The Husband: Too manly to blog.

Photo Credit: Travis Johnson

You might be wondering why I haven’t posted something to this blog in a few months. Perhaps you were among the thousands of people who wrote to me, begging me to return to my keyboard. (I am,  of course, joking. The only the fan mail I have received is from my six-year old –  a picture of a guy with green eyes and a dagger in his head that said, “I love you dad.”)

The answer to my absence on dreadlock girl’s blog in the recent past is that I have been out doing incredibly manly things. When I haven’t been out conquering the great outdoors, I have been recovering from the incredibly manly injuries that I received while conquering aforementioned outdoors.

The truth is that I almost died in the wilderness twice this summer.

The first near-death experience happened when the Canfield family took a wrong road on the way to a camping trip in July. We found ourselves careening down an unmaintaned forest service road, and let me tell you, it was hairy. There was  even a sign that read “Warning: this road not intended for passenger vehicles” – but did I let that stop me?  No way, I charged forward in our station wagon with a furious battle cry. I believe the exact words that I screamed were something like, “We’re all going to DIE! Where ARE we!? WHO wrote these directions down!?”

I distinctly remember passing the skeletons of several large animals on the side of the road – animals who had perished for lack of food or water in this barren wilderness. (There were not actually any skeletons, I just like to distinctly remember that there were.) Eventually, after swerving around potholes the size of our car and screaming out a few more battle cries like the one mentioned above, we suddenly emerged at a busy intersection with a light and, I believe, a store. I stopped screaming and we continued on our way without further incident, but I did not fail to remind my family several more times that COULD have died.

My second near-death experience was even more exciting, if you can believe it. If you need to take a break to calm down a little, now would be the time to do so.

In August, I climbed Diamond Peak with some friends.  This mighty precipice, believe it or not, is similar in height to Mount Everest, give or take 40,000 feet or something like that – so you can imagine how much manliness it took to climb it. It took the better part of three hours to get to the top. Once there, my unbelievably macho climbing party decided the best way to get back down the mountain would not be to go the way we came, to but to slide down a nearby snowfield. This decision caused me to give a battle cry not too different from the one I uttered in the station wagon. I believe the words this time were something along the lines of, “Are you KIDDING me!? If we do that we’re going to DIE! Can’t we call a HELICOPTER or something!?”

But down the snowfield we went. The first couple of guys did fine. The third guy to go down lost control, hit a patch of rocks, and flipped twice before landing on his back (I’m not exaggerating that detail at all). Then it was my turn. Apparenrly the idea when executing this kind of mountainerring maneuver is to dig your heels in to the snow if you start to slide too fast. Well, I started to slide, and then I started to slide faster. So I dug my heals in. Nothing happened. I dug my heals in harder. Nothing happened. In fact, if anything I was gaining speed. So then I started to claw at the snow with my hands, to no avail. At that point I started to blubber and scream the loudest battle cries I have ever screamed in my life.

If you happened to be in the Diamond Peak wilderness area that day, or any of the major cities in the vicinity, you probably have heard some bloodcurdiling screams coming from the mountain – something resembling “HELP ME! I’m going to DIE. I AM digging my heals in!!!”

Well, I didn’t exactly die at the bottom of the snowfield, but I did get a MAJOR flesh wound. A HUGE one – the kind that you have to cover with one of those gigantic bandaids. A picture of that booboo is included in this blog – courtesy of my friend Travis Johnson, who I hold personally responsible.

So there you have it. I think you’ll see why I haven’t been able to write much lately. But that what happens when you live on the edge like I do. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go put some more Neosporin on my booboo.

Photo Credit: Travis Johnson

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