1992 (2) – Where’s the Bathroom?

Dinner and bedtime back at camp were fast approaching for all concerned.  I had carried fresh food for our first cooked meal in the wilderness, and Joy busied herself with its preparation while Fiona and I started the campfire.  I kept being interrupted in my proselytizing about the sacred mysteries of fire by a frustrated “where’s the handle to the frying pan?” or “how does this work?”  So much of my attention was devoted to keeping Joy and Fiona happy that I began to feel drained of happiness entirely, with nothing left for myself.  I was feeling the deep, stupefied numbness of the overworked pack animal.  I had planned this evening for a long time, going over every nuance in my head of how the choreography of camping would unfold, and now I had completely lost the rhythm of the moment.  I felt disturbingly out of sync, and newly aware of the absurdity of having my family present in the only place on earth where my primary relationships were not with them.  Joy and Fiona had lapsed back into domestic mode, and their competent chatter and need to control their environment drowned out the music of the mountains.  It was time for the faithful, spent servant to fold himself neatly, close the drawer, and regenerate his attentiveness for a new day; a new chance to serve.

After doing the dishes and other overly elaborate household chores, and the obligatory s’mores had been consumed, we ran completely out of gas before it was fully dark, and groped for the tent.  Our teeth were brushed hastily so we wouldn’t fall asleep with a toothbrush in our mouths.  The familiar sounds of settling down faded and were absorbed into the eerie, alien silence of the mountains.  The incessant wind murmured vague threats with the voices of a million pine needles.  It became readily apparent that sleep would be hard to come by, in the close nylon confines of our “bedroom.”  This was not the first time we had ever been inside a tent together.  We had gone car camping several times, and with Logan along, too.  It wasn’t the inside of the tent that was keeping us awake, it was the outside.  Before, our car and connection to the security of home was always a stone’s throw away, but here – out here – where impossibly numerous clusters of stars crowded deep into the indigo night sky, we knew we were as far from the familiar as we had ever been in our lives.  Not so much for me, of course, but my empathy was so acute that the air inside the tent became thick with anxiety.  Joy and Fiona changed position often, and tensed at every rustle in the bushes.  (There were many, as squadrons of chipmunks reconnoitered our supplies with extreme prejudice.)  I felt their discomfort in my bones, which ached anyhow from the physical strain of fighting gravity all day.

“Where’s the bathroom?”

They knew where the bathroom was, of course: the bushes outside.   Those dubious comforts were shrouded in deep moon shadow, 235 miles away from the real bathroom they wanted.  Using a bush as a restroom was funny during the daytime, but at night there were too many unseen creepy crawlies and twisted things that rustle menacingly.  I sighed (more of a poorly suppressed groan), wriggled out of my sleeping bag the way an aged snake sheds its skin, and found the flashlight.

The reward for washroom attendant service was the enthralling night sky.  I gaped upward at the teeming constellations, shuffling my dead feet in a circle with the helplessness of a hanged man whose toes could barely touch the ground.  Spirals of galaxies marched across the Milky Way, and I could almost discern each one individually as they glowed as the jeweled colors of a rainbow trout.  Planets beamed their thin spotlights at the periphery of my vision, and countless stars coagulated at the focal point, until I could sense the vast, three-dimensional spaces between them.  I ushered the women back to their snug little polyester cocoons, and stayed outside a little longer; finally laying my body down among the stars and dreaming of infinity.

I don’t remember getting cold, or crawling back to the tent like a gut-shot soldier, but the dirt I dragged inside was an unmistakable giveaway the next morning.  I was summarily reprimanded for carelessness, and for my insubordination in pointing out that dirt was everywhere, and we may as well get used to it.

After eating the last of our fresh food (eggs and bacon, of course – another vain attempt to evoke the feeling of home), it was time to launch the boat.  Now, before you get the image that I somehow carried a boat on my back like an Indian portaging a birch bark canoe around the rapids, this was a small inflatable vinyl dinghy; more of a toy, really.  Silly me, I had to try and bring something fun, even though it weighed a ton.  What I hadn’t anticipated was the exhausting task of using lung power to inflate the damn thing at 5,500 feet of altitude!  This took quite a while – even for a very small boat – with Fiona whining impatiently the whole time, and Joy looking more and more doubtful about getting in the flimsy thing.  I huffed and puffed until the bellows of my lungs had transferred enough air inside the damn contraption.  Several times I saw stars again – the reflection of capillaries in my retinas – while straining not to hyperventilate.  When fully inflated, the water craft was smaller than expected, and light as a balloon.  We could only fit the three of us if we folded our legs like baby birds in a nest.  I wanted to explore the shoreline of the lake, and perhaps even paddle to the far western shore before the afternoon winds rose up, blowing everything back towards our camp.  My first mate and boatswain were extremely doubtful of my sanity as captain, and mutinous glances were exchanged before we even began the awkward process of boarding.

First, I prepared our camp for the onslaught of varmints that would surely take advantage of our absence.  All our food, in chew-resistant plastic containers, was set in plain sight on a rock so the desperate little rodents wouldn’t chew holes in the tent to see if there was anything good inside.  I marched the garbage, with its fragrant bear-attracting bacon wrapper, far down the trail and out of line with the campsite.  When I retrieved it later, I had to collect all the bits and pieces with their telltale imprints of chipmunk teeth, but thankfully there was nothing bigger in the vicinity that day.  Or, it wasn’t hungry.  More likely, the wildlife was weak with laughter at the spectacle of our first boat launch.

The boarding fiasco was hilarious, and probably the most fun we had on the trip.  The main camp has a perfect, pier-like boat launching rock that provides an easy step into the bottom of the boat.  Or so we thought.  We tried not to rub the boat against the rock while boarding, lest a sharp crack or spur poke a hole in the thin plastic.  I got in first, and the dinghy nearly folded in on itself, so more hyperventilation was needed to firm it up.  “It’s not leaking… it’s not leaking…,” I chanted between empty breaths.  We tried to put Fiona in first, she being the lightest by far, and Joy became distressed when it appeared as though her daughter might drift away forever, despite the ropes I had tied on.  It just didn’t make sense to put the child in danger first, in the clueless manner of an oblivious young mother pushing a stroller out into traffic.  We switched places, and I was the first to brave the deck, kneeling in the thicker, more buoyant bow.  Arms outstretched, I helped Fiona into the stern, which already sagged as if it would be submerged in short order.  That left the most vocal and doubtful member of our crew to board last, and fit herself into a space that might hold a basketball.

For encouragement, Fiona clambered in and out: “Look mom, it’s easy!”  And finally, it was decided that the tiny girl would stay on the rock, and be piled on last.  Joy tentatively reached out one leg, extremely discomfited by the moving, bobbing target, and held her pose like a mad ballerina shouting from the balcony for her partner to catch her.  It was great fun holding the boat in place and trying to ease the transfer of weight from solid rock to floating plastic, without ripping a fatal gash in its side.  Fiona couldn’t stop laughing long enough to hold the bowline, resulting in raucous near-mishaps and sharp commands that cracked off the granite walls of the lake basin like howling ricochets.  Eventually, with the orchestra pit in an uproar, Joy nestled safely inside, with her weight evenly (but distrustfully) distributed amidships.  As a grand finale, Fiona lithely stepped in the stern the way a bird alights on a windblown branch, and we were off on our journey.

The morning sun was already moving across the lake without us, hurrying to its apex in order to better roast us in our exposed position: crammed into the hole of a yellow, vinyl donut like human sprinkles.  At first, we were afraid to breathe, lest we capsize the diminutive craft.  Gradually, as feet fell asleep, thighs cramped, and pins & needles ravaged the crew, we discovered unconventional and limber ways to settle on our misshapen plastic bubble of a boat so we could enjoy the ride.  It was a wonderfully different perspective to be on the water, looking squarely out at the remarkable granite walls that encircled 90% of the lake.  To widen the view, I angled away from the shore and the many rock landings close by, until we were well out on the water and couldn’t see the bottom anymore.  This was a deep lake in places, I remembered from the times when I had looked down on sapphire depths from its surrounding ridges and platforms.  Joy had the same thought at the same time, and we corrected our course back towards the shoreline to be in position for an easy landfall in case of shipwreck.

The captain surveyed his vessel, and found things reasonably ship-shape.  Joy had settled into a tenuous truce with the buoyancy of our vinyl balloon, and was no longer in fear for her life.  I was wearing a daypack with our lunch and gear, and binoculars in the front.  The flimsy plastic paddles were lashed firmly to the oarlocks so they couldn’t float away.  Fiona nestled amidships, alternating to port or starboard, with an arm trailing dreamily in the water.  “I bet that looks like a big worm to some trout,” I said, ruining the moment with a bad joke, as she hastily withdrew from her reverie.  I silently rebuked myself to curb the sarcasm for once, and the need to narrate the cartoon caption for every moment, and simply try to relax in the present moment.

Leaving a rainbow slick of biodegradable sunscreen, we drifted westward along the southern shoreline.  Most of the way, the bottom of the lake and its jumbled rocks and tree trunks were sharply defined by the overhead sun, and the clear aquamarine water appeared shallower than it really was.  Green shadows lurked in the depths beside every boulder and under every drowned tree, their images broken up by the small waves that were beginning to dance around our boat.  Out in the middle of the lake, the wind had already started to pick up, and flash bulbs popped off the wave tips.

Soon we gained the western cove that I visited seen so many years before with Rob and Dave, and a pleasant little landscape invited us to come ashore.  The tangled strand of hemlock and alders that made walking this shoreline so difficult seemed natural and attractive from the water, and not at all deserving of the epithets I had hurled upon them in the past.  We found another flat rock dock, and clambered out gratefully, still bent over stiffly in our folded positions.  I tied the gaudily colored dinghy firmly against the wind, as it darted lightly on the surface like a water skeeter.  Disembarking on the doorstep of a charming, enchanted landscape, Fiona and I set about exploring, while Joy lounged gratefully on the sold ground beneath a shady tree.

There might be a better picnic spot in the Trinity Alps, or in various mountain cathedrals around the world, but the spot we found that day was our own little chapel.  An impeccably landscaped array of flat boulders formed a living room around an old fire pit that hadn’t been used in years.  On one side, miniature hemlocks and alders formed a pleasant garden backdrop.  On the other, the expanse of Big Bear Lake opened wide as a dream, across the lake to the eastern shore where we had taken up residence in the equivalent of a mountain motel.  This seldom-used area even had a unique, massive white granite “boat ramp” that was big enough to launch a destroyer.  Perhaps 50 yards across, and sloping deep into the lake at a 45-degree angle, this amazing feature lent itself perfectly to sunbathing with feet in the cool water, and head propped up for taking in the view.

Gazing back up the western flank of the mountains, towards the pass that I once navigated with my friends, the sun’s angle sharply defined the lavender ledges and dark green steps of vegetation, all the way up to where I knew Little Bear Lake lay on the other side.  It looked so alluring that I briefly considered taking the women up there tomorrow.  We had already planned a day hike so they could see the paradise I loved.  I quickly abandoned the notion, knowing full well that route was akin to hiking three sides of an uphill, boulder-strewn square.  Instead, we would be taking the eastern slopes that led up to Wee Bear, although they were sun-blasted and tougher to climb in places, they had the distinct advantage of being faster; with less altitude to gain.

We spent the afternoon picnicking on our snacks, skipping rocks, and making the acquaintance of a family of astonished chipmunks who surely thought we were generous gods.  When the inevitable afternoon wind started frisking eastward across the lake, we folded into the ludicrously small vinyl dinghy with the deftness of a team of clowns crowding into a toy car.  One push off with the oar, and the wind began to poke us along the right course with invisible fingers.  The outboard rowing unit (that was me, hanging off the bow) hardly had to work at all, and we were content to spin along, drifting slowly but surely in languid circles of drop-dead gorgeous scenery.  Our blissful amusement park ride ended almost exactly at the rock dock on the edge of our campsite.  Released from our vinyl nest, we flopped unceremoniously onto the hot white granite the way eggs are flipped from a frying pan.  I left the dinghy inflated, anchored on the dock with a smooth, heavy rock inside it, knowing it was the most comfortable seat in miles.

It was amusing to see many chipmunk droppings scattered in frustrated piles around the food containers where the determined little rodents had been gnawing the corners.  There were many marks and scars from small, but ineffective, power tools.  “I hope they broke a tooth,” I muttered as Joy wiped the hard plastic down with the sterilizing wipes she had brought for just such a biological emergency.  (Really.)  Our dinner was in those containers, and although this was before the widespread Hantavirus scares of the 21st Century, it was a comfort to know we had some control over what went into our mouths.  The first time a bug flies in your mouth when you’re camping, you will appreciate this.