RIM RAW

RIM RAW
My loving wife is a giver of great logical advice and although her training and years of experience encompass the realm of medical laboratory science, it’s not without reason that myself and some members of her family consider her as a medical doctor and in turn pose questions of health and healing to her for wise counsel. I am not a man of a great many complaints (insert wife’s hearty laughter) however an urgent issue arose during our hiking adventures in the southwest and it wasn’t without hesitation that I belly-ached my way into seeking the appropriate medical advisement of “Dr. Megan”. It is still unclear to me if her intentions were nefarious or if the sought medical advice was given of pure volition and in accordance with the hypocratic oath of, ” Do no harm” taken by all physicians, actual or imaginary.


We had arrived early in the evening to the tiny town of Williams, AZ and after a hot and dusty 5 hour drive through the dessert found our nightly rest in a desert motel about a half hour south of the Grand Canyon’s south rim. We were excited to see “The BIG Ditch” of Amerca, but needed some rest and recovery before pushing onward. My legs were aching and a tiresome weariness befell my body upon lying down and so I was fast asleep before I could attend to my hygiene in a manner which might have mitigated the extent of my injuries during the following day of hiking. I recall dreaming in the motifs of old spaghetti westerns where bullet shot cowboys attended to their wounds in the barbaric manner of biting off the lead from one of their own rounds, filling the wound with the black powder and setting it afire in order to cauterize said wound and so live to ride another day; True men of a toughness and ingenuity seldom seen in today’s times.

Perhaps it was that very display of rugged masculinity that led me to accept my wife’s medical advice, with an “I’m your huckleberry” attitude. We arrived early in the morning to the south rim of the Grand Canyon and after the jaw-dropping vistas of this natural wonder ebbed, I began to notice the raw sensations about my own crevasses. My loving wife offered the hindsight that perhaps I should have washed my ass the previous evening of the sweats and salts from our days adventures of travel and hiking and in doing so would not be suffering from such horrible chafing and rawness….a condition she diagnosed correctly as “Rim Raw”. I agreed and made all efforts to contain my complaints but subsequent hiking in the hot and arid climate exacerbated my condition to the extent where I was quite convinced that my inner ass cheeks were rubbed nearly to the verge of bleeding.

Dr. Megan piped up her assessment and offered a treatment plan which may seem crass but for all intents practical and prudent with “you need to warsh your ass!”. With the many restrictions imposed by COVID, several facilities at the national park were closed and in their place were rows of portalets. Megan had previously visited these primitive facilities and was made aware that no soap or running water was available, but a healthy amount of high strength hand sanitizer (the kind that doesn’t easily evaporate) was available for sanitation. To her, the primary importance was for me to sanitize my chafed and raw ass cheeks and this would cure me of this “Rim Raw” affliction.

Intuitively I knew this was probably a bad idea, but following Dr. Megan’s advice I cowboy’d up and smeared the hand sanitizer liberally upon my saddle wounds. Nothing could prepare me for the fire that ensued and I howled like a coyote and jumped up and down in the portalet with tears streaming from my eyes. The sanitizer stuck like napalm! I then frantically grabbed my Nalgene bottle and doused my Canyon with a healthy amount of water….all the while screaming and howling and thinking…boy, Dr. Megan REALLY got me this time. Not even the mighty flow of the Colorado river could have quenched that horrendous burn. After the cauterization of my abrasions, I did my best to compose myself but it was apparent from my blood shot eyes, to the long line of portalet patrons that something had gone horribly awry in there. Megan doubled over with laughter (not the comforting demeanor I was hoping for from my physician) and I waddled over to a bench near Hopi Point, where we took in the breathtaking sunset and saw the many facets of that Canyon light up in bright red and orange fiery hues. The big ditch was amazing and did not disappoint and my injuries have since healed miraculously with no infection but my faith in Dr. Megan’s trail remedies have not been as naive, but Rim Raw or not…I was glad to survive mostly intact and live to ride and adventure another day.