Moonshiner's Clan - 20 JUL 62

Fri 20 JUL 62

CENTRAL SEWER SENTINEL

Maximum Survival Pack Hike to Central City

   Having taken a democratic vote the night before, we decided it would be more to our advantage to eliminate a proposed full day of swimming at Idiot Springs, where we would learn nothing for future use, and instead, push cross country on a full pack hike.  Who says American children are soft and always choose the easiest of two alternatives?!

   Using old reliable Socrates to get us to the head of the Valley of Truth, we turned trail up wind into the direction of Tourist Trap Town. The going was sort of tough, although none of the men needed to lighten packs. Axes and shovels were tucked into our bindings, and a few loose fry pans banging on their tie strings were banging out the march cadence. About a mile before Black Hawk, it started to drizzle, then to rain, then to pour. Enough of this being rough and touch in the teeth of the elements!! We halted the column. Everyone helped and was helped to put on his poncho so it completely covered pack and all.  With the line of march moving forward again, we looked like small badly built tents waddling along the highway with each having a human head sticking out of the upper smoke hole. And you guessed it: No sooner did we get the ponchos on than it stopped raining! Oh well.  It’s easier than washing the car. 

   Once within the town limits of black Hawk, we made a fantastic and near tragic discovery! We were no longer masters of our own destinies and comforts! Simultaneously, Lingo and Muscle Back had to go! Bad! But how can you dig a granite hole when God, Tourists and everybody is taking moving pictures of our whole motley crew?! Really!  Out on the open highway there was a traffic jam! Cars were slowing down and stopping to gawk and take their pictures! It wasn’t until we hit the center of town that these two mighty Mt-Men, now reduced to tears of pain, spotted and dashed for and made entrance to an old two-holer out back of a gas station. (The fact that the door was labeled “Ladies” was of little ocnseque3nce.)  Five minutes later their smiles were a sight to behold. Things are so much simpler back up in the wilderness. 

   Once into Central Sewer we waded through the fumes of pop corn, stale beer, honky-tonk pianos and tourists picking their noses while shoveling out money for genuine artifakes sold in the gaudy junk souvenir stores. About the only thing given away free in this town is an outdoor squirting water fountain. After much debate and realizing how careful we are to sterilize  all drinking water in camp, we decided to bypass this possibly lethal trap. If the Central Sewer-ites are as careful about their water pollution as they are about their spiritual pollution of the atmosphere, we want none of it thank you.

   On through town, on up past the Glory Hole Mine, on up past the shafts and tailings piles.  We finally found a lovely flat area from which we could see the crest of Laughing Coyote Mountain to the east, Central Sewer below us, and the sun, now setting to the west. We meditated.

   While supper was cooking, (beans and tea) we laid out our sleeping bags and then went up to inspect and old cemetery. Lingo made a startling discovery. There was the grave and exact inscriptions of a song he had sung the night before about Sarah Ella and her lover Willie and the entwining of roses and briars from their hearts! Needless to say, this set the mood for the night: Ghost Stories! First we trotted down to the sewer in the dark, Lingo passed out quarters and groups of threes and fours dispersed throughout the town to get tanked up within the hour.  The opera House intermission crowd took a double take when they came out on the street and saw all these unwashed urchins stalking about with flowers in their hats and knives at their sides.  Back up the hill we got the wits scared out of us with the tale of “The Irishman & the Frenchman” who were mining partners together, then enemies in the tunnels right under us.  (“I laugh!  I laugh!”)  Heat wave during the day, now ice on sleep bags.  Good exhausted sleep under the stars and moon – (and moving earth!) 

I-J