[Artemisia] post on the chirurgeons list about Artemisia

[Cat]

The following is a post originally intended for the Kingdom  
Chirurgeon list that was accidentally misposted to the SCA- 
chirurgeons list.  I have forwarded it to this list since it  
mentioned alleged events in our beloved kingdom.  FYI, this missive  
appears to be addressed to Dame Eleanor Isabeau de Coeur/Dr.  
Elisabeth ("Beth") Carlock, the Society Corporate Chirurgeon.
ttfn
Therasia

-------------------------------------------------
Subject: 'yo, Eleanor, here's an FYI on the "disaster" at the event  
in Idaho
From: "helm_clark" <cat at rocks4brains.com>
Date: Sat Apr 1, 2006  2:45 pm

Eleanor,

I am not sending you this brief account of the incidences from this  
last weekend in any  official capacity but only as an eyewitness and  
participant to most of the events at the  Spring Has Sprung Small- 
Unit Mini War College hosted by the "Shire of Grand  Penwick" (they  
are trying to change their name; they are officially the suspended/ 
soon-to- be-in-abeyance Shire of Lunecorn Hafn, which comprises the  
Dry Creek and Desert Valleys  in southern Idaho and the towns of  
Snowberg, Utah and Torrent Falls, ID).  Because of their  suspended  
status, the barony immediately to the west (only ~200 miles as the  
crow flies  but 324 mi by road because of the mountains) "officially"  
hosted the event for newsletter  and insurance purposes.

The radio news report by the aspiring journalism major at City of  
Rocks State University  was highly inaccurate, and though it was only  
broadcast on the university's radio station, it  was then picked up  
by the city newspapers down in Salt Lake and subsequently by the UPI   
syndicate.  Despite the subsequent sensational coverage in the news  
media, no one  drowned, only two cars were wrecked, the incident with  
the epi-pen did not happen as  reported and the so-called "major  
coronary" was hugely exaggerated.

To understand what happened, it helps to know a bit about how the  
weather and  topography interact here.  The Dry Creek and Desert  
Valleys are "Basin and Range" valleys,  long and thin and bordered by  
north-south trending mountain ranges which are  terminated by the  
Snake River Plain on the north and the depression filled by the Great  
Salt  Lake to the south.  Winter and Spring storm systems tend to  
travel northeastward off the  Pacific, through the break in the  
California Coastal Ranges, over the Sierras, up the  Humboldt River  
Valley, and then into the Basin and Range Mountains of southern  
Idaho  and northern Utah.  Due to the dew point effect when clouds  
are blown against and then  over the steep mountain ranges in their  
way, it is not uncommon to see thunderstorms  dumping snow at  
altitude on the west-facing flank of a mountain range while it is  
sunny  and 60 degrees on the valley floor.

The event site was in Serpentinite Canyon in the Dismal Gulch Range,  
at the Green Dragon  Basalt Flow Campground run by the National  
Forest Service.  The autocrats, both college  students, "never found  
the time during midterms" to reserve the campground, with the   
results that there was no insurance rider obtained for the event for  
the forest service folks.   In addition, if the autocrats had  
bothered to visit the forest service offices, they would  have  
discovered before the event happened that the water system had been  
drained and  shut down for the winter.  Since Serpentinite Canyon can  
get snow as late as June, the  water was not yet reconnected, the  
privies were not unlocked and the loop road around  the campground  
was not plowed.

The Green Dragon Basalt Flow Campground is aptly named because of the  
conspicuous  basalt flow that erupted sometime in the distant past  
along the block fault that runs along  the base of the Dismal Gulch  
Range.  This fault is thought to connect up with the southern  end of  
the Great Rift of Idaho which terminates 150 miles to the north at  
Craters of the  Noom National Momument.  Unlike other basalt flows in  
Idaho, including the more famous  Green Dragon Flow at Craters of the  
Moom, the Green Dragon Flow in Serpentinite Canyon  hosts a lava tube  
with "skylights" in its roof.  It also contains very unusual clear  
xenoliths  of some exotic mineral whose name I can't remember at the  
moment.  This is important,  you see, because the Oki-Doki Minodoka  
Mineral Club had arrived at the campground  before any SCA members  
did for their first mineral collecting outing of the year.

The presence of the rock hounds at the campground is germane for  
several reasons.  First,  they had arrived in force with seven big  
Class A RVs.  One of their members showed up  with 4x4 with a small  
snowplow attached and had cleared off about half of the loop road.    
This was quite helpful since it made most of the campsites accessible  
so there was enough  room for both the rock hounds and the 27 SCA  
members who showed up for the event.   All of the SCA members present  
were either from the Grand Penwick war unit (as they  current insist  
on being called) or from the war unit of the shire immediately to the  
north.   The weekend chosen was not really optimal, but it was the  
only date available on the  colander between Coronation, Crown  
Tourney, the Kingdom A&S  Championship  competition, the Great Brine  
Shrimp Defender Tourney (I'm not making these names up,  Beth, go  
look at our calender!) and the Miracle of St. Alan and the Peeps  
Feast (see http:// www.rocks4brains.com/~cat/peeps.html).

While the rock hounds were friendly and hospitable, it was quickly  
apparent to everyone  that the bathrooms on the RVs, initially  
offered to the first SCA folks to show up, would  not be good enough  
to accommodate all of the SCA people at the event.  This was quickly   
solved by one of the autocrats who noticed that the screening on the  
side of the  bathrooms could be easily removed - which he  
subsequently did.  Climbing into the  bathroom, he opened the doors  
from the inside, thus providing a mens' and womens'  toilets for the  
event (much to the relief of the rock hounds).  To keep the doors  
from  locking behind someone using the campground bathrooms, the  
autocrats ducktaped the  spring-loaded latch gizmos flush against the  
side of the door edges (that was badly  expressed, Beth, wasn't it?  
But I'm sure you get my drift.  I'm also a little shakey still,   
having just gotten home after being released from the Coffin Co. Jail).

After the three peers (including myself) present at the event  
finished telling the two well- meaning but somewhat clueless  
autocrats a thing or two, they went off to pick up enough  toilet  
paper, hand cleaner gel, paper towels and trash bags for the event.   
After that,  Friday night turned into a relatively quiet and fun  
evening, even though camping was a tad  on the cold side, spent  
singing old camp fire songs and some silly kiddy songs too ("Great   
green globs of…") and roasting marshmellow peeps over the campfire  
(picked-up cheap  during the post-Easter candy sales the week before)  
with the folks from the rock club.  We  made a deal with the rock  
hounds: they wouldn't turn on their TVs (except for the news  and  
weather report) and none of our younger members who brought doombecs  
would play  them.  It was the most peaceful sleep I've ever had at an  
event.

Saturday dawned cold and clear.  The fifteen fighters present got  
into armour and we went  trudging up into the forested slopes of  
lodge pole pine, through slushy snow and mud and  had ourselves a  
grand old time - right up until Sir Fish slipped and broke his  
ankle.  You  will be happy to know that since my CPR certs are  
lapsed, I did go through the formality of  making it clear I was not  
acting as a chirurgeon, only as a layperson first-aider - which   
prompted Sir Fish to cuss me out to quit gabbering and splint "the #@$ 
%&! thing" before  he froze his butt off in the slush.

We got Sir Fish back down to the campground where we got most of his  
plate off him,  wrapped him up warmly and put him in the back seal of  
his car, whereupon his wife,  Mistress Delorosa, embarked on the hour  
and half long drive to the hospital in  Trembleton, Utah.  We figured  
that it was closer than the two hour drive to the Regional  Medical  
Center in Pocapotato or the small hospital in Torrent Falls.  By the  
time we saw Sir  Fish off, we moved the fighting to some scenarios  
inside the lave tube, which considering  that is was now raining,  
meant that we could fight where it was mostly dry.  Besides, since   
the forested slopes were a bit higher than the campground, it was now  
snowing where we  had fought during the morning.

The rest of the day and the subsequent evening passed uneventfully  
except that a weather  system blew in.  As the clouds rolled over the  
range and as the temperature dropped when  the sun went down, it  
started to snow in earnest.  The rock hounders were paragons of  good  
old fashioned rural western hospitality and took all of us in to  
sleep on the floors  and couches of their RVs.  In the morning, the  
guy with the snow plow got to work on  clearing the road and while we  
all got to work to packing up, the rock hounds took off for  warmer  
climes.  The sun had come back out and a lot of the snow started to  
melt.  By  noon, it was getting pretty wet - a situation made worse  
by intermittent snow showers and  a rising freezing fog (not uncommon  
in these parts).  Just how slippery was demonstrated  by Master Buggo  
whose old 260Z slid off the road and wrapped itself around a limber   
pine.  Both the car and tree were totaled but Master Buggo escaped  
with a few bruises and  a pair of broken glasses, thanks to his  
homebuilt airbag contraption - but what else would  you expect from  
the man who built a complete Cornish Stannary in his back yard?

Lord Gryph managed to slide his 4x4 down the road to drive to the  
nearest town, Meadow Vole, Idaho, fifteen miles away to get help  
while the rest of us applied ourselves to our shovels to clear off as  
much ice and slush as we could.  It was at this time that Lady  
Cortmey got her hoop skirt stuck in the bathroom and could not get  
out of either the door  or her skirt without help.  The problem was  
that there wasn't really room in the bathroom  for more than Cortmey  
and her skirt.  This was complicated by the fact that the wet  
ducktape finally gave up the ghost and chose Cortmey's visit to the  
bath room to fall off the taped latch - thus preventing our opening  
the door from the outside.  Our seneschal,  Carlos El Esperanzo,  
realized that the roof was only loosely nailed down to the walls of  
the  bathroom building.  It took eight of us but we quickly took the  
roof off and Duchess Elie,  being a small and lithe woman, climbed in  
to free up Cortmey's hoops.  (Note I will say  nothing about the fact  
that Cortmey decided to wear garb with a hoop skirt while packing   
and trying to flirt with the Crown Prince…)  This all would have been  
funny if there had not  been a wasps' nest in the corner along the  
roof of the bathroom that Her Grace jostled  while climbing into the  
bathroom.  This dislodged one sleepy sluggish wasp who decided  to  
land on Her Grace and sting her.  Of course, it is only to be  
expected that Her Grace was  the only one of us allergic to stinging  
insects AND that she had left her epi kit at home.   This left Her  
Grace falling onto Cortmey's lap in the now-roofless bathroom.  Thank  
God  she did not hit her head!

As I have mentioned before, my NOLS Wilderness first aid cert allows  
me to carry and use  an epi-pen in wilderness situations where EMS  
can't possibly arrive within an hour.  I got  the pen out of my kit,  
managed to stuff myself into the bathroom with Cortmey and Elie  and  
applied the pen, which had the desired effect of relieving the  
respiratory distress the Elie had begun to experience.  I also  
decided that enough was enough and banished all the  boys away from  
the bathroom so I could open the door, get Elie out of there and free  
up  Cortmey (despite her protests over the open door).

We were all out of the bathroom when the earthquake hit.  As you may  
or may not know,  the Basin and Range in Utah and southern Idaho can  
throw off the occasional earthquake,  some of which can be quite  
major, like the 7.3 magnitude Mount Borah Quake in Chilly,  Idaho in  
1983.  Sunday morning's quake was a mere 5.4 but still, it gave us  
all a good  scare as dead branches fell out of the trees on our heads  
and part of the lava tube caved  in, taking one of the autocrats'  
tents with it (thankfully, he was off shoveling the road so  we could  
get down the mountain).

We did not know it at the time, but the quake broke the earthen dam  
uphill from the  campground that provided potable water for the  
campground and irrigation water for the  three ranches just  
downhill.  We were back to packing when an officer from the county   
sherrif's office was coming up the road in his 4x4, followed by Lord  
Gryph.  We were very  happy to see him.  I was just then asking him  
to call for transportation to get Elie to the  hospital (she was  
still looking pretty bad though breathing better - it was the first  
time I  ever treated anaphalaxis and I was feeling very out of my  
depth, unlike you real medical  types…).  This was when someone  
screamed and pointed at the wall of water coming down  the valley at us.

Most of the campground is located up slope from the swale that runs  
along the road so  the water passed by all the tents, cars and people  
present.  It did however pick up the  detached wooden roof of the  
bathroom, sent it smashing through the windshield of the  county  
sheriff deputy's 4x4 and then carried both off, depositing the roof  
and SUV remains  several hundred yards downhill.  Needless to say,  
the very-young squeaky-clean deputy was rather put out.  He was not  
at all pleased when Master Buggo jury-rigged a two-way  radio for him  
tuned to the county's police frequency (did I mention that Buggo is a  
scanner junkie?).  When the deputy ascertained that Buggo did not  
have a proper radio license to build, tune and operate two-way  
radios, Buggo told him he knew the kid's dad - which shut the deputy  
up really fast (welcome to rural Utah).  After he had called for  
transport for Elie (who I had wrapped up and put into the back of my  
camper because I was concerned that her color was bad and she still  
had hives all over her despite the epi-pen) he came by to ask some  
questions.

When he discovered that I had used an epi-pen and that I did not hold  
a real cert like his  EMT or better in either Idaho or Utah, he  
arrested me despite the fact that I can use an  epi-pen in exactly  
the circumstances we were in under the doctor-supervised protocol  
set  up for faculty members with the NOLS training in my department  
at the university (because  we run field camp in the Lost River Range  
for geology undergrads every summer, which is even more remote than  
the Green Dragon Flow Campground).  Even Buggo promising to tell the  
kid's father did not dissuade him - and so I spent the night in the  
Coffin County Jail in scenic Snowberg, Utah (altitude 7234 feet, pop.  
7452).  Because his 4x4 was wreckage down the canyon, the fact that I  
had to drive him and myself into Snowberg didn't help his mood any.   
Because of the heavy and wet morning snow, the phones were out and  
the cell tower in town had toppled over so I couldn't make my one  
legally- mandated phone call

Before I was hauled off for jail, the EMS transport we called for was  
taking too long (all the  LifeFlights were currently busy on a big  
accident on I-15) and since the kid from the  sheriff's department  
wanted to haul me off that instant, Gryph and Buggo got pretty  wound  
up about my being removed from Elie.  So they put her in Gryph's 4x4  
and took off for the hospital in Trembleton.  They managed to meet  
the ambulance half way there and Elie got to the hospital ok, where  
she then spent the night.

I got out of jail when Coffin County's only judge showed up in  
Snowberg.  Apparently Buggo really did call the kid's dad, who Buggo  
really knew.  Apparently Buggo and the kid's dad met each other when  
Buggo was arrested in Salt Lake City at a Vietnam Anti-War  
demonstration when the kid's father was a brand new lawyer in the  
public defender's  office.  That was back when Buggo was a big name  
in the peace movement.  Despite their diverse backgrounds (quaker vs.  
mormon) and opposing views on the war (anti vs. pro), Buggo and his  
lawyer developed a lot of respect for one another and over the years  
became friends.  Buggo also called the president of my university and  
the M.D. who  supervises our epi-pen program for field camp and had  
them call the judge.  So the judge  himself showed up, chewed his  
youngest son the sheriff's deputy out up one side and  down the  
other, had the sheriff himself drop by to apologize, and that's  
really the end of  the story - except for the damn radio broadcast.   
But at least now you have the facts and  can convey then to the BoD,  
the society seneschal and the new SCA President (whose name  eludes  
me at the moment).  I hope this clears up some of the confusion which  
has been abetted by the press.

Yours in service,

Catie/Twcs
(Affl. Prof. C. M. Clark, Ph.D.,
Idaho State University,
01 April 06)