Setting up the final pole in my tent , I felt the male and female ends, as soon as they were put together, split away from each other. I broke a tent pole. Fuck! I had no tent repair kit. For the rest of the night my abode would have what we referred to as the "gangster lean". During the night I woke to a pool of wet tent floor and wet sleeping pad, steeping in a puddle. I realized that in my drunkenness I set up my tent on a slope and what must have been a “beach gutter”(an avenue water travels down when you set up your tent like an inexperienced ass hole) The compromised integrity of my tent, along with poor site selection, found me awake during the most uncomfortable night of the trip.
One learns lessons based on, as I so articulate and eloquently call "retard fuck ups"
We watched the grass kneel in it's faith to a water that shrugged it's uninterested shoulders past it.
The sun began to drop behind the tree line and fracture into slivers that divided the river into a keyboard of light and dark.
We marveled above it, our eyes full of coors tapping out the contention that ;
ones life is built upon experiences like this.
only the writings and sketches one leaves behind is what one will be judged upon.
How you express yourself, inspired by such moments, is what defines you.
Above the treeline tarnished silver dollars stacked. The sound of thunder slapped and quickened our set up of camp. Tent poles become increasingly disagreeable and rain-flys flap with an unsettled fervor when darkening clouds ponder their course.
(and we lie in it)
Don't do it!
I promise, It will fuck up your life.
Go for three days or more; carry everything you need. Leave the routine, ditch your car, stuff your canoe, filter your water, eat in front of the woods' thousand watching eyes. Make dialogue with river and bank and you will be changed.
(Not like a simple defrag, a refresh or reboot, but a total reinstall!)
There is one thing you learn on a river, one truth that exposes it's naked self;
insignificance.
....the insignificance of things, everythings
Be prepared to return to a fit of throwing out, abandoning, disregarding, losing interest in, and saying good-bye to things, and people, many things, important things...so you once thought.
It is realistic that you might come home and break up with your not so significant other, propose marriage or confess undying love or devotion.
You will discover a desire to write blogs, take photos, make love, author free lance articles, cook on a backyard campfire, wander in the woods alone in the rain, read stories of adventure, cause fender benders, watch your income plummet due to daydreaming and your penis rise in the most inappropriate of situations or......... worst of all......... write poems.
