As The Crow Flies

A thru-hiking ER doctor put together this medical guide for the long distance hiker. http://www.whiteblaze.net/index.php?page=med_guide

Ever since seeing the Peruvian exhibit I have been interested in traveling to Peru.

One summer I was working in Eastern Oregon in the Wallowas . I went to a movie one night and while waiting for the movie to start, I talked with the man sitting next to me. He said he had traveled to Peru and hiked up to Machu Picchu. While camped there that night he had a vision of how to build a clock that would tell you the right time and day to do anything.

After the movie I went back to his house to see his clocks. Some were big like grandfather clocks and others were just drawn on paper. He gave me one drawn on paper. You have to set it everyday but with it you will always know the best time to do anything.

The next morning, I was driving through the woods, looking for a place to call home for awhile and I see a Peruvian shepherd dressed in traditional clothes and shepherding   about a thousand sheep. The Peruvian shepherd flagged me down. He didn’t speak much English but enough to tell me that he wanted some water and that he was from Peru.

Later that day I bought a Sunday paper and started reading the travel section. The article for that week was titled: Peru is safe to visit now.

Note: I don’t know where the clock is. I think it may be at my other cabin. If I find it I will take a picture of it and post it here and then you too can know the best time to do everything, if you can figure it out.

When I was in a shelter on the AT(Appalachian Trail), waiting for someone to come see about the abandon pack that was left there, we joked about who they would send. We thought for sure they would send search and rescue or a trail runner. But we laughed that they might send two sheriff deputies through the dark woods 2 and one-half miles to the shelter with one of those huge flash lights that work really well for about 40 minutes. And that they would arrive knocking on the bottom of it trying to get it to work better There was probably over 100 lbs of gear left there and we laughed about the the local deputies putting on the pack and walking back out with that huge flashlight about to go out.

About 1 am they arrived, it was two sheriff deputys and sure enough they had one of those big flashlights that was about to go out. One was a big rotund friendly guy and the other was a very skinny guy with slicked back hair and a lot of after shave on. After they found the note that was left with the pack that said the owner had murdered his father and gone to the woods to live, they called in. Even though one 16 year old boy had carried all that gear to the shelter, they told the office that there was 100’s of pounds of gear there and that there was no way that they could pack it all out.

There were probably fifty trail bars. One fell on the ground while they were looking through the pack. The big guy picked it up and said,” I think that one will just have to find it ’s way into my pocket.”

They decided to just take the knives and the note with them and send someone in the morning to pick up the rest of the gear. They had a little spare flashlight with them to get them back out. Before they left, the big guy pointed to the bag of trail bars and said to us, “If some of these trail bars are gone in the morning, well, I guess that would be all right”

Related post: Bears and murderers

This is my newest gear purchase: a pair of Simms sun gloves. I got them from TCO Fly Shop. They weigh .80(21 grams) of an ounce.

Sun block doesn’t stay on hands very long and most of it ends up polluting streams when a person stops to dip out some water. I think this might be a good solution for sun protection for hands. They are very light and cool.

Update: These are great.