Don't Read This

Among the events which might be documented in the collection of Carleton Geology field trip anecdotes are some which I will not write about. It may be that they are undignified, or that I don't want to admit to them, or they are embarrassing to somebody else. Anyway I will not list them and I won't tell about them.

I won't tell, for example, about a batch of chili in the Badlands which contained the entire contents of the bag of chili powder the food service had given us knowing it was well in excess of what our recipe called for and which we figured was carefully measured for our recipe.

Likewise, I won't tell about any traffic tickets that were awarded to any of our faculty members on field trips.

I won't tell about the times we took long complicated short cuts down bumpy little dirt roads in the North Woods and bypassed the boring, smooth high-speed state highways that paralleled them.

You won't be hearing from me about the time we forgot the dish detergent and had to wash the grease off 39 dinner plates and all the cooking pots with a mixture of sand and water, nor will you hear about the trip where we found ourselves brutalizing the tops off of #10 cans of food with rock hammers because we forgot a can opener.

You won't hear a word from me about the time we abandoned two very conscientious and helpful geo majors in Jay Cooke State Park when the dodged off for a bathroom break after helping everyone else load up the trailer. We came home without them, and an elderly couple picked them up, fed them, gave them a place to sleep the night and a bus ticket home.

I wouldn't even think of mentioning the incident that almost got us kicked out of Jay Cooke when the faculty member with the illegal dog in the park wouldn't put the dog on a leash, nor will I tell about the time a structure class got kicked out of Jay Cooke for being noisy past the curfew and had to camp the next night at the K.O.A. in Cloquet. The aforementioned dog's run-in with rangers in Devil's Lake State Park in Wisconsin shall go unnoticed, as well.

Never would I discuss the trip to the Iron Range in which a van skidded off a road and hit a post, doing thousands of dollars worth of damage to the steering gear, and I am absolutely mum about the Paleo trip where we left the car lights on and had to use a student's AAA card to have a tow truck come and restart the car.

My memory goes completely blank when I contemplate the chili we made the time we camped in Silver Bay on a Petrology trip; the chili was so spicy that most of it had to be carried to a dumpster in a floppy, felt-like-it-was-melting plastic garbage bag that draped over our arms as we carried it away like a makeshift body bag of warm gore. Amazingly, the amnesia even spreads to many of the other way-too-hot-chili episodes; each time there were people clamoring for more, hotter spices.

I would be never so imprudent as to allude to the time when someone forgot to pack the mustard for lunch, and later the group retaliated by painting his name in mustard on an old dark blue junk car in an abandoned specular hematite mine we visited. Nor will I mention the time a few years later when on another Northern Michigan trip someone dutifully packed away the lunch in the front compartment of the brown trailer only to realize at lunch time that we had left the trailer in camp for our day of outcrops.

No way would I ever admit to the times when I exploded the pressure cookers. I'm sure the birdies in the tops of the pines of the Black Hills have recovered fully by now anyway and the bears probably got a good snack out of the stew that blew all around the campsite.

And it would be totally undignified to tell about the time the group of women followed along wondering what great outcrop the group of men was heading off into the woods to see (sprinkle yellow), only to return seconds later howling with laughter that they had been so naive. So I won't mention it.

I won't be talking about the times we have gone onto property without proper permission, and I won't say anything about the farmer (this is true) who complained when I did ask permission that the last time we brought a class to his land (without permission) the students (nuns in a summer workshop for teachers) had frightened his cows with their habits flapping in the breeze.

Get chewed out by the rangers for people skinny dipping in Lake Superior in view of the tourists? Couldn't happen. In Sheridan Lake, South Dakota? Naw. No place else, either.

There simply are times when decorum matters more than substance, and this is one of those times. Not a word about any of these things will ever escape my sealed lips!