Seven Things I dislike About Nature 9

I know, I know, you’ll give me the ol’ “you’ve got to take the good with the bad and accept everything in nature” drovel that I would expect from all of you that love the outdoors as much as I do. Shoot! I’ve even said it ma’self.

If there’s a thousand, or even a million, things that are so great about nature there’s just got to be a few things, just a few, that are no bueno. Read thru my list below and tell me these things haven’t caused you grief or freaked you out at some point in your life. I bet most of them are on your list too!

Gale Force Winds
You’d have to be a certified nut-job to actually like gale force winds. I mean, seriously, I’ve been on the water in more gale force winds than I can remember and not one single time have I enjoyed it. They turn the ocean into a roiley, boiley mess, make hunting close to impossible, and just try rowing a driftboat in a gale. No beuno! Gale force winds are like jogging. Have you ever seen a jogger smiling. I rest my case.

Spiders
This is the one creature in nature that scares the living crap out of me. Couldn’t Ma Nature come up with something a lot less creapy to eat bugs. We have bug-zapper lights , exterminators, and gooey-stickum fly strips now for crying out loud. Couldn’t we invent a gooey spider strip to do the same job. I think so. Why do we even need spiders? They only serve to create nightmares and paranoia…nothing else.

Snakes
I have to admit that I hate snakes less nowadays than I used to, but they still score an 8 out of 10 on my most-hated list and thus they make the cut. In Africa they actually have a snake called the black mamba that chases down people and kills them just for the hell of it. Another snake, the king cobra, spits venom in your eyes to blind you, then it bites and kills you before wandering off to killl something else. It doesn’t even eat you. What kind of crap is that?

Breaking Branches
There is never anything there…just a broken branch. I can honestly say that a large branch breaking in the night is something that makes me nearly shart me’drawers. On a mid-night hike into Washington’s Glacier Peak Wilderness for the early mule deer hunt in the mid-90’s my good friend Mike Jesch and I stopped along the trail at around 1:00 a.m. to rest our aching clown feet. We turned off our headlamps and sat there in the who’s-your-momma-now, pitch black darkness and listened to the total nothingness in the old growth forest. The night was soot black and there wasn’t a sound, not any one thing making a single, solitary sound. Creapy! Then, no more than forty feet behind me a giant branch breaks. It went “Kaaaa-rack!” and then like in so many other branch-breaking episodes there was terminal silence. No thump-thump-thump of a deer bounding off or primal growl from Big Foot…just nothing. We grabbed our packs and beat feet!

Slush
Slush isn’t rain and it isn’t snow. It’s 100% pure freezing ass cold. I’ve spent days on end guiding for winter steelhead in the pouring down slush and not one time did I think, “Man, this is rad dude!”. It penetrates every form of rain gear created by man and it even permeates human skin, chilling right into the very marrow of our bones. I wish they would build a gi-normous, pollution-spewing coal factory in Seattle that would provide enough localized global warming to make it impossible for Mother Nature to produce slush here. We may have pollution, but we would rid the Northwest of slush. Fair trade? I think so.

No See Ums
They fly up your nose, into your ears, in your eyeballs, and bore microscopic holes into your flesh that itch like the dickens for days. The worst part about the little buggers is that YOU CAN’T EVEN SEE THEM! You can swing your ball cap around wildly to ward them off, but you’ll be swinging at nothing but clean air. They can hang out on the gooey bug strip with the spiders. Bu-bye!

Hornets
What good do hornets do anyway? I’ve never seen them make honey or help an old lady across the street. They are only a mechanism for terror and the earth should be ridden of these foul creatures. Have you ever had a pleasant encounter with a hornet? Hell no you haven’t and neither have I. Wouldn’t nature be a lot more enjoyable without them? I think so.

There’s my list. How about you? I’m sure there’s something about the outdoors that drives you to swinging your hat around like a lunatic.

Rob Endsley
The Outdoor Line
710 ESPN Seattle
www.theoutdoorline.com