An hour to pack up and an hour drive down a new Parkway that cut a gash through the desert hills. Wild horses chillin’ in the sagebrush and golden grass curling up for the winter. The blue sky not nearly as deep now that summer ran away.
Over the hills and down into the next valley and then we could see the trees. A long line of cottonwoods sticking their necks up and looking around. That meant water. I’ve always wanted to turn left past the river and when we did, we found a scout camp with a few domesticated horses looking bored, and their people and trailers and gear scattered around.
We tried this road and that. Secret roads you couldn’t see unless you were right on top of them. Mysterious and dusty and maybe like they could get us closer to water.
But none of them did.
There were fences everywhere, and cows beyond, and we couldn’t even get into the trees. So we turned around and went back to the main road and across and down a new dirt road, sage as tall as the truck. But the road died quite suddenly and we had to do a seventy-two-point-turn-around and squish the sage a little bit so we could get back.
There was a fence-with a gate-with a sign-that just said We Want Your Fire Dead Out but nothing about Don’t Go Through This Gate. And that’s the same as an formal invitation around here, so we went on in.
We bounced around all smiley and took this left and that right and ended up smack at a railroad track. A fourteen-point-turn-around took us back and up and over and down until we found a railroad crossing and then it was more sliding a little through loose sand and tall happy sage that smelled up the truck and whacked you in the face if you didn’t roll up your window quick enough when you came up on a big one.
We walked through one gate to one potential campsite but the too-sandy-to-drive-safely road ended up in a giant sticker patch that stuck me right through my shoes and a sandy cliff overlooking the river. We can do better, Aidan said as he hopped around, pulling stickers out of his socks. Sherlock was already swimming in the river down below and barked for a stick.
Many-many fences. And lots of signs that just said ‘Private Property NO’. Whatever you want to do, the answer is NO. We thought about it for a little bit but it didn’t make much sense that the entire river was private property. So we kept going until a gate was locked with an actual lock.
Sure enough, Somebody Bought The River.
We turned around and drove back through all the things and finally came back to the main road again.
At some point we stopped at a party campsite too near the main dirt road. Aidan stepped over a used condom and we decided to move on. We found another little track headed toward the water so we took that and got stuck in the sand pretty quickly. After walking around the truck and finding the best route and putting it in four-low and keeping one tire here and the other tires over there we got turned around and made it back again and I sighed.
What, he said.
You know, I said.
You wanna just go home?
Yeah, kind of, I said.
We’ll give it twenty minutes – until 5:30, and if we can’t find a campsite we’ll go home, he said.
So we went back to the left again, back down long dusty straight-a-ways and bumpy bumps and then there was another horse camp. Remote and a little grassy. Lots of little stickery bushes that left their stickers stuck to our socks and to Sherlock’s tail, but crumbled when we touched them. Their summer strength gone. We were too far away to even see the river, but cottonwood trees scattered one here and another there, each tree putting on it’s yellow jammies for the Fall, and the spot of earth was just fine.
We set up camp but we hadn’t brought enough water so we had to conserve. Even though we knew better. Even though we were headed off into the desert. Anyway, Aidan started to cook but I forgot to bring cooking oil so he thought he’d thin some peanut butter with water and use it to cook the vegetables. Genius! Except the peanut butter was rancid and expired five years ago. Who even knew peanut butter went bad? What kind of sinner kept peanut butter uneaten for that amount of time? So we ate boiled tempeh and onions and red peppers for dinner and pretended it was just fine. And we laughed a lot and Aidan put aluminum foil on the grate over the campfire and made us toast with honey and hot tea for dessert. And he told me I was a little bit like a German Schoolmarm about food since I basically hadn’t brought any. And now we didn’t even have peanut butter for sandwiches.
The coyotes started to howl as the layers of light orange and pink and purple faded to the deepest dark blue you can imagine and the stars practiced their Morse Code. Aidan started to talk and I shushed him and he said he forgot how serious an infraction it was to talk while the coyotes sang. But I didn’t care if I was schoolmarmy about my coyotes and he knew it and he grinned his big old grin like he does when he’s super amused by me.
The campfire burned hot and bright with no smoke at all. And no wind at all. And the nails in the burning wood turned and dropped one by one into the coals as the fire slurped away the wood around them. And I had on my ridiculous jacket and pants filled with down feathers and I laughed about when I tried to find these pants online so I googled Down Pants but I was at work and came up with all kinds of results you don’t want on your work computer. I wasn’t even a little bit cold but everyone else was. Nelson put himself to bed in the tent but came out a few times to check and see if we were ready too.
I already had my hand on his head when I smelled the stench. Holy crap, what did he roll in, and what is on my hand? And we had almost no water. No extra water to wash him off. But I found enough extra to wash my own hand, that was for sure.
We sang songs from a songbook and we didn’t do a great job but it was fun. And Aidan tsk-tsk’d me for not singing the proper amount of Ooo’s at the end of a refrain. There are eight ooo’s, not four, he said. You’re doing it wrong.
So we took a break to listen to more coyotes up and down the river and then sang the correct amount of ooo’s and went to bed.
He was super non-committal about my idea of getting a little raised bed frame for our air mattress to rest on inside our ginormous tent, but once he laid down, it was all snuggles and he was a convert. He loved being off the ground. We zipped up our zipped-together sleeping bag and settled in. I pulled my down-filled hat over my eyes and felt him hold me tight.
When his arm loosened from sleep, I noticed my side of the bed was headed a little downhill. I hooked my arm around his and held on.
I woke up to the screaming of the coyotes. Then again because Aidan rolled over and I needed to re-anchor myself to him. I was definitely on a slope. Then again to more coyotes. And again. And again. And repeat. I hooked my leg under his and hung on.
He stretched in his sleep and moved his foot up. My last remaining anchor gone, I slid right off the raised bed before I was even a little bit awake. Midnight Slip-N-Slide. Our zipped-together sleeping bag caught me like a hammock and gently plunked me to the ground.
Aidan’s laugh broke the night in half. We laughed so hard for so long, our voices launching into the night. Get back on the bed, he laughed. I’m trying, I laughed. We were crying, we were laughing so hard. Out there all alone with the stars blink-blink-blinking at us and me wriggling around like a little silk worm, stuck in my sleeping bag hanging off the side of the bed. Our cheeks sore from laughing for such a crazy long time.
But I was genuinely stuck and it took a while to get un-stuck and by the time we got it sorted out, we both had to pee. We marveled at the night sky, so very heavy with stars and the cottonwood cutouts black against the sky.
And we lay back down and Aidan put his arms around me and promised to be my permanent anchor and every time one of us was almost asleep, the other would get the Church Giggles and we’d laugh ourselves awake again.
When his breathing leveled out, I listened to my coyotes and true to his word, even in his sleep…
He never let me go.