This is a story was written by Clint a few months ago and I am just posting it now. Enjoy reading it.
Well its time once
again for me to recount another one of my Russian experiences. Before I begin I
would like to caution you readers that this story is for adults only. I
contains segments that will incriminate me in illegal activity, reckless behavior,
and other nefarious deeds. I want to caution you so that your view of me as an
angelic perfect human being is not shattered. I know that most of you look up
to me as your idol. I know that many of you see me as the epitome of human
perfection. I do not wish to tarnish this view so please stop reading or at
least take the proper precautions (whatever those maybe) before you continue
this story.
Ok, having said
all of that lets begin. It was about a week ago now. I awoke early one Saturday
morning and went and met my “friend” who has a gun and takes me hunting. I say
“friend” because in every hunting relationship there are no true friends.
Please let me explain. Hunters are by nature solitary folk. We guard our
hunting grounds jealously and hold every trespass on our own hunting territory
as though one of our children had been viciously beaten. We also have a deep
longing for more hunting ground. This often leads us to trespassing on our
neighbors hunting grounds and causes a large number of blood feuds. However, as
jealous as we are at guarding our own hunting ground we are at times forced to
“invite” fellow hunters onto it. This occurs when another hunter has something
that we desperately need, like a good dog, a tree stand, a gun, a promise to allow
us to hunt on their ground, someone to help us drive game, or simply a ride to
our hunting ground. These needs cause us hunters to have hunting buddies or
“friends.” As in the case of my friend and myself I was supplying the car to
get us to the hunting ground and he was supplying the dog and a gun for me.
This symbiotic relationship has caused us to become friends.
Anyway, my friend
and me set out on a cold crisp February day to hunt wild boar and wild goats.
We sped out of Penza eager to start our hunt. We drove for about 45 minutes and
arrived at a small village. We picked up another “friend” there and drove out
to where we were going hunting. We arrived at the spot that we had chosen to
hunt and got out of the car and strapped on our skies. We were down in a
valley. A small creek ran down the center of the valley and trees grew thickly
on either side of it. The bluffs on the far side of the creek were covered in
thick forest. The bluffs on our side were mostly bare but here and there a lone
tree had sprung up. We set out following the creek, weaving in and out of the
trees. This kept on for about two hours and produced no game. As my friend and
I neared exhaustion we decided to call a halt and to grab a bite to eat. Our
other companion said that he would continue on. He had not quite lost all of
the feeling in his legs yet and wanted to continue until he collapsed. We
agreed that he should go on. It’s not healthy to hang around with crazy people.
As we settled
down to rest and allow our lungs to slow down to a gentle gasping we noticed a
few houses nestled down amongst the hills deep in the woods across the creek.
My friend informed me that these were Russian apaches. He then laughed. And
then very seriously he said to me “No Clint, they are people who live in the
forest and they are very dangerous. If you see them say Hi and ski away fast.”
This sounded like good advice to me. I vowed to myself right then and there to
ski really fast if I saw any apaches or at least faster than my friend. It was
at about this time that our radio squawked to life. Our other companion had
finally collapsed from exhaustion. However, the place that he had collapsed was
near the creek and he was calling to inform us that he had found a bunch of
fish. We excitedly downed our skies and set off in his direction.
When we arrived
at his location we discovered how he had “found” these fish. The Russian Apaches
had set a gill net in the creek. This highly effective (and illegal) net had caught
a large number of fish. We quickly relived the Apaches of the burden of having
to collect their fish. We stuffed them in our backpacks and quickly left the
area. My friend said that the Apaches might not understand the favor we had
done them and might get themselves into a rather vengeful state. This statement
lent wings to my skies and I glided like a rocket across the snow.
When we had put
what we felt was a safe distance between us and the Russian Apaches we again
got back to our hunting. We decided to
push a section of land that looked promising. We agreed to split up again and
we set a place to meet up after the drive. The agreed that the meeting point
would be on top of one of the clear bluffs in a small garden village. A garden
village in Russia is where city folk have a small garden that they tend in the
summer. There are a bunch of little houses with these gardens but people only
occupy them in the summer. Any way, we set out and began to ski up the side of
the bluff. I say ski but skiing up hill is more like walking up hill in extra-large
clown shoes that have been dipped in Crisco. One step up, slip, slip, fall, get
up, and do it all over again. We finally reached the top and our party was once
again reunited. As we stood there talking about what our next move would be we
heard off in the distance the high pitched whine of a snow mobile. This sound
caused some instantaneous excitement in my companions. They fled towards one
the houses. They quickly wrenched off the lock on the front door and stumbled
inside. I quickly followed. However, the inside of the house was littered with poison.
We were forced to make a hasty exit. We crouched down next to the house and
tried our best to blend in with the surrounding terrain. My fiend explained to
me that we had crossed over unto someone else’s land and that the snow mobile
might contain the land owner. We sat there in the snow shivering and praying
that we were not spotted.
Forty-five
minutes later the snowmobile finally departed. We leapt to our feet, strapped
on our skies, and hastily beat a retreat. Unfortunately for me, we were still
on top of a very large bluff. Large wooden hunting skies were never meant for downhill
skiing. Don’t get me wrong. They did a great job at achieving maximum velocity.
However, the skies were entirely out of my control. Indeed, this proved be a
very fortunate thing due to the fact that all of my attention was focused on
keeping my body upright. I rocketed down the hill at a velocity that approached
the speed of light. The world turned into one tremendous blur of motion and my
feet began to leave the ground. My skies did their best to raise the adrenalin
level in my blood. I believe the ratio balanced out somewhere around 80%
adrenalin and 20% stark terror. My skies would fly up to the brink of a sheer
cliff or great casem and then in the blink of an eye do a 90 degree turn just
barley avoiding sending us over the edge. My body would lean dangerously far
out over the edge only to have my muscles give a spasmodic jerk at the last
second and pull me back from sure destruction. My skies seemed to have adopted
the strategy of trying to fling me over these precipices while still keeping
themselves safely on top. They had become a monovalent being bent upon my
destruction. Heart pounding, body contorting and spasming in ways I was never
meant move, I made my rapid decent.
As I neared the
bottom of the bluff I came to the conclusion that I had to put an end to the
ride these demonic skies were taking me on. One way or another I needed to stop
or risk a face to face encounter with a tree or some other sturdy structure
that would render me into some jello like substance. I squinted at the blurry scenery
around me. I was going so fast by this time that it was impossible to determine
anything clearly. I spotted a large white spot in the far distance and assumed
it might be a snow bank. I decided to take a risk. Point two seconds later when
I reached it, I hurried myself at it face first. I thought that I would use my
face to brake my fall since I really didn’t have any other options and let’s
face it, it’s not like I could hurt it right? Anyway, the snow bank did the
trick. I was brought to a gentle halt, much like a space capsule smashing into
the ocean. I sat up and clawed the snow out of every orifice in my head. I
performed a careful inspection of all my bodily parts. I was relieved to find
that while I had lost most of my dignity somewhere up on the bluff, I had
managed to make it through my crash with all of my parts intact.
I pushed myself
to my feet. I was relieved to see that my companions had kept to the poacher’s
code and were a good half mile ahead of me and still going as fast as their
skies could fly. I judged that we must still be in danger and did my best to
mimic them. Though after the ride I had just taken I was a bit nervous about
allowing my skies to get above 50 miles an hour.
We finally made
it to the woods. My companions relaxed at this point. We were concealed by the
woods and could proceed at a more leisurely pace. As we went along we soon came
to a spring. There was half a bottle that someone had turned into a cup. I was
informed that this was a hunters spring and that it contain good mineral water.
I stared down into the slime covered pool. Apparently, all of the “good”
mineral water must be underneath I thought. This must have been the case
because my friend seized the make shift cup and eagerly began scooping the scum
off the top of the water. When enough slime had been removed to make the
“water” resemble water again, he dipped out a generous portion of it and took a
large drink. He then passed it to our other companion and he also slurped down
a generous helping. The cup was then handed to me. I stared at it like I had
just been handed a glass of gasoline and had been asked to drink. My “friends”
eagerly encouraged me, assuring me that it was “good.” I gave a small shrug and
thought “well, how bad could it be?” Gulp, gulp, gulp, gurgle, wretch, choke,
cough, gag and it was done. I made a weak attempt at a smile. “Good” I said, as
my stomach did summer saults. The water had tasted like eating a lead fishing
weight. It was indeed chalk full of minerals. “We will all go to the hospital
together” my friend exclaimed. This reassured me a great deal. I did not want
to go to the hospital by myself.
We sent out
again. We determined that we should climb the bluffs on this side of the valley
so that we could avoid the Russian apaches’. Once again we “skied” uphill. I
will not bore you will the details of this experience again. I will just say
that it didn’t get any better with a second try. We reached the top of the
bluff finally and began to make our way through the woods. We traversed for
quite some time through the majestic forest. Then it was announced that we must
now descend off of the bluff. My legs trembled at the thought. Fortunately for
me, a friendly tree stopped my decent almost as soon as I began. I determined
that it might be better to struggle through the snow on foot rather than to
risk running into a not so friendly tree. It was a long and arduous journey to
the bottom but I finally made it. I put my skies back on and slid out into the
open.
My friend was
there waiting for me and cheerfully exclaimed that it was only 5 or 6
kilometers to the car. We set out. Our companion was a good distance ahead of
us. We skied along in peace and quiet for a time when suddenly our radio
screeched to life. I didn’t know what the words were that were coming out of it
but I fully understood the look of stark terror that came over my friends face.
He jerked his binoculars to his eyes and stared for just a fraction of a
second. “SNOWMOBILE” he exclaimed. We instantly kicked off our skies and began
to sprint towards the woods. I say sprint but in thigh deep snow this is
impossible. We settled for doing a very quick waddle. The snow was flying up
around making it very difficult to breathe and see where we were going. I
realized that we had reached the woods when a tree branch clawed my face and
attempted to gauge out my eye.
There was a deep
ditch just inside the forest and we dove into this head first. We hurled our
guns into the bottom of the ditch and shoveled snow over them with great
enthusiasm. When we had about 5 feet of snow on top of them we felt that they
were concealed relatively well. We then hunkered down to wait and see if our
hiding place would be discovered. To pass the time my friend began to inform me
about various legal ramifications that we might face if we were caught and the
penalties that might be exacted against us. He also took this opportunity to
inform me that none of us had hunting licenses. This was good news to me. After
all, I knew that I didn’t have a license and didn’t have permission to be
hunting so it was good to find out that we were all in the same boat.
We hid in the
ditch for 30 minutes or so and then our radio screamed to life again. Our
companion informed us that it was just some friends of his on the snowmobile
and that we could come out hiding. We began to dig for our guns. Twenty minutes
later we climbed out of the ditch. The snowmobile was nowhere to be seen so we
set out once more for the car. We took no chances though. We both scanned the
horizon and kept our ears open for the sound of an engine. We were ready to
sprint at any singe of law enforcement. I am happy to report that we made the
rest of journey without incident. We arrived at the car and loaded up our gear.
Our hunt was done and it was time to head for home. Well almost time to head
home. We still had to go eat supper and go to the bonya and see a bunch of
Russians get drunk and jump in the snow and…….well that’s all a story for
another time.
