Where Am I to Sleep?

August 10, 2023 Shirleyjdietz3 Comments

That was the question in my mind as I traveled south to be with my daughter’s family for a few weeks. And not just to sleep, but to lay out my suitcase, charge my computer, and all the other things that people do when they live someplace. I have stuff with me. Where am I going to put it?

River Bend Farm has a large farmhouse with four bedrooms. However, the rooms are occupied with Julia’s three stepchildren, and of course, Julia and husband Kevin. They don’t even have a designated spot for the baby when she comes.

My plan was to look for something portable, like a camper trailer, and to do it as soon as possible after arriving. During the first week, while I was borrowing one of the children’s rooms, I started looking on Facebook marketplace for used campers. Having never owned an RV of any kind I knew nothing.

I looked at little, cute and retro. But there wasn’t even room to set my suitcase. I looked at large and roomy but it was 16 years old and I wasn’t sure I could handle that much brown in my living space. I was saved from further deliberation when my son-in-law said a friend had a nice later model camper and was willing to sell it underpriced, as a personal favor. It had space for 10 people to sleep, which was a little frightening, but we went to see it. I now own it and have jumped on the learning curve of RV life.

I have named it Quibble (model 295QBLE). It came none too soon. I got sick and needed a place to retreat and quarantine. It came home with Kevin and I the same day we went to see it. He parked it close to the barn where there was an electrical outlet. That’s when I learned that you have to be somewhat of an electrician (which I am not) to match your electricity with your camper. Even after watching a You Tube video on amps, volts and watts, the thought of having to figure out that equation for every one of my devices was too much. Kevin kindly drove to town and got adapters, so I could run the AC. That was enough for one night.

You also have to be somewhat of a plumber (sorry, also not) to feel peaceful about your faucets, toilets, water and pumps. Kevin and I finally got a small stream of water to run into the kitchen sink by hooking a hose up to a hole labeled “city water”, no city anywhere close. But who knew that I needed a drinking water hose, a water filter and a pressure regulator. Not me. My water pump, which shouldn’t have been turned on at all, was supposed to be whisper quiet. It started making enough noise that I could hear it even above the AC unit. I may have made it permanently very quiet. I have watched videos on water, gray water, and black water. Even I could figure out what those were.

One day I figured out the refrigerator. The next day I got a ladder and gave Quibble a good washing. Yesterday I drove back to meet the previous owner and got the title transferred and notarized. Today I tried to figure out insurance and registration. And in the days ahead I will learn about the stove and the propane tanks and the outdoor kitchen, and why the lights in the slide out don’t work. There are YouTube videos about all these things. I am discovering a whole new world of fun things to do.

But now I have my space. I almost feel guilty retreating to my air conditioned fiberglass box

Tents, Togetherness: Relationship Tools

April 23, 2022April 23, 2022 Shirleyjdietz1 Comment

Tents, togetherness and relationships. Makes perfect sense.

We’ve spent a fair amount of time living in tents, my daughters and I – enough to be thankful we have houses to live in most of the time. Tents probably wouldn’t be much of a thing if we didn’t want to be outside, where it sometimes gets cold and rainy. They allow us to spend time with people in places we might not normally get to visit.

Some tents also provide gathering spaces bigger than our houses, and we’ve done a few of those also. Small tents give us intimate space with a few people. Big tents give us casual space with many, many people. Both are useful and available in a variety of styles, and a frightening array of prices.

I’ve had a fascination with tents since I was a small child. My father set up a used army tent for me, in our yard, for one of my birthdays. I spent a good deal of time in it that summer. I’ve gone on to own three or four tents and they were all dear to me. Some of them leaked but I loved them anyway.

Tents are a relationship tool, but I’m not saying there is a guarantee the relationship will be good. But you and others will be together, like it or not.

There I’ve about said it all for tents and togetherness. Here are my illustrations from my own experience.

Tents in our backyard in Florida served as extra bedrooms for people who got very little sleep. This one was big. It also leaked.

The one on the right is my “other” tent, ready for occupancy at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Requires being horizontal.

In Cambodia I attended many large gatherings in tents. They know how to put on fancy events in them.

Yeah, this is snow. It is the food tent at the Birkie International ski race in my hometown. It was not very warm inside, but better than being outside.

And talk about togetherness! Happening here.

A tent allowed us to gather, during the pandemic, for my sister-in-law’s memorial service. Technically, we were outside.

In 2020 I rented a wedding tent. It did keep us fairly dry in the downpour, at night. Another pandemic gathering outside.

This spring (if it ever arrives), I want to put my tent up by the pond behind the barn, and listen to the spring peepers. Probably no one will join me but I will strengthen my relationship with nature, or frogs and mosquitos… All good.

Ride: Epic Moves for Building Relationships

April 21, 2022 Shirleyjdietz2 Comments

Riding of any kind can be an opportunity for building relationships. There’s usually an element of being captive for hours of togetherness. I’m thinking of the road trip I took with daughter Esther from Atlanta to Seattle, in a small SUV packed to the roof with the remains of a household and two large dogs. It was epic.

And epic is my favorite word when it comes to activities that build relationship, because the more epic it is the more memorable. At the end of an epic event, I am usually bonded for years to come with my companions. This was definitely the case in my ride across the state of Florida with daughter Julia, on horseback. It was the Cracker Trail Ride of 2007. Epic.

The Cracker Trail was the route that Florida cowboys drove cattle to the Gulf Coast for shipping in the late 1800’s. Central Florida has a large cattle industry even today so there is lots of interest in keeping history alive with the yearly Trail Ride. The route is 120 miles.

I tried to do this ride in 2006 on a borrowed horse and only got about a mile from the start when the horse insisted on being the first in line (not allowed), and seized up when I wouldn’t let him. He was an old race track pony horse and just couldn’t understand that trail ride business. He got put in a trailer and taken back. I was disappointed.

The next year I had my own horse, Andy. Julia had one of her horses, Fea. We had a two horse trailer and a fancy black truck to pull it. We, and a couple hundred of our friends and acquaintances, spent the next five days riding from Bradenton, Florida to Fort Pierce on our horses. We camped in tents at night, in the fields of some of the large ranches in central Florida. There was a chuck wagon that served meals and usually some kind of fun activity or socializing each evening.

Every morning, after breakfast we would pack up camp, saddle up and ride until noon. At our lunch stop a bus would take drivers back to their vehicles and trailers. We would drive ahead to the next campsite and then take the bus back to the lunch stop, where we would again get on the horse and ride the rest of the afternoon. Logistically, it was pretty well planned. At times we rode on major highway right-of-ways, but often it was on ranch property.

Neither of us had ever ridden all day for five days in a row, so it took a day or so for us to get hardened in. We had been trying to get the horses ready for the event, but it was extreme for them too – not only the distance but the crowd of other horses, wagons, and road traffic. We (both us and the horses) were a little nervous the first day. Poor Andy got a red bow tied on his tail to warn others that he might kick if they got too close.

As I said, it was an epic trip for me. Having that once-in-a-lifetime adventure with my daughter gave so much opportunity to learn, to be challenged in our abilities, to succeed at something unusual. It was worth every minute, but it was hard. We were glad and ready to head home at the end of the ride.

Significant relationships are built in small ways, day by day, and that is great. But it is very important, when opportunity allows, to do something special. Maybe it is something challenging, or extravagant, or luxurious or as sometimes happens, something very miserable – but it will be memorable and talked about for a long time. Getting through escapades like this with your children adds so much to the relationship with them. You are investing time and money in an experience with them, and that speaks volumes. And the payback is pretty good – I wouldn’t trade my memories of that ride for anything.

Hike: Relationship Building Activities

April 9, 2022 Shirleyjdietz11 Comments

This is the end of the first week of A to Z Challenge 2022. I have been completing posts A through H while on a trip and that has made it more of a challenge than other years. I have had to keep it very simple, knowing that it doesn’t compare to some of the other great blogs I’ve been reading. It is still fun to put it together and share. Hope you are enjoying the read.

Having always been a walker, but mostly for the purpose of getting from point A to point Z, hiking was not really a “thing” in life until 2000. That was the year we hosted an exchange student from Sardinia for her last year of high school in the U.S. Having mastered her English enough to graduate, Maura was all set to go to Cancun with a number of classmates to celebrate. I wasn’t very comfortable with that. There were horror stories of young girls disappearing from the beach and never being seen again. I said no.

I had to come up with an alternative activity. I can’t remember why hiking the Appalachian Trail sounded like a reasonable project. Maybe I already had it on my list. At any rate, we put together a small band of adventurers including my daughters and one of their friends, five of us. None with hiking experience.

We survived and we bonded, as often happens with challenging experiences. We got blisters, sore backs, got thirsty, hungry and sleep deprived. Sounds like fun doesn’t it?

While it is comforting to young people to know that their elders are capable and resourceful, it only adds to the depth of a relationship to find out that they are not always that. I think it may have been one of the first times that I was the weak one, needing to be rescued from dehydration and lifted to the next camp via truck. Those girls hiked, by themselves, the twelve miles that day and arrived in camp in record time.

It was a successful hike overall and we had great satisfaction in getting to our car on the fifth day, somewhat more experienced as hikers. Olive Garden fresh salad, bread and Alfredo sauce never tasted as good as it did on that trip home.

Seriously, we were blessed to have made it out alive.

Since that time, hiking has been a passion for me, and it is always better with a daughter or a family member. There are so many good shared moments walking through nature, talking about what we see, making camp, and dividing up chores. We see how we behave when we have less convenience and less distraction. It is getting to know each other in a unique way.

To me, hiking is a special kind of walking, in a particular planned area just for the intent of seeing what’s there and spending time with companions. It can be an hour long, or a week long – distance is not the issue, purpose is. In the last 20 years my girls and I have made lots of memories and seen some amazing places. It has been an important factor in the relationships we have with each other.

Find a friend or family member who you want to get to know better, plan a hike, and get walking!

Dreams Don’t Die (do they?)

December 3, 2020 Shirleyjdietz2 Comments

Just this morning I was reading a friend’s blog post (Click here for a great read) about dreams that have come, gone away, and then reappeared later in life. (Dreams, as in things you would love to do someday, not the crazy stuff that happens when you sleep.) The post ended with “What revived dreams have surprised you lately?” And, wouldn’t you know it, I had a ready answer.

All my life I have loved to camp out. One of the first birthday surprises that I remember, when I was 7 or 8, was looking out the window and seeing that my dad had put up a tent in the front yard for me. It was an old army tent without a floor, but I spent a lot of time in it that summer.

Since then I’ve done some hiking and camping out with more sophisticated tents and equipment, always enjoying it, but with the thought that I would someday like to have a camper. A small house on wheels. Open the door and step in.

The dream was kind of on the back burner for years. A camper was not the most expedient thing financially, and my husband didn’t take time for vacations. I looked at tiny houses online, watched videos of women who built their own tiny houses on trailers, and rode my bike through Florida trailer parks checking out the campers regularly.

When my husband retired and got a diagnosis of dementia, I took the dream off the burner altogether and turned off the stove. Even getting up one or two steps into a camper was difficult for him, let alone moving around comfortably in a space the size of a closet. The dream cooled off considerably.

Since moving to Wisconsin, I have found myself living a short distance from an RV sales lot. The logical thought “you’re never going to have one of these” didn’t keep me from looking at them all multiple times during the summers. I had my favorites, a line called Vintage with cool retro colors inside and out. But they were a little bigger than I wanted to deal with by myself, and pretty soon they were all sold. Now, due to the shortages of the pandemic year, the lot is nearly empty.

And then I saw a Scamp. A neighbor bought the cutest little pod I have ever seen, just perfect for two people to have a place to eat and sleep. I didn’t really feel envy, because I knew the whole idea would not work for me, but I had trouble keeping the lid on the dream. Yes, I did. That Scamp sat where I could see it all summer. I kept dreaming she was going to invite me to take it camping for a weekend. That didn’t happen and now it is winterized and in storage.

I don’t know why I look at Facebook Marketplace, but every now and then I go there. Last week, I nearly keeled over with surprise with what came up on that feed – an AIRSTREAM BAMBI!!! For $1200. No, I thought. That can’t be. You can’t even buy a piece of an Airstream for that price. So I sent an inquiry to find out what was going on. I emailed my daughter, who owns a couple Airstreams and asked what she thought. There was skepticism.

Nothing happened until two days later, after the weekend, when I got an email back. It was real. She was a woman, she had a reason for selling it cheap, she wrote like an American, and had all the facts. What if God had decided to give me the longing of my heart?!! It would be just like him to make it an Airstream! I emailed my daughter again, thinking that maybe I should jump on this. There was skepticism.

Airstream Bambi, these are absolutely the coolest (my opinion).

While I was thinking this over, I scrolled through Marketplace again. Oddly, there was another Airstream Bambi, from a different seller, same price. What a coincidence. When I found a third I couldn’t help but wonder why the market was being flooded with cheap Airstreams. I wrote the seller asking that question. I also suggested that she should get together with the other Bambi owners when she got to her station in Alaska. Maybe they would want to start a scammer club or something…

You know, it really is hard to kill a dream, even when I know it isn’t practical, feasible, or reasonable (or possible). It just won’t die, and I will probably keep giving it backward glances until my final day. Meanwhile, I still have a tent, and a backyard, and maybe that’s right where I belong. P.S. I’m not saying I would refuse if someone wanted to give me one. You know what I’m sayin?

Grand Canyon Leftovers

May 24, 2019May 24, 2019 ShirleyjdietzLeave a comment

Yes, leftovers. These things I’ve written about my adventure hiking in the Grand Canyon have probably not taken you more than 2 or 3 minutes to read, on any given day. When you consider that the whole experience was six days in the happening, you know there were lots of things I did not mention, yet.

There are some significant things I want to record for my own sake, and maybe for yours, dear readers.

I want to remember:

The El Tovar Hotel. Specifically, the ice cream shop and the booth where my brother sat as a teen and was encouraged to apply for summer work at the Canyon. He did, and that started his GC experiences and led to mine. Beautiful hotel with such a history.
Our knowledgeable, personable female guide, Nina. Her German heritage came out in her motherly care of us, her enthusiasm for beer, and her down to earth “so who needs a swim suit to go swimming” philosophy.
That it’s very handy to have an empty plastic Mayonnaise jar in the tent with you at night, ladies. Thank you again Nina.
How big, beautiful and dangerous the Canyon is.
That people are built to walk up easier (and longer) than to walk down.
That trekking poles are lifesavers when you are tired. Four points of balance are so much better than two.
That I can live through pain, and that pain’s memory fades (as in childbirth and hiking the South Kaibab)
That with enough rain, the desert can look so green and full of flowers.
That even in a place stamped with billions of years of time, the fact that I can see it, marvel at it, and wonder about it, means I am uniquely created to enjoy it in my brief span of time. Time is not the only measure of significance.
That I am truly blessed to not be living like I’m camping all the time, but that I get to camp out when I want to.
That you can get to know complete strangers pretty easily when you camp and hike with them, and most serious hikers are nice people. I enjoyed getting to know you Michael, Marlene, Steven, Mike, Bob and Kim.

El Tovar main lobby, from second floor balcony

El Tovar, second floor lobby near guest rooms

Mules…

April 15, 2019April 14, 2019 Shirleyjdietz9 Comments

I’ve mentioned already that this hike, sponsored by the Grand Canyon Association Field Institute, is titled “Take a Load Off: Mule Assisted Camping 0514”. My brother was being thoughtful of me and his wife, thinking that we would be better off having assistance from some friendly mules. The mules have agreed to carry a duffel bag for each of us which will lighten our load considerably.

On our first day we will meet at about 10 am to have our equipment checked over by our guide, and then our tenting equipment, some of our food and clothing – basically anything we don’t need on the descent – will be packed in the bag allowed us. I think our mule train will start that afternoon. I’m guessing they will go down the Bright Angel Trail, cross the Colorado on the Black Bridge and stay the night at Phantom Ranch (see this pic of mules crossing scary bridge). Almost everything that goes to Phantom Ranch goes by mule, including supplies for the canteen meals and goods sold in the store. Duffel transport is a common expense for hikers, especially ones going up who don’t want all that stuff on their own backs.

A lot of people ride the mules to Phantom Ranch too but the park video says the people getting off the mules are just as tired and sore as the ones who hiked the trail. Excuse me for laughing, haha. When you don’t ride for hours at a time as a regular thing, that is exactly what happens.

Our hike guidelines give specific instructions to hikers who might happen to meet a mule train on the trail. We are to back up against the uphill side of the trail and wait quietly until the last mule has passed and is at least 50 feet away. Although the mules are well trained and mostly stick to business, if they are harassed or startled it can result in an accident. It is a real shame when a mule is lost off the trail, as you can imagine. And worse yet if a hiker falls, which is why we are given the uphill side. Lucky us.

Book Cover for Brighty of the Grand Canyon

Mules have a real history in the Canyon. An old children’s book which I read to my children years ago was “Brighty of the Grand Canyon”. It was kind of a history lesson of the prospecting days, when miners traveled the canyon looking for gold, with a mule carrying their provisions. Brighty, the mule, is the star of the book – kind of the Black Beauty of the mule world. A great book about the canyon, and not just for kids. I loved it. Earlier this month a reader reminded me of this story that she had also read and loved. I’m not sure but I think Brighty might have been a burro (small donkey), which is different from a mule, but close enough for these purposes.

The little corral at Phantom Ranch looks just the same as it did when first constructed in the 1920’s. I’m hoping to hang out there a little and talk to some of the handlers because I’m curious about where the mules come from and how they are trained. I know they are very reliable and sure footed, which makes them a good fit for terrain in the canyon.

Pink Cloud and the Man Who Lives in the Woods

February 9, 2018August 25, 2020 Shirleyjdietz4 Comments

From where did this one pink cloud come? So singular and alone it was floating in the path of light coming sideways in the evening. Is it the evening because it divides the night from the day evenly? That’s what I was thinking about. I had to stop and take a picture of the cloud.

Darkness was approaching, and so was a man on a bicycle. He was a friendly man and called out to me, also on a bicycle, and to the husband who was walking. He asked about the electric bike I was on and came over to show us a picture on his cellphone of another electric bike he had just been looking at. He talked fast and easily about bikes, having put about $4000 into his ride, with special rims on the wheels and a rear approach sensor. He was a serious rider. In fact, he only rode bikes, because he had lost his license a while back.

He was riding home, well not exactly home. He was riding to his tent in the woods. Yes, homeless for the time being but making the best of it. Clean (had just showered at a shelter today), well groomed and nourished, and looking more like a yuppie fitness freak than a vagrant, he gave us several stories of life in the woods. He was a loner by choice and kept his camp clean and decked out – 2 tents, because he had lots of stuff. Oh, and he was a veteran of the Gulf War.

He was employed at Goodwill Corporate for three years now. He had another valuable bike which he kept locked up at work. It had always been a problem to keep it safe while he was away from camp. What was he to do, chain it to a tree?

He wanted to get housing but he just didn’t make enough where he was, and there weren’t any better jobs that he knew of. He told us where his last three camps had been, and I knew every one of them, had driven/walked by and thought “now if I were homeless I might try to hide in there”. The place he had been just before Hurrican Irma had been by a creek. That night he came home from work and everything he owned had floated off in the flooded field. He said it was a real pain every time he was made to move. When you have a big camp, it takes quite a few trips to relocate it all. Sometimes they don’t give him much time to do it. He has to leave stuff behind.

The husband was getting antsy, tired of standing and listening and it must have been obvious. The man’s name was Jody. He apologized for talking so much. It was just that he didn’t get to talk very often, especially to strangers who didn’t know anything about him and asked questions that didn’t sound threatening. He rode off on his really cool bike. I’m not going to say that I didn’t think about offering him a meal next time he rode by, or a shower, or maybe a yard to camp in next time he got chased out. I did think of those things, but he sounded like he was handling life pretty well so I said nothing.

Ordinary Times and Travels: Florida Off Road

March 5, 2017March 5, 2017 Shirleyjdietz1 Comment

I am blessed with an eclectic family, people that are willing to share their lives and experiences with each other. As a result, I have had an entertaining afternoon at River Ranch, Florida. It’s not really a town. It’s a community of people bonded by their attraction to off road vehicles and the camping lifestyle. Think classy redneck, lots of flags, dust, dirt, mud, throw in a few guns and lots of food, trailers and serious off road vehicles. That’s River Ranch.

In my family are men who do work with machines – clearing land, building structures, hauling stuff – and that is how they came upon River Ranch. Having done a lot of work there for others, my nephew now has his own campsite and comes up from the city to relax and have fun with his family. Early in the development of River Ranch people picked their campsites and claimed them much like the old-fashioned land rushes. My cousin had his site fenced off and outfitted with a well, outdoor showers and an upscale outhouse. The camp section is crisscrossed with sandy lanes and trails and covers a lot of territory. There are a few permanent residents but many are weekend regulars in RV’s and trailers that they park under shelters they have built.

For this outing our families had a sandwich making assembly line, packed a cooler of drinks and loaded up our vehicles. A few weeks ago a wildfire went through much of the camp area and destroyed a lot of property. We started our trek through this burn area. All the roads and paths are dirt and sand, and since there has not been much rain it is very dusty. That is why many of us had dust masks and head coverings. Our next stop was the “play pen” where our twelve year old guide showed us how to get down and dirty. We toured my nephew’s campsite and then headed out into 8 square miles of Florida wilderness. We had our picnic in an area called “the oaks” for a very obvious reason. We traveled on to the water hole and then back to our starting point. Come with me on a picture rendition of our 5 hour journey!

These were the multi-person vehicles that we used, along with several single person ATV’s. The small blue one was built by my nephew’s son – it didn’t go with us.

Our caravan starts out through the pine burn area.

Trey, our very own “Evil Kneival”, led the way all afternoon. They call this “sugar sand”. It is possible to get stuck in it, yes.

Sadly, fire travels swiftly through dry palmetto and underbrush. Many buildings and vehicles were destroyed but since it was during the week, few people were present.

We enter the “play pen” with Trey demonstrating how to play. Mud reigns. Some of these puddles are deeper than others.

He’s often on two wheels. His dad says he has never gone over, amazing. Funny thing, none of the rest of us did this.

The stunt man parks his four wheeler on a tree at “the oaks”. Picnic time.

A tasty lunch, a little tree climbing and swinging from ropes while we rested up for the rest of the trip. There were lots of families with kids out here and they all looked to be having fun. A little dirt doesn’t hurt anyone.

Trey, not quite sure of what to do with this bump in the road???

Actually, now we’re sure. We are going around this part of the trail.

Our guide opens the gate at the campsite. Shower stalls and the outhouse are prime features, along with a nice fire pit.

Many thanks to our host and hostess for an interesting afternoon “off the road” in Florida!

Then and Now: Hatchery Creek

August 26, 2016August 26, 2016 Shirleyjdietz1 Comment

I’m not done recording details about the visit to Hayward, Wisconsin. The Chamber should be paying me for this…

It was thirty years ago but I remember it like it was yesterday. Two moms, one with two little boys and one with two little girls, needed the kind of break from routine and stressful lives that only nature can provide. They were campers so they loaded up and traveled to an out of the way spot. It was an abandoned fish hatchery, state land I suppose. The cement tanks that had been embedded in the ground to harbor the young fingerlings had been removed and the field grasses had grown to cover the areas. The small road, two tracks with grass growing in the middle, crossed a stone bridge which covered a creek, Hatchery Creek. Chalk it up to mid-westerners to avoid having to name things, by just calling them what they are.

I was one of the moms. I had driven down the road one day looking for a place of childhood memories.

Sundays, with the whole family in the car, my dad would stop on the way home to look at the fish, in particular the large sturgeon who lived in his own special tank. Other tanks were rippling with the motion of the young fish waiting to be released into northern Wisconsin lakes and streams.

But in 1987 it was obvious that the program had been discontinued and the sign indicated that the natural stream that ran through the property was being restored as a trout habitat. There were no buildings left, no signs of recent activity, just a beautiful meadow surrounded by hills decorated with hardwoods and pines. It was the perfect place to camp. I could hardly wait.

In this day of protected lands, designated camping spots and required permits to camp, it is hard to imagine someone just picking a place in the woods and deciding it’s the place for them. If we were trespassing, I didn’t know it. Plus, we were gutsy women who loved to make independent decisions, and we made the decision of where to put the tent, where to make our campfire and told our kids where they could explore. That’s what they did all afternoon.

There is something so compelling about a creek. It’s more personal and approachable than a river. Rippling and clear, musical, fordable, a creek begs you to follow it up river because it has to start somewhere. What would that look like? This particular stream was easiest to follow if you got in it. The banks were sometimes purposely undercut to provide hiding places for fish and the grass and bushes on the banks were tall. A person who didn’t know the stream was there might have a hard time finding it. But you could walk in the middle in water never more than knee deep and every now and then there would be stones or boulders to stand or sit on. The kids were having the greatest time and we were watching, with cameras in hand.

I had to work my way through head high foliage to get to the place where it looked like water was welling up out of the bottom of the creek. It may not have been the birthplace of the stream but it was certainly adding the major portion of the flow. I have a weird fear of holes spewing an endless flow of water. If I stepped in there would I disappear, falling endlessly like Alice down the rabbit hole, only this hole is full of water which kind of rules out being able to breathe?

I’m again back in childhood, ice skating on the farm pond and hearing Dad tell us to stay away from a certain area where springs kept the ice thin. Springs were mysterious, like faucets that never get turned off.

The rest of our camping trip was spent cooking supper, sitting around the campfire with visiting grandparents, and sleeping through the night with one eye open. It was “that season” of the year and our tick phobia was full blown by the time we left, nevertheless it was a memorable time for me, and that is why I revisit Hatchery Creek most every time I go home to Hayward.

Two weeks ago daughter Esther and I went to the area where we had camped and observed the ritual of wading in the creek. She was the youngest of the four children present and does not remember the time and the place as clearly as I do. It has changed. It is now an access point for a series of trails including the Birkebeiner ski trail. It is used year round by many people who want to hike or single track through the woods, or skiers practicing their hill climbing and cross country skills. People do not camp there and I feel a bit sneaky (and smug, and fortunate) for having done so. The creek is still flowing, although it seems to have taken second place to the footpaths through the woods. I know where that spring is. I still find it mysterious and I still wonder how it keeps coming, and coming, and coming…