The Ozette Raccoon Incident, pt. 1

Seeing as how the professed impetus behind starting this blog was to tell real-life stories of the PNW and Inland Empire, maybe I should start.

The players:
Theo (pronounced 'Tayo'), crazed mechanical genius and part-time bard
The Vasky, aka ''you crazy Polack'; intestinal emissions are a registered level 5 WMD
Justin, a supremely annoying roommate
KillJoy, his wet blanket of a girlfriend (and future wife)
Cass, Theo's sister, in a brief cameo
50 packs of Carl Buddig lunch meat
an unidentified number of delinquent raccoons
and yours truly, Jake Brake.

The setting:
Lake Ozette area on the Washington coast (the real coast, not Puget Sound), primarily confined to a claustrophobia-inducing storm shelter.

The time:
Spring break, 1993.

You can't say we had no warning; anyone with a lick of sense could tell that the lashing rainfall and violent, gusty winds were an omen of Trouble to come. By the time we had all struggled into our backpacks and started down the trail leading out to the coast, we were already sodden. But never mind. This was Vacation, and if you're too much of a puss to handle camping in the rain, this is just not your state. So off we went: Vasky, Justin, KillJoy, and myself – Theo and Cass having gone in the evening before to set up camp.

Further omens assaulted us as we tramped through the brush on a wooden boardwalk made treacherously slippery with rain and a thin coat of algae. It kept you from having to slog through the mud, but only in exchange for at least one painful and embarassing wipe-out. (The joy of falling on a slick wooden boardwalk while wearing a 40-pound backpack – especially the part that begins with an amateur dance number, segues neatly into a bone-jarring, flesh-scraping impact with the boardwalk surface, and concludes with a graceless, headfirst tumble into a salal thicket – is something that should be experienced by everyone.)

The first omen came courtesy of a panicky yuppie couple and their baby - all predictably clad in pristine North Face outerwear - who were hauling ass to the parking lot as fast as they dared. They stopped us and breathlessly warned "There's a big cougar back there!" When pressed for details, they admitted that they hadn't actually seen anything, but they heard ominous growling sounds from the bushes, and if we knew what was good for us we'd turn around and follow them back to safety. Recognizing them as full-of-shit out-of-staters (redundant, I know), we just shrugged and moved on.

A few minutes later, we ran into Cass, who was also on her way out as she had developed a case of the flu. She of course hadn't heard or seen anything resembling a bloodthirsty camper-menacing maneater, despite being within shouting distance of the yuppiecouple, but she was miserable and we were sad to see her go.

to be continued

¶ Tuesday, August 24, 2004