Americana
I wanted to begin summer in a sleeping bag along the banks of a body of water that I could fly-fish, and it was necessary for us to be alone, so I found a remote lake on the map of Payette National Forest, and set my family off for Memorial Day weekend. The road to the lake on the map turned from a solid line to intermittent hashes, indicating an unimproved road. Surely, I thought, my truck would make it. Dreams of daily catch limits fueled me to try.
As we hit the dirt road I knew I had underestimated my enemy. On the "improved" section of road edges of rock jutted out of the gravel like daggers. When the road necked down to the unimproved section, the brush closed in. My daughter seemed to sense the tension, and said "Dad, maybe lets go camping back there." Yet I was determined. After two miles of scratching my truck on alders we come to a massive puddle in the road caused by a thunderstorm the night before. My expectations seem dashed. Not wanting to get stuck in the mud, I perform what seems like a twelve-point turn over a cliffs edge, and scratch my truck over the same two miles until we hit the improved road again.
We find a flat open spot to camp hidden from the road. We setup our tent. The baby starts to cry and a bee stings the dog on the eye. I hide my fly-rod under the back seat so I'm not reminded of what I set out to do. But my mind shifts quickly. I now have a few things in abundance: time, food, and firewood.
The crack of burning dry pine, heat against my skin, cast iron and bacon make me feel paleolithic. My daughter picks wildflowers, and my wife puts them in an empty beer can for a table-setting. Dutch-oven French potatoes, green beans in butter, elk steaks seared over the flames. My son isn't crying anymore. He's enraptured with his surroundings. All of us seem centered around the fire, and I wonder how many others shared in this experience of botched dreams, wrong turns, yet still arrived at a workable destination, and I realize that is the story of most of our lives.
