Wednesday, August 3rd - Friday, August 5th, 2011

It's difficult to take that last walk down to the creek but I must– it's only right; I can't just close the gate of the canopy, get in the truck with Cel. and drive by the trail as if we were coming back again that evening– this time there's fear mixed with the sadness and a tired swinging at the ghoul of finality– yet I have not taken my last swing at the fucker–

Celeste and I trudge up a decaying logging road whose ribs are shot through with aspens, keeping the low rush of the creek to our left. Pretty soon the trees are so close you must push past them as you do the milling fans in a crowded coliseum– their branches rake your face and legs. I see a pile of bearshit and peer through the moiré of aspen trunks, looking for any interruption of their monotony. There is nothing but the creek and the trees, and the brown and black triangles of aspen logs underfoot.

The trees thin out and the leafy undergrowth and logs are replaced by needles and pink and yellow gravel. The trees are pines, some with jagged grey fingers that jab you in the ribs as you walk by. In one close stand we find the orange shell of an ancient oven, a relic of a 19th-century logging camp that once stood here. I look around for the odd cut nail or axe head, but there is nothing but needles, pink cobbles and aspen saplings.

We spend our last night in the mountains at Jim and Deborah's. At various times and in various combinations we talk about: Winterset; Ames, IA; blue crabs; column shift Falcons; the twin beds at the cabin; Don's sinus infection; Deborah's brother's friend's fear of mites; Aunt Flossie's letter; Uncle Van; JoAn's father Arvi; Bill Ramsay's Model A; Uncle Dick Rankin's Colorado Outdoors magazines; Jim's friend Bug and their one bowl, one cup system; learning to breathe by laying on your back; the length of an average person's vocal cords; the little boys that saw Deborah when she thought she was alone for her camp shower; Oscar Peterson; Deborah's terrible bruise; the Feast of St. John in Portugal and its toy squeak hammers.

JoAn hugs us both and says how glad she is that we could meet and that we could visit the cabin– Celeste has opened her birthday gifts and the table is breaking up. I thank her for hosting us and she says "Well, it's really Jim's now," and I explain that I think of them all as Ramsays and the cabin belongs to the Ramsays. "Well, you're included," she insists. Not for the last time I think of parents and grandparents and the frightening washing-away of time between meetings and all the changes that entails– and I tell myself that we will meet again here, being calm in front of that ghoul again– what else can I do?