Bluff Head

The grocery store was sold out of lightly salted rice cakes, so I purchased unsalted rice cakes and a large cylinder of kosher salt instead. At night, watching the internet, I managed to eat all fourteen, covered in kosher salt and Crystal hot sauce. The next morning I woke up on the couch. My computer was still turned on, and my white teeshirt looked like I’d killed someone in it. And then heavily salted the body. My mouth was very dry, and the skin of my lips turned white, and split in the corners. It was a bad scene.

I went for a solo hike at Bluff Head, the highest point of Guilford. The map at the trail head was faded and illegible, but I wasn’t worried. Clueless, I shrugged my shoulders and headed into the wild. Two hours later I met two fellow hikers, around my age, with large backpacks and very worried expressions. After a few words of greeting, it was clear that we all started from the same parking lot. Keep going, I told them, sure that the end of the trail was twenty or thirty minutes away. The guy showed me his compass. I’m pushing on, I said, and my best advice is you do the same.

An hour later Aunt Judy picked me up by the side of the road. Google Maps showed that I was one full town over from where I started, on the other side of a vast swath of wilderness, by Interstate 91. Aunt Judy bailed me out, and graciously drove me back to my car. The two hikers, with fatigued expressions, were at the parking lot when I rolled up. You made it! I rolled down the window and hollered to them, from my aunt’s car. We all shared a laugh, and then I placed a phone call for Chinese food. The fortune in my aunt’s fortune cookie read, “Attend to Business today–Leave that street-side flower alone.” My fortune was, “When you are comfortable, you can do anything.”