The Revenant won three Academy Awards, including Best Director for Alejandro Iñárritu and Best Actor for Leonardo DiCaprio. It is based on the true story of Hugh Glass and his fight to survive the American wilderness in the early nineteenth century. In what is by far the most memorable scene of this movie, Glass gets repeatedly violated by a bear in the woods.
That was a movie after all. Do bears really want to rape people? Or is that just movie magic and suspension of disbelief? Would a bear find me attractive? That is quite a few questions to ponder. What is the word for being violated by a bear? Well, I looked it up and couldn’t get a definitive answer. I tried all sorts of search terms:
“bear rape man”
“how can bear rape man consent”
“jeremy allen white shirtless pics”
I got all kinds of weird, weird things and went down all sorts of disturbing rabbit holes, but no luck on finding conclusive terminology. Also I need to clear my browser history more frequently. Seems like if I raped a bear it would be “ursophilia”, so maybe the term I’ll use is “reverse ursophilia”.
To say that I fear reverse ursophilia somewhere in the woods of Appalachia would seem obvious. I believe every single person on the planet would choose not to experience this if given any other option. But how likely is this to happen? Are there big, burly bears along the Appalachian Trail and are they on the prowl for fresh meat? To clarify, when I talk about “burly bears” in this post, I mean the family Ursidae.
American black bears exist along most of the Appalachian Trail. My research indicates that they are more interested in my improperly stored and disposed of food than my improperly protected orifices. You can’t put a bear canister around your bunghole, but you probably don’t need to. Safe to say that the odds of reverse ursophilia are vanishingly small. But how about a non-sexual encounter with a burly bear?
There are very few encounters of any kind between black bears and humans each year. Fewer than one person is killed by a black bear every two years since 1900, according to sources. But an incident doesn’t need to be fatal to end in reverse ursophilia. There has been an almost 100% increase in bear incidents since last year.
Why is that? It seems like droughts and scorching temperatures everywhere are putting pressure on the food resources bears depend upon. This pressure causes them to venture out of their comfort zones and into more contact and conflict with people. More people doing more outdoor activities in ever-decreasing wilderness spaces exacerbates the problem.
Still, by and large, bears don’t want to have anything to do with us. Sexually or otherwise. The reason for that seems to be the old standby “they are just as scared of us as we are of them”. They must have access to my search history. As long as you don’t feed bears or poke bears, stay on designated routes, and practice meticulous litter discipline they will probably leave you all alone. But bring bear canisters and bear spray just in case.
Being raped by a bear? Horrifying result, imperceptibly low likelihood. Having an incident with a bear? Troubling to possibly injurious result, very low likelihood if appropriate steps are taken.
To finish up I want to revisit The Revenant and my favorite fact about it. In that movie a young Will Poulter portrays Jim Bridger. Bridger wound up becoming one of the most influential explorers in the American West. He has multiple towns and schools named in his honor. Coolest of all, in my opinion, he is immortalized along with John Calvin McCoy and Alexander Majors in a statue at Pioneer Park in Kansas City.
Majors, McCoy, and Bridgers (L to R)
No bears or people were harmed in the making of this blog post.
I actually left the safe environs of Austin to travel all the way up to Cedar Park in order to check out Brushy Creek Trail. It turned into quite an adventure on an amazing trail surrounded by some amazing parks with tons of things to do and see. But I’m getting a little ahead of myself.
The western terminus of the Brushy Creek Trail is located at a trailhead near Twin Lakes Family YMCA in Cedar Park. Cedar Park is a suburb about 15 miles northwest of downtown Austin. Probably the two things Cedar Park are most known for are H-E-B Center, home of the Austin Spurs and Texas Stars, and the never-ending drama surrounding their city flag.
In 2016 Cedar Park pretended to be a real city and designed a flag of their very own. After a lot of to-do and hubbub they released one that was met with annoyance and derision. So they took it down and never bothered to create a new one. Almost ten years and counting at this point.
Twin Lakes Family YMCA is a big deal destination with a million and one things to do. Especially on a hot summer’s day. This is a common trend along the Brushy Creek Trail. Almost everywhere along the trail there was always something else fun you could be doing instead. Check out all these options available at the Y.
The happiest place on Earth. Click to enlarge.
Fishing, water slides, pools, play areas. Sky Trail. I honestly didn’t want to leave the Y to even get started with the hike. Filled with sadness, I did make my way to the mile zero marker. All along this trail there are stone markers buried in the ground at 1/4 mile intervals, beginning with the first one.
Immediately after leaving the Y, the trail meandered along following the creek. For about the first two miles there was not much but loads of trees and plants. They did have these “animal tracks” stamped into the concrete on the trail, which looked aesthetically pleasing.
One tremendous thing about this trail is how clearly and carefully it was laid out. After two miles I came across Brushy Creek Sports Park. Pretty much the entire trail from there to the eastern end ran alongside or through a park of some kind. This was the secret to why it felt like there was always something to do; there was always something to do.
Brushy Creek Sports Park was exactly what it sounded like. A park with lots of sports. Sports, sports, sports.
They had softball / baseball fields, football / soccer fields, and play areas for kids.
That final picture is obviously of a bike repair station. A great accessory since there were tons of bikers using the trail the day I was. This would be as good a time as any to talk about how well Brushy Creek Trail lets bikers and hikers co-exist. Most of the trail was paved but there were lots of unpaved paths as well. And a lot of unpaved trails running parallel to paved trails specifically for bikers to use. It really felt like the trail was not geared toward either bikers or hikers, but actually a shared experience for both. What an idea!
Just past Brushy Creek Sports park came Brushy Creek Lake Park. It sort of combined the best of both worlds. A lake on one side with fishing and kayaking and such. A park on the other side with open spaces and beach volleyball and two bocce ball courts (bring your own bocce balls).
That last picture shows a body curl and ab workout station that I assumed was part of an outdoor fitness area. I looked all over everywhere near it but could not find so much as a rusty pull-up bar nearby. It’s too bad because the only thing that could have made this better was some freestanding exercise equipment.
As a reader of this blog, you have surely picked up on the fact that I am not particularly enamored with modern art. Most of it seems like easily disregarded trash created by people with too much free time and disposable income. However, sometimes a piece will cause a small stir in the part of my brain that yearns to appreciate beauty. I saw one of those pieces on the shore of Brushy Creek Lake. Here is “Freshwater Cowgirl” sculpted by Anthony St. James.
I’m not sure what it is exactly that I enjoy about this piece. Maybe the way she seems to rise from the earth like Minerva from Jupiter’s skull. Or the fact that she seems to be offering you something you strongly desire with her free hand. It has been said that writing about music is like dancing about architecture, and certainly talking about art falls into that same category. I really liked it, is all I’m trying to say.
Moving on from the lake I got to cross over the dam that explained it.
By this point, I was just over halfway to the other end.
Next up was Champion Park. This park was named after Jack Champion, who owned 200 acres of land along Brushy Creek in the nineteenth century. He was buried in a small cemetery adjacent to the trail and park. The thing I’ll remember most from this park is the unfathomable water pressure behind the bottle filler on the water fountain. It literally knocked the bottle out of my hand when I first held it underneath the damn thing.
I know I’ve already heaped so much praise on this trail, but I need to continue to do so. More kudos because it really felt as though this trail was designed by and for people with two things as high priorities: staying hydrated and staying in the shade. There were loads of water fountains all over. Not all of them worked, but even still it was never more than a mile and a half or so between working ones. Same with the toilets. There were also multiple locations totally covered in shade, even in midday.
My next noteworthy experience was catching some shots of a giant bird perched ominously along the treetops.
I believe this to be a red-tailed hawk based on my extensive knowledge of the local fauna. If it had made a noise I would be certain. Red-tailed hawks make the noise you imagine birds of prey make. If you’ve ever heard a bird of prey in a movie or on TV, you probably heard a red-tailed hawk. Check this video about the difference in sound between a red-tailed hawk and a bald eagle. One sounds like it wants to go to war, the other sounds like it wants to go to Starbucks.
At one of the creek crossings, I almost got a picture of a great blue heron. It darted across from one set of trees into another before I could get my camera ready. It never poked back out again even though I waited for about ten minutes. I’m still fighting with myself and my equipment to become the nature photographer I know I can be. In the meantime, these back-lit faraway shots are all I have.
The next few parks the trail touched were Olsen Meadows Park, Creekside Park, and Shirley McDonald Park. Creekside was the largest of those parks and included tennis courts, play areas, and a pool.
Past Shirley McDonald Park one leaves the city of Cedar Park and enters the city of Round Rock. Round Rock is another suburb of Austin most known for being the home of Michael “Dude, You’re Getting A” Dell and his company Dell Technologies. It is also the home of the Round Rock Express. The Express are a minor league baseball team that oscillates affiliations between the Astros and the Rangers every few years. They have been the Rangers’ AAA team since 2021 so they are probably due to go back to the Astros soon enough.
The coolest thing about moving into Round Rock is that Brushy Creek Road becomes Hairy Man Road. This gives me the perfect excuse to discuss The Hairy Man.
The Hairy Man was a small boy in the 1800s who got separated from his parents and was raised by the fauna of Brushy Creek. As he grew he had no clothes to wear. Fortunately, his hirsuteness covered his modesty. The Hairy Man vowed to protect the denizens of Brushy Creek by scaring away other people. One day he got trampled by some horses, but the caretaking cryptid is said to still haunt the area until this day.
Click to enlarge.
The Hairy Man is a pretty big deal in Round Rock. So much so that there is a whole day and festival devoted to him. The day includes a 5k race and a hairiest man contest. The festival is on October 17th this year, which means you still have time to stop shaving your back and enter yourself in the competition.
There wasn’t really much left to do to wrap up this trail after that. You may notice the very first picture here mentions Fern Bluff. In case you are wondering what a “fern bluff” is, I’ve got you.
The bluffs are an outcrop of rock that provides the perfect amount of shade to allow the ferns to bloom underneath their purview.
Soon after that I hit the mile 6.50 marker.
And finally, the end of the trail. I knew this because there was a helpful sign.
Normally, I’d wrap everything up here. But in this case I actually had to walk all the way back to the Twin Lakes YMCA to complete a slightly greater than 13 mile loop. For some other stupid reason I decided to do a whole host of errands after I finished up. This resulted in me walking over 60000 steps on the day. I had never even done 50000 up to this point so, needless to say, I was plumb wore out.
Having read this far I doubt I need to explicitly mention in my conclusion, but I loved loved loved this trail. I loved the way they integrated both bikers and hikers. I loved the way the trail touched so many parks with so many things to do in them. I loved the facilities. I loved learning about The Hairy Man. Easily the best trail I’ve hiked so far.
There comes a time during the planning portion of any operation where you get overwhelmed by the finances. You just get anxious due to how much everything costs. It seems like you spend all of your time taking money out of ATMs just to hand it to cashiers, or entering your credit card number and CVV into e-commerce websites. I have officially hit that phase of thru-hike planning and it is freaking me out.
Recently a lot of my anxiety has come from food. I have been crunching the numbers recently on just how many calories it takes to walk over 2000 miles. And just how much it costs to purchase one calorie of non-perishable foodstuffs. I am desperately looking for that magic website that sells beef jerky for $5 a pound or fistfuls of sunflower seeds for a quarter. During those searches I came across a website selling daily humanitarian rations for $15 a case. Since a case contains ten rations, that breaks down to $1.50 per ration.
Daily humanitarian rations are a “food gift from the people of the United States of America”. They are most usually airdropped someplace like Haiti after a hurricane or some African nation during a famine or eastern Europe after some dictator launches a regional war. The box they come in looks just like an MRE (meal ready to eat) box and the meal itself contains lots of the same things you’ll find in an MRE.
Each individual meal bag is like a salmon colored MRE bag. Quick aside, the bags used to be bright yellow so they stood out. However, cluster bombs are also bright yellow so people would actively avoid daily ration bags because they didn’t want to get blown up. So they changed them to be salmon colored. Fortunately, the guys that make cluster bombs haven’t switched to salmon yet. Although that seems like a really bad-ass tactic if one wanted to maximize the amount of little kids they blow up. Take notes, Department of War.
On to the rations themselves. The box I purchased was packaged in August 2022. Each bag contains enough food for one person for one day. This means two entrees plus several side dish options to snack on in between. Nutritional breakdown of each ration is roughly 2000-2200 calories with a macronutrient breakdown of about 60% carbs, 30% fat, and 10% protein.
Because the rations are meant to go all over the world to all sorts of people with allergic and dietary and religious restrictions, the entrees are all vegan or vegetarian. In other words: beans, beans, and more beans. A box of ten rations contains five different “menus”, each with slightly different combinations of entrees.
Because I didn’t want to waste the entire box doing testing, I only ate two different rations. The first one I chose was menu #1. For breakfast I had the strawberry toaster pastries, also known as Pop-Tarts. This wasn’t some kind of knock-off Pop-Tarts or anything, they were actual Pop-Tarts still in their Pop-Tarts foil wrapper. They tasted like strawberry unfrosted Pop-Tarts if someone sat on them for an hour.
For lunch I had beans and rice in tomato sauce. The beans in question were navy beans. This was a fabulous entree for a glorified MRE. Tasted great and quite filling. Remember that I said “filling”, because we’ll come back to it later.
Delicious beans and rice
In between meals the ration contained two packs of MRE crackers with peanut butter and strawberry jam. This daily ration was brought to you by the strawberry council. The most amazing thing about this ration and the other one I ate is that all four sets of crackers were completely unbroken. If you’ve never eaten an MRE, the odds of finding just one unbroken pack of crackers are up there with discovering a new star using only a magnifying glass.
The second entree was lentil stew. Also rather filling. As someone whose mother loved to make lentils, I understand that they are basically a superfood. My big problem with this stew was that it was almost devoid of taste. Fortunately, the ration came with salt, pepper, and crushed red pepper to give it a little kick and make the stew palatable.
Lentil stew
Beyond that, there was a fig bar and a shortbread cookie for your sweet tooth. The fig bar tasted like some store bought version, far from bad but not exceptionally good. The shortbread cookie was the correct amount of sweetness but just a little dry. This ration needed to contain a powdered milk packet to dunk it in.
In addition to everything mentioned above, the humanitarian ration contained a spoon, napkin, pack of matches, sugar packet, and moist towelette. No drink packets or heaters. It also contained a weird pictogram of, I guess, describing how to eat the food inside in case you’ve never seen packaged food before. Maybe you were too busy running from a dictator’s death squads or a tsunami warning to ever try one before now.
Let’s circle back to my comment on how “filling” the entrees were. Both entrees contained maltodextrin among the first four ingredients. Maltodextrin is a food additive that comes from corn or rice or wheat. It is typically added to food to add bulk, among other reasons. It can trick you into thinking your food portion is more filling than it actually is, One reason some people do not like maltodextrin as an additive is because it has a higher glycemic index than table sugar. It may also cause gastrointestinal inflammation at high doses. Another good reason not to like it is because it causes flatulence.
Between the beans and the maltodextrin squeezed into everything, it was a pretty loud night in my apartment. It was just like that campfire scene in Blazing Saddles. The farting never ceased.
For the second day, I decided on menu #4. Interestingly, menu #4 was exactly the same as menu #1 except the beans and rice with tomato sauce was subbed out for a pasta with tomatoes and sauce entree. That entree contained lentils and maltodextrin, despite there being no mention of them in the title. It also wound up tasting very good by MRE standards and is something I could definitely eat in the future. Everything else was exactly the same: Pop-Tarts, crackers, fig bar, everything.
That night in the apartment it sounded like I had the brass section of the Austin Symphony Orchestra for a sleep over. If you ever bring any of these daily rations with you to a campsite, make sure you are going solo. Or set up your tent all by itself on the far end of the pad.
Ultimately, this review is supposed be my opinion on the humanitarian daily ration as a meal option. I would eat these. Which is a good thing because I still have eight left. I would even buy another case. A buck fifty for a full day of rations is a tough deal to beat. I ate an item from the bag every few hours or so and never got noticeably hungry, and I walked about 10000 to 11000 steps each day.
On the negative side, each bag weighs about two pounds so it may not be worthwhile to bring too many in your backpack at once. I would describe the overall taste as slightly better than an MRE, so if you can’t stomach an MRE you should avoid. Also, the lack of variety makes it somewhat disheartening to eat them more than two days in a row. And the incessant farting.
I have some news to share. I won’t say it is “exciting” news, because that feels presumptuous. The news is that I have bought a domain for this blog. The blog can now be found at this new URL: https://www.genehikesapptrail.blog
The biggest change you will notice, aside from the location, is that there are no more ads to sift through. That was not the main reason I decided to pony up cash, but it is the one most noticeable to you the readers.
The impetus behind this change was because of storage. A free plan got you 1GB of storage, but the cheapest paid plan is 6GB. The lack of storage for a free blog meant that I have been compressing almost every image I have uploaded. I do not wish to spend time compressing anything before uploading while I’m on the trail, so I needed to pay for more storage space. As someone who used Lynx text-only browser in the ’90s, I never dreamed I would ever say 1GB of storage was too little.
Since the paid plan is good for one year, this purchase should last until the thru-hike is over. I’ll probably continue compressing files until the actual hike begins, but once it does I will be uploading everything in source quality. I want you to be able to experience the awe and wonders of the trail just as I will.
To celebrate this announcement, we are doing our first and only Content Week[TM]. Starting on Wednesday, September 23rd, I will be posting a new article every day for one whole week. I am heavily biased, but I feel like I have a good crop of fresh posts to keep you entertained for the entire week.
Speaking of September 23, the annual AT hangtag color vote is going on right now. It ends on the 23rd, so if you are planning on doing a thru-hike next year, make sure you get your votes in. You can vote once per day.
I have another announcement that I’ll shoehorn in here as well. There is about to be a tonal shift in this blog. For the past six months I have been blogging about getting ready for the Appalachian Trail. However, it has not felt much different from a fitness blog or a weight loss blog. Lots of hiking day trips and silly things that may have crossed my mind, but not a ton of real content about things important to thru-hiking specifically. Moving forward, while I do want to continue doing hikes and fitness stuff, I want to start focusing in on the nitty gritty of what next year entails.
Expect more gear reviews, planning tips, and overnight trips. Since it is finally under 100 degrees every day and the six month long Austin summer is winding down, I hope to bivouac at McKinney Falls and Bastrop State Park at a minimum during the fall. Those should be great occasions to stress test my gear and figure out which items are worth it and which ones need to be replaced before March. Those are the kind of things I expect to discuss way more over the next six months.
