informed that *they* did, and that *I*
was last to the car; they were extremely proud of themselves (and yes, I did
inform them that I was extremely impressed by and proud of them).

If I think about this long enough, I'm going to conclude that the ways the
boys handled the "mileage" and rests of our hike is somehow related to the
thread a couple of weeks back about hiking from place to place versus hiking
the ribbon.....

For now, just know that if you can run for a milk shake at the end of your
hike, it's been a good day.

Sloetoe

=====
"The tragedy of man is not that a man dies,
     but what dies within a man while he's still alive."

               Mind your soul.

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