A Befitting Death
While showering tonight and feeling the pains of the of an 11 mile hike with 20 extra pounds in my back pack and the 25 extra pounds on my stomach that men my age often carry, something occurred to me, “I’m almost 40. I’m old. This kind of hiking hurts!”
“Vance”, my aging voice said.
“Vance you know you are getting to old to venture out into to the wilderness on your own. You’re at prostate age. You’re at the age where you’re supposed to know what LDL means. You’re approaching the age where Enzyte commercials are going to be targeted at you! ”
“You feel that right? The aching in your knees, the tightness of the tendons in your heals. You remember how much they hurt out there on the trail, going down that hill? You remember how they felt like they were going to snap at any moment? Well if you keep doing this they will. One of these days climbing the hill to a your maximum heart rate is going to leave you stranded, alone and gasping for breath in the desert. It’s going to kill you.”
Fortunately my better half is always there to save me from myself.
So I told the old man, ”If one of these days I don’t come home, and the coyote’s carry off the pieces of my body before it is found. If I, at 38, at 45, or at 60 find my end alone in the desert doing what I love, wandering where I please, and breathing my last breath then I shall have died as I wish to die. I can think of no end more horrible than to be filled chemicals, placed in a box, and filed away in cemetery. It is an honorable end for some, but I pray it is not mine. Give my body to he wind. Give my water to the creosote tree.”
So, I think tomorrow I need to start doing some strength training and more stretching, maybe a yoga class would be good too. The problem with aching tendons is one, that at least for now, I can do something about. Ohhh…. and I’ll be damned if when I kill over in 30 years some young wipper snapper is gunna find me within 5 miles of any trailhead!