Blue Lakes and Meander Meadow, page 9

The stream meandering through the meadow.

I had a heavy afternoon agenda planned — sewing up Mica’s pack (one of the pockets was starting to tear near the zipper), reading and then snoozing. And then later I planned to wash my greasy hair. Everything went fine until we got to the nap part. I suddenly felt a dampness on my right calf and looked down to see that the dogs’ Thermorest sleeping pad was wet. Lo and behold — Pieper, who is normally such a well-behaved little girl puppy, seemed to be in the midst of a wet dream. Well, she most certainly was dribbling away with both eyes tightly scrunched shut.

I rudely pushed her aside, grabed a kerchief and blotted up the tablespoon-sized pool of puppy pee. She lay on her back looking up at me in confusion while another drop or two said ‘hello’ to the world. Then she looked down at herself with a sort of quizzical expression and contentedly proceeded to lap up the golden droplets.

“Gross!” I told her and promptly pushed her out of the tent. She spent the rest of the afternoon in isolated splendor on the other side of the mosquito netting.

At 4:30 PM I decided it was time for the hair washing. I’d brought two cook pots with me this trip, one for food and the other for tea. The smaller tea pot has served me well and faithfully for several years, but while at REI buying the maps for this trip I realized that the annual Summer Clearance Sale was on, so naturally I had to check it out. And wouldn’t you know it, they had a three-pot kit on sale that was lined with non-stick stuff! It seemed just what I needed, so I bought one. The medium-sized pot is the one I brought on the hike. The tea pot nests inside it properly, so it’s a very compact cook kit.

Now, I know you think I’m digressing here because I WAS writing about hair washing. The point is that the new system works out really well. The little pot holds the ‘get the hair wet’ water and the larger pot holds the rinse water. One pot each was just enough to get the job done, so I didn’t have to keep running down to the stream to refill. Now I’m sitting in the later afternoon sun drying my locks as I write this.

The puppies watched the whole hair washing process with great interest, then judiciously moved a safe distance away as though to say, ’She’d better not try that crap with US!’

– Continue reading.