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Month: November 2013

At the gates of spelling hell

Battery 249, Striped Peak, November 2013

 

I went for a ‘biometrics’ screening on Friday. I’m in appalling shape on most fronts; cholesterol, blood pressure, body composition. This motivated me to eat a massive salad Friday night and spend all day Saturday touring Striped Peak- an adjunct promontory to Camp Hayden. It’s a modest elevation gain, unless you are in appalling shape.  I tended to shy from the trail at the approach of others- whether from embarrassment over my labored breathing or my questionable hoard of obsolete camera gear it’s difficult to say.

Battery 249 is about a third of the way up, and provided a needed break. It’s an oddly consoling little detour on the mountain side. Maybe because it’s possibly the most unhealthy structure imaginable- it’s toxicity, dampness and disrepair seem bio-metrically in-tune with my own.

Still, nature thrives. And of course it’s difficult to take the gloom seriously with all the flawed graffiti. Warnings loose impact completely once they are misspelled.  ‘You will all parish in flame.’  Cheered, I slogged the rest of the way up the mountain.