Vacations, part 2

OK, the next summer torture fix came in, I don’t know, 1959. We no longer had the ‘shop’ and now backpacking was the rage for Ol’ Dad. OK, again, sounds fun, right? Camping, yeah!!!! Well, not so fast. As we know, Daddy doesn’t do anything quite like everyone or anyone, for that matter. We didn’t pack a little back pack and take the camper up to the mountains and sing Cumbiya (?) by the fireside and roast marshmallows. Not us. We packed only the absolute necessities of existence and went way back up in ‘them thar hills’! The High Sierras. Where there is nothing. You know what I mean. Nothing! Not even the hint of even a ‘Johnny-On-The-Spot’. We would have the pack mules carry up our food and tent and sleeping bags and we schlepped the rest. My sister and I hiked bare-foot. Don’t ask. It was about 5 miles to Shadow Lake. I think I was about 8 the first time I went. And I was a chubby kid, whose only activity was walking to school a block and a half down the road. It was a long 5 miles up the trail, when we actually used the trail.
Mamma hated camping. She had Asthma and the altitude about did her in. Her eyes would all but swell shut and her hands looked like mitts! She would spend all year walking 5 miles every morning before work to build up her stamina for the week of ‘vacation’. Her description of camping was this: Camping, for a woman, is doing everything you do at home without ANY conveniences. And you don’t get to take a long, hot bubble bath when the dishes are done!
We would take day trips from our base camp along the banks of Shadow Lake to places that weren’t even on the maps. Places that only the hunting guides had found mostly by accident. Places without trails to or from them. We would just trudge up the side of the mountain, blazing trails of our own. But that gave Larry, the unofficial Mayor of Shadow Lake, as he was know by the guides and trails guys, to name any lakes he found after his girls. Let’s see, first was Lake Dienna with the tree trunk ‘dock’, pretty little Lake Betty June, Big Lake Dolly and, oh yes, that little mud puddle creek, Lake Jeanette. If I thought going up the side of a mountain was tough, coming down was just plain freaky!! I did those hikes with my shoes on!
We were so high up, that even in August there was still snow on the ground in some shaded spots. We would all bare-foot ski, even Mamma! Well, she kept her shoes on as she did nothing bare-foot! I have to admit, that was bordering on fun. Bordering. The water was always way too cold to even think about swimming. The lake was for fishing only, I guess. And keeping the butter and eggs cold. And we had to eat the fish that Daddy caught that day!! UHHHHHHHHGGGGG!!!! That’s the only thing that Daddy cooked. Fish. Thank God for the butter! The only saving grace on a camping trip for me was the fact that Mamma always brought candy bars. One each, each day. That never happened at home! And I got to drink tea. At home it was forbidden. I’ll never forget that hot tea in those tin cups. It seemed like it was never really cool enough to drink when it was in those tin cups!.
Now, I never actually saw a bear, but the food had to be kept ‘away’ from them. Sometimes we would come back from our daily torture-hike and the Mayor would say, ‘Dolly, it looks like we’ve had bears!’ Great… It was so cold at night that you had to sleep with someone. In a sleeping bag. Another torture device, if you ask me. A sleeping bag on the hard ground. Who thought this stuff up?
With the week coming to an end, one would think I would be looking forward to freedom. One would think. But the trip back down the hill was just plain awful! You know those pack mules that brought our stuff up? They didn’t bring our stuff back down. We did that. You see why we only bring the absolute necessities of existence. We were all loaded up and down the mountain we’d go. ‘Just one foot in front of the other, Jannie,’ I’d tell myself. ‘Just one foot in front of the other. And the other. And the other’….At least on the trip down, we followed the trail…Sometimes…When we had to…Sometimes. I’ll never forget that clearing up ahead looking like Heaven itself! Agnew Meadows!! Agnew Meadows meant that the Pack Station was just one mile away! One mile! Agnew Meadows was one of those memories that will be one of the things that will always make me smile at the thought! It was a beautiful, open, green, well, meadow that was edged with flowers and trees and I’m sure the birds sang 24/7! Like a scene from an old movie. An oasis. A place that Julie Andrews might sing! And it meant one mile to civilization and a bed and pillow and a bath with hot water and a real, live, working, modern toilet!!!! Yes!!!! There suddenly was a quickness in my step and a hint of a smile on my dirty, chubby little face which was always covered by mosquito bites, as was every other place on my body not covered by some piece of uncomfortable, itchy clothing or stinky bug spray! But freedom was just ahead! At this moment of ‘vacation’, I was usually way ahead of everyone else on the trail. You see, being the baby, my pack was unusually lighter and I could move faster. That and the fact that I was so excited to be almost home! So my moment in the meadow was my own to treasure. My own to run through and laugh and play! I picked the wild flowers for Mamma and took a sip from the brook. It was my moment to be thankful I’d lived through another vacation! The last mile wasn’t nearly as bad as the other 4. And soon I could see the truck! Hello truck. Remember me? ….freedom…for another 51 weeks…. until next year…freedom….I wish Dr. Phil had known about this…..