The pain is sharp and hot on my knees, and I spring back and up to my feet in a moment of reflexive instinct laced with the realization of what I had just done. My knees and lower legs are a spiky pin-cushion of cactus spines. I look down at where I had just been kneeling and sure enough there’s the culprit: a small patch of the prickly plant, nestled right in front of the bag I had just lowered myself in front of to pack up. Shit. I had done it again.
I stood there for a moment, cursing myself and attempting unsuccessfully to pull the miniscule spines out of my leg with my cold cumbersome fingers. No luck. I had, of course, just cut off all my nails in preparation for that afternoon of bouldering, and the bare flesh of my fingertips were just no good at grasping onto those short fragile spines. The larger ones I was able to dislodge easily enough, but they weren’t the problem. Those large bulky spines were too thick to pierce through my myriad layers. The small ones were another story. They had no problem slinking their way through the microscopic gaps in the cloth to jab into my bare skin below four layers of clothing. That’s right, four layers.
There was nothing I could do about it where I was. Jessica, after all, was still in her blind on the lek below me, and I, well, I would have to strip myself down to get to those spines. What could I do here anyway, with my useless fingers and four layers, five if you count my skin, to extract those spines from? No. I would have to wait until I was back at camp.
It wasn’t a fun ATV ride back, but at least I had been IDing at a nearby lek, and at least the incident had happened at the end, when I was packing up to leave anyway. Nevertheless, with my knees bent and snug against the jostling ATV, with the spine-ridden layers pulled tighter against my leg and the needles forcing their way ever deeper into my flesh, it was all I could do to ignore the sharp pain and focus on the ride.
Back at camp, after delicately stripping off each layer, I came face to face with my two knees coated in long fine spikes. It was as dense and regular as leg hair, and looked like it too, except for its light almost reddish complexion. I spent a quarter of an hour carefully extracting them with a pair tweezers. Removing all traces of those spines from the entwining threads of my four leg layers took at least twice as long. When I was done, I had an impressive pile on the table in front of me.
I smile. It looks like I had just shaved. A raw and painful razor-burn shave.
