I just returned to LSU after spending a semester on the West Coast studying at California State University, Chico.
Before I left, a lot of people at LSU cracked f jokes about staying away from hippies once I got to California. Of course, I ran into a few, but I never expected to see “as much” of them as I did.
I was 12 miles into the wilderness on a backpacking trip when the most notorious hippy in my life thrust himself into full view.
The group I was with had decided we should all put on our swimming trunks and take a dip in some nearby hot springs.
The hot springs turned out to be quite the hot spot when we arrived. There were tubs made by stacking sandbags at the mouths of the springs, and they were all full of relaxing people.
Waiting for my turn, I peacefully sat looking across a river at a falcon perched along the bank.
My serenity was interrupted by the sound of someone emerging from the woods behind me.
“Got any room for me in there?” I heard an enthusiastic man’s voice ask.
As I turned around, I saw one of the girls from my group sitting in the hot spring with her mouth gaping in surprise.
That was not all I saw.
As I looked to find out what wilderness camper wanted to jump in, I saw a man wearing nothing but a fanny pack and big, dumb grin.
The fanny pack was definitely not covering the parts of the fanny we did not want to see.
I quickly averted my eyes as this guy began his awkward attempts at conversation with our group.
We soon found out his name was Frank. This was quite appropriate considering we spent the next 10 minutes trying to avoid looking at Frank’s frank and beans.
Frank made this a difficult task, however. His carefree, little hippy heart (among other body parts) was set on making himself fully known to us.
I mean seriously, what the heck do you say to a naked guy? How’s it hanging? How long have you been in the woods?
As you can imagine, we were quite happy when Frank decided to move his package a little farther down stream, though he came very close to seriously injuring certain parts of himself while sliding down rocky hills.
Since I was their token Southerner, the rest of the group wanted to get my take on Frank and his frank’s emergence from the deep woods.
I simply stated this: “We all know there are times and places for nudity and what people do in the nude. The daylight is just not one of them.”
Don’t take Adam too seriously and contact him at [email protected]