I walk about two to three miles every work day, when I’m working, but in my experience such strolls do little to prepare one for the longer jaunts. Especially the unexpected ones.
Once, while somewhere in between Miami and Daytona on I-95, I ran out of gas. No problem, said I to my pals, I’ll just jaunt on down to this country club, which had a prominent sign and must be right up the street, we reasoned. I started off at a jog, which turned into a march, which became a stagger. It appears as if I covered about twelve miles in three hours, on a soupy Florida day. On my way into the club I was attacked by a great heron, which was apparently the club’s mascot/watchbird. And, as I discovered miles down the road, I had taken off with my keys, so my two pals couldn’t open the damned gas door on the car, much less come pick me up, despite a dozen offers of assistance. I felt like such a doofus.
But not as much of a doofus as that time I took a hit of LSD on a hot 4th of July and wandered off into the woods of West Virginia with nothing but a couple of bottles of Sam Middleton’s Pale Ale. After about three and a half hours of hiking, my friend rather stringently argued that the way back to the camp was most definitely down this three-thousand foot high mountain, and even though we had started at the top of it, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Once we were thoroughly lost in the valley below, we decided to seek shelter at a private gun club, which was (fortunately) closed. I shudder to think what might have happened had two dope-laden hippies on acid wandered into the midst of those guys, trying to bum a ride. I finally got my bearings and realized we must be at least six miles and three thousand feet of elevation away from the camp.
We had started off at about ten-thirty am, and staggered back into camp at dusk, maybe 8pm. We hadn’t stopped walking since about one in the afternoon, except when my dehydration got so bad that my hands cramped up into claws and I started having real hallucinations. Fortunately I was within crawling distance of a spring, and about twenty minutes of rest was good enough to get us going again. I figure we must have walked about twelve to fourteen miles, down a mountain and back up it, with no food and two beers and a few sips of suspect water from the spring late in the afternoon. It was a little more than stupid. It was scary, too.
