My Dearest Trauma Whisperer . . .

Based on true events at Vogelsang High Sierra Camp.

2008 or 1863?

My Dearest Trauma Whisperer,

Dinner is now over and the camp is quiet. The Colonel has commanded us to muster at midnight. We will be marching out of Vogelsang and into the valley below. I hope we do not encounter the enemy before sun up. I trust that your sleep will be less fitful than mine in the coming days. The men in camp are all lean and fatigued. But dinner's rare sustenance did give them some measure of temporary relief. In case I never said it before, I miss you my Trauma Whisperer. I longed to bivouac at this campsite beside you, to hold your hand and watch the stars shoot across the sky like shooting stars. But as we climbed the trail, and the rigors of elevation, granite steps, and swarming mosquitos ravaged the very core of your will, to say nothing of your milky skin and shapely calves, I knew the gods had cursed our connubial summit at the foot of Fletcher Peak. You were like a delicate flower shot out of a cannon into a raging bonfire and then set upon by tiny flower-eating beetles who were also fire-retardant. What must a man do in that situation when he sees his only love suffer so? I did only what every gentleman would do. I yelled: "Is that a marmot?" and when you were thus distracted, I plunked you cleanly upside the head with my shovel. One in the head, you know she's dead, that's what the provisioner who sold me the shovel said. If there is a nobler method, dearest Trauma Whisperer, I knoweth not. Rest with the comforting knowledge that your sacrifice has served to fertilize the soil of morale among this encampment to which I am now enlisted. Tired of eating pine cones and their horses -- "Give me a biscuit, not another side of Seabiscuit," as one Colonel surmised of their woeful dietary condition -- we butchered you instead. It seemed the only practical solution as the rocky, unyielding terrain repelled any attempt at digging a proper grave. You will be delighted to know, my sweet, that of all the world's great grilled meats, you are surpassed by none. You exhibited excellent marbling, you were meaty, not fatty, charring nicely on the exterior but fork tender within. Not gamey at all, not that I was surprised. That was never your style. Oh how my soul flutters at the thought of you in a braise, but alas, the regimental crockpot did not make it past Wawona. Know that your honor was chivalrously defended when an uncouth private suggested we salt cure one of your thighs, which he called a "hock." I invited him to fight immediately, and did not yield in my assault about his head and neck until he bellowed for mercy. He apologized to the entire camp and conceded that all of your cuts were choice, lean, and exceptionally taut. The cavalry developed a mild case of food poisoning following their attempt to make sweetbreads from your thymus gland, but the blame lies with an ignorant dilettante chef among them who wouldn't know Escoffier if he was ramrodded into his musket. Still, if our flank suffers tomorrow as a result, know that yours did not, as I have kept it for myself. I know it will make superlative jerky, the chewing of which will be my eternal gift to you. I must tend to the dishes now, my love, but I sense your presence bot within and around me, in that pot and that bowl, on that plate and just a little of you there on that spork. How I wish it could always be thus.

Faithfully yours,

Lance