I just wanted to sip my iced tea by the creek and enjoy the delicious Keto Spinach Salad I brought for my lunch. I wanted to swim with my pup in the cold creek waters and have a zen-like escape from this insane heatwave the mountains of southern California have been smothered in for ten days.
I did not want to listen to gangsta rap or blasphemous teenage ranting. Now is that just too much to ask?
It was a busy Thursday in an equally busy summertime week for this local Big Bear Lake hiking guide. Eight a.m. hike to Bluff Lake with a side of swimming for my adventure pup. My Catahoula pup with her perfectly webbed feet had a delightful morning swim at the deserted lake. And then it was off to the Village of Running Springs where I grew up to visit with family, and maybe swim and hike a little bit more.
Red Neck Yacht Club
Not many people hike to the Narrows at Deep Creek in Running Springs. Unlike a lot of high schoolers who grew up in this small town, I never went to the Narrows as a teenager because there were always a bunch of teenagers smoking weed, being ridiculous and partying there. I was more concerned with showing up to every choir and drama event. I had no time for typical teenage nonsense. According to my sister-in-law, the Narrows have changed and it is a chill watering hole these days. That is so not what I discovered yesterday!
You know, I’m really glad I grew up in the nineties in a world where my parents would literally wash our mouths out with soap if we so much as uttered any of the terrible words or slogans I heard from the white trash teenagers I witnessed today at Deep Creek. What on earth is wrong with their parents? Oh yeah, the same parents who were drunk at noon, taking shots at the creek with their high school Freshmen teenagers. What on earth is wrong with people?
When I graduated high school at eighteen my friends and I spoke like adults. Yes, maybe we uttered some curse words when someone cut us off in traffic but there is a time and a place for a well-timed “Bullshit” After I graduated from high school, we spent all our evenings hanging out with Steven’s parents like they were family. We basically didn’t drink until we were twenty-one. We all worked full-time and went to school. We didn’t have time to smoke weed with our friends at the creek and why would we want to? I looked at these “Kids” at Deep Creek today and I thought these losers will be working at the smoke shop in Big Bear in ten years, probably knock up their girlfriends and probably have spent some nights in jail.
My dad always says he’s proud of the fact none of his kids have ever been arrested. Is this really the world we live in today? When I graduated high school, having a college degree, owning a home, having a good job was a life goal. Looking at these youngsters today, I thought, this day at the creek is probably as good as it gets for them. I doubt these brainless losers will ever have a six-figure job, a new car or a 401K. Not only was the vibe and the rap music depressing but the whole situation just brought me down. This is not why I come to the creek. Yes, I come to swim and cool off and yes, maybe enjoy a salad with my dog, but I also find my center in nature. How can I possibly unwind when there is gangsta rap in the background?
Oh, and that was before the hillbilly children started feeding my already farty dog Doritos. And then loudly judged me for sharing my delicious spinach salad with her.
I really did not need to be bullied by a bunch of redneck teenagers for sharing my spinach salad with my dog. Yes, I feed my dog vegetables almost every day. Yes, she likes it. She eats healthier than most people!
My boyfriend comes from southern India. He spent most of his youth at a boarding school in the jungles, blue foggy Nilgiri mountains a part of the western Gnats. We visited this jungle near the Masinagudi hill station before the pandemic. It was a step back in time to old men in Lungis spitting pan (Bettle nut tabaco) on the side of the winding switch-backed hairpin highways. These old men with brown teeth in northwestern Tamil Nadu probably did not know who Donald Trump was and I’m sure had never held an iPhone. That’s a village.
My boyfriend jokes that I come from a village. I actually come from a rural town high in the alpine mountains of southern California. Yes, it may be full of hillbillies and yes some of them may be related to me but this was my home for most of my life. I do miss it but when I journey home (Okay a forty-five-minute drive) I always see something ridiculous, like my dad bleeding all over the post office or possibly walking his Siamese cat on a leash.
Meanwhile, a trip home to the Village of Running Springs would not be complete without my grandma saying something only a ninety-four-year-old lady could say. Like telling me I’m so tan, I look like that black lady, Kamala Harris.
Grandma Marcia for president
My grandma might have a unique perspective on life as a nonagenarian but man is she going strong at ninety-four! She still lives by herself and goes upstairs to do her own laundry, she would still be staining her front porch if we the family would let her! When I was visiting her the other day she took a break from the two separate political books she was reading to have a delightful conversation with me. She told me stories of when she was thirty years old in the ’60s driving across the country to live in California from Boston like she just had these memories yesterday! Okay, it had to make me think, wow Grandma is way more with it than Joe Biden! Not that I would ever say that though to my super liberal ninety-four-year-old grandmother!
My mom is another liberal voter who I just happen to be related to. My mom puts up with a lot of bullshit. If there is one thing my mom does better than putting up with my hoarder father as he falls down the stairs and constantly bleeds everywhere, she makes a real good Keto Spinach Salad. Mom’s Keto Spinach Salad is the best salad you will ever have in your life. Recently our family has been going balls-to-the-wall keto so here is the low-sugar version of Mom’s Famous Keto Spinach Salad.
Mom’s Best Keto Spinach Salad
3 cups spinach
1/2 cup good quality Swiss cheese, grated
4 crimini mushrooms, sliced thin
6 hard-boiled eggs, chopped
10 slices of bacon, chopped
Sweet Garlic Vinaigrette
1 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup swerve sweetener
1/4 cup white vinegar
1 teaspoon garlic powder
2 teaspoons Worcheshire sauce
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1/8 cup olive oil
Mix all Keto Spinach Salad dressing ingredients in a food processor. In a large bowl,layer the spinach, hardboiled eggs, shredded swiss cheese and sliced mushrooms. Add the dressing and enjoy by a mountain creek, lake or on the side of a alpine trail.