Cycling the Drain Part 1: Blackout
At the edge of an abyss stands a cyclist who just rode up to it to see what it felt like to skirt doom.
It never dawned on him that losing his footing now, or that a strong breeze, may prove fatal.
In his Pack, was a notebook, a few markers, a bottle, pens, some coins, and some snack bars, amongst the rest of the detritus that accumulates at the bottom of anyone's well-worn bag. He peeled this off his back, and let it slide down his arm while removing a few zipper bags. The phone in his hand was closing in on a depleted battery, which hardly mattered while the sun set over a the edge of an escarpment leading down some 80 feet to the basin. He closed the useless phone, and stowed it in his jersey. He coughed accumulated dust and pollen, and closed itchy eyes while the sun blanched his wind-swept face.
Every moment of today’s trip led to this moment. A bag full of gear decamped from his Seat-post, then leaned sideways to stretch his leg over the top-tube and lay the bike down.
He was done for the day, and relished the idea of a prone position reading, writing, and reflecting, while the stars gained against the dusk. The waning moon seemed to follow him to this camp, where he set about to pitching a tarp, and tent, as well as a fire.
By Mid October, the days had become just long enough to get someplace by day, but not long enough to completely exhaust oneself before daylight fades. Riding alone seemed to him the best way to guarantee time-tables, and the calm zen of a reflective ride washed through him clearing out the unimportant and replacing dread with serotonin. With each mile his thin frame pressed and pushed the pedals up slopes that most of his friends would walk. His bike and gear were spare, and also light enough to keep moving albeit with difficulty, up nearly any pitch. He sometimes missed having a companion, but validated that having someone to share this with, would come with the cost of reduced velocity, range, and the requirement to share food, water, and labor each of which were scarce. In the air was a damp coolness which felt almost cold on the back of his arms, while his head and neck felt warm, almost hot. Fading into the background of his conscious mind were the movements of the day, where each shift of body weight, and every swerve collected to achieve his destination without the disappointing tragedy of being sucked under a Semi-Truck, or folding a wheel in a crack or grate. It should not be lost on anyone that this was a great day’s ride. He was fully aware that luck may have also played an important role to prevent him from laying in a culvert bleeding. It does happen in fact, that a ride, like a great meal, never seems to announce a tragedy, until you are choking on a bone, ice-cube, or some Broccoli, turning blue, wondering if this will be your un-luckiest day — Wondering how long it had been since you’d stopped counting incidences. He was attuned to the distinct fate of being uncertain. Knowing that whenever something strikes, it generally seems to be out of the clear blue sky.
His Uncle had passed by slipping down some stairs, and his Brother was struck by a 2x4 on a job site, and until those tragedies, neither of them saw it coming. He was a realist, but knew that surprises like this really did happen, and the difference between a quick dodge of a car door, and a cracked collarbone, was nearly always two-tenths of a second, sprinkled with Karma.
Fate was perhaps a real thing, but being kind, and considerate of others was a tested way to postpone an inevitable re-calibration of this clock.. He hadn't seen another person nor car along the road since the black-out, now more than a week behind him.
He dug out his flint, and steel, and began to scratch bright blue-white streaks of heat into some frayed grasses and needles, as the last pink crease of sky was swallowed by deep blue over the horizon. Soon a wire of orange became a glow in his fingers, then a careful puff of white smoke, and with a few breaths, a solid orange fire-ball appeared in his palms. He dropped this gently into some larger kindling, and a blaze expanded to exaggerate the shadows of his bike, packs, and tent. He became one of many shadows, which carried off into the night. Soon the crackling and hissing Fire exaggerated a glowing sphere against the blanket of darkness, and soothed away any recollection of the day’s warm sun.
To look away from the blaze would count 45 before ones eyes could make any sense of the inky shadows behind him.
He recalled the Fox he saw today, and the wolves which sulked like gangly teens into the grey brush, as well as several hawks, a solitary eagle, and a few road-kill. In each ride a fresh road-kill could easily become the evening’s meal, but today, none looked the part. He would boil water, and saturate a pouch of dehydrated food, to restore spent fuel. Food was finite, especially when calories were your fuel. Each one counted toward the next destination, and none seemed wasted.
The man settled in the contentment of being alive, warm, dry, and soon to be fed.
A cooler wind picked up the flames and blew through his camp dragging brush and lighter items if only a few inches. He pulled a drawstring to open a pack, and withdrew some lines and stakes.
From another frame bag, he withdrew a small hand Axe, and prepped the lines to tap them into the earth pulling each snug at four points on his rain-fly and poles.
He drained half a bottle of water into a Bot Pot and set this into the fire to boil.
During the midday ride, he had collected some glacial snow into each of four bottles and by days-end they shrunk into clear cool water. He hadn’t passed any clear rivers today and so did not cast a line for fish. His map showed that tomorrow he would pass a few places to try for some brook trout. The fishing had been good lately and he’d perfected a few ways to clean cook and eat efficiently along the road.
On his bike were all of his necessities, spare but essential. Without any of them, he’d become heavily reliant upon luck and the chance encounter with someone generous enough to help, or share.
Today, (tonight rather) — marked his 10th day without encountering anyone along the road. At a decent elevation he always felt a bit more alone, a bit more sovereign, and with a broad view of approachers, he slept more confidently. The tree-line on one side cloaked the rest of the wilderness but the bluff he decamped upon broadened out over an endless horizon. Tonight may be colder than typical with the Southwest exposure. Wind blustered a bit more, as he finished dinner. He carried fuel and a pack stove, but available sticks, and free fuel in the form of lumber was plentiful, and could not be born by bike, so with the scarcity of encounter, he enjoyed the slower cooking time with a warm campfire.
As the fire settled into it's embers, he listened to the breezes against the prattle of leaves above. There would be no need to stoke it. He'd soon be cozy in his bag reading. From a shift in the leave's dialog he could read the nuance to changing direction and humidity. Tonight would be clear, cooler, and dry., perfect.
He gathered his things into each bag, and tying a line to a heavy stick, he lobbed it over a tall bough, to pull the bags high up above his camp. The long line was tied off beside him with a stake, so that he could release it easily. The bags floated above him like a crowded piñata. The simplest mistakes may cause a bag to be dragged away into the woods, A stray lip-balm, candy, chiclet or toothpaste-smear marked certain a scarlet "X" on any bag to be stolen by coyotes, raccoons, bears, or smaller rodents. Once in the desert without a tree to hoist the bags, an enterprising coyote began to gnaw into his pack through the tent, and beside his bare ankle. He woke to soft warm trickles of blood rolling down his foot, as a paw repeatedly dug at his bag through his dyneema tent. He raised his Gransfors-Bruks hand axe and generating a furious scornful screech ing growl, he'd managed to spook the thieving dog back into the tree-line. Chances are best taken when in the company of copious careless campers with far more tasty things to lose than you. He relaxed into his tent vestibule, unrolled his tape, and took to mending before more condensation made it impossible to close the gap.
Everyone has their theories, about bear-bagging; While some prefer to keep their stash under watch, those in the back-country choose to keep their bags far from camp, and their own softer parts.
Bears. Bears don't care much for manners, but being just off the road, and not too remote, the scavenger at large in this region is generally manageable, and not a Bear. This means that a bag hanging from a tree is generally better kept nearby and typically with a bell, or chime. Raccoons will scale nearly anything to get to a stick of gum, and piñata practice begins when the bell rings.
His bag began to warm up with him inside his tent, and then his legs followed, as his pants and shoes were squared tidily in the vestibule, should it begin to drizzle, they'd remain dry. He found his lamp, and under it's low glow read a few chapters, before fading from the wakeful. It wasn't dawn yet, when he couldn't abate the pinge of stored fluids. He slowly scrambled his shoes to his feet, and un-zipped the flap to endeavor relief. The timing was perfect as he rose, because he found a coyote within reach and could smell and feel it's breath in the space between them. Few things can postpone more awkwardly nature's call, but this required some focus. Without breaking flow, he leaned his right shoulder to dip his hand where his shoes were, and hefted his axe. While it's never preferred to pick a fight, if one came to him, he'd be equipped. Tacitly he broadened his shoulders widened his arms and with his left arm reached for the fire-poker. He now had arms in each hand, as he looked for more visitors. He glared. With Wolves, Coyotes, and Raccoons, there is no childish remorse, whereby one can chastise them and as guilt besets them they shamefully renege into guilt-ridden apologies, and run away sulking. In fact yelling at a Raccoon from five feet we nearly never force a change in behavior. With a Coyote, which at times is every bit as smart as a teen-ager, the game to play from a distance is brinksmanship, bold and boisterous... but in close range, the game shifts to more of a tango. A quick bold tap with a stick across the nose, will generally loosen the tension and impart space for the long game of playground posturing. As in all fights, the first to strike generally wins. And so the stick cracked against the shoulder and nose as the coyote yelped, scrambling backward 10 feet. The man could see no others, but he knew they were there. Since the blackout, there had been no passing cars, or shimmering city lights to illuminate tent pitches beside a road, or over a vista. The Coyote, seemed stunned enough to not be calculating it's next move, so the man raised his arms, in one a cracked stick, and the other his belt axe. With a bit more distance between them the man bellowed a loud roar, as a playful father in costume would mimic a bear to his kid. The sound however was more convincing, as he intended to end this visitation within the moment in the most effective primal way. His arms gathered goose-bumps from his own shrill scream, while the coyote slunk side-long, and backward ten more feet. The man moved to close the gap a bit with another swing of the stick and a second sound like a drunk fog-horn. The Coyote withdrew again, this time twenty feet into the tree-line, and no longer faced him, but was standing shoulder-to. Each scanned for others , and neither resolved an accomplice in the dark shade of moonlight. The Man lowered the stick into the fire's coal bed, and indiscriminately stirred it deeply as sparks, flitted like escaping lightening-bugs from a bell jar, cooled to grey above his gaze and fell like confetti. As he adjusted to the subtle illumination the Coyote was gone. The man stood humming to quell the adrenaline amped by his screams, and with a soft numbing in his temples, he raised his stick, now lit with fire, and paced to where the coyote had stood. He rested the branch on a Raspberry bush, opened his fly to take a leak. He pinched and walked, as a dog may distribute the same, circumnavigating the perimeter of his clearing; Urine falling onto dry leaves with a hollow tapping of rain on a plastic drum. Closing the circle, again beside his smoldering branch, he gazed again onto the tree-line but recovered no useful data. He was not alone, but he was currently by himself. Before returning to his tent, he lowered his bear-bag, unzipping a pocket to extract what appeared a small plastic wrapped mint. He set it on a rock, and stepping on it gently but with all his weight until the ball turned to powder in its wrapper, and then he gathered it to scatter powder in a tighter circle around his camp. The pouch contained a pulverized moth-ball, and the smell, was so strong that it could veil anything desirable with such an overwhelming odor, that poaching animals would relent. He wiped his hands on the damp bush beside him, raised and staked the bag high above, and then retreated to a quiet sleep.
At the edge of an abyss stands a cyclist who just rode up to it to see what it felt like to skirt doom.
It never dawned on him that losing his footing now, or that a strong breeze, may prove fatal.
In his Pack, was a notebook, a few markers, a bottle, pens, some coins, and some snack bars, amongst the rest of the detritus that accumulates at the bottom of anyone's well-worn bag. He peeled this off his back, and let it slide down his arm while removing a few zipper bags. The phone in his hand was closing in on a depleted battery, which hardly mattered while the sun set over a the edge of an escarpment leading down some 80 feet to the basin. He closed the useless phone, and stowed it in his jersey. He coughed accumulated dust and pollen, and closed itchy eyes while the sun blanched his wind-swept face.
Every moment of today’s trip led to this moment. A bag full of gear decamped from his Seat-post, then leaned sideways to stretch his leg over the top-tube and lay the bike down.
He was done for the day, and relished the idea of a prone position reading, writing, and reflecting, while the stars gained against the dusk. The waning moon seemed to follow him to this camp, where he set about to pitching a tarp, and tent, as well as a fire.
By Mid October, the days had become just long enough to get someplace by day, but not long enough to completely exhaust oneself before daylight fades. Riding alone seemed to him the best way to guarantee time-tables, and the calm zen of a reflective ride washed through him clearing out the unimportant and replacing dread with serotonin. With each mile his thin frame pressed and pushed the pedals up slopes that most of his friends would walk. His bike and gear were spare, and also light enough to keep moving albeit with difficulty, up nearly any pitch. He sometimes missed having a companion, but validated that having someone to share this with, would come with the cost of reduced velocity, range, and the requirement to share food, water, and labor each of which were scarce. In the air was a damp coolness which felt almost cold on the back of his arms, while his head and neck felt warm, almost hot. Fading into the background of his conscious mind were the movements of the day, where each shift of body weight, and every swerve collected to achieve his destination without the disappointing tragedy of being sucked under a Semi-Truck, or folding a wheel in a crack or grate. It should not be lost on anyone that this was a great day’s ride. He was fully aware that luck may have also played an important role to prevent him from laying in a culvert bleeding. It does happen in fact, that a ride, like a great meal, never seems to announce a tragedy, until you are choking on a bone, ice-cube, or some Broccoli, turning blue, wondering if this will be your un-luckiest day — Wondering how long it had been since you’d stopped counting incidences. He was attuned to the distinct fate of being uncertain. Knowing that whenever something strikes, it generally seems to be out of the clear blue sky.
His Uncle had passed by slipping down some stairs, and his Brother was struck by a 2x4 on a job site, and until those tragedies, neither of them saw it coming. He was a realist, but knew that surprises like this really did happen, and the difference between a quick dodge of a car door, and a cracked collarbone, was nearly always two-tenths of a second, sprinkled with Karma.
Fate was perhaps a real thing, but being kind, and considerate of others was a tested way to postpone an inevitable re-calibration of this clock.. He hadn't seen another person nor car along the road since the black-out, now more than a week behind him.
He dug out his flint, and steel, and began to scratch bright blue-white streaks of heat into some frayed grasses and needles, as the last pink crease of sky was swallowed by deep blue over the horizon. Soon a wire of orange became a glow in his fingers, then a careful puff of white smoke, and with a few breaths, a solid orange fire-ball appeared in his palms. He dropped this gently into some larger kindling, and a blaze expanded to exaggerate the shadows of his bike, packs, and tent. He became one of many shadows, which carried off into the night. Soon the crackling and hissing Fire exaggerated a glowing sphere against the blanket of darkness, and soothed away any recollection of the day’s warm sun.
To look away from the blaze would count 45 before ones eyes could make any sense of the inky shadows behind him.
He recalled the Fox he saw today, and the wolves which sulked like gangly teens into the grey brush, as well as several hawks, a solitary eagle, and a few road-kill. In each ride a fresh road-kill could easily become the evening’s meal, but today, none looked the part. He would boil water, and saturate a pouch of dehydrated food, to restore spent fuel. Food was finite, especially when calories were your fuel. Each one counted toward the next destination, and none seemed wasted.
The man settled in the contentment of being alive, warm, dry, and soon to be fed.
A cooler wind picked up the flames and blew through his camp dragging brush and lighter items if only a few inches. He pulled a drawstring to open a pack, and withdrew some lines and stakes.
From another frame bag, he withdrew a small hand Axe, and prepped the lines to tap them into the earth pulling each snug at four points on his rain-fly and poles.
He drained half a bottle of water into a Bot Pot and set this into the fire to boil.
During the midday ride, he had collected some glacial snow into each of four bottles and by days-end they shrunk into clear cool water. He hadn’t passed any clear rivers today and so did not cast a line for fish. His map showed that tomorrow he would pass a few places to try for some brook trout. The fishing had been good lately and he’d perfected a few ways to clean cook and eat efficiently along the road.
On his bike were all of his necessities, spare but essential. Without any of them, he’d become heavily reliant upon luck and the chance encounter with someone generous enough to help, or share.
Today, (tonight rather) — marked his 10th day without encountering anyone along the road. At a decent elevation he always felt a bit more alone, a bit more sovereign, and with a broad view of approachers, he slept more confidently. The tree-line on one side cloaked the rest of the wilderness but the bluff he decamped upon broadened out over an endless horizon. Tonight may be colder than typical with the Southwest exposure. Wind blustered a bit more, as he finished dinner. He carried fuel and a pack stove, but available sticks, and free fuel in the form of lumber was plentiful, and could not be born by bike, so with the scarcity of encounter, he enjoyed the slower cooking time with a warm campfire.
As the fire settled into it's embers, he listened to the breezes against the prattle of leaves above. There would be no need to stoke it. He'd soon be cozy in his bag reading. From a shift in the leave's dialog he could read the nuance to changing direction and humidity. Tonight would be clear, cooler, and dry., perfect.
He gathered his things into each bag, and tying a line to a heavy stick, he lobbed it over a tall bough, to pull the bags high up above his camp. The long line was tied off beside him with a stake, so that he could release it easily. The bags floated above him like a crowded piñata. The simplest mistakes may cause a bag to be dragged away into the woods, A stray lip-balm, candy, chiclet or toothpaste-smear marked certain a scarlet "X" on any bag to be stolen by coyotes, raccoons, bears, or smaller rodents. Once in the desert without a tree to hoist the bags, an enterprising coyote began to gnaw into his pack through the tent, and beside his bare ankle. He woke to soft warm trickles of blood rolling down his foot, as a paw repeatedly dug at his bag through his dyneema tent. He raised his Gransfors-Bruks hand axe and generating a furious scornful screech ing growl, he'd managed to spook the thieving dog back into the tree-line. Chances are best taken when in the company of copious careless campers with far more tasty things to lose than you. He relaxed into his tent vestibule, unrolled his tape, and took to mending before more condensation made it impossible to close the gap.
Everyone has their theories, about bear-bagging; While some prefer to keep their stash under watch, those in the back-country choose to keep their bags far from camp, and their own softer parts.
Bears. Bears don't care much for manners, but being just off the road, and not too remote, the scavenger at large in this region is generally manageable, and not a Bear. This means that a bag hanging from a tree is generally better kept nearby and typically with a bell, or chime. Raccoons will scale nearly anything to get to a stick of gum, and piñata practice begins when the bell rings.
His bag began to warm up with him inside his tent, and then his legs followed, as his pants and shoes were squared tidily in the vestibule, should it begin to drizzle, they'd remain dry. He found his lamp, and under it's low glow read a few chapters, before fading from the wakeful. It wasn't dawn yet, when he couldn't abate the pinge of stored fluids. He slowly scrambled his shoes to his feet, and un-zipped the flap to endeavor relief. The timing was perfect as he rose, because he found a coyote within reach and could smell and feel it's breath in the space between them. Few things can postpone more awkwardly nature's call, but this required some focus. Without breaking flow, he leaned his right shoulder to dip his hand where his shoes were, and hefted his axe. While it's never preferred to pick a fight, if one came to him, he'd be equipped. Tacitly he broadened his shoulders widened his arms and with his left arm reached for the fire-poker. He now had arms in each hand, as he looked for more visitors. He glared. With Wolves, Coyotes, and Raccoons, there is no childish remorse, whereby one can chastise them and as guilt besets them they shamefully renege into guilt-ridden apologies, and run away sulking. In fact yelling at a Raccoon from five feet we nearly never force a change in behavior. With a Coyote, which at times is every bit as smart as a teen-ager, the game to play from a distance is brinksmanship, bold and boisterous... but in close range, the game shifts to more of a tango. A quick bold tap with a stick across the nose, will generally loosen the tension and impart space for the long game of playground posturing. As in all fights, the first to strike generally wins. And so the stick cracked against the shoulder and nose as the coyote yelped, scrambling backward 10 feet. The man could see no others, but he knew they were there. Since the blackout, there had been no passing cars, or shimmering city lights to illuminate tent pitches beside a road, or over a vista. The Coyote, seemed stunned enough to not be calculating it's next move, so the man raised his arms, in one a cracked stick, and the other his belt axe. With a bit more distance between them the man bellowed a loud roar, as a playful father in costume would mimic a bear to his kid. The sound however was more convincing, as he intended to end this visitation within the moment in the most effective primal way. His arms gathered goose-bumps from his own shrill scream, while the coyote slunk side-long, and backward ten more feet. The man moved to close the gap a bit with another swing of the stick and a second sound like a drunk fog-horn. The Coyote withdrew again, this time twenty feet into the tree-line, and no longer faced him, but was standing shoulder-to. Each scanned for others , and neither resolved an accomplice in the dark shade of moonlight. The Man lowered the stick into the fire's coal bed, and indiscriminately stirred it deeply as sparks, flitted like escaping lightening-bugs from a bell jar, cooled to grey above his gaze and fell like confetti. As he adjusted to the subtle illumination the Coyote was gone. The man stood humming to quell the adrenaline amped by his screams, and with a soft numbing in his temples, he raised his stick, now lit with fire, and paced to where the coyote had stood. He rested the branch on a Raspberry bush, opened his fly to take a leak. He pinched and walked, as a dog may distribute the same, circumnavigating the perimeter of his clearing; Urine falling onto dry leaves with a hollow tapping of rain on a plastic drum. Closing the circle, again beside his smoldering branch, he gazed again onto the tree-line but recovered no useful data. He was not alone, but he was currently by himself. Before returning to his tent, he lowered his bear-bag, unzipping a pocket to extract what appeared a small plastic wrapped mint. He set it on a rock, and stepping on it gently but with all his weight until the ball turned to powder in its wrapper, and then he gathered it to scatter powder in a tighter circle around his camp. The pouch contained a pulverized moth-ball, and the smell, was so strong that it could veil anything desirable with such an overwhelming odor, that poaching animals would relent. He wiped his hands on the damp bush beside him, raised and staked the bag high above, and then retreated to a quiet sleep.
Background
After the Darkness fell, there was only speculation about why. When pumps would no longer run, along with microwaves, cell towers, refrigerators, and laptops, several radio personalities fueled speculation. Each put forward ideas, but when the shit really began to hit the fan, none of the ideas about why mattered. Sound-bites didn't matter without power. it seemed that the whole world rotated upon opinion and ideas, but as these no longer circulated most of what we were doing, and how we sought value, became a dead currency. Everyone became a new victim of their day to day, as a new order entered, rounding up and pushing out the normal means of communication. Calendars, Events, Bookings, Banking chit-chat, and the 24 hour news cycle stalled. What remained was tasks, chores, and deeds. People gathered to conserve systems, to maintain their value, Police still met before patrolling beats, Schools still gathered to teach, and scholars, scientists, writers, and doctors still plied their craft, albeit differently. Churches were filled nearly overnight. Babies were still born, and the deceased were buried, but things were quiet, and contemplative. Planes no longer flew, cars trucks and busses no longer charged nor fueled sat where they became exhausted, and many people struggled as things unraveled. Clear uncomfortable changes constrained and disrupted the forest of people who had come to rely the most upon a daily deluge of data, and supplies. People leveraged positions on things returning to normalcy soon. Those with something tangible to broker or trade, did well, while the most affected were those with the most to lose. Those whose homes were surveilled, and fenced-in seemed the most vulnerable. AM radio carried the only useable intelligence on how far spread the black-out spread. Each station overlapping another sharing an uncomfortable one way communique, where each discussed their statuses, over air and shared that of the overlapping broadcast ranges. It seemed to be local at first, but later was confirmed to spread quite far.
Before the Blackout, there were no curfews, no checkpoints, no sorties, and no shortages. Distribution of intelligence, goods and services was nimble and efficient, but it was relied upon to be daily, and now it was weekly or worse. Wisdom indicated that density would be the worst affected, and that there may even be country folks who've not yet noticed a change. The fact was that when power was lost, and the Communications grid was down, people didn't react well.
In my town I'd imagined people cooperating to placate fears, gather supplies, and to maintain social order, but the truth was, I was on a trip when it happened, and picking up the pieces that anything occurred at all, took a bit longer. I can't be sure when the blackout came, or where it started or spread from, only that I'd first noticed it approaching a small town 2-pump gas station/ bait shop, which was closed. The sign on a peeling green screen door said, "No Power, No Fuel, Bait's Dead, Back when the Government gets it's shit together, -George". I didn't know nor meet George, but had imagined a mid 70's fishing guide casting in a mountain lake with what his surviving bait, and home-tied flys. As midday sun faded a bit behind a storm cloud, I rolled my bike under the small shed overhang, and waited for the squall to pass, eating some packaged snack-bars and refilling water from the wall spigot.
The rain lasted a few hours, and nobody else passed nor returned during that time, so I'd imagined I was alone at the tiny filling station.
Looking through the dark windows, I saw a spartan selection of Maps, Tackle, Candy, Chips, Jerky and styrofoam containers for bait. A door to the back room likely held a bathroom, and some bait tanks. I pee'd beside the embankment near the back door. Here is found stacked cans of warm soda, used to re-fill the coin-op machine out front which stood silent and warm for lack of power. Strange samples of discord from what one expects and what one observes set in my head. It was as if, I heard the vending machine humming away keeping the soda cold, and yet there was nothing. I'd imagined the pneumatic hose across the pump's drive ring with each approaching hungry auto, but it never made a sound. The unique chime as the green door swung open and clanged a dangling bell, also never made a sound. It was a quiet day, and that is how I recall discovering the mute result of some sort of black-out event.
We can call it "The Event", but as macabre as that my read, it was just as strange to behold. I was about 150 miles from the last filling station, that I could remember visiting, however I had been in the woods for a few days, and so I'd imagined the event took place when I left that pit stop.
I'd imagined people conserving gas, or siphoning gas from one car to another, and some places with generators running on LP Gas, charging a king's ransom for fuel as their systems ran until the LP tank was drained. In the silence of the deep woods, nothing really changed. It was quiet, birds, and forest animals chirped, and rustled, and carried on with daily tasks. People, were scarce in these parts, but it still was normal along a road to be passed by several dozen vehicles per hour. When the hush came over the region, and presumably a larger area -- my sense was to stay off the grid until it blew over. Scarcity of resources never comes to bear when one is already lean and living in large measure off of the land. Public safety is most secure when one's public is an occasional scavenger animal, and not a lean junky with a gun. I think the outage was now 7-10 days behind me. I don't know for certain.
When I woke again, breath brought puffy white clouds in the chill of the damp morning frost. I wiped the condensation from the shiny dyneema ceiling of my tent with a pack chamois, unzipped the screen, and rung it out into the vestibule gravel beside my boots. I un-tethered them from the trekking pole (a precaution against scavenging animals), and slid them on while ducking below the rain fly. Into the chilly morning, I gathered information about my belongings and their surroundings. My Bear-bag was intact, and stirring the powdery white ash of my fire, revealed some lingering embers. I grabbed my Gransbruks, and split a few more branches, scraping their edges to ignite easily. I placed two in an inverted v above the snowy white powder from last night's fire, and heaved some heavy breaths into the downy ash until the small flecks of branch wood ignited and smoldered lazily to life. I ventured into the outer ring of trees to pee, careful not to spoil any morels which may be lying in the leaves. There were none, but I had a half dozen foraged from yesterday, a few eggs to crack, and some shrink packed bacon, to sauté. I dropped my bear bag and dug into the inner Dry-bag to find my camp pan, and scraper. I warmed the bacon in the pan layering the surface with a sheen, split the morels with the Axe, and warmed them with a touch of chive. I cracked two eggs over the warm morels, and rested the pan higher on the oil layer to simmer softly with an occasional scramble. It's far easier to eat eggs when the yolks are absorbed, and this makes housekeeping easier for clean-up with a scraper spatula the size of a playing card. People say that camping meals are far more tasty than those shared in a kitchen, and I don't disagree, The warm smoky bacon and Morels, in fluffy golden eggs, was fantastic, however few things rival coffee in the chilly outdoors, beside a campfire.
When I was done eating every scrap from the pan, I added a splash of water, warming this to a boil on the flame, and then scraped it clean. With a full cup more water brought to a boil, I placed the small GSI bag dripper over my mug, opened a bag of ground coffee, and tapped out a few teaspoons. Coffee is magic, and coffee that comes in the quiet solitude of a heavy timber canopy under seemingly impossible circumstance is a bit more miraculous. With respect to anyone who has ever waited in line behind weary undecided crabby urbanites to get their jet-fuel in the early morning with nothing but a desk job to look forward to, I empathize. The craft concoction coming in ratios of milk to froth, to crema, mixed with syrups, and sugar, and spray cream, by a crabby barista, is embarrassing to the farmer who grew the precious beans. Coffee... -- Simple coffee, black and warm, only slightly more bitter than the millennial serving it up, sideways glancing at their tip-jar, is a world away from this method.
A pourover from a breakfast tinged pot through a reusable sieve, is perhaps coffee in it's purest form. Black, winey & sweet, warmed over smoldering white oak. I may choose to brew mine with my sock, before I'd stand in that line behind people who would lament divisively when a pump of vanilla syrup goes missing. With the hind site context of what appeared to some to be the end of days, now playing out, I'll be grateful that I still have some cherished coffee in my pack, because it's a long hike to Mexico, or even Central America, to gather more beans.
My daydream of petulent prima donnas carousing around the creamer, touching up their bleached paper cups with sugar, cinnamon, and cocoa --Their boutique morning coffee stirred nervously with a zillion wood sticks, from your unsustainable forest of choice, ends when my last swallow is interrupted by the crack of thunder. Was that thunder? it sounded strangely like a boom, and not a crack. Perhaps a sonic boom? Nah.
Clutching my warm Ti mug for a few more minutes, I gazed over the embankment unconsciously calculating weather from nuances of air, pressure, humidity, and wind direction. I think I'd surmised that the boom was not thunder, but something else. I turned to collapse my circus into a few small packs, and set about to hitch them up to my trusty bike sitting in the shade. The morning sun broke the cloud veil, and poured warmly on my face that low kelvin orange glow that morning brings, through a slit of clear blue, below a heavier cloud layer. I pulled up the spikes anchoring my tent to the earth, and bagged them. The wind was mild enough that I didn't need to mind the direction from which I rolled the tent, but did so anyway, rolling with my back to the wind, in tight purposeful pinches like a baker would a jelly-roll keeping my lines, inside the fabric. I stowed the tight bundle in a compression bag, and folded the top down with my knee on the side to remove spacious air. I pull the valve on my sleep pad, and rolled it atop the ground sheet to keep it safe, and stuffed it in a bag the size of a coke can. I gathered utensils, my axe and my cooled cook-kit into the other bag, and rolled it down.
I was packed -- except for my toothbrush, which hung loosely from my slack jaw, gathering saliva, whilst my hands were busy clicking bags into place. I gave each tire a squeeze, and then brushed my teeth. I looked forward to the descent down the backside of the hill. I spat, straddled, slid the brush in my frame-pack, and clicked into my pedals, to roll out.
Before the Blackout, there were no curfews, no checkpoints, no sorties, and no shortages. Distribution of intelligence, goods and services was nimble and efficient, but it was relied upon to be daily, and now it was weekly or worse. Wisdom indicated that density would be the worst affected, and that there may even be country folks who've not yet noticed a change. The fact was that when power was lost, and the Communications grid was down, people didn't react well.
In my town I'd imagined people cooperating to placate fears, gather supplies, and to maintain social order, but the truth was, I was on a trip when it happened, and picking up the pieces that anything occurred at all, took a bit longer. I can't be sure when the blackout came, or where it started or spread from, only that I'd first noticed it approaching a small town 2-pump gas station/ bait shop, which was closed. The sign on a peeling green screen door said, "No Power, No Fuel, Bait's Dead, Back when the Government gets it's shit together, -George". I didn't know nor meet George, but had imagined a mid 70's fishing guide casting in a mountain lake with what his surviving bait, and home-tied flys. As midday sun faded a bit behind a storm cloud, I rolled my bike under the small shed overhang, and waited for the squall to pass, eating some packaged snack-bars and refilling water from the wall spigot.
The rain lasted a few hours, and nobody else passed nor returned during that time, so I'd imagined I was alone at the tiny filling station.
Looking through the dark windows, I saw a spartan selection of Maps, Tackle, Candy, Chips, Jerky and styrofoam containers for bait. A door to the back room likely held a bathroom, and some bait tanks. I pee'd beside the embankment near the back door. Here is found stacked cans of warm soda, used to re-fill the coin-op machine out front which stood silent and warm for lack of power. Strange samples of discord from what one expects and what one observes set in my head. It was as if, I heard the vending machine humming away keeping the soda cold, and yet there was nothing. I'd imagined the pneumatic hose across the pump's drive ring with each approaching hungry auto, but it never made a sound. The unique chime as the green door swung open and clanged a dangling bell, also never made a sound. It was a quiet day, and that is how I recall discovering the mute result of some sort of black-out event.
We can call it "The Event", but as macabre as that my read, it was just as strange to behold. I was about 150 miles from the last filling station, that I could remember visiting, however I had been in the woods for a few days, and so I'd imagined the event took place when I left that pit stop.
I'd imagined people conserving gas, or siphoning gas from one car to another, and some places with generators running on LP Gas, charging a king's ransom for fuel as their systems ran until the LP tank was drained. In the silence of the deep woods, nothing really changed. It was quiet, birds, and forest animals chirped, and rustled, and carried on with daily tasks. People, were scarce in these parts, but it still was normal along a road to be passed by several dozen vehicles per hour. When the hush came over the region, and presumably a larger area -- my sense was to stay off the grid until it blew over. Scarcity of resources never comes to bear when one is already lean and living in large measure off of the land. Public safety is most secure when one's public is an occasional scavenger animal, and not a lean junky with a gun. I think the outage was now 7-10 days behind me. I don't know for certain.
When I woke again, breath brought puffy white clouds in the chill of the damp morning frost. I wiped the condensation from the shiny dyneema ceiling of my tent with a pack chamois, unzipped the screen, and rung it out into the vestibule gravel beside my boots. I un-tethered them from the trekking pole (a precaution against scavenging animals), and slid them on while ducking below the rain fly. Into the chilly morning, I gathered information about my belongings and their surroundings. My Bear-bag was intact, and stirring the powdery white ash of my fire, revealed some lingering embers. I grabbed my Gransbruks, and split a few more branches, scraping their edges to ignite easily. I placed two in an inverted v above the snowy white powder from last night's fire, and heaved some heavy breaths into the downy ash until the small flecks of branch wood ignited and smoldered lazily to life. I ventured into the outer ring of trees to pee, careful not to spoil any morels which may be lying in the leaves. There were none, but I had a half dozen foraged from yesterday, a few eggs to crack, and some shrink packed bacon, to sauté. I dropped my bear bag and dug into the inner Dry-bag to find my camp pan, and scraper. I warmed the bacon in the pan layering the surface with a sheen, split the morels with the Axe, and warmed them with a touch of chive. I cracked two eggs over the warm morels, and rested the pan higher on the oil layer to simmer softly with an occasional scramble. It's far easier to eat eggs when the yolks are absorbed, and this makes housekeeping easier for clean-up with a scraper spatula the size of a playing card. People say that camping meals are far more tasty than those shared in a kitchen, and I don't disagree, The warm smoky bacon and Morels, in fluffy golden eggs, was fantastic, however few things rival coffee in the chilly outdoors, beside a campfire.
When I was done eating every scrap from the pan, I added a splash of water, warming this to a boil on the flame, and then scraped it clean. With a full cup more water brought to a boil, I placed the small GSI bag dripper over my mug, opened a bag of ground coffee, and tapped out a few teaspoons. Coffee is magic, and coffee that comes in the quiet solitude of a heavy timber canopy under seemingly impossible circumstance is a bit more miraculous. With respect to anyone who has ever waited in line behind weary undecided crabby urbanites to get their jet-fuel in the early morning with nothing but a desk job to look forward to, I empathize. The craft concoction coming in ratios of milk to froth, to crema, mixed with syrups, and sugar, and spray cream, by a crabby barista, is embarrassing to the farmer who grew the precious beans. Coffee... -- Simple coffee, black and warm, only slightly more bitter than the millennial serving it up, sideways glancing at their tip-jar, is a world away from this method.
A pourover from a breakfast tinged pot through a reusable sieve, is perhaps coffee in it's purest form. Black, winey & sweet, warmed over smoldering white oak. I may choose to brew mine with my sock, before I'd stand in that line behind people who would lament divisively when a pump of vanilla syrup goes missing. With the hind site context of what appeared to some to be the end of days, now playing out, I'll be grateful that I still have some cherished coffee in my pack, because it's a long hike to Mexico, or even Central America, to gather more beans.
My daydream of petulent prima donnas carousing around the creamer, touching up their bleached paper cups with sugar, cinnamon, and cocoa --Their boutique morning coffee stirred nervously with a zillion wood sticks, from your unsustainable forest of choice, ends when my last swallow is interrupted by the crack of thunder. Was that thunder? it sounded strangely like a boom, and not a crack. Perhaps a sonic boom? Nah.
Clutching my warm Ti mug for a few more minutes, I gazed over the embankment unconsciously calculating weather from nuances of air, pressure, humidity, and wind direction. I think I'd surmised that the boom was not thunder, but something else. I turned to collapse my circus into a few small packs, and set about to hitch them up to my trusty bike sitting in the shade. The morning sun broke the cloud veil, and poured warmly on my face that low kelvin orange glow that morning brings, through a slit of clear blue, below a heavier cloud layer. I pulled up the spikes anchoring my tent to the earth, and bagged them. The wind was mild enough that I didn't need to mind the direction from which I rolled the tent, but did so anyway, rolling with my back to the wind, in tight purposeful pinches like a baker would a jelly-roll keeping my lines, inside the fabric. I stowed the tight bundle in a compression bag, and folded the top down with my knee on the side to remove spacious air. I pull the valve on my sleep pad, and rolled it atop the ground sheet to keep it safe, and stuffed it in a bag the size of a coke can. I gathered utensils, my axe and my cooled cook-kit into the other bag, and rolled it down.
I was packed -- except for my toothbrush, which hung loosely from my slack jaw, gathering saliva, whilst my hands were busy clicking bags into place. I gave each tire a squeeze, and then brushed my teeth. I looked forward to the descent down the backside of the hill. I spat, straddled, slid the brush in my frame-pack, and clicked into my pedals, to roll out.
Darker
The roll out was smooth, travel down to the road from the escarpment was a great thrill, managing weights shifting rearward while applying downward force to the front to keep the bike-packs load in check. I was cruising on gravel, and potted fire-roads, with a plume of smoke-like dust kicking up behind. In the bottom, the sunshine seemed to parch everything, it was chilly but warm and dry at the same time. It was a windless blue, with plenty of daylight remaining as the shadows grew long, and I came upon a flat near the river paralleled by train tracks, which seemed to have just lost the polish of a recent engine. The river flowed silently betraying the fast flow beneath the calm surface. sparse grasses and thatch grew along the banks. I stated long down the rod-straight train line. The tracks seemed to converge far before they'd bend or end in a switch in the next town. There was a lonely feeling down here, if only because no critters showed themselves for several minutes while I broke the surface of the river to sample the water. What mattered was that the water didn't have chemical toxins, runoff form a factory, or spill. The rest could be made potable with my sawyer filter and some treatment. What I first sampled was the temperature, factoring the deviation between air-temp and water, could indicate a local spring, and that was always welcome. The in-rush of hundreds of gallons of fresh water per minute, meant it would be significantly cooler than the air, and far more likely that the water would be drinkable. There was a 40 degree difference between the cool morning air, still frigid, and the water which moved quickly downhill. This would be a great space to collect from, and so I followed up-stream sampling deeper until the water warmed significantly, and the difference was no longer significant. Then doubled back and settled upon a flat area to pitch the next site, fill and filter water, cast a few lines, and perhaps bathe.