Every day, I am amazed with the regenerative powers of sleep. My body feels a hundred years old when I go to bed. Everything hurts. In the morning, a little ache here and there but I’m good to go again.
This adventure happened yesterday. I fell asleep before I was able to share it with you. But here it is. I’m still chuckling just thinking about it:
Mid-afternoon, I needed to take a break. I was on a beautiful plateau and spotted shade underneath some trees. I took off all my gear, put my towel as a blanket on the ground, and then took off my sweaty t-shirt as well. Shoes, socks, and pants followed. I spread everything out so it could dry a bit, relaxed, had some water, and a snack.
All of a sudden, I heard a noise. I looked up to see twenty large cows coming through the trees. They looked utterly surprised and shocked to see me. The feeling was mutual.
I got up slowly and carefully, my mind quickly going through all the options. There weren’t many. All my stuff was spread out on the ground, and I stood there barefoot in my underpants. This was when the cows began stomping their hooves and moved towards me.
Could I quickly gather all my things and make a run for it? Too late. As several cows began charging towards me, I grabbed my phone and my walking sticks and moved slowly backwards. I began singing to the cows since I had heard grizzly bears calm down when they hear singing. Maybe it is the same for cows? It isn’t. If anything, they seemed to double their speed. I doubled mine, too.
As fast as I could, I hopped over some rocks and scrambled up the hill in my underpants. Then, I wiggled underneath some bushes.
The cow herd arrived at my stuff and, stomped their hooves. They circled my backpack and clothes suspiciously. Some of them gazed towards where I was hiding, but soon they were preoccupied with my stuff. I was scared. What if they trampled my backpack? What if they chewed on my shoes?? Should I run out and charge at them, screaming my head off? I followed my instincts and opted for keeping quiet instead, hoping they would soon lose interest.
One by one the cows checked out my belongings. They circled, sniffed, probed. Then, finally, one by one, they got bored and the herd slowly walked off into the distance.
It took about an hour, but then, finally, I was able to carefully approach my stuff at the bottom of the hill. All things considered, I was lucky. The cows hadn’t chewed anything. However, everything was covered in cow slobber. I took a couple minutes doing my best to quickly clean my clothes, shoes, and backpack and get rid of all the gooey slobber… always keeping an eye out in case the herd decided to double back.
Then, I quickly got dressed, worked some more on the slobber on my socks, put on my shoes, shouldered my backpack and snuck away.
This probably was one of my scariest and most hilarious experiences to date. For the rest of the day, I kept laughing every time I thought about it.
Of course, I had been way too busy running around in my underpants to take any pictures. So this one is just in the spirit of cows, showing some peaceful and curious bovines I met further on along the way.