Semper Fi

Hey ho out there. I just spent a weekend in the Catskills where I discovered that I have become a city person. I got lost in the woods, had a wet, nerve-wracking rowboat experience, and went on a bike ride only to end up walking the last hill. Also, I will be honest here: the outside noises scared me. At home, when I hear an ambulance siren, I know it's an ambulance siren. I know, when I hear reggaeton blasting from a slow-moving car, that I am in Jersey City. Or possibly the Lower East Side. When I hear people talking or bums yelling or cars honking or trucks backing up, I know that those noises are exactly what they seem to be. Last weekend, when I heard a crunch or a scrabble in the woods, it could have been a leaf blowing around, or a grazing animal, or a serial killer coming to molest and decapitate me. All the sounds were furtive and mysterious. They could have been one thing or another. Was that a series of approaching shotgun blasts, or a construction site miles away? Is that a highway or a waterfall? The creak of a tree trunk or the unlatched door of a cannibal woodman's cabin?

Born-and-raised-in-New-Jersey Scott is hiking the Appalachian Trail right now. He’s 500 miles down and 1500 left to go. I can't help but wonder what keeps him sane alone on the trail at night. My guess is booze. Lots of booze.

Despite my paranoia and inability to navigate without street signs, I had a wonderful weekend and have decided to spend more time getting back to my outdoorsy, Midwestern roots this summer. This of course will mean a reinstatement of my Naked Navy Seals membership and the opening of a mid-Atlantic chapter.

Naked Navy Seals was a small but exclusive club that came about the summer after my sophomore year of college. I was living in Madison, but recovering from mono (read: unemployed), so I went home every weekend. A few friends at the university had one of those beautiful scuffed-up Victorians downtown that smell permanently of stale beer and bong water. There was no air conditioner, and it was a hot summer. I think it started with a game of Dare (we already knew each other’s ugly truths); something about a naked Irish jig. I believe there was a karaoke machine involved. Pretty soon we were going on “missions” as a “team.” It spiraled downward from there. We spent a lot of nude time outside that summer. We learned to love the feeling of bark against bare ass.

I think fondly on those humid, creepy nights and wonder where my brothers in naked arms have gone? And then I hum The Humors of Kilkenny and expose myself in public.