[pct-l] Was UL Tents, now Cowboy Camping

[Palomino]

I'll share a cowboy camping story...not from the PCT, but from the So Cal
desert...

Twenty-some years ago, I accompanied the geology crew from Santa Barbara
City College on one of their notoriously fun summertime field  trips to the
Four Corners region of the desert southwest. There were about 25 of us,
riding in vans. No one brought tents...cowboy camping was the norm, sort of
a geologists' rite of passage.

As I remember it, our first camp was on some BLM land near Mitchell Caverns
in the high desert of southeastern California. After dinner and a review of
the day, we spread out and settled in for the night. One of the students, a
bright 19-year old named Gordon, had a pretty interesting experience. A
mouse visited his camp a few times before midnight, running across his
sleeping bag just enough to wake Gordon up. Finally, when the commotion
happened behind him, right above his head, Gordon had enough. He reached
outside his bag, grabbed his trusty rock pick, and in one motion, turned to
swing the business end of the pick at the mouse.

What he saw when he was about to swing was a big fat rattlesnake with a
tiny, frightened mouse in his mouth. From his prone position, Gordon swung
hard and drove the pick through the snake's head and pinned him to the
ground, where he died a quick, but squirmy death. Then Gordon went back to
sleep!

I don't know what happened to the mouse.

Gordon told everybody the story the next morning and showed us the evidence.
Of course, he was henceforth known as "Gordon the Impaler."

Good luck with that whole tent research thing!

Jim Ostdick
Palomino
San Juan Bautista, CA