Author: pensandpicks

The most recent attempt to top the Sawtooth trip took place a couple summers ago at Kennedy Lake in the Immigrant Wilderness of the central Sierra Nevadas. This was not our first rodeo at this lake, so we were ready for the sinky, stinky bogs and grueling hike. On the way in, I was excitedly telling Garrett about my new, super-small, super-lightweight sleeping bag I got … at Walmart. I think he knew I was in for trouble, but wanted to wait until we had hiked a full day and completely set up camp before pointing out the error of my cheapskate ways. My pack was probably only ten pounds heavier than Garrett’s, which was a huge improvement from the first time we hiked there more than a decade earlier (that time I had intense groin pain, and Garrett, who had “just read about this in a hiking book,” was sure something “down there” was not as it should be. Turns out it was poorly performing boxers bunching up and cutting off circulation. No big deal once I effectively turned that pair of undergarments into a slitted kilt). I was the everything-and-then-some guy. Garrett was and is the if-I-don’t-need-it-to-survive-it-stays-home guy. It’s not that Garrett really convinced me that taking everything you might want isn’t a good idea, it’s just that I’m too old now to be carrying 70 pounds on my back with my “green antenna” (as Garrett dubbed my fly rod case) protruding up more than twice my height.

Even though it was July, the nights were cold. There was even frost in the mornings. I learned four things on that trip as it relates to sleeping bags. Number one: Garrett is right. There’s no substitute for a quality bag. Number two: The temperature rating of a sleeping bag is “you can survive at this temperature,” not “you’ll be comfortable at this temperature.” My 40-degree rated Ozark Trails bag was no match for the frosty Sierra nights. Number three: Nothing, not even all your clothes plus the rain fly will make things better. Number four: other than the rusty hot tub incident, this was the closest I’d ever come to getting closer to Garrett than I ever had been before. After three nights of more shivering than sleep, we both agreed to head out early. Our decision was also influenced by the fact the lake valley was rapidly filling with wildfire smoke from whence we knew not, and didn’t want to be warmed much more than necessary.

Before I close out this Kennedy adventure, I want to mention one more story that isn’t particularly humorous, but testifies to the quality of the man to whom all this writing has been dedicated.

My mother passed away in the May of that year after a long and hard fight with Pulmonary Fibrosis, and I had a canister full of her ashes that I wanted to scatter somewhere special. I had decided upon Lost Lake, a small lake about three miles away and 2,000 feet up from Kennedy Lake. Garrett agreed to attempt the hike with me. At one point, we came up to a basin where we thought the lake would be. However, we quickly realized where I was trying to take us was “way up there. See it? There’s a small path in the shale. It’s only a thousand feet up. We can do it.” That’s the point where Garrett mulled things over, stared at the map and suggested we turn back. He was tired and not convinced I was leading us where I thought I would. After some prayer and consideration, I made one last appeal.

An hour later, we were standing on a 9,000+ foot ridge with Lost Lake immediately behind us and the breathtaking glaciated valley below. Garrett took photos of me reading Psalm 90 and then pouring my mom’s ashes into the wind that was rushing over the ridge and down to the valley. It was meaningful for many reasons, one of which was sharing it with Garrett. He told me later the only reason he was willing to endure my folly and the brutal and treacherous hike was so I could honor my mom. I am grateful for a friend who cares.

While I could fill in many more adventures that include bears, guns, caves, green spray paint and fire extinguishers, theological debates, blizzards and a Russian exchange student/wannabe KGB spy, I think these stories suffice for now. What I hope you take away from this is that there are certain special people in our lives that leave indelible marks, and Garrett is that for me. It’s been an honor and blessing to partake in this pilgrimage on the way to to heaven with him, and I look forward to more adventures together … if his wife will let him hang out with me ever again after reading all these stories!

Remember how I mentioned in a previous post food poisoning would rear its ugly head again in this series? Well, this time it was Garrett who was the tragic victim of tainted food. I want to say that this particular story shows just how gutsy Perks can be, and I’m not just referring to the troubles he had after a fateful dining experience in a small town in southwestern Idaho. Garrett was the only one who opted for the salad, though I’m not sure why. He’s not granola, hipster or otherwise kooky in any other way. But, alas, salad it was, with a side of botulism.

We were planning to leave around 0400 hours the following morning for a 12-mile hike into the Sawtooth Mountains, with a planned wake-up of 0300 hours. When I woke up, I heard Garrett stirring, which was more than I’d hoped for considering he was a night owl and it would not have been the first time I’d have to wake him up to leave for a trip. “Great to see you’re up!” I said when we crossed paths in the hallway. “Dude, I’ve been up in the bathroom all night. I’m going to try to get some sleep now.” I asked him if he was joking, which he insisted he wasn’t. This was not going to do. Garrett had flown all the way to Idaho and I taken time off work, and we were going to hike! Thankfully, he was of the same mind, but needed as he said “a solid hour of not needing to use the bathroom” before we could make an attempt at the mountain. About 0800 we hit the road, but were not on it for more than 15 minutes before I was pulling over for Garrett. Nevertheless, he told me to press on with our four-hour drive and see if he’d improve enough over that time. A few stops later, including one roadside “in the woods” experience, we made it to the trailhead.

Again, Garrett is gutsy. He pounded a couple Gatorades to get the electrolytes his body craved and we were off. I was in awe. We hiked 12 miles up and down more than 2,000 feet of elevation over Sand Pass and still set up camp before dark. Garrett spent the next three days rehydrating with high alpine lake water and MRE sports drink mix. All in all, it was one our best trips that included driving through the flames of a roadside wildfire then getting pulled over by an angry trooper, food-borne illness, swarms of mosquitos that rivaled the plague of flies in Egypt, ignorantly camping and making fires illegally and topping it off with an in-depth discussion of feminine hair products on the ride home (ask Garrett).

Garrett and I make it a point to get together every couple of years or so for some kind of outdoor adventure. While I was stationed in Alaska, he came up for some river rafting/fishing on Willow Creek and the Kenai river. The Kenai float was more uneventful than we hoped in many ways, mainly fishing. The good news is that we didn’t get eaten by a grizzly bear, so that’s a win in our book. The Willow Creek float, however, made up for the lack of excitement on the Kenai.

The 12-mile trip, which neither of us had ever done, started out just fine. However, within a couple hours, both of Garrett’s oar locks had snapped, and he was relying on some crudely wrapped rope to hold his now extremely range-of-motion-limited oars on his boat. It was the most frustrated I had ever seen him. Not long after the second oar lock gave up, a man with no oars floated by on a small pontoon boat like the ones we were using. We were so perplexed at his situation, which he informed us was intentional, that we failed to adequately listen to the instructions he called out as he drifted off. “When the river looks like it wants to go right, go left. Then, when you see this happen again, go right.” Or, at least that was we thought he said. It seemed ominous, but the fishing was fun and the river was beautiful.

About dinner time, I decided to call my friend Kyle, who had grown up on this river, to find out where about we were since it would be getting dark in a couple hours. I could tell by the panic in his voice when I described where we were at that time that we were in a bad situation. “Dude, you’re only barely halfway done. You’d better get a move on it!” As we were leaving, I had a chance to save Garrett, rather than the other way around for once. Of course, I might have been pulling him out of the frying pan and into the fire.

I heard him cry out for help and saw that he was being forced by the current under a small log jam. I made it over and managed to pull him back and away before it continued to suck him under. I then told him what my friend had just told me, which at least helped Garrett get his mind off of what had just happened. As we continued on in a panicked hurry, we must have missed the first “go left” point because the left turn we took ended up with us portaging our boats and gear (flop, flopping in waders) around a half-mile of treacherous log jams and then dragging our boats a couple miles down the trickle of water that existed on that skinny braid of the river. Darkness was upon us and steady rain had been falling for a couple hours, meaning that we were soaked and in danger of the rising water once we were back on the main river. We ended up missing our take-out location, which we didn’t realize until we came upon the Parks Highway bridge. This meant more than a mile hike in the pitch black in bear-infested Alaskan wilderness back to where the van was parked. I had the .44 mag and was the responsible party for this debacle, so I made the trek and picked up the most annoyed Garrett I’d encountered. The upshot was that a friend was letting us stay at his cabin that night, which had a hot tub (or so he said).

As we pulled up to the cabin, we could already taste the Blue Moon and feel the hot water that awaited us. As it turned out, the “hot tub” was literally that – a tub. It was a Jacuzzi bath tub just big enough for two people who wanted to be very close to one another. After what we experienced, we almost didn’t care … almost. We discussed taking turns, but decided to just go for it and never speak a word of it to anyone, ever. The only reason I can speak of it now is that it didn’t end up happening. The water that came out of the faucet was less water than it was rust, and time didn’t make it any better. In the end, we settled for showers and sipping a brew in the living room. Not quite what we’d hoped for, but then again, nothing that day was.

Garrett has always been a gracious person, as well as someone who loves a good joke or wise-crack. I plied on both attributes once when I hit his truck with my car. It had snowed that night, and the plow had come through and pushed up a berm of ice that effectively impeded my departure for work. Rather than take the time to properly dig my way out, I resorted to employing horsepower and physics. My plan was shortsighted though, as I failed to account for the fact the momentum I needed to extricate my vehicle from the driveway was greater than I had room to quell for before I impacted the side of Garrett’s truck. I hit it hard, really hard, and I was sure there would be extensive damage. Miraculously, there was nothing I could see – at least at 5:20 in the morning. I knew I needed to tell Perks, as I called him, in case there was something I missed during my low-light inspection. Standing at the grill together pooping and flipping pancakes was the perfect time to broach the subject, so I proceeded to tell him about being stuck and and smashing the gas pedal to get over the ice. Here came the confession. “So, when I gunned it, I came flying across the street in a blaze of ice chunks and glory… (at this point, Garrett was belly-laughing again) and I hit your truck. I didn’t see any damage, but I’m sorry if there is.” He told me it was no problem and that the story was worth any harm done to the truck.

That was not the only time those two vehicles – Garrett’s Ford Ranger and my Volvo sedan – made it into the lore of our relationship. I can’t recall the exact circumstances surrounding Garrett’s attempt to turn his truck into a Christmas tree ornament hanging on the side of a cliff on Highway 180, but his experience helped save my parents from heart attacks. Not too long after Garrett’s death-defying antics and the subsequent middle of the night phone call from the sheriff trying to determine if the driver of the ornament was still alive, I tried to copy this feat on the other side of the mountain. My cliffhanger adventure was due purely to juvenile stupidity, fast driving and lack of sleep. Once I made it back to Hume Lake around 1:00 in the morning, I noticed Garrett’s lights were still on, so I went to his place and related my near-death experience. He asked me if the car was registered in my name, which is was not, and told me I needed to call my parents and let them know I was alive in case the sheriff happened upon my car and made another phone call. That was my first “Dad, let me start by saying I’m ok…” conversation, and I’m sure Garrett’s wisdom in that matter prevented much angst in the Liapis family.

 

Last time I shared about the pregame excitement prior to a fishing trip on the Kings’ River. Unsurprisingly, there were some other trips to the river worthy of recounting. For the sake of time, I will only mention one.

Garrett was an excellent swimmer. In fact, he once saved the Chief from drowning in the frigid April-waters of Hume Lake during an ill-advised Navy Seal training session. I was not such a great swimmer, but that didn’t stop me from venturing anywhere Garrett would dare go since I assumed he could save me. One such place was dubbed “Tarzan Falls” – a waterfall on Tornado Creek, a tributary to the Kings’ River that required either a poison-oak laced trek along the cliffs of the canyon, or an invigorating dash across the raging river. We typically opted for the river route since drowning seemed like a better option than contacting poison oak.

The falls were about 60 feet high and surrounded by cliffs of various heights from which we would jump into a deep pool about forty feet wide. We discovered on this particular trip that we could also slide on the mossy granite at the bottom of the falls. After a few go-rounds, Garrett gasped and said, “Dude, you’ve got a leech on your back! Actually, you’ve got three or four!” As he proceeded to pull them off, I suggested I check his back. I didn’t have enough fingers and toes to count the number of blood-suckers who were trying to colonize his back. Needless to say, that was the “suckiest” day we ever had there.

That was not the only time Garrett saved me from certain death. One afternoon during a 15-minute break, I unwittingly drank tainted apple juice out of one of those school cafeteria-sized cartons. As I lay on my deathbed that night, I used what little strength I had to call Garrett and ask him to pick up some Gatorade for me from the General Store before I expired. “Sure, I’ll get you some,” he replied. Good Garry. I knew I could count on him. I waited for my hero to bring the electrolytes my body craved for more than two hours. I was at the point where I needed to either call 9-1-1 or find out what was taking Garrett so long. I called Garrett mainly because 9-1-1 doesn’t do much good when you live 90 minutes from the nearest hospital. “Garrett, where are you? I’m dying here,” I eked out. “Oh, I was just finishing my game of Risk with Andre. I was planning to get your Gatorade once we were done.” I proceeded to explain that the Grim Reaper was standing outside my trailer door sharpening his blade. He finally arrived and chased the angel of death away with a bottle of Lemon-Lime Gatorade and profuse apologies when he saw just how bad off I really was. This was not our only encounter with food poisoning, but more on that in a later post.

As I stated, Garrett and I worked in the kitchen together. As such, a glorious culinary rivalry began. We had pancake pooping races (it’s not what you think) and oatmeal clashes (the best being his spectacular Burnt Beelzebub’s Bungalow fail), but the most memorable were the Great Gravy Wars. I gathered my sausage soldiers, and he his bacon battalion and the lines were drawn. We enlisted the entire dish crew, headed by Neil “The Chief” Barton. With a massive crowd of spectators, the combat began. While Garrett and his fried pig strips put up a respectable fight, my mysterious mashup of pork won the day. Garrett has still not fully recovered from the wound, nor will he admit that sausage gravy is superior to bacon gravy.

Garrett, while usually staid and thoughtful, would sometimes surprise me. The squirrel incident was probably the most notable of these anomalies. We had planned to fly fish on the Kings’ River that afternoon, and I was to pick Garrett up from the trailer he shared with Neil. When I knocked on the door, I expected Garrett to come out ready to head to the canyon. What I encountered caught me off guard, so much so that it was the only time I actually felt uneasy and even scared around Garrett.

The small side door swung open abruptly, and Garrett, with a crazed look in his one good eye and a rifle in one hand, grabbed me with the other and pulled me inside. The door nearly hit me as he slammed it shut and said, “There’s a squirrel in the trailer, and I’m going to get him.” Garrett then proceeded to explain the plan. “He’s under the entertainment center. You take this vertical blind and flush him out. When he runs out, I’ll shoot him.” As many crazy things as I had done in my life, shooting inside a dwelling was not one of them, and I suggested it was a bad idea and asked what might happen if he missed. “I won’t miss. It’ll only take one shot.” I agreed to execute his plan, not because I was particularly inspired by his confidence, but more form a morbid desire to see what would happen next.

I jammed the thin piece of plastic under the entertainment center, and sure enough a gray rodent spit out from underneath at mach 3 and made his way toward Garrett who was awaiting him in the kitchen. At least six shots from the .22 caliber rifle rang out in quick succession, yet the squirrel streaked down the hallway unscathed. Garrett was vexed by this poor showing on his part, so he proceeded to track the intruder who had apparently been raiding Neil and Garrett’s pantry for the past few weeks – a deed clearly warranting the death penalty. I was not far behind as Garrett stopped in the doorway to the bedroom. There was the critter perched atop Neil’s mountain of clean – yes, clean – clothes. I thought there would be a standoff since, after all, Garrett wouldn’t want to get blood on his roommate’s clothes. Wrong. A single gunshot proved my theory incorrect. The wounded animal ran past us, down the hall and then under the fridge where it expired. Just then, Neil came home from work. After a bit of cleaning and “squirrel-splaining,” we finally left for a relatively uneventful trip to the river.

The first time I encountered Garrett Perks was in the entrance to the hallway to the dish room in Ponderosa Kitchen at Hume Lake Christian Camps. As I recall, my response to him running into me with a sheet pan was not befitting the type of camp I had just been hired to work for full time at the end of the Summer in 2000. What I didn’t know, but later learned and felt terrible about, was Garrett’s inability to see out his left eye. Over the following three years as we worked at the camp and recreated together in various ways – some of them quite humorous – and have enjoyed (mostly) other defining experiences in the years since.

I was persuaded by my supervisor to start taking on-line college courses in spite of my determination to not accomplish a single hour more of school in my life. So, being as smart as I was at 18, I chose Political Economics as my first class. I thought I knew a bit about politics (I didn’t) and I liked money (who doesn’t, right?), so, why not? Too bad I failed to pass the course and that D was an anchor to my GPA for the rest of my college career. Garrett graciously attempted to help me, but I was just not ready for proletariat-led revolutions against the Bourgeois. In fact, that word – Bourgeois – that I needed to ask Garrett the definition for was the defining moment of that whole experience.

A few months after my miserable defeat, we were sitting in the Cedar Hall staff dining room talking. One of the staff members mispronounced a word, which I, as the self-appointed Grammar Police, was kind enough to point out. Garrett, not one to miss a chance to dig at me and my youthful pride, said, “That kind of reminds of that time someone asked me what the heck a Bourgeois (but stated with English phonetics, like bor-jus) was.” I chuckled, but let it lie since I knew I only stood to lose by responding. That’s when Ben spoke up and said, “Yeah, people like that kill me. They are all book-smart and know what words mean, but since they have no social skills they don’t even know how to pronounce them!” Garrett laughed one of his typical belly-laughs, but was kind enough not to mention that “someone” was me.

Note: This series is a bit of a light-hearted departure from my usual topics.

I had the privilege of witnessing the wedding of one of my oldest and best friends, Garrett Perks, and his wife Kristina recently. As I was on my way from Florida to California for the ceremony, I took some time to recall some of what I will call “Campfire Stories with Garrett.”

What will follow over the next few days or weeks are a sampling of some of the crazy adventures we’ve shared over the past 17 years. However, it’s not the humor or the near-death experiences that have forged such a strong bond between two people who talk once every few months and see each other every couple of years. It’s our mutual relationship with, and love for, Jesus Christ and for the theology by which we know and discuss Him that was and is the foundation of our friendship. Garrett is one of the finest men I have ever known, and probably the single most influential person in my life other than my wife.

Enjoy.