Thanks for reading, listening, sharing, restacking and all of it. Here is Day 5 of 29 stories and podcasts in the 29 days of August. This one has been gurgling up from below. The lunatics want to privatize water.
There weren’t any water bottles in the cabin. Mark is going through the recycling looking for suitable glass bottles that he can use for a hike down to the local spring to bring back full. He finds all the glass he can, there are six bottles. Two 750ML, and 4 pints. That’s a lot to hike with, and they’d be heavy to hike with.
Mark puts them out on the counter, he’s going to have to wash them, but of course, there’s no water. He decides to take three empty plastic milk jugs and 3 large, empty plastic juice bottles. He’ll wash them as best he can down at the spring. Which will be pretty easy and thorough. Then he’ll bring them full, back to the cabin. He’ll use one of the gallon jugs to clean the glass, and the rest he’ll transfer to the glass.
His frame pack has many loops for tying on accessories, those will easily work for the bottles. He has twine and a multi-tool in the pack. He packs up some wash towels and a bottleneck cleaner from the kitchen.
Before he leaves, he takes a quick inventory of the cabin. Scanning the room, he sees a lot of typical camp items. Lamps, batteries, blankets, tools. He wants to be sure he has what he needs for a two-mile hike to the spring and back. Maybe even something fun, just to make the time move along a little. He grabs the small hand scythe in case he needs to bushwhack or something.
Mark grabs his small walking stick. It’s very dense hickory, and is not quite waist high. It’s roughly 1.5 inches in diameter. This is the fun stick. He can do a lot with it, and it’s easy to wield when the pack is loaded down.
There are several ways to get to the spring, which is closer to the little town than the cabin. There is the main back road, then there is an upper trail, and a lower trail. Mark lives closer to the upper trail, and it’s the most fun to hike, because it’s not a vehicle trail, there will be no ATVs on it, and in the winter, no snow machines. It’s a more narrow trail, with less visibility, it’s more wild. It’s not the kind of trail Mark wants to be on loaded up with a full pack. He doesn’t want to be slow on that trail if he comes across a bear or a cat.
As he approaches the upper trail, he has to decide if he’ll head down the hill to the lower, wider trail, or take the upper trail. He takes the upper trial because it’s a more direct route, and he already knows that once he’s loaded down, he’ll walk the back main road for safety and expedience.
It’s a really nice trail. He wants to hike it barefoot some day, so he always clears out stones and rocks when he sees them. He’d love to smooth this trail down well. There are some protruding branches that he cuts back with the scythe. That will make it easier to bike in the future. He sees that the wild blackberries have been eaten down, but not recently, so that’s good.
He stops at a clearing and drops his pack to gather a pocket full of small, smooth stones to smack with his stick. Hitting them down the hill, he watches them fly into the tops of the tress below. Always a fun little dalliance.
Continuing on, he crosses the small footbridge that spans above a brook, about 25 feet below. The froth of phosphates from the local plywood plant is so frustrating, it’s such a f-tard situation. It’s so unnecessary to do that.
Now, Mark is coming up to the first road he has to cross. It’s a nice little country road. There are a couple houses close by, it’s quaint, and beautiful. Both of the houses have a lot of flowers and little gardens. The one across the street has an overgrown lilac bush that is breathtaking.
Mark hears a horn honk down the road. He recognizes a pick-up truck. It’s his friend, Hal, from across the state line. Hal pulls over to Marks’ side of the road. “I was jut at your place, looking for you. I figured you might be on the trails, so I took a drive.”
Mark responds, “Cool, what'er you doing? I’m headed to the spring to get some water. I was sick of driving and needed to get out here.”
“How about that, look in the back, how fortuitous.” Says Hal.
In the back of the truck there are three, glass five gallon carboys strapped to the sidewalls. “I just did a barn clean out and got 15 of them. I’ve been passing them out, I knew you were in town.” Hal explains.
“Well, hot damn, that’s really nice.” Mark says, shedding his pack, throwing it in back and jumping in the passenger seat of the truck. “Let’s go test them out.”
The old, childhood friends take care of these chores, build a fire, fry some fish. They catch up, outline each of their summer plans, and have a very nice rest of the day.
The End877 Words
