Arboreal Olympiad

 

    Like so many things up by the cave in the Baker National Forest, it started out as one of Ralph’s jokes.
    He was getting some silver streaks on the sides of his chin and down his back and maybe he was feeling a little past his utter stunning macho prime. It made him feel a bit competitive. He kept checking out his biceps when Ramona wasn’t looking.
    “Ralph,” she said one day, “what’s the matter?”
    Being a guy, he said, “oh, nothing.” Then he said, “I want Twigg to be proud of me, you know? By the time he is big enough to care he might think I am some old embarrassing bag of bones and hair Ramona.
    “I should do something great for him to remember. It will help him feel great too,” said Ralph.
    “What would it take to make you feel better Ralph?”
    “I’d like to whoop up on about four other Squatch guys. In a friendly sort of way of course, but real good, you know? With Twigg watching. And Bob doesn’t count! He’s too busy being straight right now anyhow. It takes all his time,” Ralph giggled.
    “How about a contest, Baby,” Ramona asked, getting into the spirit of the thing. She was giving him a little sideways grin.
    “How could we do that Ramona?”
    “Well, it shouldn’t be too hard. You choose six or seven activities, and a time, and we send that goofy bird out with the news. All she would have to do is fly all over the forest finding those wild guys who think you’re a sissy anyhow. She could invite them. They’d swarm here to beat you!
    “Then all you have to do is be better than them, and it will be easy for you big boy,” vamped Ramona, grinning.
    Ralph was thinking hard.
    “How about this? Loudest hollering for one. Tree breaking for another. Then rock pitching. Foot prints, the biggest and best! Disappearing skills. Fishing bare knuckle style, biggest fish wins. Window peeping to scare. I’d have to keep the grin off my muzzle for that one. Some of it can be done right here. Some of it would have to happen other places. Maybe Maeve could be the judge of some of these items,” Ralph said.
    “What day do you think would work,” he asked.
    “Let’s say day after tomorrow. We don’t want those guys to have to work too hard to keep the day and place straight,” said Ramona, “they can be a little basic upstairs.
    “I’ll get ahold of Maeve and talk her into it. No problem. She will love it. Poking that long black beak into forest business is bread and butter to her,” added Ramona.

    And so, it was done.

    The appointed day dawned bright and cool. Ramona made a pot of oatmeal with raisins and nuts. They ate breakfast and waited around a nice little fire at the stone circle outside the home cave. The seating logs were pulled invitingly close to the fire, ready for company.
    We shall call the first arrival Melvin. Young adult male, only six feet tall, but very wide. He is totally black, skin and hair. It’s hard to see expression on his face. He took a seat on a log and accepted a bowl of oats.
    Then there was Larry. He is a little careful of his appearance for a Squatch. Reddish with a pink face. 7’2” and angular. He takes a seat, making sure the log is clean where he is to sit. Does not accept a bowl of oats. Ramona’s eyebrows go up a bit, but she doesn't speak.
    York is next. He is the scariest of the bunch. He is 8’ tall. Grizzly colored with rough scraggly body hair. He doesn’t bother to speak. He just sits waiting. No one really wants to sit by him. He sports the famous aroma to a degree.
    Lastly, and latest, is Ferdy. He is every Squatch girl’s dream. He has a silky light brown pelt and dreamy dark eyes. He is about 7’ tall. He is about Melvin’s age. Young guy. Good manners, considering. He takes a seat on a log and does accept a bowl of oats. Ramona looks upon him with approval.
    Twigg is fit to be tied. This is the most exciting day of his whole life, minus those picnics with Thaga and his mom.
    Maeve is watching over the whole scene avidly from a convenient fir branch overhead. She is ready to judge. Her eyes are bright and beady.
    Ramona taps on her cooking pot with her wooden spoon, for attention, and speaks.
    “As you all know, this is just a friendly contest for fun. We all want to stay friends when it’s over. So, try as hard as you can and have the most fun you can!! Maeve, here, and I will be the judges. We will keep score and let you know at the end.”
    The guys all look at each other thinking “right, we’ll see about that girlie.”
    To begin, one by one all five uttered their finest and most terrifying screams.
    1.Melvin, low and menacing. Not the loudest.
    2.Larry. Great carrying power. Rather screechy.
    3.York. Two competing tones. It was awful. Like throat singing. High and low, but rather local in impact.
    4.Ferdy sounded like singing. Not scary. It did carry though.
    5.Ralph. He sounded like two gorillas tied to an elephant. He gave it his all. High and shrill with a rumbling undertone. It bounced off distant hills.

    Then there was Tree breaking. Of great interest to Maeve.
    1. Melvin silently pushed an 8” diameter tree over, exposing the rootball.
    2. Larry. Stood between two alder trees and pulled them toward himself like Samson. It looked great, but they never did break. They just swished back and forth.
    3. York went over to a rotten Doug fir about a foot and half thick and broke it off about five feet above the ground.
    4. Ferdy did about the same with a smaller tree.
    5. Ralph knew he had to do something special. He strode over to York’s tree, picked it up, put it across his shoulders, and shrieking hideously broke it over his own shoulders. Then he winked at Twigg.

    Rock throwing was next. They all traveled downhill to the river for this one.
    1. Melvin chose a smooth black river rock, football sized, and threw it down stream where it landed with a huge splash.
    2. Larry picked up a piece of broken granite, the size of a loaf of bread, and tossed it upstream. It splashed water back on him.
    3. York let out a roar, waded out into the river and fished around. He found a big slippery rock shaped like a sort of flying saucer, then he flung it sideways into the forest where it tore the heart out of a small maple.
    4. Ferdy looked around the riverbank for a few minutes. His rock was a nice grey pebble about the size of a basketball. He threw it downstream also. But it didn’t go as far as Melvin’s rock.
    5. Ralph, just to be different, grabbed a nice round black one about as big as his own head and bowled it down the riverbank into a large boulder where is made a mighty crash and struck sparks!

    Then they all made footprints in the sand. There was no contest. Ralph has the biggest feet in the world. Twigg was right there watching everything.

    Since they were already at the river. One by one they dove in and went fishing. It wasn’t the season when salmon swim upstream, so they had to content themselves with trout. Each of them got a nice trout. Larry didn’t like being wet, but he got one too. Ramona took the trout into her handy basket that Thaga had made of little strips of bark. All five trout were about ten inches long, more or less, depending.

    For the next feat Maeve had to follow each contestant to a location where there was a window to peek into.
    1. She followed Melvin to the ranger’s house. The ranger wasn’t home. So, he went to the ranger station and leered in the window on the door. The ranger cussed and threw a heavy notebook at the door. Melvin left. That was his disappearance bit too.
    2. Larry, with Maeve, found a camp where there was a pickup with one of those campers they put on the bed of the truck. There was a young couple in the camper. Larry knocked until they opened the door. They did scream deliciously! Then he slipped off into the woods doing a very slick job of disappearing.
    3. York, with Maeve, found a car in a parking lot near the official campground. A lady was napping in the front seat. York took hold of the bumper and picked the front end of the car up and then dropped it. The lady woke up, took a look at him, and screamed almost as loud as he had in the beginning. Then he vanished very nicely into the underbrush, crouching down so she couldn’t see his head as he left.
    4. Ferdy and Maeve went looking for a likely victim. They found a guy sitting on a folding camp chair talking to a camera. Ferdy crawled up behind him and then suddenly popped his head up over the guy’s shoulder and let out a big “wuff” sound and a snort. The guy fell off his chair and screamed like a whole girl scouts troop. He spilled his beer too. Ferdy got up off his hands and knees and vanished over a small rise, in fine style. Maeve was impressed, and she said so.
    5. Now, Ralph isn’t all that scary. So, it was hard to come up with something. This is what he decided to do. He was cheating a little, but the other guys would never know. He rambled over to Thaga’s house and put his big mug in her kitchen window. He made a terrible face and winked. Thaga screamed very convincingly, while laughing and Maeve heard it. Then Ralph vanished like a pro.

    Everybody was getting pretty hungry and tired by now. So, they all headed back to the clearing by the cave, with the handy logs by the fire. They were all laughing about the day’s adventures and didn’t care anymore about who had won. Maeve had an opinion about who won but managed to keep her beak shut. Then she flew off to wherever Maeve calls home, which is still a mystery.

    Ramona had cleaned the fish and speared them on small green branches and put them over a small fire to cook. She had also made a big pan of corn bread over the fire while she was waiting for them to come back. It doesn’t take long to cook a trout so soon everyone was sharing some trout and cornbread and some of those beers Ralph keeps under his log out in the woods a few hundred feet from the cave. Even Ramona had a beer.
    Twigg conked out and Ralph had to carry him in to bed.
    Then the adults talked around the fire until about midnight. It was a clear night so way up high in between the trees they could see stars.
    Melvin, Larry, York and Ferdy each headed back to their own places under cover of darkness quite contentedly.