06-04-11 Feel the heat

06-04-11
Feel the heat, pushing you to decide
Feel the heat - burning you up, ready or not.
1.5 Miles
Sleeping on the floor of the motel upon my comforter and in my sleeping bed was not half bad. No rocks or tree branches gouging me. I wake about 5:35 am and start rolling up my stuff around 5:55 before the alarm goes off. My friend Paul wakes up and checks the clock - It’s 6:02 am and the alarm hasn’t gone off. Three minutes later it does.
Today is the Volkmarch, the reason I delayed coming into this state a week ago and added Iowa instead. And my travel plans have worked out much the better for that decision. The march starts at 8am and costs 3 cans of food (plus $3 to do the hike.) There are 4 check points and that last is near the top of the Crazy Horse Monument.
It starts off well with everyone’s spirits high and the weather cool. Mischa is in Paul’s rented vehicle with windows cracked and food and water and her blanket. I guess we’ll be up and back by 10:30 -11am tops. Still the cool of the day. We’re hiking and chating to people along the way. By the second checkpoint, I’m feeling a little winded, but with proper rest and hydration, I continue. Paul has gone ahead of me, but we meet up at various rest points or the next checkpoint. (You get a letter written into each of the boxes as you got - it spells out a four letter word when you complete each of the stages). The first checkpoint is easy; the second is hard, mostly uphill; the third is kinder than the second. I even have a chance to take some pictures of and with fellow hikers with Crazy Horse in the background. One of the hikers, Kathleen, is from Omaha, Nebraska but the mother lives nearby. I promise to post her picture so she can get it later in the day.
The journey from checkpoint 3 to 4 is both easy and hard. It’s fairly easy until the last two ascents. Two 15% or greater climbs. It’s not the distance it’s the conditioning. I’m stopping every 300 ft and resting and checking my pulse and tying to get the wind to go another distance. I’ve lost track of Paul and Kathleen long ago.
I trudge up what I hope is the last grade to checkpoint 4. I see concrete buildings ahead and this gives me hope. As I near the building I see another slight climb to where the sign “Check Point” 4 rests with prota-potties in profusion to the right. I make it slowly up to the tented area and have a scout put the final letter on the Rebus “TIKI” - just as I’d guessed.
And above me an even steeper grade to the ultimate destination - Crazy Horse’s arm. - The finish. (“Go the Distance”) I hear a voice in my head say. But first catch my wind. Take a little break. Sit on a huge rock. I do this and start to feel my pulse come down. I am breathing regularly but I keep feeling the urge to inhale a deep gulp of air. But every time I do, it’s like I can’t quite get enough and my vision goes light…like everything is getting washed out by sunlight. I stop this and continue to breath shallowly and things come back…but with little sparkles dancing in the vision of my sight. I start to feel a little whoosy sitting on the boulder. I drop off and lose my balance a little. I ease over to a small rock to sit on upright. Then I slouch down, lower my head and raise my legs to a level with my heart. Am I having a heart attack, or about to have a stroke? Breath. Slow and low is the way to go. I lie back and close my eyes. The plastic doors to the porta-potties slam…annoyingly. Repeatedly. And people are talking around me. Annoying little inane conversations. Can’t they take them elsewhere? I’m trying to Breath here!
And I get it. I’m irritable. It has nothing to do with them. Ok, a little. It pisses me off that Grandmas and older and fatter people than I are just chuggin’ up that hill and I can even stand up for 10 seconds without “welling” out. I feel feeble. I’m pissed that I’m not going to see my friends at the top and get that picture I have in my min: Four smiling faces together - Paul, Me, Kathleen…and Crazy Horse.
Why is this happening? How can THAT guy be going up to the top and not ME?!
A lot of time has passed. I’m able to sit upright without wanting to puke of collapse.
Can I stand up?
Made it.
But for how long?
I walk over by the Check point tent and ty to get some water. They are out. Just a few drops in a cup. I’ll take it.
Do I walk down and concede defeat. A prudent man might. I should.
But it’s just right there. That one last grade and then it looks like easy switchbacks. If I take it a step at a time…
I start up, but a wave of people are coming down the hill washing over me oblivious that I am trying to walk up. Headless to my presence. So I stand still like a rock in an ocean and let them pass by me, staring uphill. I take a step, then another, then another, then another wave passes.
A woman asks “Are you ok?”
“I’m just trying to stand…and walk up that hill.” I say
And I’m walking like a zombie. I think this. I may have said it out loud. I can’t tell.
I keep going up hill.
I’m doing good. I’ve gotten 10 feet and it’s only been like 4 minutes or so. My since of time is unreliable.
A Scoutmaster comes up to me and stays “Are you ok?”
And I say “I’m trying to get up there”
He says “Maybe you should come over here and sit down, have some water.”
I think about it for what seems like a long time.
I follow him. He’s in uniform. Authority figure power I guess.
He’s out of water…why didn’t I remember that?
He gives me a cold bottle of the stuff they are selling.
It’s empty. Oh, yeah, I drank it already.
I must be in visibly bad shape if he gave me water meant for sale.
He says that the shaded area is a good place to sit to wait for people coming down the hill to find me.
I go there.
It’s cold there.
But I sit and watch the people coming down the hill.
One large (bigger than me) guy comes down the hill and stops near me. He’s talking to threee girls who are resting near me from their climb up to check point 4. They are talking about stopping there. He says “It’s easy. Just that one little climb and it’s easy switchbacks the rest of the way”
I KNEW it!
I get up and start to head back up to the hill. I get as far as the Scout Tented area again. I look at the hill like Steve McQueen looked at that roulette dealer jut before he put all his money down in the Magnificent Seven. And got the same result. I asked the scout master if I could sit on the chair in the sun ‘cuz the other place was too cold.
The line from Magnum Force “Man’s got to know his limitations” pops into my head, but I still feel defeated. These seem artificial limitations, not my own. I don’t know why I can’t go up the damn hill. And I’m angry. And feel a sense of loss. Maybe that’s why I’m angry.
A woman comes up and says “Do you want a ride down the hill.
Hell no, I don’t I should be able to at least walk down the freaking hill. I should be able to do AT LEAST that!
“Sure…I guess so” I reply.
Yeah. Feeble. I may be crazy, but I ain’t real dumb” as the David Crosby line goes.
If I can’t walk up I shouldn’t risk walking down. Take the damn ride. Do something smart today.
A few minutes later a truck comes down the mountain and a woman (Nurse Carol) says are you the one wanting the ride.
“Sort of, I guess” is all I can muster. I start to climb in the back of the pickup but she says “no” and scoots over.
We start down the hill and it’s longer than I remember. And I have a lot of time to examine it because of all the people going down and still coming up. It takes awhile to get down. The driver, I’m sorry I forgot his name - he was a very nice guy - reminded me of Steve Zahn, says “Well at least you got to the top”
Put a little salt on the wound why doncha?
I explain, “I didn’t where you picked me up was as far as I got.”
The look on his face…kinda matched the way I felt. To have gotten so close.
Nice guy. He offered to turn around and take me back to the top. We were already nearly down and I said “Thanks, but I want to earn it. I got to checkpoint 4. That’s something”
Carol asked if I wanted to have the medics check me out.
WHY would I WANT to have them check me out.? Absurd question.
“Yeah, might as well. Maybe I can find out why this happened.”
Carol had already suggested that it could be the elevation. “A 25 year old from Pennsicola came down the same way last year”
How many have been driven down today? I ask
“You’re the first”
What an honor. Can I feel any lower.
She did offer that someone had to be driven out from Check point 1 - “but she was really obese”.
I’m not sure how to greet that information.
Misery love any sort of company, I guess.
As we get to the last stretch before the “Finish” banners I see a quote from the sculptor Korczak “Never Forget Your Dreams’
I try to get my camera on in time to snap the picture because it seems so thematic to today’s debacle an my Journey in general…but we’ve passed it by.
The Driver, turns around the truck and goes to the other side (so as not to run over any hikers in this maneuver) and get’s me to a vantage where I can get the shot. Great guy.
We get to the medic tent and 5 people are attending to me. I feel like a fraud. This is the attention someone who’d just come back from a moonwalk should get. They take my vitals, hook me up to machines, ask me questions, get all my personal information and internet passwords and then rip hair off my flesh (you missed one, folks! I took it off that afternoon myself!).
They had me sit with them and drink water for awhile. I told them about my journey (like the Ancient Mariner…it’s almost a compulsion!) If any of you Medic crew out of Custer read this - Thanks, guys! You really made me feel safe and cared for. Glad I was able to give you “something to do” that day. Your presence was useful and needed and I’m happy nothing dire happened that day to anyone (Me included)
I then went back to see who Mischa was fairing in the back of the SUV. It was approaching noon and I had no way of letting her out. As I got there she was doing fine. She wanted to get out and I was worried she might need to relieve herself and hoped she hadn’t already in the rental. Might be hard to explain (especially to Paul who I’d assured Mischa wouldn’t do anything like that - but today hadn’t gone to plan at all.)
The windows are cracked and it IS a hot day (Elevation & heat I think may have effected me - it might have been a slight case of heat stroke,) but Mischa seems in fine spirits though it is evident that she wants to come out and be with me. The best I can do is pet her through the open windows. I look for sticks that I can open the doors with, but the sturdiest I can find are reed like and not solid enough to effect an evacuation.
Then I see my friend Paul coming up to the car. I’d tried to call him several times up the hill and couldn’t get reception more than once. The time I got thru it went directly to his voice-mail and I didn’t leave a message. Paul uses a cell as a one way communication. It’s off virtually all the time until he’s ready to make an outgoing call. The rest of the time it’s just an answering machine. Makes it hard to reach him unless he’s looking for a call.
He says he’s been down for hours and had let Mischa out and had just gotten back from the bathroom. “What the hell happened to you?” I recount the story and say how glad I am that he’d gotten back early and seen to Mischa. “Didn’t you see my note?” he says. There is a note on the passenger side of the front window. Many of the cars in the lot had flyers stuck on their windows so I hadn’t given it a look. It reminded me of Gandolf’s chastising of Bilbo at the beginning of the Hobbit. “Mr. Baggins! When ever are you going to come? What/ The Dwarves are waiting for you at Bywater. They left a note for you. I didn’t see any note. Great elephants! If you’ve have dusted the mantle you’d have seen this note under the clock”.
Kinda like that.
Anyway we head back to Hill City and I’m starting to feel the heat radiate from my face. Sure enough, when we get back to the room I see my head is baked like his bag of potato chips. I change and was my face, feeling the cold water take the sting off the day. Paul is going to take the train from Hill City to Keystone as fun as that might seem, I can’t afford the $24 ticket and need to spend time writing up the recent days events, especially today’s. At least the part I know of so far. We still have tonight’s light show at Crazy Hourse to go to. I hope it’s better than last night’s “Lighting ceremony” at Mr. Rushmore.
Paul returns around 6:30 and rests for about a half hour before we leave for the laser show. We get there and each get a cup of ice cream from the snack stand and Paul explores the place while I wait on a picnic table faing the moountian. It’s starting to get dark and cold. There are lights changing on the mountain at 7 pm an announcement says the show will start soon.
Music and lights begin. The music is good, but it seems all that is happening with the lights is that colors are changing from time to time. Nothing spectacular.
10 minutes of this and an announcement comes over the loud speakers “The program will begin in 10 minutes - please find your seats”. There is a great deal of laughter at this announcement because apparently all of use hade thought the program had already started.
A few more announcement like this continue at the 5 and two minute marks and then it begins.
A lot of the animation is cartoon like. I was expecting something more dynamic and life-like, Less “Disney-esque”.
And it seemed a bit disjointed. Random quotes. Historical figures from different times and slight linkage between subjects. But the music was great and the light show was certainly more entertaining than the Mt. Rushmore “White Light” show from one angle. Both hit on the “Patriotic” them. Mt. Rushmore seemed understandable if heavy handed. Crazy Horses inclusion of the country western song “Proud To Be An American” featuring Native Americans as featured players seemed like pandering for Patriotic inclusion, though the people being pictured certainly deserved the recognition and respect.
Back at the motel it was time to check out the “Cot” I’d gotten for the room that afternoon thru the kindness of the Motel Manager Jan. She and her husband were very kind an helpful and even seemed interested in my Journey.
The cot was nice compared to the floor. I determined that I’d continue on my Journey in the morning rather than go along with Paul. It was great seeing paul again for the first time since I left my housing in
Simi Valley and spent my first two nights of homelessness on his couch back in January. He is one of the first people who got me on the this road. And the two nights of not having to do wilderness camping and having “modern resources” near at hand as well as an old friend to talk with were way better than I’d expected. I wanted to interview Paul about his difficulties finding work/ income but he didn’t want to talk about it on record. He has his own freelance print advertising business but work has been getting more scarce over the last few years and getting even part time retail work has been problematic. The same thing I hear from all of my friends of a similar age: “overqualified”, “Afraid you’d leave”, “no positions for a person of your experience”, “We Can‘t Afford you”. All the same business lies HR people tell themselves.
Paul and I had talked about seeing Deadwood together, but we’d miss-communicated on the timeline for doing so.
I guess we both though it would be on our last day in South Dakota. Just didn’t realize those would be different days.