I was 12 that summer.
My parents and I were spending a vacation in a remote mountain area in
the north part of Colorado. There was a small jewel of a lake on the
western slopes of a ridge just off the continental divide close to Rocky
Mountain National Park. We had learned of the lake several years
earlier when camping and exploring in that area. A good sized cattle ranch, a boy’s camp and a
fairly active logging operation shared that part of paradise.
We drove our old paneled truck, loaded with two weeks supply
for the 3 of us, down a narrow rutted road into a small flat park with a spring
flowing through it at the far edge where the trees and rocks took over
again. This was not a park in the sense
of a developed recreation area, but of a flat high mountain meadow surrounded
by forest. It was a perfect host for our
little camp set up near the stream close to the trail winding into the woods
toward the lake and other inviting wonders we’d not yet explored in our many
trips to that region.
Setting up camp always took a good bit of time. My mom nested. We moved rock, built a fire pit with seating
about it made of large rocks and fallen logs.
Lots of ‘this goes here; no that goes there’ combined with the sound of
the old hand saw and my mom pounding nails and stakes with intermittent pan
clattering and discussions of what a perfect spot it was. Part of the perfect spot was the placement of
trees where my mother could string her rope for hanging wet towels and clothing
and an old gas lantern or two. They
became the perimeter of our ‘home’ for the week.
My dad was a fisherman.
The lake was close enough for a daily jaunt or two, but far enough that
a 12 year old would not wander to it alone.
Sometimes it was the 3 of us, sometimes just my dad and I. I liked to fish. I liked to cast the line and hear the reel
spin. I loved to see how quickly I could
bring it back in. I was much more of a
stream fisher than a lake fisher.
Watching a bobber for lengthy stretches was not my long suit. So I fish/explored. It always involved getting wet. It always involved noise and a few reprimands
from my dad when the wet and noise interfered with the peaceful, dozy solitude
of lake fishing.
So, I discovered things. I had adventures. I dreamed and
wrote stories in my head. The art of
story composing was part of my life. It
filled long stretches of time when I didn’t want to be discovered by those left
in charge of the ‘baby’ of the family.
Story telling filled long nights when I was expected to stay quietly in
bed regardless of the lack of sleep that has always characterized my life. Storytelling could take the simplest of ‘not
quite acceptable’ and make it enviable grandeur. My mother had read to me from the time I was
quite small: Alice in Wonderland,
Through the Looking Glass, The Wizard of Oz, Little Women, Swiss Family
Robinson, The Five Little Peppers, White Fang, Call of the Wild –these and more
filled my mind with scenarios to build from.
They were as real as the stone and fallen logs of our outdoor living
space.
One day on that vacation, I discovered the remnants of a
home made raft hiding in the undergrowth.
By the time my mother wandered up to the lake and my father roused from
his fishing stupor. I was in the middle
of the lake with a pole that could not reach the bottom. While it was a small lake, it wasn’t small
enough for them to reach me with anything.
My dad had a hundred foot rope in his tackle, but even when they tied a
rock to it and he gave it a fast ball pitch, the rope fell short. Trying to paddle with the tall thin pole that
had gotten me to my spot in the center of the lake was futile. My dad was pulling off his shoes and emptying
his pockets when I got the idea of taking off my shirt and tying it to the
pole. ‘Half nekked’ I struggled to hold
the pole in place. The shirt caught just
enough wind to ease me toward the bank.
It was ingenious; I deserved more praise than I got! My dad got firewood out of it.
One day as we were cleaning up from breakfast, we were
blessed with visitors to our solitude.
It was a family of three like our own who had hiked up the road in
search of ‘Lost Lake’. They also had a 12 year old – a boy. They were from New England
and talked funny. They asked several
questions about the lake, admired my mother’s set up and shared a few of their
own stories from the trip they were on.
Mom and dad loved to visit and I was definitely not a shy child. We offered to walk with them to the lake and
they seemed grateful for the offer.
I don’t remember any of their names, but I took it upon
myself to make sure their son had a good time and learned all kinds of things
about the wilderness of Colorado. Yeah, I was that good! When they finally started toward their own
‘little camper’ late in the afternoon, we felt we were parting from long time
friends. My mom offered to share our
dinner as we had our lunch, but they wanted to be tucked in before
nighttime. They didn’t relish the thought
of being out of their camper in the dark.
I thought that was strange. We watched
them wander back down the road where they came in that morning. I spent a good portion of the rest of that
trip constructing stories of how we would meet again some day in the future –a
prince and his long lost princess – to be united in love forever. It didn’t happen, but they were probably
good, if sappy, stories.
My mom loved making a wilderness home if only for 2
weeks. She would scour the surround
areas for plants and make a garden of wild iris, columbine, mountain larkspur
and other beauties. When she was young
her father had contracted TB and was sent to a isolation/treatment
facility. My grandmother, a resourceful
and intelligent woman, the formally educated grand daughter of an Indian chief,
sought a teaching position that would support her small family and was hired on
at a tiny mountain town where her own children were schooled as a
majority.
There were kind mountain folk that stepped in and helped
this young mother with her children and step-children. One old man taught my mother and her brother
survival skills and introduced them to the ways of respecting and living in the
wild. There was always a fondness in my
mothers stories for the time spent there.
I’m sure it was a difficult life for my grandmother, but she made the
children feel it was a great adventure.
And so camping was part of that adventure.
Mom honored faithfully the teaching the old man had
given. One teaching was to never let a
fire go out at night. My mom had dad cut
a supply of ‘keeper’ logs. Two large logs were place side by side on the coals
at bedtime. All night they would smolder
and smoke. On rare occasions, they
would flame up and we’d hear mom out there adjusting them a bit. In the morning she would move them apart some
and fill the space with limbs, small
twigs and pinecones and soon a good fire for breakfast was started. Our fire seldom went completely out during
our stay. The few times it did, we were
blessed with critter visits that we weren’t overly fond of, but that made great
telling in the future.
It was Thursday afternoon and we were leaving to go home on
Saturday, but dad decided we needed to take a supply run into the nearest town
–about 30 miles away. Unknown to me it
was my parents’ anniversary. My mom made
excuses and then gave in thinking dad had some sweet commemorative celebration
in mind. When we had tightened up the
camp, put everything away, and set in some keeper logs, we climbed in the old
truck and started off. On the other side
of the park, our trip came to an abrupt halt when we started to climb the
little incline going out. After a bit of
time, my dad reappeared from under the vehicle – a familiar occurrence in our
world- to inform us that the u-joint had gone out. A short discussion decided we’d walk to the
logging camp and see if my mom could get a ride into town to get the supplies. The loggers agreed to take her and dad and I
hitched a ride back to the road we were camped on and went back to our camp to
wait on her return. Around supper time,
a logger came by to tell us the car parts store didn’t have what she needed so
she had called my sister who would bring the part after her husband got off
work. Mom waited for them in Granby
while we made supper and then settled into the tent for a little sleep,
figuring they probably wouldn’t get there until the wee hours. Dad had allowed the fire to burn out and said
he didn’t need to keep a fire going all night to protect us.
I think I’ve told that story enough times. The deer wandered in with their heads down
and then panicked when they caught their antlers on the ropes my mom had
strung. It was a frantic “What the heck
are we going to do?” moment or 5 as they banged into the side of the tent over
and over in their terror. They did of
course finally find their way out. And
the first thing dad did was to build a fire.
Neither of us could go back to sleep and we sat up until my brother in
law’s truck with the camper came rolling in a little after midnight.
The babies were all asleep, so after a bit of visiting that
included a variety of stories, the revelation that my dad had forgotten the
anniversary completely and wanted fishing tackle, and my tale about the deer
that brought ‘the look’ from my mom, I was left with the sleeping children
while the four adults walked to the lake in the moonlight. It wasn’t quite fair, but that’s the way of
it.
Our vacation the year I was 12 has always been a fond and
fun memory in my mental scrap book. So
many pictures stay in my mind, like in those books my mom would read and then
pause to show me the accompanying picture before resuming the story.
