Wednesday, November 14, 2012

I'm a Fan uh Bananuh


This is the story of a Banana Saver.

It is yellow, shaped like a banana, and has a small, royal blue, non load-bearing--just banana-bearing—carabiner.  It encloses your Cavendish in banana-shaped hollow plastic, making it easy to take climbing, caving, rafting, backpacking and have a banana always at your disposal; adventure with the enjoyment of potassium, and the ability to become anyone’s friend, muse, lover, soulmate, when shared with Nutella. 

A Banana Saver, I learned, is a key to success, and saves far more than just a banana.  Reputation in jeopardy?  Quell your ill repute by pulling out a fresh banana, or two if you invested wisely, three days into a backpacking trip.  Others will see your wisdom, prudence, foresight and odd attractiveness.  Nothing is classier than an unmushed banana in the backcountry.  

In Thailand, there is a benevolent ghost called Nang Tani that haunts banana trees, and I know why.  She wants all the bananas for herself; so did I.

Suddenly, I found myself eating bananas everywhere.  I could eat the soft, sweet, leathery-suited fruit on top of a tower in Sedona, wind whipped and thrilled with the view, but more so with the saving of a banana.  Cramps became a thing of the past, and I began to coordinate my climbing outfits to match the sprightly bit of yellow hanging off my harness, wearing banana colored t-shirts.  It would have been preferable to have one banana shirt covered in dark splotches to match the overripe bananas, but one can only get so much in life.  Eating bananas, or Musa acuminata, in the most extreme of places became my recreational sport of choice.

On the day Ethan and I mooned a crowd of tourists from halfway up a cliff in Sedona, I found that, if situated in the front of my harness, my Banana Saver became suspiciously awesome.  Waiting for the climbers ahead of us to stop shit-showing their way up the sandstone, we spotted their camera lying on a backpack and took the time to get a quality picture of my Banana Saver hanging off my belay loop, between my legs.  If the climbers had already seen that terrifying picture, they said nothing of it when we met them back at the parking lot.

The downfall of the Banana Saver came one day when, grabbing the last banana of a bunch, I discovered it had far too much angularity to fit in the molded casing.  This banana was like a boomerang.  Thinking back on the occasion, I should have checked to see if it was genetically modified.  It must have been.  Months of Banana Saving had gone without a hitch, but, here, here was a banana that could not be saved.  It had to be eaten in a less than stellar location.

Nothing can insure a banana’s full potential like the Saver.  It can bring them far away from the fruit bowl, up into the reaches where many bananas have never been.  How many others have eaten a banana on a glacier, or at the bottom of the Grand Canyon; in the darkness of a limestone cave, or at the top of some granite peak?  Before reaching their raison d’etre, all those bananas were unpeeled into a place unlike the aisles, the kitchens, the farms, the city streets that all other bananas know.  I bet they thought they must be in heaven, that they had been saved.


Banana Saver and I on top of Mt. Wrightson