Fear and Loathing in the Field

[Ed.: Today’s blog post is written by CU Boulder student Lena Streisand].

In 30° Celsius weather the only dark cloud ahead is one of impending doom at being “flappled” (thank you, Bill Caraher) in the face by the likes of this thing:

Locust

You’re walking your first swath of the morning.  You see an artifact in the distance.  You hasten your step and soon you are face to face with this artifact and the only thing stopping you from grabbing it is the massive, intricate web of a spider the size of your left eye that has conveniently woven its way around your point of interest.  The clock’s ticking, the other walkers are waiting for you and just as you reach for that artifact the walker beside you asks if you need him to “hold on.”  Not remembering you’re diving face-deep into the web of doom you mutter “yes” and just as you do so you go face first into one of these:

Spider

You flail your arms around helplessly, ground yourself in the soil and stand up directly into the olive tree branch you were avoiding, effectively diving head first into another web.  Flustered and frazzled you trip over a rock and unleash a whole new kind of beast.

Scorpion1

Trying not to totally freak out about the fact that you are in very close proximity to a scorpion you keep on the move.  Beetles of unimaginably large sizes propel themselves at all imaginable angles towards you and bees buzzing in various octaves swarm around you, but you keep moving through that field and away from that scorpion.

Finally you’ve left the realm of unmentionables for dinner when the delusion sets in: suddenly all sorts of things are flying past you and you think you hear buzzing and you feel something crawling on you and you’re waiting for a flapple when you look up and realize that you’re actually just sitting at a dinner table swatting, dodging, and flailing the air directly above your neighbor’s Greek salad.  It’s okay, she understands.

Tomorrow you’ll both wake up and face the treacherous inhabitants of the field once again because regardless of the delusion and the constant feeling of web-on-face, the possibility of finding that one artifact makes it all worth it.


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