Chapter 8.
From The Pier To The
Campground
Everyone and everyone's gear were up on the pier. Andrea checked one last time and gave the sign. The skipper, with what seemed like just a trace of “good luck guys, this was your idea” in his voice yelled up “OK, see you back here Monday at three!” The boat started straight away to the southeast, then turned northwest towards Carrington Point, on the way to San Miguel where the rest of the passengers and their gear would disembark through the surf in the skiff. Katy was disappointed that we were in the minority, staying behind here at Santa Rosa, but I told her about what I’d read about San Miguel. It was a rough landing and a rough campout. Maybe someday, but I’d rather be here today, at least at this stage in my outdoors experience. I started getting a GPS fix: SRPIER.
Tim from the Park Service had his truck parked there at the end of the pier, but not for us. Perhaps he was picking up supplies brought out by the boat. He stood there giving moral support while Andrea gave the camper’s briefing. It appeared she was staying on Santa Rosa with us. It looked like she would be trying to arrange vehicle trips to various places on the island maybe today, tomorrow and Sunday as circumstances allowed. We would all be restricted to the ridgeline surrounding this bay except when accompanied by a ranger as a Vicker family sponsored hunt was taking place on the rest of the island this weekend. With horses on the island, the rule about gates was to leave them as you found them, open or shut. There was a Youth Conservation Core group set up in the front campsites, but the rear ones were better anyway. Try to clean up food nearer the front; we didn’t want to train animals to come down into most of the campground. Stay off the runway, it’s an active airstrip and people shouldn’t be walking on it.
She shouted to be heard above the wind. We didn’t hear much as we were preparing our packs for the hike to the campground, principally getting our three 2-1/2 gallon water bottles together; strapping the food box back on the outside of my pack; tying the canteens, one each, on our packs; and putting my day pack in the top of Katy’s big pack. This done we looked ready. Some people were already heading up the pier, others were still re-arranging gear like we were.
“Will this be in the book?” Katy was becoming fond of asking.
“Yes, of course.”
We got our packs on our backs; they were indeed heavy, Katy’s heavier than mine thanks to this last rearrangement. The three water jugs were still there sitting on the pier. I picked up one and handed it to Katy, 20 more pounds for her, then picked up the other two, including the one marked “X” for “slow leak.” We would use that one first, I reminded myself. We started up the pier, maybe the third party in line. One group was already ashore; one was mid-pier, maybe a hundred yards or so to land. Andrea was saying “three o’clock, OK?” to a lone hiker starting out about the same time with much less equipment. He must have been a day hiker returning with the boat that afternoon; we didn’t see him again.
The pier consisted entirely of iron pipe supports except for a few wood pilings right at the beach. Facing outward (northeast), a platform jutted out to the right at the end. This is where the boat had backed up. Some sort of makeshift crane that looked like a bent over light pole (including the lights) was out at the end, not in use. It was 11:33; we started walking.
The pier ran level to the top of a 20-foot high cliff above a small beach. Once on the cliff there was a kiosk with Park Service information and choices on how to proceed. The hiking trail was marked. We got a new Channel Islands National Park newspaper which turned out to be the same as the one we were already carrying and noted that we already had copies of the park’s general brochure, the Hunta Virus warning and the island map.
We were tired; I was already sweating though the stiff breeze was dry. After fifty more feet, Katy asked to stop and rest soon. We came up to a gate. There was a sign there telling us to leave the gate as we found it, being specific that if we found it open we should leave it open and if we found it shut we should go through and shut it again after us. “Where do people come from anyway where this convention isn’t obvious?” I mused to myself. We stopped and set down the water and took the weight off our backs by leaning against the fence.
“This isn’t as bad as the test hike yet,” Katy said.
“No it’s twenty degrees cooler and you have a better pack,” I replied.
“And we’re not carrying as much food and water,” she said, having a last word as usual.
A few feet up the trail there was an animal bone off to the left. “Last week’s hiker,” I thought.
We went on through what must have once been a corral or loading pen and up to another gate, this one open. It too had the sign with the directions on how to use it. I looked back; nobody was in view behind us yet. Camping spots would be first come, first served and although we knew little about what we were facing, it might make some difference to be towards the head of the pack. The two groups ahead of us were spreading out rapidly, no hope of catching them.
We continued to the south edge of the developed area at the generator house and rested again. The diesels were running, making electricity for those on the island who were hooked up. The road ahead proceeded over a rise and out of site. It was unclear which canyon up there would contain the campground, the near one or the far one. Couldn’t be too far, it was supposed to only be a one and a half mile hike. Couldn’t be very close to here either, I doubted we’d gone as much as half a mile yet.
“How far have we gone so far, dad?”
“Oh, probably about half a mile, maybe a third of the way, at least a fourth,” I always tried too hard to be accurate in the wrong direction.
Keith, the Vicker’s property caretaker who, with his wife, lives on the island year round except for a couple weeks vacation, drove by in a truck and waved.
I looked back again, nobody was coming but I didn’t want to lose too much time while we had the strength.
“Let’s keep going,” I said, remounting the pack against a fence with some difficulty and picking up the two water jugs. My hands were tired, but not as bad as in yesterday’s test hike. We trudged up a light grade. Towards the top of the rise, we could see a couple of trucks parked near an intersection. People were milling around. A twin-engine plane flew over at a few hundred feet, then turned and went back to sea as if to proceed to Santa Cruz. I didn’t think much of it. Five minutes later he was landing on the airstrip, pulling up to the intersection with the trucks and stopping its engines. People started bustling about. I didn’t have enough interest to try to figure out whether a party was arriving or leaving. Maybe both. This lasted for several minutes; we drew closer, slowly.
When we were a hundred yards away, the aircraft engines started back up (right first), and the plane turned and taxied back over the rise in the middle of the runway to the southeast end.
“Katy, watch there, we’ll probably be just about where he lifts off.”
“Coool, dad.”
Shortly he came roaring over the rise, already fifty feet high and turned north just as he passed our position. The trucks started up and drove back towards the compound, just drivers. It must have been a departure.
“Dad, this needs to be in the book.”
“I’ll make sure it is.”
Keith stopped when he reached us. “I have to take some stuff back to the house there, but then I’ll come back up the road and pick up anybody who wants a lift. Just rest here if you want and I’ll be along in about fifteen minutes,” he offered.
“Thanks, we’d appreciate that, might just do it,” I replied. The next party behind us was now in view back at that last gate and there was another just behind them.
“Well, just rest here along the road and I’ll be along in fifteen minutes. Carry everybody up to the campground who wants a ride.”
“Ok,” I said, “Thanks.”
He drove on, leaving dust.
In my reading of the brochure, it was promised that there were no rides to the campground. It was camping after all.
We paced on, leaving footprints. It wasn’t that first canyon that I thought it might have been, it must be that next one up there, the one that looked like it was a mile away, and who knew how far in.
We stopped to rest beside the road. My pack fell over.
“Fall over!” I commanded. “Good,” I commended, tardily.
The next party, two women each with packs and carrying something between them, struggled by, made pleasantries and stopped to re-stack several yards ahead. Tired, we continued resting. The next party after them, a couple of surfers carrying boards in addition to their packs, were coming up fast, and another party of three was in view now behind them. So much for campsite competition, we’d just have to take what we got.
We loaded back up and started another push. There was another intersection with a kiosk to the right up ahead.
“Let’s see what that sign says,” I said.
“OK,” the panted reply.
To our seaward side was a fence and another dirt road inside the airstrip paralleled ours. At the kiosk, a closed gate joined the two and then continued down into a gully. The two women were still behind us; the surfers passed us at this point, opened the gate and went through, shutting it behind them, and kept on going southeast. The first two parties had been out of sight for some time. Was the campground here or further? The party of three, two parents who appeared to be in their twenties and a boy of about six, all loaded down and looking quite hale walked up.
“Is this it?” I asked.
“Oh yes, this is it,” the man smiled reassuringly. “I have some energy left, let me carry one of those water jugs,” he offered, not seeming even winded. “I’ll leave it by the water spigot in the middle of the campground, you can’t miss it.”
“Yes, it has our name on it, won’t be a problem,” I replied.
The water in the spigot being potable, the irony of this offer would grow on us throughout our stay. This, too, was promised not to be the case in my reading of the brochure.
“Sure,” I said, carefully picking the one that wasn’t yet suspected of leaking and setting the other one down so I could hand it off without dropping it.
“It’ll be right there, you can’t miss it.”
“I’m sure I’ll see it. We’ll all be in there together later anyway.”
“OK, see you later.”
“Good luck.”
Campers were often friendly like this, very un-city-like.
They passed the kiosk and went up the hill over a small pass of white rocks. We followed, a little slowly. The surfers were out of sight down the hill. Keith drove up with the two ladies in the back.
“You just had to tough it out and finish on your own didn’t you,” he shouted, pulling up to park at the kiosk.
“Yeah.”
This was the worst climb on the path and not steep or long at all, nothing like the grades on the test hike near our house, but it was upwind and we were tired. White dirt blew in our faces. We came to a pinch in the trail, a cut out of the rock to the right and a sturdy fence protecting us from falling 100 feet into the creek on the left. The campground was in view ahead!
First, a hundred yards on down the trail the pit toilets were on the right. In the middle of the trail at that point was the “brisk shower” surrounded at the moment by a large blue tee-pee. After another fifty yards there was a large installation, apparently the Youth Conservation Corp mess tent. Beyond that were several tent sites, maybe fourteen or fifteen, the first five or six already occupied with two or three tents apiece and a couple behind that were already claimed by newcomers.
Each site consisted of a two-sided shelter with partial roof, apparently protecting against winds from up canyon, and a picnic table. The insides were pointed in our direction.
“Those must be for the windy season,” I said, a little worried. We had camped out at Jalama Beach on the mainland just north of here a few years ago on a July 4 long weekend. After getting a campsite on the hillside by lottery, we spent about half the night with the tent dome blowing in on us. I had slept in the most upwind spot, being heaviest, rather, had attempted to sleep as the tent wall kept banging me in the face. Finally the wind had died some around 4 a.m. and I did sleep for a while before sunrise. Next day we experimented with different arrangements of the campsite, parking the van upwind, for example, but nothing worked much and it was clear why the hillside spots not near shrubbery were sometimes left unoccupied even on a busy four-day weekend.
I knew from having talked with people at the Park Service earlier in the year that late summer and fall were better for weather at the islands and that winds and rain would be less likely if we scheduled the trip later. This is why we had delayed from Spring Break to August. One volunteer had said that they always waited until school started then went out for a week when it was prettiest and nicest. My expectation was that spring and early summer were the “windy season” and that this wasn’t. Island Packers personnel going around this morning saying that the weather would be beautiful out there had seemed to confirm our plan in this regard. Still, it was not my experience with campgrounds that superfluous improvements, like unneeded wind shelters, were common.
The family of three claimed the first one they reached, just right of the trail. We passed by, retrieved our water jug and went into the next one a little further off and to the left.
This would be our home for the next three nights.
“Do you want to eat lunch or set up the tent first?” I asked.
“Let’s set up first.”
“OK.”
We took off our packs onto the picnic table. Katy’s fell over as usual.
“Fall over,” I commanded mine. It didn’t. “Hmmm.” We took a pre-setup picture, I got a GPS fix: “SRCAMP.”
I detached the tent from my pack and rolled it out in the shelter. We squared it up there, leaving about three feet on each side for access facing the door up the trail, put in the poles and started figuring out the fly. I put stakes in the four corners, bending one pretty good trying to hammer it in.
“When you need a hammer, whatever is in your hand is a hammer,” I remarked, a bit of folk wisdom. We used rocks, calling them “hammers”.
The tent up, we detached our pads and sleeping bags. Katy put hers in on the right; I took the left (facing in from the door). She put her feet by the door, I put my head by the door, but soon decided it didn’t matter and switched around to match her. We lay the packs between us and detached and unloaded more stuff. My pack was by our feet, Katy’s by our heads. The daypack went up in the corner by my feet at the door. Unpacked articles and clothing started to fill in the rest of the spaces around us. The camping alarm clock turned up, it had been in my pack after all. Katy took out a zip-lock of fruity pebbles and started snacking.
“That was supposed to be breakfast….”
“I know; I’m hungry.”
Back outside, we moved the table from downwind to the unprotected east side of the tent without the door. This made a makeshift third wall, but not a very effective one. I put up the most leaky water jug on the furthest, upwind side of the table and stowed the others on the opposite side of the shelter.
There was a scraggly plant nearby. Katy dubbed it the “Grim Reaper.”
The two ladies passed by and went on to the site right behind ours.
It was 1:30; Andrea was making rounds through the
campground, she stopped to visit with us.
”I can’t get a vehicle this afternoon, the drive over to Carrington
Point is
off, but we are going to hike Lobo Canyon tomorrow morning, leaving
about
eight. Do you want to go?”
“Sure,” I said, grasping at what little structure might be offered but forgetting to ask Katy. “Do you want to go to Lobo Canyon, Katy?”
“I guess,” she was non-committal but seemed resistant to the idea of doing anything.
“The map says it is thirteen miles over there and back.”
“Oh yes, but we’ll drive most of the way. If you hike all the way you will walk six miles, but you don’t have to do all of that. It’s too far to walk the whole way without making it really exhausting. This is just a chance to get to some other part of the island besides here, our only chance to go into the hunting area. We should be back around three.”
“So bring our lunch?” I asked.
“Oh yes, it will take all day.”
“OK, we’ll be there.”
“Meet out at the kiosk about eight.”
I asked some other questions about the island history and learned a little more about the Vickers and Vails, prior owners of the island. The island staff consisted of a full time Vicker’s caretaker, a full time law enforcement ranger, a full time fox breeder, a part time ranger, Tim, and some regular visitors.
She then moved on to the family of three next up, staying there only half a minute. Looked like they wouldn't be going with us tomorrow. Six miles walking was too much for the boy, they thought.
Done with the setup, we got back in the tent and lay on our sleeping bags and rested. I began to feel despair, urban withdrawal. There was very little left to do today and a lot of day left. None of the usual escapes, mail, e-mail, things to fix, things to accomplish, were available. And, as with most trips like this, I hadn’t slept well last night and had been up very early this morning. We had books to read, but we were here to do things together….
Katy got our her book, “The Silver Chair,” fourth in the Narnia series by C. S. Lewis, and started reading it. I stared at the ceiling. Katy had said that she didn’t want to do a lot of hikes and that was about all there was going to be to do here, in my estimation. Well, we’d do some anyway and we’d try to do other things too. What other things?
How long would we be here? Counting from when the boat left port until when it was supposed to have us back in port, it would be about eighty-three hours. That was a long time, about a day longer than Viannah and I had spent in the Grand Canyon, and a big chunk of that Grand Canyon time was spent doing something. Once I was on the boat on the way back, I’d be in motion, I’d be doing something to make progress, I’d be fine. I’d be looking forward to sleeping in a real bed.
That was after three nights sleeping here, and who knows doing what else. Maybe close to nothing else.
I looked at Katy, contentedly reading. “Are you OK,” I asked.
“Yes,” she was totally nonchalant about it all. “Are you OK?”
“Yes.”
She went back to her book.
“Are you ready to eat?”
After a pause, “OK.”
Today’s lunch, meat sandwiches, the only two bananas, and water bottles were supposed to be crushed into the top of the daypack. I opened it up and there they were. We went out and sat at the bench. It was 2:30. That was good; we were getting out of synch with the clock. On the other hand, we wanted to be settling down for the night at dark, which would be earlier than usual for us.
“Dad, will there be pictures in the book?”
“Maybe, we could scan some in or you could draw
something.”
”I know how to put pictures in documents.”
“Yes, I do too, if we have pictures to put in it.”
She ate half the sandwich and started to throw the rest away.
“Don’t throw that away, save it for later. We’ll just have to carry it out as trash.”
“OK,” she put it back in its bag. The bananas were ripe but not brown. Just right.
“Dad, will this be in the book?”
“What’s that?”
”Eating.”
“Well, we won’t be able remember absolutely everything that happens and some things would be too much detail anyway. You know, when I wrote the book about Viannah’s trip, she was supposed to help me by proofing and correcting chapters after I wrote them and maybe writing some of her own. She never did it much though; I ended up doing most of it myself. But, you’re different; we might be able to work on it together. Anything either of us remembers can get into the book somehow.”
“Yeaaah.”
This affirmation was drawn out with a slide down in pitch of about a fourth, an expression for more than just assent or mild agreement. More like, “That sounds like an interesting, coool idea.”
Being newcomers to the canyon, we didn’t know how severe the animals-in-food-and-trash problems would be, but I remembered the squirrels in the Grand Canyon getting into my sack lunch that I carelessly left unattended on the table for five minutes. We secured the food in its box and the trash in a trash sack and hung them each from hooks in the wind shelter. We then got back in the tent for a little rest, maybe a nap. The wind started to pick up.
The tent started flapping around. Every breath of wind caused the trash bag to crinkle loudly and similar bags in the tent near the walls made noise too. This was not going to be conducive to sleeping, day or night. I rolled on my side. More noise. Katy asked for the hairbrush and started trying to straighten out her hair. I continued to consider my depression.
It was something I was going to have to face while we were here, in fact, part of the reason we were here was to test and face these very emotions and conditionings. At home I was always threatening to get rid of cable TV, it seemed to consume a lot of time and attention for nothing, or worse than nothing. The kids could talk at any length about the content of a worthless TV show and often would until Viann would say, “I don’t want to hear about TV shows at the dinner table!” Well, taken near its limits, this was the dream that I was threatening to move towards, that simpler life with more creative living and less junk poured in from the outside. It was the root of the Alaska dream and the Antarctica dream and the Panhandle of Texas dream and perhaps the travel to Mars dream as well, to get away from the noise, or at least to have it confined in a radio that could be turned off as desired, to be a wizard in a tall tower and only venture out rarely and gravely.
I looked out the window at the nearby campsites and the hill with dead grasses rolling off as the backdrop. This place was pretty desolate. What had been attractive about coming out here? The remoteness? Yes. The difficulty? Yes. The mystery of what’s out there? Yes. But, I’d always said I would rather be on a work crew or an investigator, someone who was there for some reason; I’m not much of a spectator, not much of a tourist.
I lay with my eyes shut and tried napping a little. Katy did too. We both might have dozed off for a while.
Katy was reading again. I thought, “Well, I brought a couple of books, and we’re here for a long time, it won’t hurt for me to pass a little time reading too.” I got out The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky. Mitya’s father had been murdered and Mitya was the prime suspect. He was off in some town wasting stolen money chasing after his beloved Grushenka when the authorities had caught up with him. I was in the middle of “The Preliminary Investigation” which, like many works of Dickens, might well have been sold by word count.
During the Grand Canyon expedition I had been reading Les Miserables (though I didn’t pack it in with me). What was it about me that had to be reading these downer books all the time?
I forged through a couple of chapters of Dostoevsky and felt a little more depressed as a result. "Maybe I should read the other book here and continue this one after we get back," I thought.
“Gosh we should have brought our chairs,” I joked.
“Dad, you made us leave them at home!”
“Yes, I didn’t want to carry the weight.”
“Oh yes.”
I climbed out of the tent and walked 50 yards east to the edge of the creek. The creek was in its own sub-canyon, maybe 50 feet deeper than the floor of the broader canyon where the tent sites were. I walked back to the tent.
“Katy, let’s look around.”
”Where?”
”Just around the campground. Put your
shoes on.” It was 5:30.
“OK.”
I consulted the map. “Hike 1, Water Canyon Beach” was the only one marked “Easy.” It was going down to the beach at the mouth of the canyon. “Hike 3, Water Canyon” was going up the canyon looking at the wildlife around the creek. It could be any length you liked, depending on where you turned around and was marked “Moderate to strenuous.”
I put the map back in my pocket. Katy came out.
“Let’s go up to the top of the campground and see how far this trail goes,” I suggested.
We went the last hundred yards past the last campsite and found an animal trap under a bush. It was empty. I wondered if they were trying to keep animals out of the campground this way. The bait can was empty too. The trail continued up to what could be another pinch pass. We went on up and found that the trail did in fact end at a sheer face dropping into the creek. We looked around, there were rock climbing possibilities ahead and some less used trails going off different ways back, but no obvious next place to go. “Hikes up the canyon must proceed up the creek bed,” I thought.
We walked down the edge of the cliff. It wasn’t always a cliff; in places it was just a steep bank with crisscrossing trails going down. Katy noticed this.
“Let’s go down there!” she seemed interested in the exploration. That was good.
“OK.”
We edged down a fairly easy trail, switched back a time or two, passed a rusted piece of pipe going nowhere and came to the running water of the stream.
“The Indians had pipe, I see,” I remarked. I explained the inside family joke to Katy. Whenever dad and I used to hike when I was a kid, we’d come across interesting things in the creeks around Marysville. “The Indians had tires, I see,” dad would say.
Katy laughed politely.
A pool was full of tadpoles, dozens of small ones and several larger ones. Katy threw rocks in the water to see them move.
“Coool.”
We slowly went downstream crossing on rocks or hopping or going around on ledges as needed. I would make an evaluation of a path and move forward. Katy would come up behind me, make her own evaluation and more often than not, go a different way. She makes her own decisions. At one point, I made a moderately difficult reach from one rock, taking a step on a small, slippery hold, and jumping down onto a rocky sandbar. Katy tried it but didn’t trust the middle hold and couldn’t quite make the reach. Finally she decided to go around on the other side, no small detour that involved considerable climbing and thrashing through bushes.
Each pond had its share of tadpoles in both sizes. There was no sign of any actual frogs.
The east side of the stream, opposite the campground, was a cliff containing numerous caves in the sandstone in various sizes. We named one “head cave” because it was about large enough to contain a person’s head. Many others would be large enough for a person to occupy. Katy wanted to climb up to some of them.
Ten years earlier I might have done it. Even in the Grand Canyon, I had suggested some climbs on Tuesday, the “at the bottom” day, in which Viannah didn’t have interest, but today I was the conservative expedition leader in charge of everybody’s safety. With a little reluctance, I declined. Katy, asked again but then, disappointed, went on ahead. Looking downstream, the sedimentary layers were inches thick and were tilted downhill at about twice the slope of the streambed itself.
“Katy, look at this, these layers go downhill faster than the water.” It was an odd perspective. Our camera, a cheap instamatic, was not up to this grasp. Also, I was being conservative. We only had about 60 pictures worth of film with us. I don’t know why I hadn’t brought at least two more 24 rolls; they weren’t very big or heavy. (Hadn't that been a Lesson Learned at the Grand Canyon too?)
Around a bend, we encountered a fence. I went over, Katy went under. Then there was a road ascending steeply both ways away from a low water crossing. We crossed and followed the stream down to the water but found that the beach had the stream water dammed up into a little lake that we would have to cross to reach it. After some investigation, we went back up to the road to look for broader alternatives.
First we went up the side that did not head back to the campground. There was a Chevron windsock and convergence of several fences at the top but it was just a broken field of dead grasses with no nearby ways to reach the waterfront. So, we went back down to the creek and started up the road the other way.
The sun at that point was shining directly down the steeply inclined road; I adjusted my hat for little improvement. Katy said, “Look,” pointing behind us. Our shadows went all the way down to the creek.
“We’re 300 feet tall,” I commented.
“Yeaaah.”
At the top of the hill we found the campground kiosk and followed the trail back up to the toilet area. The wind in the pinched off pass was worse than before. Some of the YCC kids were showering, taking turns in the tee-pee; others were around the mess area getting ready to eat. Sunset in the canyon comes at least an hour before sunset for the area. You could see this from the sunlight still on Santa Cruz across the channel.
Back at the tent, I made some notes about our adventures and suggested that we start winding down. We should eat first then put on our swimming suits and take a sponge bath at the adjacent spigot, avoiding the crowds over at the tee-pee (we’d take a real shower tomorrow, mid trip), then walk together to the toilets around the end of twilight one last time before settling down in the dark.
I took out my hand held radio and tuned around a bit. This netted a few broadcast FM stations and I managed to “kerchunk” one amateur repeater … somewhere. At different times and places during the weekend I got different results with this. I put the radio away, we weren’t here to raise and talk to other people.
Dinner was the same menu as lunch except substituting apples for bananas. (“Ooples and Boonoonoos” I reminisced about the song that Raffi sang, a favorite ten years ago when the kids were all little.) Katy’s apple had to be quartered and cored because of her orthodontic restrictions. I did mine similarly. We had split a can of Vienna Sausage four to three at lunch. Now, at dinner we split another, three to four. They were really tough to get out of the little cans. We used the sandwich bags for trash, but it was a little tricky because the wind was picking up and the light was dying down. Katy, having snacked on more Fruity Pebbles during the afternoon, wasn’t that hungry and only finished the half sandwich left from lunch plus pears for dessert. The meat sandwiches would spoil, so I suggested she have the other for breakfast and, if not finished, throw it away then.
It was beginning to get really dark by the time we were ready for our baths. A real camper (or a real American Pioneer for that matter) wouldn’t need a bath for a week or more, but I’m not that much of a real camper. I have trouble sleeping when I’m sticky from sweating all day. While changing into my bathing suite, I remarked to Katy that this experience here was very much like some of our own ancestors out on the plains of northwest Texas. They lived in a dugout and probably ate and washed and slept very similarly to what we were doing here, when they did even that much. The days must have been long and hard, the price of that free land pretty high. Katy didn’t get it.
“Oh, you know, that dugout museum that we go to in Panhandle. They slept and cooked in that hole in the ground about the size of one small room. They probably didn’t spend much time in there; they probably worked all the time when it was light.”
I went out to the spigot, briskly, got the soap wet and rubbed it around a little, then put the soap away in it’s bag, rinsing off the outside and working the soap off my body with successive scrubbings and rinsing of the rag. The stiff wind was also chilly. A towel wasn’t really needed, nothing stayed wet for long. I stepped back to the tent, got in, and started putting on some of tomorrow’s clothes, and the Campus By the Sea sweatshirt which I would try sleeping in. While doing this I instructed Katy in how to bathe similarly and she took the soap and went out.
The two ladies asked if she wasn’t cold doing that. She replied that she was indeed. I flossed and brushed.
Not wanting to listen to plastic crinkle all night, I brought the food and trash inside the tent. We also broke out the other plastic bag to be used as a laundry bag. Katy would use this expanding mass as a pillow every night. I would have to make do with other experiments.
Now it was getting really dark, too dark to read. Katy was reading anyway, driven on through the adventures of the Narnia chapters.
We went out toward the toilets; the stars were out.
“Wow, look at all those stars, dad!”
“Yes, there’s the Big Dipper, do you see it?”
”No.”
“And Cassiopeia….”
“What?”
The walk to the toilets was long, maybe 200 yards or more. Part of the way the destination could not even be seen. This was all probably a design feature, but this walking a quarter mile to go to the bathroom was going to be … interesting.
We arrived. Katy inspected the outsides of the outhouses, focusing on the southwest one that she hadn’t used before.
“Dad, look, this one is nicer than the other.”
I hadn’t noticed much difference inside. They were both pretty … full.
“Oh, those are the cleanup tools and things. I don’t think there’s much difference on the inside.”
She went in the ‘nicer’ one anyway.
When we were done; we washed our hands at the little oasis of green surrounding the spigot.
“You don’t need towels here,” I commented, holding my hands up in the wind which was more effective than a restroom blow dryer.
“No, but this air is cold!”
We stood looking at the stars.
“Now, see the Big Dipper, right there,” I pointed up close to her head.
“Oh, yes, so where is the North Star?”
“Over there.”
“And that’s the Milky Way?!”
“Yes. And over there is, I think, Mars.” What I thought might be Mars was in the west about 45 degrees up in the twilight. “And see right there is Antares, and all those stars curling away to the left are the tail of the Scorpion. That’s Scorpio.
“Coool.”
“And behind that is Sagittarius, that’s where the asteroid is. I should have brought Otwell, we could certainly see it, I would think.”
We walked along, the return path straight into the wind. We were walking a quarter mile and half of that upwind!
“There are so many stars!”
“Yes.”
“Where’s the moon?”
“It’s not up yet.”
“I want to see the moon!”
“You can get up early in the morning and see it. It will be there if there’s no clouds.”
When Viannah was three she looked at the moon and said she wanted to go there. I was as powerless to take her there then, as I was to put it in the sky now. Some things just require waiting.
We were back at the tent; Katy went in. I lacked only taking “my eyes” (my contact lenses) out. This chore was always a pain in camp. It was usually worth wearing them rather than glasses, but getting them in and out and maintaining them properly in the outdoors, wind and dirt, was always a risky operation. I found what I thought was the calmest end of the bench and waited for calm times, being extra careful in the rinse phases. It went without incident although a little dirt got into the soak.
We got in our bags. I tried piling up some of my clean clothes as a pillow with the usual, partial success. The new Zrest pads were going to be nicer than the old flat plastic ones, but not as nice as an air mattress. Well, not an air mattress with air in it anyway.
Katy said, “I miss the freeway noise at home. I guess I’ll just pretend the wind is the freeway.”
The wind was gradually picking up. There was still some crinkling coming from somewhere. Sometimes the tent would fill then evacuate suddenly whapping me on the head with the nearby wall. Several times, just as I was drifting off, a gust would do this three or four times and I’d be awake again. I looked over at Katy. She appeared to be sleeping just fine. Well, that was the important part, I wanted her to be OK; I could deal with some pain myself.
I worked on the “three positions.” One was flat on my back with my feet and head hitting the opposite walls of the tent, and getting whapped regularly. The other two were on sides, trying to get propped within the constraints of the sleeping bag to where I wouldn’t roll off or have an arm or leg go to sleep or be out of joint. Sometimes I would sleep long enough in one position to wake up sore and change to another. Rotating between the three positions time after time in at least partial consciousness each time consumed much of the night. It seemed like I made a change every five or ten minutes. Katy tossed less often and didn’t seem to need to be awake to do it. I awoke once and noted the tent was bright, not like daytime but neither like the darkness when we went to sleep. The moon was up. A huge gust blew in and rattled everything so much that we both woke up, but Katy went right back to sleep. I thought I even heard light snoring. I awoke again, this time in a sweat. I sat up, took off the sweatshirt, and piled it up as part of the pillow. That helped.
We wanted to be ready for the hike call at eight in the morning, that one blessed piece of structure to look forward to tomorrow, but that was two or three hours after first light. I didn’t set an alarm, just hoped to sleep some before being awakened by daylight and didn’t worry at all about getting up on time despite the long day now past and the long night now passing.