Skip to main content

Things I Will Be Doing INSTEAD of Reading This Week

By
Some scenery from my trail crew trip last year.
          Starting this Sunday, I will be on a volunteer trip to repair trails in the wilds of some area of the United States whose name currently escapes me.  I've done this kind of thing once before.  Basically, we start out at some kind of wilderness headquarters and hike out to a patch of trail that needs maintenance.  Then we come back five days later, dirty, reeking, and very happy to see a flush toilet.  
          There will be very little space in my monster hiking bag for frivolities such as books, so I will not be reading much this week.  This is a list of what I will be doing instead:

           1. Stuffing my monster hiking backpack with supplies, struggling to hoist it onto my shoulders, and then buckling under the weight like a sad and metaphorically charged statue, like my friend did on our last trip.    
          2.  Burying unwanted food scraps such as apple stems so that my counselors don't make me eat them.  Littering is, of course, COLOSSALLY frowned upon on trail maintenance teams (the slogan is "Leave No Trace"), and we can only carry a small amount of trash back to headquarters, which means that volunteers are expected to eat apple stems.  Gaaah.
          3.  Falling asleep at 8 pm  because we are actually tired at that point.  
          4.  Getting excited because I found the perfect "scree" rock.  
          5.  Giving up on combing my hair after developing an impenetrable knot at the nape of my neck.
          6.  Missing soap, deodorant, shampoo, lotion, and smelly bubbly bath products.
          7.  Going to a river once every day to fill two multi-gallon jugs of water and then dragging them back to camp to be filtered or purified with iodine. 
          8.  Tying up bags of food so so as not to draw bears.
          9.  Working on a story about a serial killer who preys on members of a trail crew team and kills using trail repair tools.  The story will be called "Leave No Trace."   
          10.  Remembering that I don't need as much stuff as I think I do.  
           - Carly



Comments

  1. KeitJuly 28, 2014 at 1:11 AM

    Haha, this sounds like hell of a fun trip :D Although, not having a flush toilet close by is a huge issue for me :D
    Also, not brushing hair is something I would totally do! :D

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownAugust 9, 2014 at 10:05 AM

    Haha it's fun to do for a week each year! It's kind of peaceful, despite the dirt.
    And you get used to no toilet after a while :P

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thank you for talking to me!! I wish you lots of good books and brownies!

Popular posts from this blog

Junkie Metaphors and Books About Our Inner Crazy

By
    So, recently I was doing a spot of (mandatory) community service for my gym teacher when I experienced a rare instance of karmic payoff.      Me and a bunch of other temporary bond-slaves were unloading this huge file cabinet onto the gym floor, sorting everything from Dance Revolution DVDs to pamphlets on Your First Visit to the Ob-Gyn! into neat piles, when I uncovered quite by chance a crumbling copy of Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs.  Elated, I carried it around for the remainder of the period until my teacher took pity on me and offered to let me borrow it. It's falling apart before my very eyes I swear...      I fell in love with this book the moment I heard its title quite a while ago - Naked Lunch ?  What the hell kind of weird awesome twisted name is that?  I am only now realizing how twisted it really is.  The book is a compilation of notes that Burroughs took while under the sick influence of heroin. ...
5 comments
Read more

Book Review: A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

By
Alex's drink of choice is milk spiked with drugs. Classy!      This book left me conflicted and disturbed, as all good books should.  It's set in a future world where teenage gangs terrorize the streets while the Government attempts to control and reform them.  The protagonist, who refers to himself as Your Humble Narrator, is a rat bastard named Alex who spends his free time looting and raping with his friends.  (Keep in mind that there are lots of graphic and violent scenes in this book.  Don't read it if this will upset you.)  At the tender of age of 15, he is a proud sadist and his society doesn't know what to do with him.  His story is a meandering answer to several tough questions: Is it better to choose to do bad or to be obliged to do good?  Can the price of goodness ever be too high?      The best part of this book is probably that it dares to deal with such controversial questions.  The next best part ...
4 comments
Read more

Goals for Book-Loving Losers

By
A mini-library in Park Slope, Brooklyn - GOD it's so cute      For me, this time of year means nonstop action - essays, tests, cross-country practices, holidays, and rushed, chilly walks to the subway.  I like being busy, but often when I'm studying and hurrying I find myself fantasizing about the all reading I'd do if I had any spare time.  I think I would be much more educated and cultured if my teachers just shut me up in a room with a load of books, rather than expecting me to come to school.  Oh well.      Here are my fantasy reading goals for sometime when I have more time.  (And if you happen to have a lot of time right now, why not attempt one?) 1. Read a ridiculously long book - War and Peace , or the Bible, or the entirety of that endless series about feral cat colonies, Warriors - and admit to yourself that you're mostly reading it so that you can tell people you read it. 2. Go camping/sit in a shed/climb up a tree/ac...
3 comments
Read more