The Misadventures of Tall Guy and Short Gal: The Hike
Posted: Friday, November 05, 2010
by Dianne Lehmann
Artisan Jewelry from SyZyGy
This should begin as most things do at the beginning. But that is not our way today. Today we shall begin in the middle because that is where the most fun may be had. Except, of course, if you are at the end of a "crack-the-whip" game. Then the end is most certainly more exciting than either the beginning or the middle. A little more dangerous too.
On any given Saturday, we will find Tall Guy and Short Gal competing at a number of tasks: who can do the most dishes, who will remember to do the laundry first, who will clean the floor and who will take out the trash are just a few. We did mention that their lives had descended into the mundane. But it wasn't always like this. There was a time when they were special. Not the I-like-to-wear-a-bicycle-helmet-wherever-I-go kind of special. Real special special. This tale begins (in the middle of course) like this.
"Well, Sweetie, what would you like to do today," Tall Guy asked Short Gal. Her reply was a little longer in coming than was comfortable. Tall Guy knows that when Short Gal thinks too long about something, it doesn't always turn out well. He has come to prefer the quick remark with some discussion afterward to the long drawn out ums and ahs and thoughtful looks out of the corners of her eyes accompanied by much rapid blinking. He thinks to himself that it is the blinking that is most frightening.
There is always at the forefront of his mind the time she came up with a scheme to light the hibachi. It took her a long time to answer his question of how to do it (accompanied by much thoughtful fluttering of her eyelids) and that most assuredly did not turn out well. The hair on his head ended up so crisp as a result that most of it had to be removed. That was not completely a bad thing, though, because it remedied the problem of the bad smell that seemed to follow him around.
"We could take a hike," was her seemingly innocent remark. This was uttered with a small smile playing about the corners of her mouth and her head canted ever so slightly to the right. All of which prompted Tall Guy to inquire, "What sort of hike," with a frown creasing his normally very much unlined brow; the smoothness of which is a source of constant frustration for Short Gal.
"Oh, you know, the walking kind. Out on the ranch land. Nothing special. We take some water and walk for a couple of hours. That kind of hike."
"So, we'd stick to the usual cattle trails and take in all the usual sights," he wanted to know with a little bit of worry creeping into his voice and a tightening of the muscles around his eyes. "And we won't pick up any rocks weighing over a half a pound each. Right?" he added.
"Oh, yes. Absolutely," was Short Gal's reply.
"Will we do this before lunch or after lunch? Because if it's before lunch, like right now, I'd have to have a small snack before we set out." Food is always a big concern for Tall Guy.
"It's my thought that the sooner we get started, the sooner we will be done and hopefully miss the hottest part of the day," she replied. So Tall Guy had his snack and Short Gal got the backpack and several bottles of water. Short Gal always wears the backpack because at approximately five feet and two inches of height and weighing approximately 100 pounds, she has the least weight to haul around from the get go. You might be thinking that the backpack will just keep getting lighter as they drink the water and so it does not matter, but that is not always the case. Short Gal has a thing for rocks and their hikes are often thinly veiled excuses to collect several pounds. All of them go into her backpack which at some point she will ask Tall Guy to carry for a while.
Dressed in blue jeans, wearing their hiking boots and ball caps, sunscreen applied to all exposed skin and dark glasses protecting their eyes, they set out to have a nice, short, leisurely hike out where the cattle roam and jackrabbits hop. Tall Guy always carries a pistol and Short Gal favors a folding knife because you never know what you might encounter. She also brings along a box of matches and a compass, though her amazing sense of direction rarely fails her. They also wear stout leather belts, because sometimes they must link them together to form a rope to help pull one or the other out of a wash. Tall Guy and Short Gal strive to be prepared in all ways at all times.
There are a couple spots within about a half a mile of their home where it is easily possible to negotiate the barbed wire surrounding the ranch land on which they love to hike. Having never seen a sign stating "No Trespassing" in the vicinity, they have always assumed the barbed wire is intended to keep the cows in and not them out. It is the matter of only a few minutes before they find themselves at their customary spot where the wash has eroded away from the bottom of the fencing and in no time they are up where the antelope roam. Or rather roamed. It's been a long time since anyone has spotted a pronghorn antelope out there. Although, the mule deer are still somewhat plentiful.
So Tall Guy and Short Gal head off in one of the usual directions for the usual sort of hike, wearing the usual apparel and carrying the usual gear. Unfortunately for Tall Guy, these were to be the only usual parts of it.
One would think that with all the many times Tall Guy and Short Gal have hiked out on the ranch land that they would have walked every mile of it. Sampled every wash. Memorized which can be exited easily and which will require some climbing and lots of dirt in your pants. But this is not so. There are miles and miles of land out there and much of it unexplored except by the cows, rabbits, quail and deer. Not to mention the raccoons, coyotes, bears and mountain lions. So the fact that this particular day they happened to stumble across an untried wash should not really surprise one. It does presume, however, that very early on in the hike, Short Gal had broken the promise she had made to Tall Guy. They had not stuck to the many known cattle trails. At Short Gal's urging and against Tall Guy's better judgment, they had struck out in a generally northerly direction much further than they had ever done before. Tall Guy is content to see the same sights and do the same things over and over. In only one area does boredom easily set in for Tall Guy and that is the area of food. Short Gal, however, always wants to seek the new and interesting. She wants to know what is over that ridge they have never before surmounted. She also detests making the same foods over and over and this is one of the many small reasons they have been together for so long.
When Short Gal paused to take a longer than usual look at a larger than usual rock, Tall Guy quietly said, "It's too big. Forget about it." But Short Gal was staring raptly at the rock and barely heard him. She picked it up to examine it further and Tall Guy was forced to say, "Do not put that in the backpack."
"Why not?" Short Gal wanted to know, while letting her shoulders slump and forming a small pout with her lips.
"Because, we are farther from home than usual and the walk back will be longer than usual. You will get tired of carrying the pack and then I will have to and I have no interest in carrying that particular rock home. Don't you have enough rocks at home already? And you know that I just ignore your pouts."
With raised eyebrows, a small wistful smile and a slight tilt to her head, Short Gal replied, "One can never have too many rocks." She may have also batted her eyes, but it happened so quickly, Tall Guy couldn't be certain. Still, she obligingly put the rock carefully back into the spot it had occupied for goodness only knows how long, once again sealing several small beetles into their dark and damp home.
Tall Guy was correct; they were indeed very much farther from home than they had ever been before. They did not know just how much farther because of the nature of washes and walking in them. While often, the most interesting rocks and other flotsam and jetsam can be found in the bottom of washes, that is just the point. You are in the bottom of a wash and can not see the landscape above you. Also, washes meander and may take you in all sorts of directions you had not intended.
When the new and only just that very day explored for the first time wash that they were traversing finally became blocked by some annoyingly impassable barbed wire, Tall Guy and Short Gal decided it was time to find a spot to climb out of it. With much frantic scrabbling for handholds and considerable dirt in their pants, they finally emerged from the rim of the wash only to see that they had absolutely no idea where they were.
It was Short Gal's idea that they strike off south overland and see where that might take them. They were down to their last bottle of water and so Tall Guy hoped that it would take them directly home but in fact had very little faith that it would.
When Short Gal turned to her left and took off at a goodly pace, Tall Guy called out, "How do you know that is south?"
"Well, just look at the sun you silly. Although it is much lower in the sky than I might like, it still tells me that this is south." And she pointed in the indicated direction to help make her point. Tall Guy decided to ignore the eleven words that followed "although."
The position of the sun along with the knowledge of the time when they had first set out was all that she needed to discern south from north. But Tall Guy was not mollified. After all, he wanted the shortest route home, so he said, "Are you absolutely certain?"
"Yes. I am absolutely certain," she said as she rolled her eyes first one way and then the other and uttered a soft little sigh.
"Do you have any idea what time it is?" Tall Guy wanted to know.
After some thought, Short Gal decided not to tell him what time she thought it was. If he knew how late it was getting, he might start thinking too much about his empty stomach. Instead she said only, "It's time to be heading home," with a firm, no nonsense nod of her head; once down and then up again.
With Short Gal in the lead, they had been walking for some time. They had had to cross one wash and just as they were topping another rise, she was heard to say, "Oh my." Whereupon she stopped dead in her tracks and let her chin rest on her chest. When Tall Guy caught up to her, he was heard to say, "Oh hell." They had come to the back fence of a middle school that they knew very well and so found themselves still many more miles from home than they would have liked.
Tall Guy said, "I can't believe where we are. How did you manage to get us so lost? My fingers feel like sausages, my hips ache and my feet are on fire." Luckily there was no mention of his empty stomach.
Short Gal replied, "We're not lost (totally ignoring his complaints; it's not that she is insensitive, it is just that she knows it is best not to let him dwell on such things too much). We know exactly where we are. We know there is a main road on the other side of the school. All we have to do is find a way to get to it and take the road home."
The only problem was that the chain link fencing around the school was about eight feet high and topped with barbed wire. So they decided to walk south along the fence and see what they might see.
In the many years since they had last been down the road fronting the school, a church had been built next to it. So when they came to the block wall surrounding the church, Tall Guy was very disappointed. But Short Gal pointed out that at least it wasn't topped with barbed wire and that perhaps, if they just kept on walking, they would find a place to climb it. And indeed they did. Short Gal helped to push Tall Guy onto the top of it and he then pulled her up. They dropped down on the other side and hurried to the front of the property hoping that none of the owners of the several vehicles in the parking lot would spot them. They weren't so much worried about trespassing as they were about proselytizing.
They reached the road only to discover that it was considerably more trafficked than it had been in the past and soon the whoosh of cars passing them began to annoy Tall Guy. So Short Gal suggested taking a wash that she knew well the rest of the way home. You can imagine what Tall Guy's first reaction to that was. We shall not, in the interests of decency, print that here. Suffice it to say that he was extremely reluctant. But he weighed his dislike of the hard surfaced road and his tired feet and his sore hips and the whooshing cars against softer dirt and green plants and the latter won out.
Short Gal did, indeed, know that wash well and before long, they were back in territory that Tall Guy also recognized. And in another mere hour or so they were safely, if tiredly, returned home.
They had showers before eating (although Tall Guy was torn between cleanliness and his growling stomach) because they had not, after all, missed the hottest part of the day. They had walked right through it. Then Short Gal made one of her quick, but nevertheless amazingly tasty meals. Tall Guy complained for several hours about his sausage fingers and sore hips and was somewhat worried that he would not be able to walk at all the next day. Sadly for Short Gal, he is not one of the most adventurously minded of men.
So a hike that should have been a mere four or five miles ended up a minimum of four grueling times that. Tall Guy reaffirmed his resolve to never again let Short Gal lead him astray from his desires full well knowing that he frequently has little say in the matter and reflected that perhaps his father was right when he proclaimed with no small amount of disdain and ire, "You do whatever she tells you to." Unfortunately for the men of Tall Guy and Short Gal's world, they have not yet learned, or at least not made peace with the fact that it is, in reality, the women who are in charge.
Perhaps you have forgotten, or perhaps you have not, but the one way in which Tall Guy and Short Gal are most assuredly not normal is this: They rarely become angry, each with the other, no matter what might transpire. And as Short Gal has been known to reflect on many occasions, that is certainly a blessing as she has much to answer for.
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Top-level comments on this article: (4 total)Very good and interesting story Dianne, I enjoyed reading it.Hi David.
Thanks! I put it under fiction, but there is a lot of truth in it too. I'm glad you enjoyed reading it. That's what it's all about for me.
Hugs,
Dianne
Great story Dianne. I'm sure Tall Guy is on to Short Gal after all these years before the hike even begins and he knows he's never going to win. Sounds like even Short Gal was glad to make it home from this little venture. Thanks for sharing.Hi Linda.
Short Gal has been known to bite off more than she can chew. It's just one of the small things that Tall Guy loves about her. And for sure he is on to her, but he is ever hopeful.
Thanks for reading!
Hugs,
Dianne
Great story Dianne, and emphasises what I've always known - women have absolutely no sense of direction at all :) Joking ;)Hi Bill.
Kid all you like, but I know that Short Gal always knows which way is north. :) Well mostly, she's only gotten lost once and then it was Tall Guy to the rescue.
Thanks for reading. Glad you liked it.
Hugs,
Dianne
Poor Bernd! So was he able to walk at all the next day?Hi Jennifer.
He was able to walk, but complained all day long about it. :) I'm generally more active than he is and so it didn't bother me too much. But as Linda said, I was glad to be home too.
Thanks to you ... and everyone else too ... for making it all the way through it. I know it is kind of long for the Internet, but I just couldn't tell it any shorter. The next one is kind of long too. Oh well.
Hugs,
Dianne
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