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?

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Sprague Lake Trail

In the pine barrens that cover the trail I look for a black shape on the uphill side, maybe impatiently turning over rocks and growling testily– but there are only more trunks rising through the reddish-brown duff.

But down in the valley again, in an arm of a sea of grass and lazy elbows of clear water, we see a glistening brown question mark of an animal turn on a boulder and slip noiselessly into the channel. "That's a mink," Celeste whispers. We advance softly and scour the lanes of grass between spiked logs, the commas and parens of water written in the green. There is no retrograde swaying of stalks, no hesitant ripple to show his track, only a pair of female mallards calmly touring the waterway.

We give up after a time and find Sprague Lake a hive of human activity: parents with bored children; eager children with bored or unimaginative parents (the worst); hikers who seem to be merely animated displays for their new gear; ordinary middle-class sorts who are just happy to be there; and a number of men who sound like Jim Nabors.

Back at the Cabin

Celeste picks the 78s this time and I type furiously while the laptop's battery power lasts. We eat tuna noodle casserole by the light of the hissing propane lanterns and Celeste leafs through the old guest log. The idea of a 50-year anniversary celebration has germinated and she's looking for some definitive date of construction. But the only specific reference dates the addition of the kitchen, in 1971. We will just have to ask JoAn.

Monday, August 1st, 2011

In the morning the aspen trunks look like flesh, smooth, wrinkled where the branches strive. I eagerly trot across the road to my esteemed teacher: an icy stream, all gold and silver, in its bed of granite shoals and lined with great cow parsnips, tender firs and rough spruce. I follow the stream down to a big aspen leaning across and hang my towel on it, undress, and unbelievably, find myself sitting naked on a log, my feet and calves burning with the cold. Will I get in? Should I get in? There is none of this. I am in, I am in the water and the breath is squeezed from my body, chasing all the layered duff of doubts, fears, arrogances and wishes– there is only the stream and the black tangle of needles and the racing pebbles and the deep cold like a fire on my skin– then it's out to soap, then in again– then in and down, so my body is in its pool, and now comes the heaving, the struggle to stay in while the water seems to throb with my heart– then kneel and pass the last gate, cup my hands and soak my head and face while the cobbles dig into my knees and toes– and out, into steaming sunlight and the creek clattering safely behind– warm and sensing, receiving the wind as the trees do– without question, without design. By the time I crest the little footpath and see the cabin I miss her again and want to be burned by her icy fingers.

Then it's time to pack our things and meet Jim and JoAn at Hollowell Park, a small picnic area in Rocky Mountain National Park. There's a sense that the roads have always been here, along with the toll booths at the park entrance, made ridiculously to look like tiny log cabins– that all these things define the valleys and the meadows– and instead of interpreting what is, they contain it so that some modern pharisee may insert it into his pharisee history.

But none of this means anything to us; we sit under a lodgepole and eat our macaroni salad and sandwiches, then drive up to Bear Lake and sit watching the lookers-on walk by with their bucket hats and t-shirts. According to JoAn there was a lodge here, but apparently it was pinched out by a rising clutter of regulation or its heirs simply grew tired of running the business. She and I stare out over the water, and I try to imagine the place we're sitting as the end of a dirt road populated by a few Model As and hikers strolling around in wool and leggings– a lodge in such a setting wouldn't be such a bad thing when you compare it to the city the National Park Service has built in the wilderness.

I'm forcefully reminded of this later, while Celeste and I march down the trail from Cub Lake– clammy and tired after a rugged two miles of steady uphill. Coming the other way are soft suburbanites, softer even than me, walking casually, dry, well-scrubbed– is this really our heritage? This exercise track in the woods? The terrain of the rockies from a distance inspires glowing generalities– but look closer, look at each other, you visitors– I include myself- look at that city in the wilderness– it cannot last.

And the wilderness? Say rather the wood, the place outside the farm, outside the pasture, the place inimical to humankind; whether it is a "wilderness" or a "reserve" or a "national forest". That it stay inimical, that is the important thing, whether it conforms to a federal standard or not. We walked through this forest, trudged through it;

the trail is a steep track through stands of pine and aspen–moderating only to climb again after a gentle turn– and we are both drawing deep breaths, surging with the effort, our hands heavy and a little swollen– and still the trail heads up; eventually, in a hogback covered with pines, the trail descends and off our right shoulder we can see white and pink Vs of water through the trees. But the lake is still many more toe-jamming grades away. Celeste concedes; her knee is flaring and we turn to go back. It is as well; as Nicholson Baker says, why break into fulfillment's desolate attic? the lake will become a lovingly-tinted illustration of memory as it becomes a reason for another hike– an ending made sweeter by years of waiting.

Sunday, July 31st, 2011

The next morning Celeste brings the campers across the road some coffee and I show them the tub. Some time later they thank us again and leave. "They're well within their rights to stay there," Celeste had said the night before, after we'd brought the last of our bags in. "That's public land over there– they can camp anywhere they want."

As the white Toyota disappears we pull out the tools Jim left and start on the front wall, staining and prepping. We finish all the siding and about a third of the deck when the first drops fall. We retreat into the cabin and I take stock: when you combine the beer the Vanderhoofs left, the order from Liquor Mart and the cider we brought from Portland there's enough to stock a cooler case.

While Celeste cooks up some pasta I acquaint myself with the Victrola and seek out all the 78s that promise dividends: The Volunteer Firemen, the Original Dixieland Band, Arthur Fields, Harry Lauder. Sometimes the crank runs down during a side and the tune wheezes like a deflating windsock puppet. I wind the crank and the tune swells again, bobbing and marching crazily. I match its rhythm with my own internal wind-up and it's a relief almost to leave them behind and eat to the hiss of the creek and the aspens outside.

After a sigh of fatigue and a pleasant tingle in the feet, it is sweet to lie there with the forest closing us in, standing between us and all the uncertainty and grinding routine of the lands beyond.

Saturday, July 30th, 2011

I dawdle over my blog posts while Celete visits with JoAn downstairs and Jim curses quietly in his office. He relies on internet service that seems to have the same reliability as a regularly-shelled World War I telegraph line. Meanwhile the Vanderhoofs return with the cabin key and Deborah injures herself on a heavy piece of furniture. It's a painful bruise and Jim and Robin agree she should see the M.D. It's a somber time; Deborah's already loaded up with several obligations, including us, and I feel self-conscious about adding to the burden. But it turns out O.K., and Deborah and Jim see us out, and we drive to Boulder to pick up supplies for the cabin.

Boulder is a smaller Portland of the Rockies– an attractive little town with a strong tang of sanctimony. We eat at a stiff, dark restaurant called Mateo– purportedly French, where the waiters have to keep one hand behind their backs while they pour your water. I have an expensive burger which they serve with fries ("frites") in a sawed-off paper bag. The drinks, too, are expensive and I'm not surprised to see the prices listed as whole numbers, no decimals, no cents column– an affectation of hip restaurants that is wearing really thin.

The burger is excellent– and the waiters are almost too eager, but friendly enough– and we're fortified for our trip to the Liquor Mart, a building the size of a Safeway stocked with nothing but beer, wine and liquor. I'm strangely underwhelmed; the depth of inventory is impressive but the breadth isn't much better than many of the neighborhood liquor stores in Portland.

McGuckin Hardware, however, is a different matter. The typical customer is dazed and freshly distracted each time they pass a new aisle. The building is at least as large as a typical Walmart and completely stocked with hardware, tools and related items. We go there for a vinyl repair kit, a coffee carafe for the cabin, and my Holy Grail for this trip: a puffy cap that will make me look like James Sikking in Outland. We score on all three.

The cliffs over the South St. Vrain River are purple and a rich red as we make our way to the cabin. By the time we turn onto the Ski Road it is quite dark; so when the white Toyota shows its trunk to us it is a surprise. Celeste climbs out and I see a headlamp bobbing out of the trees to the left. It's a young guy with his hand up in a gesture of assurance. He says they'll move right away and Celeste is apologetic but negative. They are in the clearing across from the cabin. I see few huddled shapes of luggage, a fire, a guitar case. While the guy's friend waits for him to turn the car around Celeste relents. "I mean, they took their guitar out and everything," she says. I say it's okay with me and she climbs out again. The guy is surprised and very pleased; they promise to be quiet and douse their fire. Later Celeste brings out some marshmallows the Vanderhoofs left and I ask them if they'd been in the creek yet. "It's not warm," I warn them. They laugh in a way that makes it clear that they knew this.

Friday, July 29th, 2011

In the gloom of seven A.M. I savage my foot on a piece of flat, jagged sandstone that serves as a door stop. My toe burns and the pain signals overwhelm all other warnings, remembrances and questions and I lay there squinting my eyes shut and breathing hard for a while. Celeste offers a variety of over-the-counter solutions but I just lay there throbbing.

Later that morning the pain subsides while I'm uploading photos, and a tension begins across my shoulders as the tedium of cataloguing sets in. I really should be posting this travelogue but there is no time; our plans have become definite and cut across my intention like a flash flood. Soon we will be isolated in the cabin and internet connection is impossible.

Jim drives Celeste JoAn and I to the cabin and JoAn notices all the yellow ovoids that mark the cut pines off the ski road. "Did this burn?" she asks. "No, the beetle," Jim says. In a clearing on the left side of the road we can see the blotches of rusty red on the mountainsides: thousands of beetle-killed trees.

When we meet the Vanderhoofs and we're standing around the fire across the road from the cabin, the disaster seems far away, and Celeste says she's not convinced this part of the forest is in danger because of a major fire in 1906 and the subsequent reforestation by young, healthy firs and aspens. And the forest around the cabin does look green; when I take the trail to my bath hole I must slalom around tender fir and spruce saplings and giant stalks of cow parsnip. The creek is just as I left it, a beautiful confusion of silver and black logs, pink cobbles and white and gold gravel. The water looks gold deepening to brown in its bed; but when I put on my trunks– in deference to the Vanderhoofs and the rest who may be around– the water is clear– clear, clear, clear. The cold and motion surrounds me and supports me; there is no distraction or temptation, just cold and sand and quivering aspen leaves. I really want to stay and make minor improvements to the hole, maybe a bench, splash around building dams and altars of rock; but I must be visible and normal for Celeste, so I put on my dry clothes and climb the hill back to the fire pit, where Russ Vanderhoof, his daughter Danielle, Jim and Celeste are talking.

Danielle's husband Al arrives while we're there– a tall, amiable guy wearing glasses and a baseball cap with the face of Cookie Monster on the crown. The group talks of trees on your property, including our confrontation with the owner of the lot to the north over a butchered fir– old friends of Jim and Russ– Richard Brautigan.

Later, we all go in to join Russ' wife Robin, JoAn and Danielle's little girls for a profusion of picnic food– all of which Robin lays out cheerfully and efficiently. Russ, Celeste, Al and JoAn stay in the darkened kitchen and Annabelle, the youngest, half-sits, half-squirms at her place. Russ talks about canoeing in the Boundary Waters and Celeste recurs to the idea of buying a canoe and using it on the Yampa. A picture of a cliff filling our view as the green carries us along and the far-off yellow shape of a mountain lion tracking across its upper reaches occupies me for a moment.

Before we leave, Al gets us all to stand in a photo and I manage to shoot the group before I have to climb up on the deck with the rest. Jim, I think, is ready to go. We pull into his driveway when the sun is orange. Deborah is worried about Kobe, their cat. He's been making weird noises and now sits behind the couch looking morose. Jim, Celeste, Deborah and I group around him, talking to him like an infant, before Deborah can't stand it anymore and looks at the ceiling and laughs with a kind of resigned disgust.

We watch a biopic of Frida Kahlo and that night I have a heartbreakingly elusive dream about a beautiful black dancer who's enamored of me.

The next morning my toe hurts again.

Thursday, July 28, 2011

The next day Celeste is up, it seems, at dawn and I fully intend to turn over and go back to sleep but instead I pick up my notebook and begin writing. Jim is up, too, and soon I hear him in his office. I hear him and Celeste talking softly. I shower and dress and find the coffee. While I lay in bed and write Celeste comes in and uploads her photos; Jim passes through occasionally to drop amiable complaints about his work and offer simple hospitalities.

Eventually Celeste walks downstairs to visit JoAn and presently I follow her. The three of us sit around the breakfast table down there and the subject of Celeste's Iran Flickr set comes up. She had scanned them from a set of slides JoAn had kept from the late 50s of a long-awaited visit of President Eisenhower to Tehran. The photos, I said, were rare objects from an era of friendship that neither government cared to admit right now. JoAn regretfully shakes her head. She remembers diplomacy and even amity when she lived in Shiraz with her husband Bill, an officer for A.I.D., and her kids Jim and Janet. There were concerts over which she presided as a then-untried voice teacher and even a cultural exchange with a pop singer whose song she can still remember; she sings a bar or two, but the rest is gone for now. Later Deborah comes downstairs with a pitcher and asks who wants to join her in a wine cooler. We all say yes and Celeste takes an inventory of the refrigerator. There's sweet white wine and a mango nectar blend and ginger ale; it's all poured into the pitcher and the result is pretty good.

Celeste says I don't like mangoes and Deborah asks me "What don't you like about them?" "It's their fibrous texture," I say. She assures me I haven't had a good one. "In Mexico we had a mango tree, a lime tree and an avocado tree. There was a man who helped us and he would go that way to get the laundry. He would pick some mangoes and they were real firm and smooth." "Like a peach," Celeste puts in. "Yeah, like a peach– just slightly more dense than a peach– and they were delicious– and not at all fibrous." I finish the pitcher after everyone else declines.

Later we get into some red wine over dinner– a pasta dish– and Jim and JoAn talk about Nigeria and Botswana. Politics comes up and Jim says that the best features of Botswana's self-government endured while Tanzania's socialist experiment remained as an uncomfortable legacy, a jacket that didn't fit. Celeste says that Nyarare's policies led to better health care and education in the long run. She complains loudly about the diffuse, shrill May Day rallies of years past and the lack of any clear source of concentrated anger. Jim agrees that there's an apathy problem but thinks that the next round of elections will reveal a new geography that may point to a way out of our gloomy swamp.

I seem to be even more tired than the night before, so much so that I can't remember any of my dreams.