Campsite Cleanup #15: Questa, NM, Where Firewood Thrives And Garbage Prospers

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Well hello it's me again @otherbrandt, and as usual I'm here to regale you with tales of trash and camping and homeless vagabondery and a bumbling haphazard existence of the sort that most would find somewhat irresponsible and a bit naïve if not fully fuckin' off-the-charts and ruinously reckless. Joke's on them though because I'm still alive and well and still not dead. Crossing my fingers for tomorrow.

Anyway, recently me and my gloomily moody and grumpily brooding Subaru, Yolo McFukitol, found ourselves encamped a mile or so up FR 134A in the Carson National Forest above Questa, New Mexico. How we ended up there is a fairly banal story about a nomadic madman and his vehicular steed seeking to escape the encroaching Colorado cold by driving south with no particular destination in mind, so I won't bore you with the details.

It was late in the day and light was scarce but there was just barely enough sun left for me to shotgun a fifth of Canadian Mist and for YMF to mainline five grams of Venezuela's finest and then for the both of us to go charging around like clowns with their heads cut off scooping up every article of garbage in sight for this our preliminary Campsite Cleanup #15.

Considering the spacious accommodations this site had to offer—probably a full acre of land I'd guess (even though I have no idea how big an acre is), with not one not two but three firepits, and a stack of firewood bigger than YMF—our initial haul was not that impressive. And quite frankly I didn't really care. I've done enough of these Campsite Cleanups now to realize that you'd best be grateful when a site fails to yield up much trash, because when a site decides to hit you heavy collecting it all can quickly turn into an extremely time-consuming endeavor.

And so it was that I stood there alone in dark and unfamiliar forest next to my car and a pile of other campers' garbage, staring into the flames of a fire I'd built with wood that someone else had split, wondering if tonight would be the night I finally snapped and said Fuck it all and splashed all three gallons of my spare gas all over Yolo's insides and sat down in the driver seat lit a match slit my wrists and flipped off existence forever.

But just then I remembered I was planning to go climbing in the Latir Peak Wilderness in the morning.

Obviously being dead would present a significant obstacle to achieving this goal.

So I put suicide on the back burner,

and went to bed.

Sweet dreams:

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Preliminary Campsite Cleanup #15 that night…

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…with a few additions the next morning.

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Three days go by.

I'm beat up and tired,

I smell like a wild animal,

and all I really want is a bath.

So I go looking for the closest creek.

I can hear one babbling off in the distance,

so I gather up my hobo bath pack, lock up my car,

and go stumbling out to the sound of its cleansing chorus.

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On my way I find just a few more articles of garbage:

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Just a few more.

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🏕 🥃 💉 🔪 🔥 💥

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11-23-21. You're a madman @brandt but I gotta say you do make a real mean fire.