Decked out in plaid shirts with a light drizzle hitting the windshield of the car, we were stuck behind a log truck taking it slow up the McKenzie river highway. I tapped the steering wheel in boredom and looked around the car to my friends who were all asleep. We heading to Cougar Reservoir to find a place called Terwilliger hot springs for our reunion trip.
All of us had been friends and roommates and gone to Iraq together and hadn’t seen each other in almost a year. The car smelt like beer farts and my belly hurt from all the laughing I had been doing during the trip, rekindling all the inside jokes and recounting tales that only we would understand. I was also showing two of my friends Oregon for the first time, a place I had talked up over five years and described as a paradise on earth; where the mountains were tall, the water clear and crisp and the beer the greatest on the planet. To complete the northwest moment, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” came on the radio and woke my friends, who heard me singing along to one of the greatest and most over-played songs of all time.
We arrived at the hot springs and were greeted by a lady burning incense and tapping lightly on a drum. The level in the reservoir was lower than normal and exposed bare earth.
The hot springs is located in a grove of old growth Douglas fir. The water emerges from a small grotto and then cascades down into a series of pools, with the hottest one closest to the grotto.
After taking off our clothes we entered the pool and joined the other people already soaking. There were families, and men and women who were just there.
A slender man with long hair and a beard was talking to a couple at length about the power and wonder of musical healing. He then produced a didjeridoo that he had hidden away in the brush behind him and entered into the cramped grotto.
The drone of the didjeridoo helped me slip into a coma of relaxation. My naked body was floating in the sulfur water and I was about to fall asleep when an old man in the center of the pool began to speak loudly and recite poetry.
Annoyed with the man reciting poetry and drunk with relaxation, we stumbled out of the hot tub, put our clothes back on and hit the road.
We then went up to Portland and stayed at a friend’s house that was out in the woods. We started a fire and sat around making smores and staring into fire.
“I got something to tell you guys,” said my friend Vijay, “I think I’m going to go back into the Marine Corps as an officer.”
“Why would you do something like that? Didn’t you learn your lesson the first time around?” I asked Vijay.
“I just don’t really like college. I’m surrounded by a bunch of selfish spoiled kids who are just out to make a name for themselves and don’t realize the consequences all their dumb theorizing has on the world.”
“Yep, I don’t really like college either. It’s a huge waste of time. I already know what I want to do with my life. I’m good at it too. But instead I have to waste a bunch of years going to school to get a dumb piece of paper saying I can do what I already know how to,” Mat said.
I threw another log onto the fire and stuck my marshmallow stick into the fire to stir up the embers. Sparks flew up and drifted off into the clear night sky.
“College is huge racket. $150 for a dumb book you look at once. Paying money for a class taught by a guy who’s never done anything with his life besides go to school. I really hate college. I think I want to drop out,” I said.
“You can’t drop out, that’s throwing your future away,” Vijay said.
“Why? I’m tired of people telling me what to do with my life and giving me all sorts of advice that pretty much boils down to following your dreams and doing what makes you happy. I just don’t think I belong in college and I feel like I’m wasting time there dealing with nonsense that doesn’t matter. I don’t think I’m going back in the fall.”
I buttoned up my flannel shirt and went inside to get my jacket. I came back to the fire and took my place.
College was not the magical dream land of learning we thought it would be. It was more a land where time and energy is wasted on inconsequential ideas and full of kids who think they are going to change the world. It is a nice holding ground for people to ease into the real world. But if you’ve already had a taste of the real world, it is hard to believe anything teachers say.
We doused the fire and went inside, quickly falling into a deep sleep.
http://thebroadsideonline.com/04/voices/out-of-your-element-with-donny-iler/
The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years… the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.
and some my resource about phones – cell phones
мой сайт оригинальные подарки для мужчин если вам интересно