FLOG

Is FLOG™ melting?

I tells ya, too much free time spent in the languid Eugene heat is really cramping FLOG™'s style. I mean, I've hardly posted at all lately and the best I can come up with is telling you hardy readers about my dreams. My brain-damaged laptop can't take all the blame for this state of affairs. No, that ain't the problem. It's just that, here in the muggy July doldrums, FLOG™ is an under-stimulated and overheated denizen of an under-stimulated and overheated backwater half-horse town.

What I really need right now, with Ashley off at work, the dogs asleep, and a little Spaten Optimator coursing through my veins, is a dead body to go search for along the train tracks outside Cottage Grove. That would be about the only cure for the Southern Willamette Valley Summertime Blues. Hell, I might even come of age out there!

I had a brush with coming of age on Tuesday, actually, out hiking with the dogs in shimmering oak scrubland along the Coast Fork of the Willamette River. First there was the man in the woods, dressed only in a bright blue swimsuit and hiking boots, his cheeks, jowls and man-boobs sunken and drooping as though being left too long under the sun had softened him up. I'm not usually on edge about strangers in the woods, being 6'3" and 235 lbs. myself, but he angried up the dogs merely by his presence, and as we approached one another, I found him to be a full two inches taller and broader than me. But in the end all he wanted to know was if there was a place down the trail where he could re-cross the river, and I relaxed.

But, though I hadn't been forced to come of age yet, it got me to thinking . . . next time I'm out in these wildlands alone, I'll be sure and pack some kind of defense, for the hills round these parts positively teem with crazies and burnouts and it's best to be on guard.

A few steps down the trail, though, I had another brush with that old coming of age. The woods opened out into a riverside clearing, where a moody, charcoal-gray basalt fissure bound up three quarters of the river bed, forcing the whole Coast Fork down a chute 8 feet wide. Relaxing on the rocks, I stripped down to my Spongebobs and hopped in, steering myself feet-first down the chute. My dog Zuma followed me, having a couple hours earlier learned on his own how to negotiate rapids. (He's a sharp little fella.)

After a couple runs I pulled myself out onto the rocks, and realized I smelled a little rank. Briny or swampy or something. I looked back at the water and realized this wasn't the greatest navigable waterway in the world to hop into. Near the shore, long fingers of brown algae wagged ruefully in the current; the only fish visible were wary black darters that clung to the shadows. The whole stream was brown and teeming with melancholy plant matter and scum. I had just soaked myself in the combined agricultural effluent of Cottage Grove, Creswell, Goshen and all the soaked and swollen farmlands between.

And then I noticed the leeches. Tiny and wriggling, no longer then the breadth of your pinky nail, they squirmed on my skin, one end tapered, the other all mouth. They were everywhere on me. I hurriedly wiped, scraped and scratched every inch of body I could reach, dressed and hiked back to the car. On my way out I passed a sign that said

WARNING:
Deep water, leeches, and sometimes pollution.
Swim at your own risk.

And I grew up just a little.

Maybe next time I find a body!

Posted by FLOG at July 22, 2004 4:52 AM