I HAVE BEEN GONE A WHILE

I've been away for a while, camping quite a ways away from my place. The weather hasn't been friendly down here, but I needed to be away from the cabin for a while. Jay was starting to get to me, and when Matt commented recently and sort of said he thought my drawings of Jay made Jay look like Jesus, I began to think that maybe Matt had a point. Good heavens, was my imaginary friend also an object of a kind of worship on my part? The concept of people worshipping imaginary things bothers me. It was then I knew I needed a mind-cleansing, outdoor wilderness experience.

Anyway, the camp-out was fun, even if it was extremely cold and windy. The wind was blowing so hard the tent barely stayed up, and during a couple of nights it collapsed completely but I just stayed in it anyway... too icky outdoors to go out and fix things.

After being down here a while, I've discovered that gull and albatross aren't bad eating. I don't own guns, but I do have a "wrist rocket" slingshot, and I'm quite accurate with it. The birds aren't used to seeing many humans, so they are fairly tame. That makes them easy targets. Cormorants, shown below, are also tasty:



There isn't anything here that can be used as fuel for a fire, so I had to do all the cooking on my camp stove, inside the tent, no less. Packing all the extra fuel is a nuisance, but it ended up helping out with preparing meals and with warming my hands now and then.

I left Charley at home in the cabin with a large tub of water and an open bag of dog food. It was only five days, and he survived just fine. Of course there was ample poop to be cleaned up, and the place still smells a bit from where he peed, but hey, this place isn't real high-class anyway. The best part is that Jay hasn't been around since I've been back!