Call of the Wild Manicurist

I treated myself to a manicure recently, and not in that sit down with a entourage of gaggling white women in front of an entourage of gaggling vietnamese women in order to talk about, of all things, "nail polish." That’s called a "real manicure" or an RM.
No.
Mine was what I’d like to call a Mountain Man Manicure, or MMM. The processes by which one procures an MMM is really enough to qualify one’s broken and cracked hands for an RM, but MMs don’t get RMs do they? No they don’t.
I had the pleasure of playing host to my beautiful girlfriend and our two friends for a week in Colorado that was also to include four days and three nights at our cabin in the mountains. If you’ve never been to our cabin, or even heard me talk about it, let me give you a tiny taste.
My mothers grandfather built a cabin with his bare hands what must be 100 years ago now. Over time it underwent many changes and at one time held residence to a roving group of hippies who nearly burnt the entire thing down to the ground. Fifteen years ago, we as a family (my grandparents and my mom and my uncle and their progeny) decided that we would take it back from the shallow grave that the hippies had dumped it into, rebuild and rededicate it as a mountain home for all us Snapps and Orahoods to use on weekends and idle summer afternoons. It is a forty-acre plot on the North Fork of the South Platte river. The main cabin just recently got electricity and still has, as part of its charm, outdoor "facilities" and no running water. Cell phones are just electronic timekeepers in this little off-the-grid locale. It is perfect.
So up we went, armed with raw meat and marshmallows, ready to rough it for four days - to pull dinner out of the river and eat it with our bare hands (or plastic picnic forks).
The MMM is, thankfully, a four day process that includes any or all of the following outdoor spa treatments:
1. The environment must be one of high altitude and low humidity. This provides a base of cracking skin that is integral in the MMM. We also recommend that you plunge your fingertips deep into a riverbed or a pile of mud to really get that thick line of refreshing mud beneath your fingernails. You may not realize it, but that mud is likely exfoliating those tender bits of fingertip that live under your finger nails.
2. Several salves and rubs are available and include motor oil, charcoal, ash, and mosquito repellent. The aim for these salves is to create food conveyance tools, ie fingers, that you wouldn’t touch anything with. There is, however, the inevitable "mosquito tolerance factor" where a MM will slap his own face, with good force, leaving some of his "manicure salves" in a streak down his cheeks. (See next weeks article on "MM Facials")
3. The "fire" treatment includes the handling of firewood, ripe with splinters, and the placing of logs with ones bare hands directly into beds of "hot coals" or even into "cast-iron stoves" that, after they’ve been cooking a little while, are just under the temperature of Satan’s left foot. This treatment will help the spa guest to increase the thickness of callouses on the hands and on the backsides of the knuckles.
4. The Fish Hook treatment is meant to aerate ones fingertips to let stagnant (and regular) blood out of those dead-end fingers. The MMM guide book encourages you to get a whole six-hook fishing lure wedged into the webbing of your fingers to "tighten up" those problem areas and loose skin. Rinse in the stream where the cold water and low Ph will over time eat away a full layer of healthy dermis.
5. The handling of animals, inside and out, whether guiding a horse that hasn’t been washed in eight months or pulling out the egg sacs of a pregnant trout that swallowed a hook - all of these massaging textures are meant to increase the success-rate of your MMM.
If performed correctly, the MMM will leave you with rough, angry hands similar to those of people who do actual work for a living instead of bouncing their soft little round digits up and down on a keyboard for hours at a time. . . grrrr, I’m a Mountain Man . . .

I'd also like to introduce you to the now late, great, MS - who was the original Mountain Man (M&M) and Chief Executive Officer of one of the Yahimake Subsidiaries, Yahimake M&Ms. . .