That’s Why the Lady Likes to Camp

To camp out in the wilds of Idaho in the summertime is to step out of the stream of time and immerse yourself in the cool green light of a wood that hasn’t changed much since settlers first raised their stone chimneys on the banks of the Coeur d’Alene River two hundred years ago.  If the weather cooperates, you can hike on sun-dappled paths, catch out wildlife as it startles and skitters away at the sound of your approach, and toss stones into the creek chattering over its rocky bed.

We just returned from a four day camp out with Paul’s Dad and his wife, Yvie, in the beautiful Shoshone area, where we did all of those things and more.   Dad drove up on Thursday morning to set up camp ahead of our arrival.  Paul and I slept in a tent, but we were grateful for the presence of Dad and Yvie’s camper, without which we would have been digging our own latrine, a decidedly unromantic endeavor, best left unmentioned in Walden-esque rhapsodies about the beauty of the woods.  The kids slept in the camper, too, which gave the two of us some appreciated privacy and room to stretch out in our little four-man dome tent.

How I love waking up to the sound of birds calling to each other as the sun comes up!  The angry chipmunk squeaking madly at us from a perch right outside our tent?  Not so much.

With four glorious days stretched out before us, we tramped through the woods, roasted marshmallows over the campfire, and spent hours slung comfortably in camp chairs, reading or chatting while we watched the kids play with sticks and bugs.  Dad took us in turns for long rides on the ATV, which was, for me, the highlight of the trip!  We covered miles of logging roads and emerged from the tree line to a lookout point that allowed us an unfettered view of legions of mountains marching away into the horizon.  It was on one of these excursions that Dad and I ran across a family of elk crossing the trail, including a baby.  They are so big up close!  It was close to twilight, and many animals are moving around at that time of day.  We also frightened a rabbit, which ran down the road in front of us for several yards before it got its bearings and darted off into the undergrowth.  The strangest forest-dwelling creature we came across was a fat, orange tabby cat, preening and lying at leisure in a bed of leafy green plants, far from the nearest campsite.  How did he come to be there?  And how had he survived the brutality of life in the wilds without becoming a meal for a hungry cougar?  He was so clearly the ruler of his forest kingdom, I was tempted to make up stories about him.

On our second day, Dad took me out on the ATV while everyone was drowsing in the late afternoon sun.  We were on a mission: huckleberries, enough to add to the pancake batter for huckleberry flapjacks the next morning.  They grow pretty high up on the mountain, and it took us a while to locate a few bushes that had escaped the scavenging of bears and birds.  At last, however, we found a good patch, and set to picking.  When we rode back into camp with our “haul” (maybe two cups of berries, all told), it felt like we were ancient hunters, returning with a hunk of mammoth suspended between us on a pole.  The tribe cheered.

One thing we didn’t do for four days: shower.  Sweat, dust, and grime coated us in layers, and every day my hair looked more like a modern art sculpture.  On the plus side, I couldn’t feel the itching of my many mosquito bites through all of that dirt.  Also, I didn’t have to shave my legs; and isn’t that what camping is all about?

We came home Sunday afternoon and raced for the showers.  It felt SO good to get clean (even if it did cause my mosquito bites to flare into life).  I spent today washing the campfire smoke out of our clothes.  All the leftover food has been put away, and all the pictures have been downloaded from the camera.  All that’s left now is to soak in the memories.  I think they might even keep me warm this December when we’re buried under several feet of snow.

Let it Slow, Let it Slow, Let it Slow!

We are running out of places to put the snow.

I love snow.  Truly.  But the berms on the sides of our driveway have grown so high that I had to plant warning flags on the crests to keep them from being hit by passing helicopters.  I chased a couple of mountaineers off of one yesterday.  Fortunately, one of them dropped his copy of Into Thin Air as he scrambled away over the lunar-looking landscape, so now I’ll have something to read today as we enjoy our fourth snow day of the year.  Yes, fourth.  The two days before our two-week Christmas vacation were wiped away by a record-breaking snowfall and subzero temperatures, and yesterday and today have been likewise canceled in the interests of keeping staff and students safely off of the widening ice skating rinks that nature has constructed all over town where there used to be roads.

Not that I’m complaining.  I need the snow days for, well, shoveling snow.

In the past three weeks, we’ve gotten over sixty inches of snow, breaking our town’s previous 24-hour snowfall record (16 inches) by a good 9 inches along the way.  We’ve shoveled the driveway nearly a dozen times, and at one point Paul borrowed his dad’s roof rake to pull some of the heavily caked snow off of the roof.  While Paul has done the lion’s share of the work, I’m proud to say I’ve taken a fair turn at the shovel, fighting to keep our precious forty feet of driveway clear of piled up precipitation so that our coming and going could continue unabated.

In the seven years we’ve lived in Idaho, I’ve learned a few things from winter.  I’ve learned to drive on snow and ice: go slow, pump the brakes, turn into the slide, don’t panic.  I’ve learned to traverse the slick expanse of a frozen parking lot with the graceful, floating movements of an ice skater, carefully maintaining my center of gravity over steady feet, knowing that any sudden motions could land me flat on my back in a most painful and unladylike position.  I’ve learned which kind of gloves are good for playing in the snow and which kind are merely ornamental, useless after the chilly fall days have given way to more arctic climes.

But until this year, I was still a snow shoveling novice.

I thought I knew about shoveling.  In our apartment, the landlord plowed the parking lot, and we tenants took it in turns (when we felt like it and had the spare time) to shovel the thin ribbon of sidewalk that wound from our doors to the parking area.  Only now do I realize: in the world of snow shoveling, that didn’t count.

Now that we have a driveway to shovel, I’m a little better acquainted with this Northwest rite of passage that makes grown men cry and compels otherwise sane people to level firearms and hatchets at innocent snow plow drivers.

I learned that the different types of snow make a huge difference to the snow shoveler.  Our first couple of feet were light and powdery snow, easy to lift, despite it’s irritating habit of leaping onto the wind and blowing back in your face instead of settling sedately down on the ground.  When the weather warmed up, the snow grew heavier, more substantial, making a nice, satisfying “whump” noise as it landed and raising the shoveler’s heart rate a bit.  The worse snow to shovel is the pile at the end of the driveway that the snowplow leaves in its wake.  Having been partially melted and mixed up with road dirt and ice chunks from the encroaching berms, it quickly refreezes and takes on the consistency and weight of concrete, and digging it out requires a well-muscled back, a tough shovel, and a sense of humor.  There is some sort of natural law at work that causes the snowplow driver to arrive at the very moment that you’ve finally finished clearing your driveway.  If you know that and expect it, perhaps you won’t be the one picking up the hatchet.

I met a lot of our neighbors while out shoveling snow, because they were out doing the same.  We even had one neighbor come over with his snowblower and finish up for us on a day when the load was especially heavy.  Several people with four wheelers attached small plow blades to the front of them and made an attempt at clearing the street, knowing that the city plows wouldn’t come through for hours.  There’s a sweet sense of camaraderie in working side by side to beat back the elements for survival (or at least for the ability to get out and go to the McDonald’s drive-thru.)

Make no mistake about it.  Shoveling snow is hard work.  Sweaty, difficult, back-breaking labor that is guaranteed to help you burn off the extra helpings of pumpkin pie you ate at Christmas dinner.  It is one series of motions–scoop, lift, turn, throw–repeated over and over, like the programming of some factory machine.  Except this machine is breathing harder than Paul Revere’s horse and soaking wet from mingled sweat and melting snow.  It’s an odd sensation to be simultaneously so hot that you long to throw your scarf and parka off in a handy snowbank and so cold that you can’t even feel your fingers or the dripping end of your nose.

Yes, it’s a good workout, and probably the one thing that saved my muscles from complete atrophy over the gloriously slothful two weeks of holiday vacation.  With the local authorities urging everyone who didn’t need to travel to keep the roads clear for emergency vehicles and snowplows, it was no trouble at all to devote ourselves to lazy indoor pursuits, like watching movies, playing games, and reading books.  Still, thanks to the ever piling and drifting snow, I went to bed every night with a new ache in a muscle I hadn’t realized existed until the moment I used it to toss a shovel load of ice up to the top of the steadily growing white mounds flanking our drive.

Nice neighbors, beautiful snow-covered vistas, a healthy workout–it wasn’t so bad.  I feel like shoveling snow was the last step of the makeover transforming this Georgia girl into a true daughter of Idaho.

But at this moment, I’d trade our car for a working snowblower.

***

The Northwest equivalent of prairie dogs...

Spelunking, Idaho style

Wedding Drums

Well, Amber is a married woman now.

I know she’s 29 years old, but she’s still my baby sister, and seeing her in a wedding dress was every bit as surreal as the first time I witnessed my brother (the one who used to give me Indian rug burns and wrestle with me for control of the TV remote) changing diapers and answering to the name of “Daddy.” Still, the look on her face was beyond description. I suppose I could say that she was glowing, but it doesn’t seem to do her justice. When that kind of happiness, so deep and transforming, shines out from someone’s eyes, it’s almost too beautiful to look at. Seeing it radiating from my beloved sister warmed me straight through.

The wedding was lovely. It was a perfect reflection of the two hearts being joined together that day. Daniel’s twin brother and best man, Samuel, sang a song in Shona, and Amber walked down the aisle to the sound of African drumbeats. Then she and Daniel faced each other before a crowd of smiling witnesses and promised to love each other always, to build their lives on God’s truth, and to be home to one another forever. After their first kiss (which was heralded by Daniel’s sincere “Woohooo!” of glee and the onlookers’ appreciative chuckles), the newly married couple a-wimoweh-ed back down the aisle together to the strains of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” by The Tokens, grinning from ear to ear.

Thanks to the round-the-clock food preparation and decorating efforts of some very dedicated extended family, the reception was a vision of candlelight and white tablecloths, filled with the aromas of delicious Italian meatballs and skewered chicken. Our Aunt Linette made the wedding cake, a delectable Italian Cream cake festooned with red roses. Samuel made a sweet toast to the happy couple, and the bride and groom entertained the guests with their own harmonic performance, singing an array of songs, accompanied by their musical friends, Butch and Linda. A few brave souls even jumped up to strut their stuff on the dance floor; mostly the kids, who found it an excellent way to burn off their sugar high from the cream cheese frosting.

Finally, the cake was eaten, the bouquet was flung, and Daniel and Amber were ready to exchange the noisy wedding festivities for the quiet refuge of their reserved room at a nearby bed-and-breakfast. Instead of birdseed to hurl at the bride and groom (possibly causing grievous injury or inviting freak bird swarm attacks) the guests received glowsticks to wave around and light the path through the dark parking lot to Amber’s well-decorated car. With one last run through the cheering crowd, the freshly joined pair jumped into their escape vehicle and drove away to begin their new life.

Just like that, the wedding was over.

The cleanup, however, was just beginning.

***

Congratulations, Daniel and Amber. May God bless you with true friendship, self-sacrificing love, and more mountains than valleys. I wish you both very happy!

(Final photo courtesy of Mike McElhatton)