On Saturday, I went on a hike with Hanzo and my friends Elizabeth and Studphish (don’t ask, it’s a long story). We were looking for this little-known trail with lots of big sandbars sticking out into the Skagit River, but instead we found ourselves at a derelict concrete factory by an abandoned limestone quarry.
IT. WAS. SO. COOL.
It's a fixer-upper.
Stud was the first to venture inside:
(sing with me) Fat man in a little hole! Fat man in a little hole!
The inside smelled of pee and wet stone, exactly like a real goblin lair! We set about looking for goblins, but mostly we found dangerous holes and graffiti that could have used some copy-editing.
This building was built by the Swiss. Or maybe by Frank Lloyd Wr--Okay, I won't. I won't. Just put down the hammer.
He doesn't see the resemblance.
I am afraid of heights, but not in that pansy way where I stay away from them because of it. Oh no, I like to risk breaking my neck because of it, to prove I’m still ready for the apocalypse. When Ragnarok arrives, I need to be ready to kill massive amounts of zombies or climb out of their reach, and I’m not much good with a shotgun.
Anyway, so I climbed up this old ladder with sweaty palms and figured, hey, if I die, I’m already going toward the light. Ba dum shh!
Photo taken by Elizabeth Coleman.
I took this before we left. Look at how the leaves from each tree are so different from each other. Okay, now that you’ve done that, count them. Okay, now write me a 700-word essay on what the shapes of the leaves tell you about your place in the universe. This is a hundred and twenty percent of your grade, so don’t screw it up.
Don't you hate when people subject you to their boring amateur photography?!
On our way further up the mountain, we splashed through a puddle that turned out to have a log hidden in it. The entire undercarriage scraped over it with a noise like a jackhammer. We couldn’t see any damage, but we still decided that in case we had ruined the car (which paradoxically began to run better), we should go to a different park, one more accessible by tow trucks.
Stud heading for Lothlorien. I think he said something about elfburgers.
Ah, rivers. Nature's latrines/refrigerators. (Nature is efficient like that.)
Pitbulls eat wood, like termites. It is a natural part of their diet, along with plastic bottles, stuffed animals, and my Dr. Scholl's inserts.
Thunder is nature's way of saying "GTFO."
A storm rolled in, and rather than risk the car taking more damage that made it better (Elizabeth claimed if it got hit by lightning, it would acquire the power to fly), we took off. The timing was so perfect–the second all four doors were shut, rain pelted down on the windows!
This is Hanzo and me snoozing on the way home. (:
Photo by Elizabeth Coleman.
Heh. Actually, Stud said the lightning-struck car would fly. I was just repeating his wisdom.
jackass… all the way down on the Skagit and you didn’t even stop to say hi… shit you could have jumped on an inner tube and floated here. I’m RIGHT BY THE RIVER!
Looks like you had a great time though