Tiki-man survives near drowning

Dateline: Spring Brook, Camden Hills State Park, Camden, ME

The normally staid water bottle, AKA Tiki- Man, barely survived a harrowing fall into the rushing, frigid  Class V rapids along Spring Brook on March 16, 2013, in Midcoast Maine.

Tiki-man taking well-earned rest on Vermont’s Long Trail

When Tenzing was getting refills for multiple water bottles near the bloated culvert containing Spring Brook, Tiki-man  leapt from his hand into the raging torrent.
While Tiki-man remained  collected, Tenzing became gravely distraught about the situation.Tiki-man was engulfed by the torrent that quickly propelled  him under the multi-purpose road above.  In panic mode, Tenzing scrambled up the embankment, only to become further frantic as he realized that the revered, purple, and ( at times) luminescent head was no where to be seen.

Glancing straight down the side of the road to the surface of the maelstrom below, Tiki-man was sighted, in an  immobilized state  within the backwaters of an eddy, but beyond human  reach.   Tenzing leaped into rescue mode, and quickly fashioned a three-pronged branch,  that he used to dislodge and release Tiki man, only to realize that the valiant water bottle was facing yet another harrowing scoot down the icy water.
Tiki-man courageously traversed at a diagonal across the channel, where he eventually struggled to maintain a tentative hold on the far-side shore.

Gripping on for dear life!

At this point, Tiki-man was clearly up against very thin ice.

The three-pronged stick guided Tiki-man past this last challenge into a still pool, where he was airlifted to safety by the selfsame stick.
Most importantly, Tiki-Man lived to tell the tale. He described his dunking as the most harrowing experience that he has ever been through.

Tiki-man is a seasoned, 6 year old water bottle. Tiki-Man has recently become  increasingly despondent at his persistent failure to lose enough weight to qualify him as an ultralight backpacking accessory. He occasionally mumbles about being teased as “a bloated relic” by Platypi and even the young upstart plastic soda bottles.
The colorful character has risen through the ranks of backpacking water bottles through his persistent dedication to thru-hiker hydration.

A veteran of three National Scenic Trails, Tiki man has endured unparalleled adventures on the Appalachian, Pacific Crest, and  Vermont’s Long Trails.

The closest the battered water bottle had come to the slag heap of also-ran hiker gear was in 2007, when he was dropped from a day pack on the AT and left for dead in a crevice between a rock and a hard place. Extracted from his impending tomb by a hiker named Big Sky,  the revived Tiki-Man survived a dark passage through the US Postal Service, adorned with a mere one dollar and thirty-two cent stamp and a tattered Uncle Tom address label.

Undaunted by his early morning sub-freezing soak today, Tiki- man bucked up, and settled into place in the backpack, where the wizened vessel  supplied his human partner, Uncle Tom, with hydration on a  long winter day hike in the Camden Hills.