That Sunday afternoon

It is Sunday afternoon and the amount of distance I have to cover in order to get home and get myself in the position to teach school tomorrow is freaking me out a bit.  I am actually pissed.  I am pissed for many reasons.  To begin with, I am too far away from home.  Literally.  I have just spent the last oh, what? fourteen hours climbing San Miguel Peak, one of the more remote 14eers on the tic list.  We still have to break camp, ski out, load the Land Cruiser, and drive home four hours across southwest Colorado, grabbing dinner somewhere between Buena Vista and Alamosa. NOTHING is going to be open. Gareth is going to stay awake by rolling down the windows as we roll home, furiously, into the indigo darkness.

The spring snow has gone to crap this late in the afternoon, it's melted and frozen again because it took us forever to bag this one. I swear to God it was like a seven mile ski in up a snow covered Forest Service trail just to get to our camp yesterday evening. I already don't remember anything about the climb or the summit.  I think we had some good runs. Whoo-hoo.  But I don't give a shit about that now because on the descent, Annabelle caught whiff of a deer and took off after her across a gully where, right smack in the middle was a marmot carcass. Ddespite our furious protests ringing off the jagged cliffs, she stuck her head in the belly and went to town on the freshly killed animal. I thought Gareth was going to loose his mind or at least blow a vein in his right temple. When she finally made her way back to us, I slipped on the ridge. I fall, I swear 100 feet, my ski poles another 300 feet.  I am not scared, although I should be. No, I am pissed.  Pissed at how hot I am, skeins of sweat are running underneath my polypro shirt, my long underwear is sticking to my ski pants, my eyes are red and burning from dehydration.  All I want to do is take out my contacts, peel out of my soggy bra and put on cotton.  But the saline solution and my change of town clothes are in the Land Crusier about seven miles down river at the trail head.  So now I have to slide down another 300 feet to slog back up again. We're not even close to camp yet.

I am sick of Chris and Gareth and the three stupid dogs and this whole weekend.  I am hungry, thirsty, hot, uncomfortable. I am also pissed at everyone at Osprey Packs and feeling a little righteous about it.  So I am going to say it.  The pack I am testing for Mike sucks. I should be paid to wear it. They cannot bring this to the trade show in a few months.  It needs to go in the garbage. I need to be compensated.  I spit that at them when we finally reached the car, well into early evening and about five full body spills into snow banks.  I threw it off, into a puddle of slushy snow and dirt.

Gareth took a picture of me during this tantrum. Of the few pictures he took of me our ten years together, he never took very good pictures of me. Anyhow, I found it the other day, tucked into of my journals. It isn't a good picture. I am having a tantrum. But in some ways I think that Sunday afternoon sort of changed everything.