Brett French: Time to couch out? What I do when I’m down to patching the patches on my gear

There are a couple of ways to look at the scars we bear, as well as those we inflict on our possessions.

Is it neglect and abuse? Or maybe just a tendency to always be pushing boundaries: trying to scale the rain-soaked rock on that lakeside cliff as a shortcut; crashing through thick brush because the trail disappeared and, in the process, breaking the tip off your favorite pack rod; running whitewater rapids in a hailstorm as lightning echoes through the canyon.

Foolhardy? Maybe. But pushing boundaries can make for the best personal discoveries, good and bad.

The fox’s footwear

One recent discovery involved a red fox living near a Forest Service campground in the Tobacco Root Mountains. We spotted the fox looking back curiously at us before trotting into the woods.

It made sense the fox was touring the area. Ground squirrels lived on the flat terrain, their burrows providing opportune spots for an unwary camper to twist an ankle while stumbling through the dark of night without a flashlight.

I set my hiking boots in the sun to dry before we left for an afternoon adventure. When we returned, they were gone. I thought my friend had accidentally picked them up, but no. Then we blamed another camper, but what were the chances he had the same shoe size? And the boots were not in great shape.

So I blamed the fox. Everybody laughed at that explanation, until last week when Grand Teton National Park advised campers to keep their boots inside at night. A fox was blamed for stealing at least 32 shoes. Ha! Vindication for a wild theory.

Fear of disposal

At least those boots won’t be lingering at the back of a closet for years after I quit using them. I tend to hang onto things too long, sometimes tinkering to keep deteriorating machines around for one more season or hoping I will find some other use for that ancient pair of Teva river sandals with the tread now worn smooth.

Throwing things in the trash seems to be an admission of failure, a lack of imagination, not to mention an addition to a landfill crowded with things I may be able to find a use for someday. I’m clinging to the hope of reincarnation.

But now the tinkerer is fading, losing patience for pulling the lawnmower starter cord 20 times to cut the grass or jumping on the motorcycle kick starter until my foot goes numb. The hoarder is cleaning his garage.

Is new gear better, or just less work? Should old stuff be recycled by placing an ad on Facebook Marketplace? Or should I just set it on the street with a “free” sign, which seems like a lot less work, although generates no revenue for new stuff.

More patch than boat

An example of my attempt to keep old gear going is my 30-year-old river raft. It has patches on its patches.

It was doomed this season by a friend asking if I carried a patch kit when floating. I typically do but forgot to pack one on this outing. I made up an excuse that it takes too long to patch a raft, so carrying a kit on the river was unnecessary.

As we loaded gear into the pumped-up raft on the shore of the Stillwater River, my buddy said he could hear a hissing sound. I thought he was joking and suggested it was the sound of the water rushing past.

Then my wife heard it too. Sure enough, air was whistling out of one of the seams where the raft’s tubing joins. This was not a good sign. It indicated a failure in the raft’s structural integrity, which at 30 years maybe I should have expected.

Defying good sense

My pickup truck, on the other hand, is only seven years old. Yet a couple of weeks ago a new warning light glowed on my dash. Turns out a wire connecting a rear wheel to the automatic braking system, which is also responsible for traction control, had broken. The dealership wanted almost $340 to plug in a replacement wire. Being cheap, I declined.

Instead, I crawled under the truck and spent an hour with dirt falling into my eyes as I tried to strip the stiff coating off the wire with a knife I sharpened so well that I cut myself three times. Unable to get an old soldering iron and wire connector to work, I twisted the wires together and heavily taped them. Duct tape to the rescue.

A temporary fix you may say, but oh the feeling of power to disregard a mechanic’s overpriced bill.

Monument plant’s plan

A couple of weeks ago we were bouncing the truck over the gravel road up Crooked Creek into the Pryor Mountains and then across to the wild horse range. The slow, rocky route – mostly traversed by Jeeps, ATVers and dirt bikes – emphasized the torture I inflict on my belongings. Shocks were absorbing blows, tires were prodded and poked and fine dust from the road settled inside my air filter and the truck’s cab.

After hours of agonizingly slow climbing, gaining 7,000-feet in elevation in about 10 miles of driving, we arrived at the top just in time for a thunderstorm to roll in. The fine dust melted into a greasy mess as rain poured down. But the views across Bighorn Reservoir and into the Bighorn Basin were spectacular. Wildflowers were blooming, including tall plants I mistook for beargrass.

My phone app told me it was instead Frasera speciosa, a member of the gentian family that is also known as elkweed, monument plant and green gentian. Research revealed the plant only flowers once in its lifetime, which can extend from 20 to 80 years. After it blooms, the flower dies.

The plants sometime bloom all at once in sunny mountain meadows. Our timing serendipitously captured one of these unusual events.

As we bumped down Burnt Timber Ridge Road to leave the high mountain pastures (a circular route I highly recommend for those willing to brave bad roads in four-wheel drives), we spotted one of the wild horses grazing next to the road. Its hide was scarred and a front leg looked like it had healed crooked. The horse stood as testimony to a tough life in the wild.

Maybe elkweed, aka the monument plant, has the right idea: bloom only once after years of growing and then recede into the soil to fertilize the next generation.

Making do

Sitting in the shade in my backyard on a 90-degree day, scraping to remove a patched patch on my raft, I realized I may have gotten in over my head. It took more than an hour to peel one patch using a chisel, sandpaper and a toxic cleaning solution. At least four other patches needed removal and repair. My confidence was dying a slow, mouth-drying death in the hot shade.

At what point is keeping this old boat afloat futile? Does buying a new or used one even make sense? This air-filled blue beluga lasted 30 years. At that rate I’m unlikely to outlive another raft, and it will be up to my heirs to decide whether Marketplace or the street is its next adventure. I don’t envy them cleaning out my garage. I can envision them opening a box labeled “old lawnmower wheels” wondering what in the heck I was thinking.

Time to couch out?

Maybe it’s time to hang up rafting. Maybe it’s time to surf the couch on weekends.

My brain says, “hell no,” but the body I’ve beaten up for twice as long as my raft is protesting. Steroids, anti-inflammatories, stretching and horse-pill-sized supplements of glucosamine and chondroitin only take the edge off aches.

A few years ago, it felt like I had gravel in my shoulder. An astonished X-ray technician could hardly believe what he saw. The pin surgically placed to keep the joint from repeatedly dislocating when I was a teenager had broken and was migrating south.

My friends and I joke that what they’ve long known is now a medical fact: I have a screw loose.

The scar from that surgery has faded, but the lesson I learned from the accident remains fresh. I never pushed that boundary again.