Peaches

It's a rare day when I leave a place once, and once only.

Very often I get to the threshold of too far to turn back when I realise I've forgotten something reasonably critical; you know - wallets, keys, Children, clothing, stuff like that - and, thus, return to collect said forgotten item.

It's likely that this after-the-last-minute remembering is a learned behaviour from long association with befuddlement - mine now... but first, my Dad's.

Dad's befuddlement was insidious because at no time did he seem befuddled. He cruised through the chaos with an air of supreme confidence and je voulais faire cela such that the unsuspecting kid did not see the hardship coming - right up until he'd utter the infamous "No Sweat for a big operation like this" curse.

Fortunately, hardships make for great memories.

I may have mentioned that Dad liked to camp.

Well, actually, Dad liked to hunt and fish - and remove himself from the stressors of civilization - which pretty much amounts to the same thing; so, in order to accomodate those preferences with the maximum efficiency... Dad camped.

And it was good, because we camped with him. Most of the time time we took Mom, but sometimes we left her at home to her devices - but only when she had done something especially deserving of that rare treat.

Another rare treat Mom was especially deserving of was a tent trailer. Dad bought it from a friend of his in the Old Country early one summer, after a particularly odious camping trip to Kaslo, on the shores of the Mighty - and, ultimately, Unfathomable - Kootenay Lake.

It rained that trip. Rather a lot. I was about six, and I distinctly recall the bread floating out of the canvas cabin tent that was swamped in about five inches of water.  Mother Packed me and my little sister over to Gramma Jay's Camper - sturdily housed on the back of a 1962 Chev Pickup truck - and gamely said nothing to Gramma and my older sister calmly drinking tea and playing cribbage in the dry warmth. Her eyes bulged a little when Gramma indicated it hadn't occurred to her it was raining that hard - but I, as is my custom, digress.

 Mom had emphatically stated that she was interested in sleeping in a moldy canvas tent Never Again. So dad bout the trailer in an effort to woo her back to the campground.

Admittedly, it wasn't much of a tent trailer, but that was the beauty of the thing. It was beds, storage, and a table, arranged 20 inches off the ground with a reasonably water-resistant roof - which is really all Mom wanted. She set to its organisation, even including little lists taped to the underside of the bed lockers describing what the proper contents should be for a standard trip.

It was also small enough that Dad could easily maneuver it around without using a car. As it took him several years to master reversing a short hitch trailer, this was a Good Thing.

We dragged that trailer everywhere.

One Labour Day weekend, after Mom had given up camping for the season, Dad decided my brother and I should join him in a trek up to the Lussier River for one last Fish before school set in for the winter.

Dad made a list of the things we ought to pack, and we set to work. The nice thing about the tent trailer was that its standard load-out saved half the packing time.

Friday afternoon right after school we hook up the tent trailer and roar off. It's a drive - 45 minutes south, and then an hour north, half on paved roads, half not. That's typical of south eastern B.C. - a 200 km drive gets you 45km as the crow flies.

We were at our usual location on the bank of the river, down in a draw basically under the road and bridge before dark. We set camp in a hurry; Dad wanted to cook dinner. That's when we made the discovery.

The tent trailer was great as it stored almost everything you would need camping.

You know - except when Mom has, unusually, already commenced cleaning it out for the winter.

The critical issue was Pots. and Cutlery.

Cutlery was okay. Dad and I had our schrade knives, and we could use those to whittle forks and spoons for the three of us. I defy, however, even the most seasoned mountaineer, survivalist, man-vs-wild aficionado or Queen Scout to whittle an effective Cooking pot.

And this is where I learned that It Ain't Over until you have exhausted all the possibilities.

Dad found a big tin of canned peaches. The can opener was in the cutlery box back home, though.

Ever open a tin can with a folding knife? It works alright if the blade locks, like these, fortunately, did. Terrible for the blade, though.

We ate dessert first, and then used that can to cook our meals in for the next two days, and had a stellar fishing weekend.

To this day, when the Avoidable Sideways Slide happens in my own endeavors, when I just plain screw up by forgetting something critical and my learned after-the-last-minute-remembering magic fails me... well.

I'll just wing it. I'll think of something.

I prefer to do this with just a touch of panache and  je voulais faire cela - it's fun to watch my Beautiful Wife's eyes roll like that.

The trailer hitch broke on the way down the mountain. Dad had to chain the thing to the truck, and I hung out the back window watching it to ensure it didn't jump off. Ate exhaust fumes until I was car sick. I think the hitch ball had lost its nut, but I don't recall.

That would be typical. Dad was aggressively unlucky about vehicle maintenance - acerbated by burgeoning indifference - and the tent trailer, and the K5 Blazer took the brunt of it when I was a kid.

But those... those are stories for another day.

A Well-Aimed Rock

Gramma Jay gave me a St. Christopher medallion near the end of 1983. It's hung from the rear-view mirror of every vehicle I've commonly driven since.

I'm not one given to idolatry, but she gave it to me for a specific reason. It serves as my reminder to look around when everything appears to be going sideways on me.

It is probably coincidence that every vehicle save one it's hung in has managed to avoid accidents - and that one exception should have been much, much worse, but there we are.

Dad and I were out hunting.

My audience will note that, very commonly, my discussion of bizarre turns of events in my formative years usually start with "Dad and I were out hunting."

It was nearing the end of October in the Sticks, and the weather started out its usual autumn-in-the-mountains craptastic; it had dusted snow overnight and turned to rain in the morning. Pretty good for the Moose Dad wanted to fill his tag for. We were somewhere down the Corbin road at first light, and took an extended walk through the gathering slush in a good place he had scouted.

Not unusually, the local Moose population had other ideas, and left an enormous number of tracks to taunt us - immediately around Dad's old K5 Blazer.

It was mid morning, and we mounted up and headed home, keeping an eye to the treeline on either side of the road. Any game we saw would still be fair, but Dad knew I had a prior commitment I wanted to keep if I could - the remote possibility of dressing out a large animal notwithstanding.

There was a truck some distance behind us. Suddenly it peeled off the dirt road, and disgorged its hunters to the west side.

Dad looked over at me and said few choice words about luck when we heard the shots. Neither of us had seen a thing when we went by. "Wasn't to be, today, I guess," he said, shrugging it off. "Let's get you to your game."

By 11 am, at home, I had showered and was ready to make the 45 minute hike up to the Heights. "I can give you a ride if you want," Dad offered.

This was unusual. I mean, if it was on the way to somewhere he needed to be, sure, but commonly I would just walk. It occurred to me he just wanted to go for the drive. "Sure," I said. "It'll make me pretty early, but that's fine. Thanks! Let's go."

At the time, I had a winter coat with the cool new feature of zip-off sleeves - which I most commonly wore sleeveless. I'd checked the weather and it was improving pleasantly; I'd be fine in the vest. To this day I don't know why I put the sleeves back on the thing. For a car ride, no less.

And off we went.

They were still building the Highway 43 bypass, so to drive to the Heights - the new subdivision in the Sticks - was a twenty minute tour through the old townsite, past a couple trailer courts, and over the ancient one-lane trestle.

It was always a nice drive, later I would tour around there in Dad's car in summer evenings - unbeknownst to him, of course, just for the pleasure of it.. But I digress.

People were out. There were a couple of kids fishing under the trestle bridge, a girl sitting on the north slope with a couple dogs overlooking Matevic Road; just enjoying an afternoon where the weather had settled down. Dad turned up Matevic Road.

That led to a more established set of acreages up in the hills - and was not where I was intending to go. I surmised he thought I going to a different friend's place; his parents had bought a house up there a few years earlier. That was fine, as I still had more than enough time before my appointment. I had Dad drop me at a cut line that led from the road up to the subdivision - an easy walk.

And I arrived to find my appointment canceled. The guy was a couple houses up the street, working for a neighbor. He'd called - but missed me by about five minutes. He invited me to stay - but I declined; I didn't care to interfere with his job for the day. He said I should call for a ride - I said it was fine; the walk would be quite comfortable since I put the sleeves on my coat.

I headed back down that cut, and decided to drop in on that friend a half-klick up the road.

I stood there on his doorstep and looked at the doorbell for maybe five minutes, debating whether I should press it. I finally decided not to, mostly on the grounds that I just didn't want to impose without calling ahead.

I gave the whole day to that point up as a bad job, and decided to at least enjoy the walk home over the CPR tracks... which technically was illegal and moderately unsafe due to the train bridge, and trespassing to boot - but also not something I hadn't already done a hundred or so times. Me and every other Kid in the Sticks.

I headed back to the ancient one-lane trestle. It came majestically into view as I cleared the trees by the freezing-cold Elk River on Matevic Road.

The girl with the dogs had left - but the two kids were still under the bridge. They weren't fishing any more; one had slid up to his waist into the river. The other was trying very hard - with no success - to pull his hypothermic friend out.

Could have rung a doorbell.
Could have stuck around for a while.
Could have been dropped at the right door - and then got a ride home.
Could have got a phonecall.
Could have left the sleeves off the coat.
Could have passed up the ride.
Could have been dressing out a deer by the road.
Could have waited in the Blazer.

I learned in that instant to never begrudge a manifestation of Infinite Improbability - just Roll With It.

Next time you find yourself somewhere you - by rights - should never have ended up, and you're cursing your rotten luck - have a look around.

Maybe there's something you're supposed to do.

Maybe - this time - Ananke's Well-Aimed Rock is you.

Lessons

I taught myself to ski when I was 17 years old.

You tell people that you grew up in the mountains in British Columbia, and they make assumptions. Truth is, I've been skiing maybe a half-dozen times in my life, and I'm not very good at it.

All my contemporaries growing up in the Sticks skied, or played hockey, or whatever. I never did. I always presumed it was because the gear was too expensive. For one reason or another, we grew up poor-middle-class, but that's a story for another time.

We could actually skate on the street most days in winter. The snow was usually compacted to the point of ice, and the plows didn't scrape it down so as not to rip up the gravel shoulders of the streets. The Municipality installed gutters on the streets in the early 80s, and that signaled the End of That.

At the time, not skiing and not skating didn't really bother me. Well, that's not true; the not skating kind of did. I had Dad's old hand-me-down skates and they obviously fit me horrendously badly. I tried going skating on my own a handful of times in the Sticks... but those stupid skates had nothing for ankle support, and were more a detriment than anything else.

At least I always thought they were Dad's; they may have been my brother's once - that would certainly make sense. Suffice to say they were very old, and a little too big.

I suspect that a good skate swap for kids - like we have practically everywhere now in North America - would have really done well for me. It's one thing to build a bike out of spare parts... but there isn't much you can do for skating.

Looking back, I know for a fact that if I really wanted skates, I would have got them. But, as stated - I didn't care enough.

We've been taking the little kids out to Brimacombe for skiing lessons on Saturdays.

This is something I'd never did as a kid - organized lessons in a sport - except for swimming lessons at the wading pool at Kin park when I was five. I rather like the fact that we are able to provide things for our children that I never had... but then I think about it.

I spent winter weekends icefishing. And snowshoeing. And hunting. Snowmobiling. Sledding. Shooting. We played shinny on frozen ponds with rough-cut hockey equipment that dad made on the fly. Meals involving roasting home-made elk sausage on willow sticks over the open fire (yes, lit with One Match). Winter drives to explore. Camping occasionally.

Whatever my childhood lacked in financing sporting lessons - my Dad more than made up for in time and effort. Nobody could ever complain about that.

The result of that breadth of experience, courtesy of Dad, is that I've done - and am comfortable doing - things that make some of my Contemporaries go all bulgy-eyed. Butchering an elk on the kitchen table and making sausage comes immediately to mind - but I digress.

So I taught myself to skate on rollerblades at 27. I bought good ones. I still have them. Funny thing - the difference between Ice Skating and Rollerblading is Hills. I believe I still have the scars...

But when I was 17, I went on a school skiing trip to Fernie. As I indicated, it was my very first crack at skiing. It turns out they teach kids what they called "snowplowing" - nowadays they tell kids it's a pizza.

I never did that. Couldn't for some (knees) reason. I went straight to the proper turning method by watching people who knew what they were doing - and mimicking them.

Of course the down side is when you're a novice, they set your bindings to come off the boot really easily so you don't hurt yourself - even if you are roughly gorilla-shaped. They don't expect you to turn properly. I sheared my skis right off my feet a couple times before I figured that out.

I'm hoping that in a year or two my eight-year-old will be a better skier than me. It's not much of a stretch.

Maybe he'll teach me how to ski backward. In the mean time, the Saturdays out have been excellent.

Winter Pursuits

A couple weekends ago, my brother-in-law, Ardy, and I took the kids out tobogganing.

As it was the first time in about 22 months that we had enough snow, it was kind of a big deal. The kids in question are his 7 1/2 year old daughter and my 7 3/4 year old son, who are more like brother and sister than any kids exactly three months apart could reasonably be.

We've been raising them like that. It's one of the reasons we moved out here.

We roasted down a nice bowl hill for 90 minutes in different configurations of pairs to much shrieking laughter, and almost no complaining about cold or climbs. Somebody had a campfire going off to one side - out of the way - at the bottom of the bowl. It smelled marvelous.

I can recall a couple times Dad took us out like that - but the tobogganing was usually ancillary to the trip. Trips out usually involved ski-doos, dogs, campfires, snowshoes, and - more often than not - frozen stretches of water, with tree limbs cut into hockey sticks and pucks. In later years there would be backpacks, bush cabins, and mulled wine, but these are stories for another time.

You only sat around for a winter weekend in The Sticks if it was actively raining. Which - In Winter, in the Sticks - was pretty much never.

It was a glorious afternoon - and all Ardy's idea. So I told him about Twister.

Serious tobogganing in the Sticks didn't require a car; everything in the place was walking distance, even for a pre-adolescent.

It's remembrances like this that make me feel like I grew up in a different dimension. We no longer let our children cross the street alone at an age where we were out of sight of the house from dawn till dusk... but I digress.

You had pretty much had three standard options for sledding when you lived in lower Sticks. The hill behind the row houses was okay, and it was really close, but it was a short rise at only sixty or so vertical feet... and the slope was fairly terrifying at between 70 and 80 degrees. It was also a standard path for a lot of kids to go to school... so very often it was either worn to dirt, or chopped-up and refrozen ice - which rattles your teeth while sledding.

The water tower was better - across Highway three at the top of the hill, and it was a good 150 vertical feet - but still 70 to 80 degrees vertical. It was so steep that snow very often didn't stay on it all that deep, and it was popular enough that the tracks would be worn to the dirt.

The speed you could reach on it would also flay your skin in cold weather.

By far, the best hill around was Twister.

It was an old cut road that wound its way down from Old Highway 3, and opened up to a small meadow at the base of the causeway that was built up to support New Highway 3. The climb was something like 200 vertical feet, but since it was originally a road it was cut into the slope with S turns and switchbacks to minimise the slope. It took a good 15 to 20 minutes to walk up from the bottom.

The result? Add a little snow and you had 3 minutes of steep-banked wide-track bob-sled-inspiring greatness that was populated every snowy weekend available.

And seriously - the more kids, the better. Lots of them would bring inner tubes from the mine trucks  - once punctured, they couldn't be used on the trucks any more, but patch them and fill them up, and you can seat up to five 10 year olds on one.

The season after my brother first took me to Twister, Santa delivered a pair of plastic formed sleds. They were basically a rectangular tub with a catamaran shaped front slope, and a seat pressed into the form. They were also the fastest sleds on the hill the next 4 years running.

We were lightning. In one of those interceptors you could let the tubes go first, and get around the top corner, and you'd still pass them before you were half way down. One of the best places to pass was above an innertube on the outside of a turn embankment. If your timing was bad, the tube would bounce you right out of the gully into the trees. Which of course was all of the fun.

The hill was like riding down a drainpipe.

Somebody built a golf course on the end stretch of Old Highway 3 in the mid 80s. A couple years later, someone noticed guys on dirtbikes were using the Twister cut road to get on to the 9th hole of the golf course, and tearing up the fairways.

Several huge roadblocks of deadfall were constructed across the path of the cut road at various intervals almost immediately after that.

And a Legend passed into the mists of memory.

When Lawn Chairs Attack!

Dad had a long-standing, near-legendary problem with folding lawn chairs.

Wait, What? Lawn Chairs?

Yep.

Looks innocuous enough, doesn't it? Woven polyester/plastic slats, 1mm thick rolled aluminum molded into 2.5 cm diameter formed piping, riveted together in a fashion ostensibly designed to provide hours - years - of support as you are entertained in the Great-Out-of-Doors.

But there's one thing the packing label won't tell you. It hints at it nowadays - but doesn't come out and say it directly.

Turns out Dad started to expand a bit once he hit 30. He always, in his own writing, would refer to himself as Slim Hunter - as, in his late teens and early 20s, he was certainly beanpole-esque at a long 193 cm and barely scratching 97 kilos.

For those of you for whom Metric is so much gobbledygook,  that works out to 6'4" and just a touch over 210 pounds.

And by 30 - getting larger. Interestingly, his limbs remained lean and very strong. Unfortunately that meant that all his weight gain for the next 30 years was in his chest and gut. He managed it by remaining active, Hiking, Running, Hunting, and eventually Cycling. I think he probably got back down to 105 kilos from cycling by the time he was 55 - but still had the legs and arms of a leaner man... so still seemed bulky.

Yes, I know Dad always swore he was 6'5". He also always wore cowboy boots. It's easy to add an inch to your height when nobody can see the top of  your head.

At any rate, I was looking Dad in the eye by the time I was 20 years old - and I've never made it past 193cm.

Let's just say that Dad was pretty freakin' large and leave it there.

I don't remember where we were the first time it happened - but I wasn't very old. Probably around 8. That would make Dad 38, and in the worst of his paunch development. He was in a lawn chair, as shown above.

On Grass. On the tiniest slope backward, and to the right. The conditions, as they say, were perfect.

The lawn chair, sensing that Dad was at ease, and therefore vulnerable, suddenly, maliciously and without warning threw him to the ground and clamped its ravenous jaws upon his buttock in an effort to eat him whole.

Dad, never one to be ignominiously eaten by mere furniture, fought back.

This did not appear to be the case from the vantage of the casual viewer, of course. The scene was more reminiscent of an upside-down turtle trying to get clear of a set of bagpipes - and it sounded imaginably similar, too.

After a few minutes of flailing around and some mildish cursing, Dad rolled to his feet, victorious, the mangled carcass of the lawn chair laying in crushed defeat before him. He escaped with only scratches, amidst much tittering from various onlookers.

I said that was the First Time. There were a few others; details mostly the same until the last one which actually drew blood in an attempt to relieve Dad of his kidneys. He liked to show people the scar.

But that was that. Mom found a different brand of lawn chair in Better Homes for Ogres and went shopping, coming back from the Outdoor Shop in the next town... which was in the next province... with four sturdy, thick-rolled, thin tube, very, very sturdily (and therefore, tame) framed chairs.

Which had canvas seats. Nice striped ones.

The canvas on the chairs suffered Dad and weather for a single season, and then promptly split on the first trip the next spring. Dad,  his backside on the ground, arms akimbo and feet dangling, sputtering and cursing somewhat less mildly, fought his way loose form the Very Very Sturdy Frame, and left it where it fell in its disgrace, laying on its side.

Mom looked at the chair. Then back to her spring edition of Ogre Living. Then back at the chair. This went on for some time as Dad, still sputtering, used his chainsaw to cut a stump to sit on.

Well - I presume it was him sputtering... it may have been the chainsaw. The pitch was similar.

Mom eventually put down the magazine with a shrug, picked up the now-denuded lawn chair frame, her bag of macramé cord, and a fresh glass of Sangria from her Camping wine box, and went to work.

Mom macraméd. And Knitted. Pretty much if it had to do with knotting up fibers, she built stuff out of it. We all had really warm sweaters. Nice ones. We had furniture, planters and wall hangings littering our house in The Sticks.

Speaking of knotting things - she also used to cut our hair. But that's, as I like to say, a story for another time.

She also liked to take a box or two of Sangria on camping trips. She says it helped drown out all the sputtering.

At any rate, over several days she built a seat and back out of the macramé cord, weaving and knotting and creating pleasant patterns in tan, cream and green. I suspect it was of her own design, I can't be sure and she can't recall. Eventually, over that summer, she had re-upholstered all four of those chairs.

And they were brilliant. They lasted forever. And superbly comfortable. But there was a drawback... and it was why they were superbly comfortable.

Macramé cord tends to stretch. A few seasons of Dad sitting on them, and the chairs were like little hammocks slung in an upright frame. You get in, and if you're under a certain height... your feet no longer touch the ground.

But you're comfortable. Especially when the backs got bent a little further back from use so your chin wasn't crammed into your chest. It's impossible to get out of the chair without help, but it's okay... you're comfortable.

Just don't decide you need to pee.

One thing though - you couldn't manage a plate in them. Your knees were usually about chest high. Balancing a plate on that was not going to happen.

I haven't sat in one of those chairs in 15 years. Now lawn chairs are geodesic arrangements of piping covered in ballistic nylon - no way you're getting through that. But I said they come with a warning.

Maximum weight 225 lbs.

Dad would love that.

As such, I'm very careful sitting in them. I'm pretty sure that tag means that if you're less than that, you aren't a worthy meal.

The other day when I was thinking about this, I thought, "no way..." and then Googled Macramé Lawn Chairs. Yep, They exist. She could have made a fortune. But probably not.

I'm pretty sure I saw a Macramé Lawn Chair peeking around from a dark corner in the basement of Mom's house when we packed it up last June.

Wouldn't surprise me. It was probably pretty hungry.

Rum Junction

I recently recounted certain events surrounding the development of a hunting cabin called the Rum Junction Hotel. About a klick south of Highway three, barely five minutes out of the little town I grew up in - The Sticks - there is a bottle in a tree.

Okay, seriously. In that neck of the woods, there are very likely a number of bottles in a variety of trees - but none that I know of that are a named landmark for a very select group.

Couple things.  I grew up in the 80s.  It wasn't exactly the wild west, but... well, okay, it was actually the West, technically. My point is you've all very likely seen the posts on facebook how we should never have survived our childhoods... well a lot of this story would probably - nowadays...

Whatever. This story has elements that are not gonna be politically correct. I'm probably gonna offend PETA, MADD, and possibly the BCTF and a bunch of other acronyms, but that's the way things went down. Get over yourselves.

But then, my old friend Zon tells me I'm not exactly hindered in my commentary by an enormous audience, so I guess we're good.

Right. Into the abyss.

Dad and I were out hunting. It occurs to me that this is usually the way these things start.

The unusual part is that he actually saw something. An Elk.

And he saw it long enough to get a shot off.

When I was 15 years old, Dad was a pretty good shot. Having said that - a bottlecap in a tree is almost exactly unlike a 500 kilo Elk ripping up turf and trees around it as you can, realistically, get.

But I wasn't there - I was in the valley. I started moving in his direction when I heard the shot.

I found a man in befuddlement. He was certain he'd aimed true - but we could find absolutley no evidence.

Eventually, Dad found a tiny shred of bloodied flesh on a bush in the vicinity, that might indicate a bullet wound on a large animal. So now we had to track it down.

Six hours later, it was getting on to dusk, and we had not managed to find even one more trace of an animal that was injured, and we very nearly tore that valley apart. But Dad, being a Conservation Instructor and Environmentalist in his way, had an idea that seemed like a good idea at the time.

Heh.  There's an acronym I use as a matter of routine... SLAGIATT. Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time. It's a great catch-all for when things go unpredictably, horribly sideways. This seems to happen a lot in My World.

We were coming back the next day - and we were bringing The Dog.

I grew up with dogs. There were usually two. And they were generally large - as in over 40 kilos, and 30 cm tall at the shoulder, and very often both. This Dog was both. He was the unregistered offspring of a purebred Shepard and an Alsatian Police Dog, and a couple years later would be diagnosed with genetic Retinitis Pigmentosis, and then develop cataracts.

That's a story for another day, of course.

He was in no way intended or trained to hunt or track... but there was nothing wrong with his nose.

The next day, we were back in the draw at Roberts Creek.

Dad handled the Dog. The Dog was somewhere over 50 kilos, and still otherwise prime, and Dad, rightly, was concerned that he'd yard me off my feet running a blood trail.

Four grueling hours up and down 45-degree slopes with nothing to show for it, the Dog pulls Dad off his feet. In landing, Dad came down beside a bush and one of the twigs slid under his glasses, and gouged the cornea of his right eye.

Never done that, but I wear contact lenses sometimes. I'm pretty sure that it HURT. I seem to recall him mentioning that once or twice.

Dad was on a mission, though, and gamely carried on through excruciating pain, his eye tearing to the point of useless.

And for several more hours, we continued to find absolutely no trace of this evidently phantom Elk. Dad, finally, had had enough, and sat down beside the old snag in the center of the draw up the valley. He pulled a bottle of  overproof Demerara rum out of his pack. It was a 750 ml bottle; back then we'd have called it a 26er. It was about a third full.

"I brought this to toast with in case we found that Elk," Dad said. "Don't imagine you can drive us home." I thought about it for a second or two, and, having never touched a steering wheel in a moving vehicle to that point, knew my limitations.

"Thought not. Well, I can't see a damn thing, and this is the only painkiller we have. Pass me one of them cokes."

So we sat under that tree, and killed the sixpack of coke we had in my bag, splitting the remains of the bottle between us. When it was empty, Dad decided to hang it in the Snag we sat under, in the bottom of that draw. there was a perfect broken-off branch pointing straight up about 10 feet high.

I rode Dad's shoulders and mounted the bottle on the branch... and we hiked down the 20 minutes to the truck and drove home - very fortunately without incident. It took years for dad's eye to heal all the way. And now - we have cellphones so such events would never happen.

That bottle sat upside down in that tree - hell, as far as I know, it still is. Eight years after we placed it there Dad expressed amazement no one had shot it out yet. I have not been through that draw in 22 years, though, so I can't even tell you the snag is still standing, let alone the bottle.

That Snag in that Draw lives forever as Rum Junction. Welcome to the Group.

Ghost Stories

I learned a lot from my last camping trip with Mum and two of the boys. Mostly that campfire Ghost stories are just as tough as I thought they would be. I have a new appreciation for the Imaginations of my predecessors.

The best part about camping with Dad and Uncle Crazy Legs had to be the Ghost stories. They had a vast repertoire; from the Humorous to the Benign; all the way into tales that could make the blood of the most worldly seventeen-year-old run to ice.

And you always knew when it was time; the fire was brightening against the chill of the mountain summer's eve, and Dad or Uncle Crazy Legs would start like a distant howl on the wind...

"WhoooooHoooooooooooo..."

It was campy, but it always worked. Every kid, any age sat with rapt attention until the story was done. Very often one or two had eyes squeezed shut, or left in fright all together. It was glorious.

Naturally the mark of success for a ghost story was how hard it was for which kids to fall asleep. You'd be amazed at how much spookier the bush is at night after one of their better tellings. I hope you went to the bathroom before it got dark, because, believe me... you aren't interested in leaving the camper now.

A little taste of moonlight plays through the trees and throws faint shadows that move with the boughs in the breeze... really - just stay in your sleeping bag. The terror is delicious.

We actually tried, as kids, to record some of these stories for posterity, with varying success. I must admit though, that success has diminished given that those recordings, to my knowledge, have passed into legend along with the stories themselves.

Dad did start writing a manuscript about 20 years ago. He never finished it; there was always one more hill to hike up, one more trail to ride down, and that's really the way it should have been. I have that manuscript now, and the technology to convert it back to a usable form... and the collected memory of a dozen now-adult cousins to flesh out the stories. And, it turns out, I have something else.

I was sweating bullets, and I had researched the history of the area for three days... but on our last camping trip, I told my boys a ghost story of my own devise.

Kid Two didn't admit to much, but it kept Youngest Kid up that night.

Thanks, Dad.