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August 30, 2008
Chinns Lake - Continued
It's 80 degrees at my house, 7,500 feet above sea level and we're packing to go camping. Jennifer is packing her short and short sleeve shirts and we have to go through this every time.
"Baby, it's going to be cold up there. Dress as though you were going outside to play in the snow in February. You need gloves, boots, hat, and your winter ski jacket and pants. She packs them, but not without protest.
On the ride up to Chinn's Lake, Jennifer is scared. This is not a bad thing, though. This is a good thing. It means she's reasonably intelligent.
She's looking out her window as I'm picking a line, slowly, up a steep 4wd trail. And when she's looking out, she sees the tops of trees and a nice sharp drop off on the right. Not like in the Andes, mind you, but still a respectable 75 foot droop.
We didn't get away as soon as I'd hoped. It's 3:30 by the time we get up there.
By chance, some people had just pulled out of one of the best campsites on the lake and we unpack and set up the tent and pretty soon, we're wetting a couple of lines in the lake . Drowning flies, as it were.
Now this like, it's nice. Breathtaking. And quiet. Serene. Calm. The lake is flat. And then the music starts. Somewhere further up the lake, some idiots are blasting music from a stereo and it makes me sick. This is not why I come up here.
I could possibly go down there and politely ask them to turn it down, but the reality is that, judging by the commotion, there sounds to be several of them, and only one of me. Plus, they might not choose to turn it down, at which point they'll know I'm upset by their noise, and I'll have little recourse.
So, instead, I decide to do something slightly different. I get my pistol and make sure it's loaded and I put it in my pocket and between songs, I scream at the top of my lungs, "TURN THAT CRAP OFF!"
The reason I do this is that it preserves my anonymity somewhat, and also keeps me at a safe distance, so I don't have to start killing people unnecessarily. They do, in fact, turn the music off promptly.
Some guys fishing on the spillway decide they can't keep quite and they shout something at me to the effect that I should have asked them nicely at first, which floors me. Because, basically, he's accusing me of being impolite, when they were so inconsiderate of everyone else camping around the lake that they're blasting their heavy metal racket so loudly that I can hear it clear across the lake. Astonishing.
In any event, they turn off their music and so I accomplished my goal without firing a shot and this is what the tree-huggers don't get. They don't get that having a gun allows me to go out into the world and not cower in fear. I promise you I would never go out into the woods without a firearm, because I have to be able to stop whatever anyone else starts.
I have Jennifer to protect. And we're sleeping outside in a tent with a bunch of strangers around us at the lake. I can't control what people do outside my tent. But I can certainly control what happens once they poke their head in for a look-see.
At night, we cook hoboes and smores because....well...because we can I guess. And we eat until we're sick. And it's cold, of course. It's cold and Jennifer has climbed into her heaviest winter jacket and ski pants and gloves and boots and we're sitting here, eating smores and Jennifer says, "You got them to turn the music off, daddy. Yay, daddy!"
Posted by Rob Kiser on August 30, 2008 at 11:42 PM
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