I felt like going back to bed. I didn't. I forced myself to get ready to clean up more litter and drove to the Silvertip area.
It's my favorite of all the areas to clean up litter, except for my absolute favorite--Tern Lake. Silvertip is about as flat as a highway can get, given that it runs though mountains on both sides.
I'd finished cleaning up 0.7 of a mile, which was a long, boring chore because there were so many chunks of blue high density foam board that had been mulched by the highway mower, as well as a gazillion pieces of fiberboard in the same condition. It took far longer than a normal clean up.
When I was done and at a perfect stopping part along the highway, I decided to take a short loop drive that's between 0.2 and 0.3 of a mile long. It's part of the old highway that was bypassed during road rehab some years ago.
It's a nice, quiet little drive that gets very little use and I decided to do drive-by clean up, wherein I lower my driver's side window and drive slowly along the shoulder in the wrong lane. When I saw litter, I stopped, picked it up, then drove farther.
At one point, I started checking the opposite side of the road too, just walking over and picking up whatever was there. That's how I spotted a kitchen stove that had been tossed over the side of a steep hill that leads down to Six Mile Creek.
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| As ususal, pointing a camera downhill diminished the steepness of the slope. That white object is the stovetop. Beyond it is the dead, down spruce and the rest of the stove. (And this little pocket camera needs to spend some quality time with a Nikon repairman.) |
It was a ways down there and I had no intention of going down the slope that far. Instead, there were some beer bottles and food wrappers closer to the top of the hill that I could get if I just went down about ten feet.
So I did.
Well, one beer bottle leads to another and pretty soon I was farther down the hill than I intended because what I thought was white plastic turned out to be a five gallon pail filled with paint, if the contents matched the label. Nope, too heavy for me to haul up that hill.
Well, what the heck. The stove was so close.
And then I was at the stove, which was lying right next to a dead, downed spruce. That's when I spotted the rope that was on the path. Must be how someone tugged items up hill, I thought, and began considering all the ways I could use that rope to get that stove out of there.
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| The stove. The full bucket of paint is that light spot in upper right. |
I stepped over the dead tree and SUDDENLY MY INNER OLGA KORBUT emerged and the involuntary gymnastics began. Down I went, not just to my knees, but rolly poly down, doing somersaults, slamming into the sharp knots where branches had broken off the dead tree, rolling over rocks, doing at least two complete rolls feet-over-shoulders.
I remember my head was in the leaves during one roll and looking up at the sky the next time. About the time I was wondering if I was going to go all the way down the slope, my body hit something hard and unforgiving and came to a stop.
I could tell nothing was broken. Battered and bruised, yes. Contused and abraded? Oh, yeah. Bleeding? Didn't feel anything. My shins are going to be an unusual color tomorrow, I thought, but nothing was broken.
And what if something was broken? How the hell was I going to get out of that mess? Very few people come by here. How long would it take for someone to notice my unlocked truck and decided to look around?
My cell phone was in the truck at the top of the hill. My bear spray was also in the truck. But I was only going to go down about ten feet, I thought. Why bother taking that stuff with me? Famous last words.
So, I climbed back up the hill with no trouble, still working on how that rope could be used to haul that stove up the hill. It's a good thing I didn't have anything that I could use to attach to that rope, or I would have tried it, using my truck to pull it.
I passed the stove top and instead of dragging that, I said it could wait for someone else.
I really, really wanted to follow the path down to the river but not without bear spray. Smartest thing I did all day.