Day 15: Hammocks that Float

Thankfully I didn’t freeze.

I’m not sure it ever got down to freezing. But I had my glowing hot rock all the same, it was still warm to the touch the next morning. Naively, I thought wrapping it in my wet long johns would serve two purposes: a). to protect me from first-degree burns and b). to dry out my shirt. It served the former well enough, but the latter not at all. Instead, it created steamy swamp conditions inside of the semi-permeable sleeping bag. When I woke up, everything was wet. Or at least dewy. Which, counter-intuitively, doesn’t preclude things from also burning. Like my shirt. Both wet and burnt. Didn’t know that was even possible.

My spot in the sand, and said EZ-baked rock.

It was larger than it looks. A slightly less-than-average cantaloupe in size.

When I opened my eyes upon awakening, this mountain was the first thing I saw. Pretty epic.

I was the first to get up and took the opportunity to wander the small still island.

I tried doing some timelapse of the shadows moving across the mountains, but it only produced an anxiously vibrating body of water. I think I would have needed many hours, maybe the full day, to really capture the shadows moving. 20 minutes wasn’t going to do much.

I did see a pelican soaring over the lake, which was fairly amazing. Even at a substantial distance, I could tell it had an impressive wingspan.

Bland was fast asleep in his hammock. I’ve never understood the appeal of spending more than a few minutes in one. When I’m relaxing (or sleeping), the last thing I want is to feel swaddled, or constrained. I want to starfish and take up lots of space and be able to reposition easily. Hammocks are so culturally enmeshed with notions of relaxation, summer, and enjoyment that I always felt like I should enjoy them, but never actually have. Human burrito just isn’t my thing.

While I had my phone propped on a log catching some timelapse footage, I felt sleepy and laid down on a patch of dirt. It was surprisingly comfortable, mostly because it was conformed (approximately) to a human body. Enough to provide neck support anyway.

Bland found me there asleep, chuckled, and said something in a whimsical tone to return me to wakefulness. Breakfast was happening, did I want in? Um, is that even a question? I can count on one hand the amount of times in my life I’ve turned down food.

Everyone was in some stage of decamping or meal prep around the fire. The night before Bland had showed me the most effective fire making method I’ve ever seen. From his bag of tricks (which included glow-in-the-dark bocce and the inflatable “dry” suit) he pulled a battery powered leaf blower. Yes, this is going exactly where you think it is. I could say more, but I’ll just show you.

*Side note- when I filmed this, I happened to blow hella ash into Evi’s (Ani’s? Evita’s?) coffee. She was not pleased. Mea culpa lady whose name I don’t remember, mea culpa on both counts.

But that was the night before, all was forgiven this new day. In fact, I was even offered coffee by the very same person whose precious commodity I’d previously ruined. I aspire to such grace.

Over breakfast, Bland continued to get shit for the dry suit debacle and my (still) wet clothing. Sure, it was a mild inconvenience, but it was all part of the adventure! And now part of the story. As we were wrapping up the meal his sister’s friends asked more about Alfred and how Bland and I knew each other. You guys weren’t really friends? No, not really, we had a class together, different social circles.

It’s funny, how these things work. How time and distance change things. My ingrained narrative conceptualizes separation as a force that corrodes social bonds. Rare and wonderful are the instances where you can pick up right where you left off. Even rarer are the ones where you’ve somehow surpassed where you once were. 15 years ago, not friends. But now? I’d say so. It felt a little like finding a fellow expat deep in a foreign land: Oh, you speak my language! I suspect this might be the case for almost anyone I went to art school with, and perhaps for art students generally. For four years we weren’t the lone weirdos. We were a pack of weirdos. And it was fucking awesome. People in their flow, unbridled creativity at every opportunity, surrounded by beauty, curiosity and non-stop activity. And then… back out into the world, surrounded by people who don’t really get us, who don’t speak our language. I mean, Bland and I compared notes on the respective bubble-blowing machines we’ve built. (Seriously). That’s pretty fucking niche.

And we were about to wade even further into the kooky creation space Bland has carved out for himself, ala the Hammocraft.

After breakfast, we were back on the water in short order. I think there was an official timetable for vacating. But I also think that’s just how this crew rolls. Hurry to the wake. Thusly, Bland and I were deposited back onshore along with all the camping gear so that hydrofoiling could resume. I would have been down for more myself, but time was limited and I had to try Bland’s homebrewed signature sport. I couldn’t not try it. Even with my lifelong disdain of hammocks.

And, again, I could try explaining, but a video’s worth 100,000 words.

Side note:

You might have noticed that the video has a respectable 7.5K views. Well, that’s nothing compared to the Business Insider video on Hammocraft that went viral on Facebook. Can you guess how many views it has? Forty-two million. I bring it up, not as a testament to the popularity of Bland’s vision (which it is), but as an entry point in dispelling a particularly specious assumption many of us hold about the power of virality. I, for one, had a long-held notion that going viral was tantamount to adding rocket fuel to your dreams and that whatever you were doing would be bolstered exponentially. I believed this so strongly that I crafted an entire business model, if you can call it that, on attempting to leverage social media for viral success. And while I never achieved anything close to virality, Bland definitely did. So, what happened? Did 42 million views translate into lucrative contracts, massive sales growth, continued high-level attention, or important cross-promotional opportunities with key players in the outdoor industry? It didn’t. Bland’s telling was that it amounted to “like, 12 additional sales.” Maybe he was being flippant, maybe there’s more to the story, but it was clear that virality is more like a fickle gust of wind than rocket boosters. Sure, it can carry you to great heights, but you don’t get to decide when to turn it on and off and if you’re not poised and ready to catch the wind then, frankly, it doesn’t actually do much for you. Going viral is rare, translating it into sustained success even more so. My hat is off to those who’ve set sail on viral winds, but I would never recommend centering one’s goals around this elusive feat. It’s like planning to win the lottery in order to buy a house.

So, what exactly is this much-watched, yet seldom-experienced, group-hammock-adventuring actually like?

Fucking awesome.

And remember, this is coming from someone who does not like hammocks. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say, did not like hammocks. Turns out, I just wasn’t hammocking right. Comically, my change of heart has some of the hallmarks of a religious conversion: a pilgrimage, a charismatic evangelist, and a baptism. I’d join the Church of the Hammocraft for sure, it was full of joyful whimsy, good company, and stunning natural beauty. The biggest difference between a hammock in the yard and a hammock on the river was, well, everything, but mostly the sense of purpose. On the river there’s a destination and an approximate time duration and a slow-rolling natural slideshow, in the yard it was always like “when does the fun start?”

The fun starts on the river.

Bland, well-practiced in the outdoor sport he invented, accurately called the attention we’d get from setup to break down. Watch, as soon as we start putting it together the questions will start. He was right, they did and I’m sure they’re like the same five questions he always gets:

• What is that?

• Where did you get that?

• How many people does it fit?

• Do you sell them?

• And some version of “got room for one more? hardy harr harr”

Once we were actually on the water people kind of lost their shit. Like when this one group of college-aged women in tubes breezed by us, Bland starts waving around a bubble wand and they erupted into delighted scream-laughter. Mr. Bland sure knows how to work the crowd. Another example from when we were in art school was when he did a dance performance with these large sleeves. Like, suspiciously and cartoonishly large sleeves. And at the very end of the dance, POW, his sleeves pop open and he showers the audience in a thousand colorful pieces of latex (as in popped balloons, which came from yet another crowd-awing art piece).

Hammocks, lazy river floating, bubbles, and cheers from excited onlookers… could it get any better?

Yes. Because mud.

Not just any mud, perfect potter’s clay. A whole shelf of it. Bland was neutral about the option, but I insisted that we go play in the mud. The river was high, so high that it was covering a portion of the grass on the bank. I love it when that happens, underwater grass, I mean. It’s an order of magnitude more beautiful than non-submerged turf. Specifically, it’s the combination of the particular hues made possible in that light, the glassy quality of the water, and the curious motion of the blades as they wriggle with the current. I find it so pleasing. And then there was the clay!

Bland went right for the clay and started making a shrunken head to ward off evil spirits and/or tourists. Meanwhile, I started coating myself in it, inspiring Bland to follow suit. Pretty soon he was in full ritual mode and then we were just two kids playing in the dirt and cracking each other up.

Once we’d gotten all the giggles out, we rinsed off and strategized for our river crossing. Our dryland exit was just across the way, but slightly back from where we were. Ish. It’s hard to explain, also I’m writing this almost 8 months after the fact soooooo my memory might not be 100 percent. What I do remember is that we had to aim backward, and hustle, in order to land in the correct spot.

Across the river we dragged the Hammocraft to a flat sandy spot in the shade and Bland took off on his drybagged OneWheel to get the truck. A thick trail of dust followed his Back-to-the-Future-esque getaway. It was going to be a minute, he told me. Perfect opportunity for a snooze. An excess of direct sunlight can have that effect on me.

Despite epitomizing poor sleeping posture, I fell fast asleep in the hammock. Bland returned 20ish minutes later and startled me awake by tickling my nose with a branch. We loaded the Hammocraft onto the truck and rumbled along the dirt road back towards the dam and put-in.

Bland had, coincidentally, crossed paths with his sister’s crew. He showed me a video of his brother-in-law’s face, his lip split. He’d fallen off the hydrofoil and it smacked him in the mouth. He didn’t seem too bothered, actually, he had a smirk. Battle scars. Bros wear them like a badge of pride.

As we were exiting the park Bland asked if I wanted to see the pavement, the culvert. I didn’t realize what he was referencing, surprised that he seemed excited about a piece of pavement I declined to stop. He seemed disappointed and then it hit me that he was asking if I wanted to see a piece of his public art. Ohhhhh, right, the thing with the concrete, yeah, let’s do it!

True to form, it was fairly spectacular.

I can’t remember now what type of material was going to get poured into the middle, maybe a different colored concrete? But it was clear that the effect was going to be stunning. Even the cavity was captivating. Naturally, I had a lot of process questions. I won’t bore you with the details, but there was one spot where, apparently, it had gotten so hot that the the foam forms he’d carved began to melt and you could see where the concrete had filled in its slumping shape. The river he modeled it after was the one we were just on, the Snake. I asked if it was accurate in it’s layout, it wasn’t- he’d had to bend it to fit inside the confines of the pathway. Still pretty cool.

On the way back to Bland’s Vivarium we passed through the town of Jackson. There was so much adventuring to do that the typical shopping-as-vacation trope just wasn’t in the cards. Though we did briefly stop to pick up some sort of Asian food (Thai?). And, of course, Bland knew a bunch of people in the restaurant. Local celebrity, remember.

The town itself was utterly packed with tourists. Being in such close proximity to unmasked crowds of humans still hit a nerve for me, even with my recent double-dose vaccination and deep yearning for a return to normality.

Hey kids it’s Tangent Time. Re: Normality vs. Normalcy.

So, many many years ago a high school teacher, a one Mr. Jack Langhorne, went on a diatribe about how normalcy was a military/economic/political term and should never be used in place of normality. The story goes that the reviled dunce (and U.S. president) Warren G. Harding used it in a campaign speech as a call for stability in the wake of WWI. And while some publicly derided him, including a columnist who called his misstatement “jackasstical” (which is pure gold, imo), that the respectable response was that Harding’s malapropism was added to the dictionary with its own sociopolitical-specific definition apart from normality, retroactively providing dignified cover to the Top Man. This was back when even an “idiot like Harding,” by virtue of the office he held, would command the respect of an obedient populous that knew when to fall in line. Langhorne, implicitly conservative in my very liberal hometown, was making a thinly veiled criticism of the fervent anti-Bush sentiment in our little Left corner of the country. He was also calling us whiny babies. Something he made a semi-annual presentation out of, complete with a slide projector portrait of a stuffy 14th century royal 6-year-old from Austria or something. Seriously. It was his favorite soapbox. Anyway, the point is that I believed him. Yes, that we were entitled brats, but more importantly that NORMALCY WAS A BULLSHIT WORD. And with a quietly self-righteous, and wholly unjustified, sense of superiority, I have continued to use normality ever since. (Same with healthful vs. healthy when describing inanimate objects, like food). BUT, but, buutttttttttt. He was wrong. Not that Harding misspoke or the word was popularized and given a spot in the layperson’s dictionary, all of that is true. Jack Langhorne was wrong about the very nature of language. Linguistics is not fixed, it is fluid by definition. We are constantly co-creating our shared language, artfully, awkwardly, unintentionally, playfully, and purposefully. There are no improper or false definitions, there are simply the words that we use and their ever-shifting meanings. I use normality and healthful out of habit, but don’t ever let me or anyone else make you feel inferior for choosing differently.

Langhorne. Christ, what was I even talking about?

Right, Jackson Wyoming. Which, to anyone who thinks it’s named Jackson Hole, it isn’t. Not the city anyway. DAMNIT. Self-righteousness strikes again. Ugh... anyway, Jackson, cute town. Would be nice to go back and wander around downtown sometime. I really like exploring charming places on foot, car is just too fast. Actually, foot is too slow- bike is my preferred exploration speed/method. Even better if it’s an “adult-kid carrier” and your wackadoodle art school friend is careening you both through his hometown. Speaking of adventures with Bland, they were decidedly over. We had one last meal together, he gave his kitty a flip, and waved goodbye with the tiniest of hands.

What a goober.

Now it was back to Hidy Ho. And maybe, just maybe, someone was finally going to fix my stupid van.