Git r' Dun

It was Labor Day 2004. For five years, my ex-wife, Kirsten, and I had been living in DC, and our outdoor activities generally consisted of exploring the mountains to the west (mostly Shenandoah National Park, VA and the Harper's Ferry, WV area), to the north (in and around Michaux State Forest, PA), or the DelMarVa Coast. With nothing planned for the Labor Day weekend, it was decided to go a bit further than usual and spend the weekend camped at Wonderfalls, a 15-foot waterfall on Big Sandy Creek in Preston County, WV. Because it is within two hours of Pittsburgh, we recruited our friend Jeremy, who brought his dalmation, Pepper, to show us the way to the campsites and invited the Groves (my sister's family: Julie, Matt, and the kids, Jonah and Xavier, at the time, aged 4 and 2, respectively), who came to stay for the day. On Saturday, we met at Little Sandy's Restaurant, a truck stop off I-68 in the truck-stop-dependent town of Bruceton Mills, WV, ate a couple Ostrich burgers, and heaed for the campsite.

Before Jeremy or the Groves arrived, in perhaps a bit of foreshadowing, Kirsten and I sat in the parking lot of the truck stop as a beat-up, muddy Chevy Blazer pulled up next to us and two party-worn kids jumped out. We chatted with them for a minute, discovering that they had just returned from our destination in order to stock up. Their "list" consisted of far more beer than two humans can consume and several Subway sandwiches. Nice guys, and it wouldn't be the last time we would see them.

The plan was neither complex nor ambitious. We're just camping, and we're not even packing gear in to the site. But, only signficantly equipped 4WD vehicles can actually drive to the falls, though any car can make it to within a mile to Rockville, WV, if its owner is willing to drive the backroad. Rockville is not a town. In fact, nobody lives there and it doesn't look like anybody has lived there in the recent past. It just has a bridge over the Big Sandy and a lot of rocks in the creek there and the USGS had to give the place a name when it set up a streamflow gauging station there, I guess.

After a few miles of the shoddily maintained backroads, Jeremy instructed us to park the Civic (our '98 DX Hatchback that went where no '98 DX Hatchback had ever gone before succumbing to the VA emissions regulation in April 2006 . . . it took us a whopping 205,000 miles in that time). Gear and passengers of the Civic (that's me, Kirsten, our dog, Harrison, and our stuff) were transfered to the two Jeeps, and we continued.

Continuing, in this case, consisted of twisting the Jeeps through terrain choked with large rocks, trees, and holes. In yet another bit of foreshadowing, a team of ATV's zipped passed us as we trodded on at one point. The crux move in the journey came when all of the non-driving Jeepgoers refused to stay in the vehicles for a dogleg down into a ravine, an uphill turn when in the bottom of the ravine, and back up out of the ravine. The rear ends of the Jeeps swung at least 4 - 6 feet as each dropped in to the ravine and made the right turn into the gradient of the slope, stopping hearts.

For about 30 minutes, the Jeeps labored along what, at some point, was probably a fairly clear passage into a clearcut forest. That was arguably decades ago, as the larger of the trees around which Jeremy and Matt drove were 2 feet in diameter. Jonah said to us on the 2-way radio we'd brought, "Mommy is scared of the road." "How do you like it, Jonah?" "This is fun! It's bumpy!"

As we approached the camping area, we started to hear the roar. It would take us about 10 minutes or so before we realized that what we thought was our beautiful destination waterfall was, in fact, an army of at least 40 ATV's. The choice activities were donuts in an ankle deep pool of the creek, thereby creating a muddy geyser 30 feet high, and lots and lots of drinking the finest beer in two counties (Natural Light, I believe, it was). A man with one arm ATV'ed past us while sipping, and waved, welcoming us.

The next several hours were spent trying to ignore the group. They were loud, they ran our beautiful waterfall muddy brown, they exploded dynamite, and they threw their cans wherever they landed. In the middle of the ankle deep pool, a man we eventually named "Buttcrack" stood with one hand hooked around a can of beer, the other fisted, pumping in the air. It was Buttcrack, the name begotten from the low hang of his shorts, who would introduce us to the true meaning of "Git 'r Dun!" The name "Buttcrack" could have easily been "Beer Belly," but his namesake got more severe as the beer flowed, so we stuck with it. He repeatly shouted the phrase, "Git 'r Dun!", while his comrades would do donuts around him, sometime as many as 4 or more geysers spouting around him. In a way, it was like he was the center of a Vegas act, and should have been lip synching AC/DC. The act, in this case, came with the unmuffled sound of several ATVs at about 6500 rpms.

The Groves left after a few hours of jumping off the waterfall and swimming about the rocks, and we drove behind them to make sure they got out okay. Jeremy, Kirsten, and I then drove back in with the two dogs, looking forward to the ATV group's departure. There was very little camping gear scattered about, so we were fairly certain that such a departure would take place, and it did, eventually, just as the sun was setting. We started a fire, cooked dinner, and climbed into our tents.

Waking up in a tent with headlights coming straight at you and the high-pitched squeal of an ATV drawing louder is perhaps one of the most unsettling ways of waking I can imagine. I might have preferred the roar of an attacking Rhinoceros. It was actually Kirsten who woke me up to this intense moment, and we literally had to shout to hear each other. Jeremy was awake, as well, and when we hurriedly got out of the tents, we found that the ATV's were driving right at us and turning away at the last moment on their way to the bedrock of the creek. It was midnight. They'd convene somewhere out there, discuss the fact that there's no party here as they'd believed there to be, and drove back out, again just missing our tents. These were different ATV'ers, much younger than the earlier party that I figured was composed mostly of shell-shocked Vietnam vets. One of them even clipped one of our tent guywires on the way out, creating a good "thung-g-g-g."

Jeremy moved the Jeep around to prevent a drunk ATV'er from driving into our tent, and we sat there on the hood, miles deep into the woods, at least an hour's drive to the nearest motel, exhausted, as the ATV's kept coming and going. After they finally stopped for a spell, we set a time of 1 AM, deciding that unless they stopped coming and going by that time, we'd break camp and drive out. 1 AM came, and it was quiet. We climbed back in our tents, exhausted, behind the protection of Jeremy's bright yellow Wrangler.

I believe that the rest of the night was peaceful. We woke up early as the sun was rising. Kirsten and I were doing Yoga at the time, and so Jeremy joined us for some poses on the rocks above the waterfall. We hung out and laughed at the situation while cooking breakfast, knowing that the ATV's would be back as soon as they slept off their hangovers and saddled up. But, before any of our morning truly began, I woke up alone and walked over to the bedrock where the rodeo had taken place. There was a man there, trash can in hand, picking up the hundreds of beer cans that had been left by the ATV army. I chatted with him a bit, discussing the travesty of yesterday's activites, wondering when they'd be back. He was very disturbed by the group's disrespect. I returned to our tents and told Kirsten and Jeremy that there was, in fact, another camper here who is interested in treating this beautiful place as it should be treated, someone who would prefer to hear the roar of Wonderfalls rather than the roar of the ATV's. Kirsten and Jeremy glanced over at the man, who was on his second trash bag, and, together, said, "Dude, that's Buttcrack!" Sure enough, after a few beers, there he was, pumping his fist in the air. "Git 'r Dun!!!!!"

Believe it or not, we decided to stick it out and camp the rest of the weekend after moving our camp to an area below the falls. The ATV's didn't go down there, and the roar of Wonderfalls drowned out the noise for the most part.

On Monday, as we were driving out of the forest, we came across the two kids Kirsten and I had seen at the truck stop. They were walking the trail to the campsites, and they looked dazed. This was somewhat normal, given the weekend's activities, but walking very far wasn't in anybody's intersts, from what we had experienced. So, we stopped and asked if they were okay. "Well, we rolled the Blazer," one told us. Sure enough, the two of them had been driving the trail and went off to the side, rolling several times down the slope. We gasped, asking if they needed a ride out to get medical attention. "Naw, we called my Dad and he's gonna come get us. We're gonna go have a couple more beers till he comes."

I went back to Wonderfalls yesterday, the first time in the two-and-a-half years since this event. It was a Thursday afternoon in January, and my friend Rob and I were driving back to Morgantown from paddling the Cheat River. We knew that the creek would have enough water to paddle the falls, though neither of us has the skills for that, but we wanted to see it. There was nobody there, and it was like a different place. It is hard to find a place as beautiful, and I've been spending a lot of time looking. Ice coated all of the rocks within the range of the waterfall's spray.

I also wanted to test out my fairly new Subaru Forester, which made it to the falls just fine. I, however, was a shaken mess of nerves driving most of the trail, but I'm happy to report the car is just very muddy, but fine.

Git' r Dun.