"Let us first be as simple and well as Nature ourselves, dispel the clouds which hang over our brows, and take up a little life into our pores. Do not stay to be an overseer of the poor,but endeavor to become one of the worthies of the world."
-Henry David Thoreau
“So what do you like to do?”
“I like the outdoors, camping, fishing...stuff like that.”
Why is it when you first meet a girl at a bar they always say that? It's as though they assume everyone loves camping, fishing, and the outdoors? Like this is going to impress me? I’m the kid who hated those weeklong backpacking scout trips up in the mountains for 4 days huddling in the cold and rain trying to cook a fucking G.I ration on a piece of shit sterno. Yeah, I’ve never really been a big fan of the outdoors unless it was a trip into the woods to eat mushrooms and drink. Well actually, there was this one time at scout camp…
Summer 1992.
Our Scout troop was spending the weekend up at this reservoir, I forget the name, but I remember I was super bummed out because my friend Jerry and I were planning on having a sleepover that weekend at his house so we could watch late night porn as his parents slept. (he was the only one of us who had cable) The last thing I really wanted to do was spend the whole weekend out in the middle of fucking nowhere. Jerry, that lucky fuck, didn’t have to go on this particular trip, but I did. My old man forced me to go...So did my friend Matt's dad, so I wasn't alone.
A little about Matt: Matt was the quintessential drama/Shakespeare geek. All of us were, but Matt was the ringleader. Everything he ever did: every carefully chosen word, every action, to Matt, was an artistic statement. We’d walk around reciting lines from “Hamlet” or “Romeo and Juliet” or “Macbeth"...we’d try to fuck with people, and we’d try to outdo each other. Matt always came out on top. Matt was a performance artist. For instance, one time we were all in math class taking a midterm. The entire room was a dead silence, everyone deep in concentration. All of a sudden Matt, this eccentric fuck, screams at the top of his lungs, “I AM NOT A ROBOT!!!” gets up and runs out of the room. All of the other kids were shitting their pants wondering what the fuck just happened...my friends and I just sat there sniggering like a friggin pack of hyenas, you see, that was Matt, unpredictable and ready to explode... like a powder keg.
Anyhow, Matt and I went up with our Scout troop to this reservoir. We all arrived on Friday night and Matt, myself, and 2 other kids went “crawdad” hunting. We convinced these kids to eat a couple of the crawdads, raw. These dumb fucks were so desperate for our praise they’d probably eat dog shit if we told them to. The next day, on Saturday, the troop decided to go on a day hike. Matt and I pretended we were sick (Matt even made himself puke) so we wouldn't have to go. To our delight the scout leaders fell for it, hook line and sinker, and we were allowed to stay at base camp. Once everyone left Matt and I went on a little hike of our own. There was another smaller, really isolated lake by the reservoir so we decided to head there. We walked along in the sunshine talking about kid shit: ninja’s, dungeons and dragons, comic books (this was before we discovered women, obviously). We finally reached the lake and found it was teeming with trout. We didn’t bring our fishing poles and we couldn’t let this opportunity go to waste, and we did have our scout knives in our pockets, so we decided we’d go spear fishing. We found some old twine lying around and tied our knives to some sticks.
“Hey, let’s re-enact Lord of the Flies!” Matt excitedly blurted out. Wow, what a fucking great idea! This lake was out in the middle of nowhere; there wasn’t a living soul for miles and miles. We stripped down to our tighty-whitey’s. Matt, that crazy fuck, then said in order for this to be authentic we have to be naked, and filthy. So we took off our underwear. We then smeared mud all over our bodies and faces and hair. We looked like a couple of pygmies, the only thing you could see were the whites of our eyes. We both waded out, waist deep, into the cold-ass lake. After about an hour and a half of unsuccessful, exhaustive spear fishing I finally managed to wound a fish. I remember we both savagely screamed in glee, danced along the bank, and raised the fish to the heavens as an offering to the gods. Caught up in the moment Matt and I decided to skin the fish and remove it’s guts and spine and neatly lay the disgusting mess on a flat rock as an offering to “Baphomet.” We ate it's eyeballs and some of it's skin. It started to rain and I remember sitting there watching the steam start to rise off the remains of the dead fish. It was a fucking rush. I remember how in touch with nature we both felt. For a moment, Matt and I actually became cave-men, or fucking neanderthals somewhere in prehistoric southern France, surviving off of our wits and savagery. The wind and rain on our skin and hair, and the dirt on our bodies, only added to the primordial intensity and mental de-evolution we were experiencing in those moments. The thunder clouds started to clap overhead as we danced around the rock where the dead fish lay howling like wolves and laughing hysterically. It was all too much for the both of us. We decided to “meditate” so we could calm the fuck down. Our little hearts were beating like mad and we needed to collect ourselves before we returned to camp. We climbed a tree (not a bright idea during a storm... still naked and covered in mud), found a comfortable spot, closed our eyes, and hummed a continuous “Ohm.” This was a "ninja technique." You see this was part of our training regimen. Coincidentally, this was also the summer Matt and I decided to hone our martial arts skills so we could become costumed crime-fighters, like Batman. You know, sneak out of our houses at night dressed in black and wearing masks and bust drug dealers and shit....
We washed ourselves in the lake, got dressed and returned to base camp only to find everyone freaking the fuck out wondering where the hell we went. They were about to call the Forest Service or the search and rescue to come find us. Matt and I apologized and put on our sorriest faces and sulked into the tent. Once inside the tent we laughed and laughed. We used to call this maniacal laughter, “laughing profusely.” We were selfish kids who honestly didn’t give a shit about anyone but ourselves. Ah, the good old days!
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