Background: An occasional piece I figured I’d send to piss off the Sierra Club magazine. I was disgusted at being back in California and got shanghaied into the ordeal which led to the below divertissement.

   

 

COUSIN RUTHIE IN THE WILDERNESS

 

c 1997 Tristan Winter

 

 

 

Day 1.  Reclining, disheveled, with languorous pouts, the clouds lolled above in violets and golds while the sun sucked the throat of the stoic Half Dome. Evening poured down on Yosemite Park. We had riven the furnace of the San Joaquin Valley and climbed 8,000 feet to Tenaya Lake where -fulfilling her promise- the temperature dropped to a brisk 102 by the time Cousin Ruthie let me out of the trunk.

I was there solely because Ruthie had suffered a lachrymose breakup, precipitated by her fiance’ calling the cops when he deduced she was slugging him. Not that she really needed any special citation; that’s just one of those things women do well quite naturally. After that they usually steal your clothes, but Ruthie already had plenty of fiber. -She took a camping vacation instead.

In a humanitarian mood, therefore, I rode the extra hours around the preserve, searching a place to homestead for four days, in direct competition with millions of other suckers, for Ruthie hadn’t reserved a site. She’d insisted we hit the lake first.

Straddling the shore, Ruthie flapped her arms at the expanse of granite and proclaimed it delightful. I scowled at the view; crouched across miles of cow-turd shaped hills was a wasteland of rock pricked with an occasional pine. I marveled at Americans’ fascination with apocalyptic, post-nuclear landscapes.

We set up camp in the one place available. Doing so, I was stabbed by the same poniard of despair that had pinned me upon our departure, for Cousin Ruthie had transported from her home in Marin her very own mountain of crucials and comforts. Towering above the rest of the heap were the two massive ice chests, crammed to the max with her three squares a day, each meal consisting of three to four courses. I had brought a knapsack and a single paper bag full of food for myself. The arrangement of all these supplies and the construction of tents took place in the dust of the scalding day’s end, always under urgent direction, rapped out by Ruthie with her Rommelesque charm.

Fumbling, I muttered: “What the hell did they put chains on the mini-bar for?”

“Pascudnyak!” barked Ruthie. “That’s a bear-proof food locker. -Like nobody told you there are bears here.” Which they hadn’t.

This is the same class of person, I consider, who will brag ‘I meant to have that checked out,’ when the car splits in two while crossing Death Valley.

In addition to bears, Yosemite shelters hundreds of other animals from extinction and cheap jobs. The brochures handed out at the gate warned me not to directly fight any bear, but, should one of the mountain lions attack, I was to engage in hand-to-hand combat.

I kept reminding myself of the sympathetic nature of my mission. I had been nominated Ruthie’s companion in much the same manner I was elected Master-of-Chickens when my mother decided we would raise our own eggs: everyone else had already fled. The chickens had all turned out to be roosters and I became more a mortician as they pecked each other to death. As for camping, I’ve avoided it since my youth, when we endured an epic forced march, the highlights of which were the 100-yard dashes I was obliged to finesse whenever my father got that surprised look on his face.

Once we had secured anything with any odor whatsoever inside the locker -for the bears are not bright enough to distinguish between toothpaste, for example, and taramasalata- night dropped her skirts over the park, and we crawled off to our beds to sleep off the heat. I felt myself lighten as I drank in the stars, lulled to sweet sleep by the bellows of traffic and German disputes, the eternal dreams of the forest at night, and the mind-searing reek of the hot Port-O-Let.

I had drifted and dreamed for less than an hour when the flapping of extraneous appendages roused me enough to note that the temperature had plummeted to 36 degrees, inviting the snakes to thaw in my sleeping bag. My screams turned to icicles in the compassionless taiga, and I only calmed down after inverting the bag with a pair of large sticks. After an hour I realized I was being consumed whole by massive squadrons of mosquitoes, bloodthirsty gnats and dread tsetse flies as big as my fist. They gnawed and they slurped with relentless glee, rolling me over several times in search of fresh turf. By four in the morning they began on my eyes. Flaunting Ruthie’s warning on scents, I doused myself with DDT. The spray glazed over the suppurating shale of my body and lent a gruesome yellow sheen to my festering welts. A bear darted over and considered snapping me like a wishbone, but recoiled at the putrid sight.

Day 2.  Things started out fine, though I had difficulty uncorking the ticks as I shivered and wept in the sharp morning cold. Ruthie snapped in disgust as I futilely peered through the tubes of my eyelids for the bulls-eye marks of Lyme disease. I was yellowed with pus and scabbed red and black, but Ruthie decided when she had finished her breakfast that today we would drive the fifty miles into Yosemite Valley, which I was to haunt like Blake’s vision of a tortured eclair.

“I have to plan out what gear I’ll need for my climb. In the meantime, pick up all those cigarette butts.”

“But I haven’t smoked any cigarettes yet.”

“Doesn’t matter,” she snarled. “I always leave a campsite cleaner than how I found it.”

By the time we hit the Valley, the mercury began to climb yet again. Though she knew I had no access to running water, Cousin Ruthie fulminated about the smell of my sores, ejecting me from the car to hike on my own.

The Valley itself was once a wonderland for its native dwellers -the Ahwahnee- of whom one living descendant remains, unless one counts the luxury hotel named in their stead. The trees were more plentiful here and the geologic phenomena much more to my taste. Looking around the glacier-carved granite, I found myself swept along by literally thousands of people as they toured nature’s glories. The weekend had hit and gawkers from all over the planet had packed into the park, many garrotting each other in the bushes, desperate to land a vacant campsite.

Dying for sleep, I meandered through trails opening up to views of the monoliths heaving above. Yosemite Valley was now lidded by heat, mashing down at a healthy 105. Vultures and Belgians dropped from the cliffs. The air rang with jays and the sobbing of kids being broiled alive. Somewhat giddy, I darted around that World Congress of lemmings, even as most of them pulled away in offense whenever a patch of me burst open and splattered. Cautiously running away from the mandrills, I limped through the miles of cedar and pine, visually piqued, for Nature, in her wisdom, created a dazzling kaleidoscope of Disney apparel for mankind to wear.

I was beginning to enjoy myself now that Cousin Ruthie was away chewing on Sentinel Rock. I met up with a group of lost school kids and performed a good deed by guiding them past all the attractions.

“And here at the base of El Capitan,” I averred, “Irving Thalberg massacred hundreds of millions of Yugoslav partisans in the hideous battle of Chickamauga.”

Ruthie materialized just in time to rebuke me with her oaken caduceus and made me refund everyone’s money.

Throughout the day my eyes had been hazing and a feverish thirst was now shredding my throat. I feared it had something to do with that squirrel who bit me on the stomach. -Although I did kick the crap out of him in the end.

We came back to camp dripping with sweat and I collapsed on the ground as Cousin Ruthie bustled, erecting another full three-course meal. I watched her with sympathy, though I couldn’t muster enough strength to reach into my bag and fumble a cracker.

Night laid its terrors right back at my feet. Only the animals could move in that cold. The bears were incensed at the lack of fine foods and the porcupines leeched the brake lines of campers. Giant tapirs and wallabies dashed at me, enraged, and shrieked in frustration when I shuddered and groaned.

Bitterly, I noticed that others had kept their campfires smoldering, and were reasonably safe in the proximate heat. I scraped together all the deadfall I could and started a smoker to ward off my grief. I was not previously aware that fire can actually travel up a stream of unleaded gas and into the can. I managed to fling it away just in time, but Ruthie came out when she heard it explode and looked sternly suspicious when she saw the flames burst out in the woods some few yards away. Thus, instead of respite, the first hours of dawn saw me quickly moving our camp.

Day 3.  Latrine duty again. I offended the liberal morality of Cousin Ruthie’s insular Marin County world view. She learned of this sometime around four.

We began just jim-dandy, with Ruthie mapping maneuvers while I wavered in place, almost dead from fatigue. Precisely when she’d predicted, we packed up the supplies and drove east for the day.

Ominous smudges were congregating along the ridges as the smoke from the mysterious forest fire challenged the sun. The weather was hotter and thicker than ever. Ruthie eyeballed Cathedral Peak, then set off to conquer while I sank to the ground. As the sun hammered down through the smoke, I crawled to a nice spot, where I saw trees and a rock.

The thunder of animals routed by fire prompted me to my feet sometime after and, wandering lost and delirious through the Tuolumne Meadows, I stumbled upon one of the tourist shops. For a hundred a pop you could score an egg salad, but of course they had to be fresh out of morphine. I did find a gun in the back of the store.

What riled Ruthie was this: I had been brooding over the sordidness of this place, my weakening mind battered by all the instances of human debasement. All for a cost I did not care to reckon, Yosemite Park displayed and imposed such pitches of distress that my hopes staggered beneath the sad lot of man. Somehow, as if to drive the point home, I kept seeing again the lumbering rubes -too many of both sexes with that sad slab of fat yoked over their shoulders- and I felt such oppression just could not continue. A clear signal would inspire the people to rise up and cashier the middle-managers of their misery in one great, historical flood of justice and hope. That’s when I shot the game warden.

I should’ve known before I told her, that when the chips were indeed down, Cousin Ruthie would side with the bourgeoisie.

She hustled us back to our camp just in time for her dinner. The going was dreadful; forest fires are capricious things at best. Combined with the locust-like crush of weekending campers, panic and lawlessness blazed up as well, but my hope for a rising of justice was idle. -The masses were merely killing themselves.

Worse, my few lucid moment were ruined by new discoveries: enormous black boils in my pits and my groin, excruciatingly sore and hard as Arch Rock.

After she had replenished her soul, Ruthie relaxed with an eye on the sky.

“Looks like we’re in for some fun,” she declared.

“More fun?” I drooled.

“Summer storm, moron. You did bring your rain gear?”

I must have said something about climatic vicissitudes, because Ruthie cut lose with another upbraiding. The whole of the trip had gone much the same way. So far I’d been lucky to get off with a dozen warnings regarding my attitude and a few special bulletins concerning that face.

The rain and the cozy sub-alpine breeze cooled down my wounds, but the showers died off after barely two hours. Through the howl of my head, I saw that my forest fires had not been diminished. Then, instantly, ice-crystals cracked off my form as I charged up a tree just a hair faster than death, for two Komodo dragons lashed into the compound, gargling blood and hell-bent on mayhem.

I clung to a limb as I clung to consciousness, my mind sputtering backwards over the delights of our trip. For one selfish moment I was seized with regret, wishing I had let Ruthie come on her own. I thought about all her preemptive orders still echoing in my skull, and the tortures of backing up poor Ruthie’s healing process; the ravaging climate, the ordeals of fun, and I tore out my hair with one hand as I thought of Cousin Ruthie’s insane determination to enjoy herself in the face of human inconsequence. Just before dawn I clambered down from my limb to pry back the flap of Ruthie’s tent. All the indignities I’d endured teetered in the balance of my literally thankless mission to prop Ruthie up as I watched her there dreaming the dreams of the unconscionable. With a sigh I remembered that my task was exclusively one of loving support, that I was under Ruthie’s own orders to be positive, nurturing and always co-chipper.

“Ruthie,” I pleaded, “Ruthie, wake up. I’m pretty certain I have to kill you.”

Just then the tent peeled off into the void. The fires had jackknifed out of control and we were suddenly slugged by a sight beyond hope; the fight for camping space had grown so desperate that Liberian warlord Charles Taylor had invaded the park, his drug-frenzied troops hurling charge after charge under the personal command of that fierce martial legend, General Butt Naked. Through the crimson, choking scud, the naked Naked stood glistening in his assegai, defying all gods as his men ran amok, looting the possums and raping the Cheetos.

The carnage was piteous. My left arm protectively sheathing her nails, I led Ruthie far from the embers and sparks, and the dark, bloodied heaps twitching up towards the moon.

Day 4.  In spite of the hell crashing down all around, Ruthie was determined to keep every promise she’d made to herself, the completion of which required one last rafting trip.

I followed her through the fleeing hordes, rasping for breath as we crawled between rubble and smoke of near equal heft. By now most of the beasts had stampeded out of the preserve, and those which remained hurried away from my cracked, blackened crust and my swirling red eyes.

With unerring instinct, Ruthie navigated through the inferno, down to the abandoned shack where rafts were once leased. Along with her supplies, we dragged the thing down to the banks of the river, now raging in concert with the rest of the place. The location was poor, but with steely elan Ruthie announced she would just paddle upstream. Since I couldn’t swim, my job was to jog along shore and yell life-affirming slogans from deep in the scrub.

Cousin Ruthie sat steady as I lifted her chest of three cubed a day, but the pain which lit through me as I tore open a buboe caused me to drop the forty-pound crate, which then cut through the mooring and sent Ruthie awhirl. Mad as a cat, Ruthie whizzed through the boulders, cursing my issue until she diminished in size and her voice got real small, like the time Uncle Morty was locked in the fridge. I shall always remember her as I saw her then: intrepidly cleaving the tunnel of flame, Cousin Ruthie pachinkoed quickly downstream, to the breathtaking gorge of Bridalveil Falls.

I would have imploded from fever right then if I hadn’t seen the battalion of rangers charging my way, guns pointed like spokes straight at my head and a grim look in their eyes like this whole thing was my idea. I let out a squeal and shot like a hog through the crackling bracken.

The manhunt continues, but I am myself far more concerned with the shame and obloquy, and in fact I am writing this from where I am hiding, inside a carton of potato salad. I’ll emerge once again to enjoy nature’s wonders, just as soon as the fine people of California leave off insisting I have so much fun.