Occasionally I talk to myself

Occasionally I talk to myself and I say "self, what sacrifice did you make this week for your readers, your viewers, your friends?"

And then I scratch my leg, not because that is something I do when I'm thinking. No, when I'm thinking I scratch my… well, you get the picture.

No, I scratch my leg because my leg really itches and my leg really itches because Saturday night, when it was smoky and hot and miserable I got the bright idea that I'd go for a hike to one of my favorite little swamps.

I like this swamp for a variety of reasons, but my favorite reason is it's fairly easy to get to and something strange or unusual (sometimes both) usually happens if I go there.

So like I said, on Saturday night I went to this swamp (isn't that what most middle-aged men do on Saturday nights nowadays? Go to swamps. 'Honey, where are you going?' 'Oh, just my favorite swamp, dear.') But honest, I went to this swamp and the game plan was actually to go to another swamp further down the trail, but it was so smoky and so miserable that I just went to the first swamp and in — there guess what?

The birds were singing.

Even in the smoke and the heat the birds were singing and I thought, 'you know what, this isn't all bad.' So I slogged around the swamp a little while but the birds and the light weren't particularly cooperative, so I decided to get the heck out of there. One thing about smoky evenings is that the light can be either really good, because all that smoke diffuses the sun and sets a golden glow on everything, or it can simply make things dark and on this night it was doing the latter.

But just as I was about to leave I noticed a lily pad and on the lily pad was a lone flower and it was one of the prettiest flowers I'd ever seen and so I waded out to it. Now I had shorts and sneakers on so wading wasn't all that bad, but the mud was about thigh deep.

I took a bunch of pictures of this flower and then slogged my way out the mud, which had the consistency and smell of raw sewage. Somewhere along the line I picked up a leech, you know, a bloodsucker.

It drilled a hole in my leg and was sucking blood. According to the King County, Wash., Web site, (isn't it nice that King County keeps a little Web site on leeches, isn't it? You know it is…) leeches not only have an anesthetic in their saliva, they also have an anti-coagulant called hirudin, that keeps your blood from clotting.

This allows them to suck your blood easier, but in my case, the leech somewhere along the way was torn off as I walked through the grass.

I looked down at my leg and noticed a good stream of blood going down my calf, soSince I didn't remember cutting myself or being shot with a small caliber rifle, I figured it must have been a leech and the blood just kept running and running down my leg into my sock. It finally stopped and I got home and took a shower and after all the mud and blood was washed away the tell-tale signs of a leech bite revealed itself on my calf.

There was never any pain, but now it itches, sort of like a spider bite.

I'm not a huge fan of leeches, but the flower pics were worth the bite. All in a days work, as they say.

On an entirely differently matter and in the name of shameless self-promotion, I'd like to extend a welcome to anyone who can make it to a little kick-off party for Glacier Geographic magazine on Saturday from 4 to 8:30 p.m. at the Montana House in Apgar. Bring a friend.

A portion of the proceeds for subscriptions on that day will benefit the Glacier National Park Fund's Native Plant Endowment Fund.Those of you that get this newspaper by mail should have a complimentary copy in this week's edition.

Chris Peterson is photographer for the Hungry Horse News.