ONSC Deathmarch: Part Three

By the time we made it to the cliff shelter, many tempers had turned sour. Every middle class American one of us was hurting for the absence of our accustomed eating routines. Kevin was ADHD, so he was the only one with energy and we all were frustrated with his constant over-the-top output. Kyle still didn’t want to be on the hike at all and capitalized upon Dominic’s new rule that we were to cease asking about distance and time-of-day by denying us any answers at all. No matter what was asked of him, whether it be, “is a maple leaf edible?” or “can we take a break?” or even the covert attempt to skirt Dominic’s no-questions-about-distance rule, “what road is this?” Kyle would respond with a surly, “don’t ask questions. It got to the point where we found subtle ways to innocently inquire into some minor detail, just to harass the poor guy. We nicknamed him Kyle the Communist.

It was at the Indian overhang that we had our first “real” meal in days. There was a little creek nearby which was fed by a waterfall beside the shelter. When Kevin reported that there were no fish in the creek – I think Dominic had counted on that – we turned to the little pool. No fish, but the place was crawling with crawdads. Upon inquiry – of Dominic and the nice girl that made up the third party of the councilors, no one turned to Kyle – it was determined that crawdads could be boiled like lobsters. Ecstatic, we broke up into teams to produce firewood, whittle kindling, and catch a half dozen of the water bugs – not many, but we didn’t care.

Once the fire was going hot someone turned up with an empty bean can that they had packed for such an occasion and we set to boiling our unfortunate meal. We took turns nursing the can with its precious contents and salted the concoction from our individual supplies, given to us at the Center in film canisters. When done, the wee lobsters looked great, but one of the councilors had to test them to make sure they were safe for consumption. We all thought the excuse was rather lame, but once given the go-ahead, we no longer cared. Our catch was carefully divvied up; each person who contributed received a crawdad tail for their pains and several of us even sucked out the meat from the legs. I’d never tasted anything so good.

The one downside to the overhang experience was the presence of prolific Poison Ivy in the area, to which my sister and I are terrifically allergic. The terrain was very rocky, so in places we’d had to toss our pack either up or down to a waiting deathmarcher, and as a consequence my pack had taken a roll or two in the dreaded undergrowth. To my shock, Dominic, who is EXTREMELY ecologically friendly, allowed us to bath our arms and legs with anti-ivy cream that Mom had provided and – gasp – to wash the chemicals off in the waterfall. I’ll bet that if I went back there now, all the crawdads would be equipped with extra eyes or tails.