You guys know that I, very much by accident, married an outdoorsman. I still really like him, even though he wrote on my dry-erase board, he’s monopolizing the washing machine, and he scoffed at my request for Starbucks.
And that’s just stuff he did today.
Because I still really like him, I try to do outdoorsy things because I’m that good of a wife as long as you keep your sloppy mitts off my dry-erase board.
The problem is that I am decidedly, remarkably, unbelievably bad at being outside.
Let’s start with last weekend. We were at The Cabin. Now that I have my hunting license, Don was adamant. I actually need to know how to fire a gun.
I was reluctant. In what should come as a surprise to no one, I have a gun phobia. I’m afraid I’ll accidentally shoot someone but not realize it until it’s on the next day’s news. By then, of course, it will be too late. I will go to prison for murder and leaving the scene of a crime.
I also, like Ralph Malph, have about a million jokes, and they’re all gun/phallus analogies. I can’t tell the jokes while I’m shooting the gun, lest I lose focus on the task at hand and wind up fully ensconced in my accidental murder-prison phobia. Do I start out with the jokes? End with them?
I also recalled little to none of the interminable gun lessons in hunter’s education, because I learn things by doing them.
Make that a million and one jokes.
Don, gem that he is, kindly and patiently reviewed everything for me. I settled into position and readied myself to fire.
And learned the hard way long hair was never meant to rest between your shoulder and the butt of your gun. They should probably add that to hunter’s education. Maybe include a blaze orange scrunchie in the hunter’s ed welcome packet.
It’s all good though. I didn’t need that chunk of hair, and later I was able to use it for kindling when I stoked the fire in The Cabin.
I paused my weapons training to pull my hair back. Then I tried again.
I missed. I tried again. And missed again. This went on for six, seven, ten, thirteen rounds. No matter how hard I tried, no matter how solid Don’s instruction, I missed all but one shot I took.
I am in no shape to hunt an animal. I am more likely to seriously wound him than mercifully dispose of him. And my quarry will make it to the next state by the time I’ve mentally organized myself to fire.
My dream of butchering felt thwarted. I had taken hours of hunter’s education for this. I had exposed myself to squirrel paramecium for this. I had ripped out my hair for this.
It doesn’t help that months prior to my weapons impotence – sorry, I had to slip one in somewhere, and sorry again because I clearly couldn’t stop at one – I had miserably failed at a hike.
I was determined to find a place to hike at The Cabin. Not just any place. Somewhere the kids could climb and play. Somewhere Pete could do his little beagle things. Somewhere Don would look at me with appreciation and praise.
That last one is the hardest. If you want routine praise, do not marry a man of German descent. Don thinks we shouldn’t celebrate birthdays until age 87 because then you’ve outlived the average lifespan, and therefore truly achieved something. It’s not really an accomplishment, he says, to be seventeen or twenty-two or even sixty. Make it to eighty-seven and only then will Don be laudatory.
A diligent internet search brought me to Fort Halifax. Fort Halifax hit all the right marks. The fort allows dogs. It’s historical, which really appeals to all of the Ranks as we’re history buffs and therefore really know how to party.
The brochure promised a variety of animals, and didn’t mention snakes by name. This seemed like an all-around win.
As we drove down the flat, straight stretch of highway, we could see the fort appeared to be located on either side of the road. I elected to pull into the left-hand side of the park grounds.
We parked in front of a barn that most certainly held a corpse or two. That was when I noticed the sign. “Don’t miss the larger portion of the park on the other side of the highway!”
Of course.
I hustled two kids and one beagle across the highway to what was indeed a larger part. Flat, wide, with no shade, the sun beat on us as we struggled to the tree line in the distance. I had neglected to pack water for Pete. And the Ranks – myself definitely not included – drink water like they’ve just emerged from two weeks in the Sahara. They guzzle it, loudly, over tonsils perpetually the size of Jupiter. The kids quickly went through their own water as well as mine.
We reached what I think is Armstrong Creek, but my map skills are pretty poor so it may well have been the Pacific. Pete, who normally eschews any water touching his body to the point he won’t even enter a bathroom, went running into the water. His legs were buried up to his doggie elbows as he drank the cool water.
Pete is also a Rank. It’s never just a sip of water with him any more than it is with the other people in my house. It’s the entire vessel. Loudly. Don says my distaste of their deafening gulps is misophonia. I say I don’t care what he calls it. I just want everyone to sip their water like normal human beings.
Or canine beings.
The kids headed for the water’s edge. I was pulled along by Pete, eventually winding up on a narrow stretch of creek bank. Should a snake appear, I had nowhere to escape.
Don followed me, which should have been a comfort but just made it worse. With him behind me, my only snake escape route was blocked.
That was when I heard Don cluck in disapproval.
Rocks had been stacked, neatly if precariously, into a small tower along the water’s edge. Fear ripped through me. Every horror movie in the woods starts with some kind of odd rock or stick arrangement. If my calculations were correct, now that we’d seen the unnatural rock formation, the forest would become endless.
Each time we’d think we were near the road we would just find more forest. Eventually, one by one, we’d disappear. Our empty car would be filmed in the parking lot, briefly flashed across Good Morning America while George Stephanopoulos narrated our grisly vanishing.
Don’s dismay revealed that, uncharacteristically, he appreciated our dire situation. I’d have to navigate our escape, of course, as Don doesn’t watch horror movies and therefore wouldn’t know where to begin. But at least he appreciated the danger.
I should have known better.
Don tsk-ed over the rock tower, which only pisses off the malevolent forest monsters. If we ever wanted to see daylight again, he’d have to move away from the rocks.
When I said so, Don told me he felt a bit obligated to topple the rocks.
Damn. Possession. I hadn’t counted on the forest demon possessing Don, but there it was.
“I’m not possessed,” which is what they all say. “This is vandalism.”
I explained this kind of entity doesn’t care about vandalism.
Dismissing my very valid concerns – as usual – Don explained the humans – humans! – who had stacked the rocks had technically vandalized the fort.
I wondered at what he would call it when the nature gnomes made all of civilization disappear, trapping us in the forest forever.
It was clear Don was not enjoying the hike, which was really more of a walk as we seemed to have found the only part of Pennsylvania flatter than El Paso. He was not his usual invigorated self. He was just his usual curmudgeonly self. The kids were hot. And I had just seen a frog.
We trudged home. I was devastated by my failure. How is it I can navigate subway systems in foreign cities while finding the outdoors so elusive?
More outdoorsy failures than this have peppered my landscape these last few months. If I were a literary heroine, my struggle would be labeled “man vs. nature” for sure.
A good friend told me recently that being outside can be as simple as reading in a deck chair.
“What about watching my iPad in a deck chair?” I asked.
Let’s just say that was another failure.
But maybe I was onto something. Start small, build from there?
Got it. “Man vs. Wild” is loaded on my iPad.
Talk to me in sixty-one episodes.