Day 1136: Leeches

Filthy, steaming hot and exhausted, I waded into the shallow pond eagerly.  Mud squishing between my toes, I dipped my arms into the cool water and splashed it on my face.  All around me, students were giddy with relief as they charged into the water.  In just a few moments, the laughter turned into screams.  Shrieking, slapping, lurching, kids scrambled out of the water.  Thick black leeches clung to legs and ankles and arms.   Adults ran into the pond to calm kids and pluck leeches.  I looked down and flicked one from behind my knee and another from my ankle.  Then, I grabbed a shrieking girl and slapped leeches from her legs.

This is one of the most memorable events of all my 28 backpacking years!  It took place on the Thursday night of 1978 or 1979 hike.  After that year, I always made sure to zip in and out quickly and not stir up the muddy bottom.  Now that we hike in May, the water is too cool for the leeches.  Thank goodness!

I'm hoping to finish the Atlantis chapter tomorrow.  This morning I revised the first page to focus more on the efforts by the entire middle school staff to cooperate to make Atlantis possible.  I resolved the conflicts by eliminating specific dates for incidents.  It's the stories that matter more than the exact day they occurred.  Tomorrow, I should be able to finalize its conclusion, check the repeated word counts and finish editing.

I also located two possible publishers.  One is Mountaineers Books that focuses on backpacking trails throughout the states.  And the second is Sagamore Publishing which specializes in outdoor education texts.  That one might be too academic.  It's exciting to begin this next phase!

Desert Moon in February