WHEN BOREDOM STRIKES OUTDOORS, THE CLEVER THRIVE

Band-Aids are essential items for any back-country traveler's pack. But they're of little help in the most dreaded of all outdoor emergencies.

Boredom can happen. Imagine being tent-bound. You've read your books and drunk all the wine, and somebody forgot the cards. You're starting to notice your partner's jaw clicks when she eats. This is serious.

In extreme cases, boredom can disintegrate solid friendships and sink dream trips gone awry.

One winter, for example, I convinced 12 friends to devote a week to ski touring in Glacier Park.

For weeks, we pored over maps and planned ski routes. We reserved a cabin. We bought food and organized car pools and cooking teams. Everything would have been splendid - if there had been some snow.

Instead, the weather was the pits, and the landscape was either brown or ice.

So there I was, leading 11 snorting skiers who had driven 6 hours and cashed in precious vacation time only to find the skiing conditions were comparable to a packed run down an Interstate 90 off-ramp.

As we skied up a foot-wide track of ice on a dirt road, trying to dodge the little rocks poking through the skiff of snow, I could feel the tension building behind me.

When you hear people saying, "This is ridiculous," or "We could be on Mount Spokane," or "Landers, you can take your trip and shove it," you know you have tension, and possibly unhappiness.

That's when my keen and desperate eyes noticed a sheltered shelf the size of a basketball court and the edge of the timber where a good 6 inches of snow had accumulated. "You want to learn how to use those skis?" I said. "Follow me."

The follow-the-leader game made the best of the little oasis of snow. It was good training for the novice skiers, and the more experienced skiers eagerly schussed to the occasion.

We did kick turns over downfall, backed between trees, skied with and without poles, ducked between each other's legs and all sorts of nonsense.

More recently, I've used the same sort of diversion to muster enthusiasm with kids. Wind and a steady drizzle are not deterrents to a group of 6-year-old cross-country skiers if you can, say, convince them to pretend the rain drops are snowflakes and the wind makes the forest a haunted house.

Soon the kids are singing Christmas songs, trying to catch rain drops with their tongues and skiing into the creaking timber to chase ghosts that leave tracks suspiciously similar to those of a snowshoe hare.

Next thing you know, they're back at the cars, trying to convince their moms they're not as wet as they look.

Regardless of age, groups of campers have an amazing instinct to rise from the hopelessness of a situation and have fun despite it.

On one grim trip, a woman introduced our group to Hig Pig, a word game that begins with one person giving the definition of a pair of rhyming words, usually a noun and its adjective.

If the pairs have one syllable each, the clue giver follows the definition by saying "hig pig." If the pairs have two syllables each, it's "higgy piggy." Three syllables, "higgety piggety."

Clue: A Communist cot, hig pig. Answer: Red bed.

Clue: A sticky mannikin, higgy piggy. Answer: Gummy dummy.

Clue: A pondering investigator, higgety piggety. Answer: Reflective detective.

Before we started this game, we were a sour group, higgety piggety. But the astringent contingent was in good spirits the rest of the evening.

On the eighth day of tour through the Clearwater National Forest, our group of four mountain bikers started showing strains of withdrawal from civilization.

We had told all of our jokes, read our books, played our repertoire of games and eaten all of our gorp.

After dinner that night, we just sat in the dirt beside a fishless creek, bored.

"What we need is a little music," I said. As quick as you can tune in your favorite radio station, the group began assembling an act.

A few rocks in the cook pot got the percussion section going; blowing over a water bottle worked as well as a whiskey jug for a bass. We rapped spoons on logs and used other pots for bongos. A broken spoke applied to a spinning wheel made a washboard sound. The metal ends of an adhesive tape dispenser made good finger cymbals.

The music was bad enough to cause elk to stampede and trout to head for the ocean. But the challenge of making musical instruments in the wilderness was contagious.

Physical games, such as Frisbee and the time-proven water fight, are effective ways to get through a sluggish hump in a trip. But when you need a quick way to pull together a group of six or more, try "Knots."

Participants gather in a tight circle and reach into the middle with each hand to grab someone else's hands.

The game has two main rules: You can't grab a hand of the person next to you, and once you secure a hand, you can't let go.

Then the group tries to untie the knot by stepping over bodies, squeezing through arms and ducking and twisting until the group unfolds into a large circle.

Accomplished Knots players inject amusing variations, such as reaching through a player's legs or around someone's waist before securing a hand.

As you can imagine, this can be the perfect mixer for a group that's fit to be tied.

Copyright 1996 Cowles Publishing Company
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.