Gone

by Linda K. Olson

  “I’m soaked,” Brian groaned as he pawed through his dry bag. I dragged another bag through the water on the floor of the canoe while trying to untie the drawstring with my teeth and one hand. Rummaging through the tightly packed contents, I grabbed the first thing that felt like plastic, and out it came—a beautiful, large, white, very chic trash bag.

  “Here, Brian. Put this on.” His five-year-old look said, And just how, Mom, does one put on a trash bag? Oops. I grabbed it back, pulled it open, and sat there looking at it. What had I been thinking three weeks earlier? Oh, yes, tear a hole in the bottom so you can pull it over your head. Why didn’t I do that before we left home, when everything was nice and dry? Turning the bag upside down, I grasped it with my teeth, ripped open a hole in the seam about the size of Brian’s head, and handed it back to him. He obediently pulled it on and turned around to look at me. Everyone burst out laughing at the tousled, blond-haired head sitting atop a white bag. No-arms-no-legs Brian—just the comic relief we needed.

  Pulling mightily with each stroke, Roger, Carla, and eventually Dave powered through the waves and paddled our canoes up to a narrow, isolated beach on the waves of a summer storm. There were no other boats on the lake, and there did not appear to be any campers at this end. The remoteness and water sloshing into the boats gave us a sense of urgency. Dave, Roger, and Carla landed their vessels. Roger snatched Brian up and out, and Dave hauled me out onto the wet, narrow, sandy beach and levered me down onto the ground.

  I looked pretty normal but was inert on the packed black sand, with my fake legs, nice blue jeans, and shoes sticking straight out in front of me.

  Behind me, Dave followed Carla and Roger’s lead and dragged his canoe up to the tree line, where they all started feverishly unloading the bags.

  Twisting around, I looked at the edge of what used to be a pristine forest but was now a charred black landscape covered by a layer of ash. There were tall black poles with snags, indescribably different from the green boughs on the Christmas tree–shaped pines in untouched portions of the park. In the short year since the massive Yellowstone fires of 1988, the decimated two-hundred-plus-year-old trees already had a bright green carpet growing under them. As my eyes focused, I saw an exotic spray of vibrant color from delicate, early wildflowers.

  I needed to get out of those legs and into butt-walking mode. Above-knee prostheses are essentially replicas of the stilts from which clowns tower over us at the circus, and I’d be willing to bet that clowns walk only on very flat surfaces and in very wide-open spaces. And yes, my stilts technically did have knees, but they were unnatural contraptions that with the slightest misstep could send me crashing to the ground. I needed to get them off and under cover as quickly as possible. Not only were they all show and no go in this environment, they’d rust if I didn’t keep them dry. I pulled myself over to my bag to retrieve my camp pants while everyone else buzzed around me.

  “Hurry and get the tents up first, and make sure the rain flies are on them!” Roger directed. “Then get the food and kitchen stuff under tarps until this storm passes.”

  Ignoring us, the kids raced back down the beach, leaving a trail of wet clothes strewn haphazardly behind them. Their screeching and squealing reached us as they splashed into the lake to body-surf the storm waves in water the temperature of which the park ranger had warned us could lead to hypothermia in fifteen to twenty minutes. Guess they missed that part of the lecture.

  Within an hour of our coming ashore, the lake was a sheet of silver-blue glass mirroring a huge crystal-blue dome overhead, and we started drying out. The M&M’s and dried fruit had taken us as far as they could. Dinner was uppermost on our minds. Unless we got our butts in gear, set up fishing poles, and got back out on the lake, we’d be eight campers grumping around with growling stomachs. So Dave and Roger each retreated to a comfy rock and opened their sacred tackle boxes.

  Dave sat up straight; glanced around; pulled out beautiful, shiny, bright red metal lures shaped like little fish; and started tying them onto spools of various colored lead-core line for us. Roger thumbed through his impressive array of dry and wet flies before choosing some woolly boogers that he tied lovingly onto four fly-fishing rods for his family. The men watched each other surreptitiously, the unspoken message between them being that fly fishing is beautiful and classy and trolling with lures, plebeian.

  Well, we’re going to need water. It was immediately obvious to me that this was a made-for-Linda job. I rummaged through the bags, found what I was looking for, and started to formulate a plan.

  I cradled the pump and Nalgene bottles in my left arm and set off in my inimitable butt-walk to the shore. Goose bumps covered my arm. More than anything, I looked forward to the warmth and smell of our first campfire. Thrusting one hip forward and then the other, I made my way to the shoreline, happy for the knots at the ends of my camp pants that prevented the chilly wind from blowing up through the leg holes and pebbles from embedding themselves in my flesh.

  I found a set of not-too-round, not-too-flat, partially submerged rocks, scooted into one, and grabbed a Nalgene bottle. It fit snugly between my legs, making it easier for me to unscrew its top. Tubing and filter in, I slipped the other end of the hose into the clear waters of the lake, allowing it to sink away from me.

  We’d already had one hair-raising experience on the lake; the last thing we needed was giardia and cryptosporidium from the water ruining our trip. I wasn’t keen on the idea of any of us contracting anything that could cause vomiting, diarrhea, or excessive gas.

  While everyone else focused on getting fish, I watched Tiffany and Brian make the easy transition from city slickers to camp kids and started pumping. It was going to take a while, but I didn’t care. I was doing something important—pulling my weight and being useful.

  “Come on, kids. Let’s get going.” Dave steadied the canoe as he proudly handed Tiffany and Brian their fishing poles. Roger and Carla tried not to snicker as our city kids climbed into their dad’s canoe, let out their lines, and started trolling away from shore. The Cox boats launched, and soon the fish-for-your-supper derby was in full swing.

  After filling the bottles, I gathered the pump and tubing and butt-walked back to camp, leaving a line of closely spaced Vs in the sand. It would be hard for me to get lost. Deer, elk, wolves, and bears leave tracks all over the park. Wonder what biologists would think if they saw this.

  “Fish on!” Dave shouted. The zing of a reel as the first fish made its run was proof. “Reel it in! Faster! Don’t let the tip down,” Dave instructed. It was a rapid-fire lesson on how to land this all-important prize. “Come on. Keep tension on that line!” He grabbed the fish net and deftly swooped a big Yellowstone cutthroat trout into the boat. The kids squealed and laughed, not knowing quite what to do with themselves or with the big fish that flopped out of the net and onto the floor. Dave quickly threw their lines back in, and the story repeated itself not once but several times.

  Leif and Heidi watched jealously.

  “Dad, can we use what they’re using?” Leif asked. Roger adjusted his baseball cap and muttered something the still air didn’t carry all the way to me.

  When Dave and our kids had netted six or seven, they headed for shore to clean the fish and set up the campfire for cooking them, leaving our friends and guides looking bemused as they gracefully flicked their wrists and rods back and forward, in an equally successful choreographed dance of fishing.

  As they approached, I called out, “Hey, kids. Grab those water bottles I left on the beach and bring them up with you.”

  After dinner, Dave dutifully gathered all the dirty dishes, along with camp suds, a washcloth, and a Teflon scrubber, and carried them to a secluded section of beach. From another spot closer to camp, I sat refilling water bottles.

  There was no noise—no radio, no TV, no motors, no neighbors. Dave sat scrubbing dishes and gazing across the huge expanse of steel-blue water at the receding mountain ranges as the alpenglow faded
and darkness enveloped the dense forest. The ground was cold under my jeans, and goose bumps crept up my torso, but I wasn’t ready to leave.

  Dave was a picture of peace. He is a man who immediately disables the dings, beeps, and chimes on every new appliance or gadget that enters our home and mutes the television when he watches sports; the quiet of the lake and forest suited him.

  After a few minutes, sounds emerged from the silence—the faint splash of a fish jumping; the haunting tremolo and decrescendo of loons’ evening conversations; the gentle lapping of wavelets on the shore; the scratching of the sand Dave was using to scrub the pots; and, somewhere behind me, the faint, occasional laugh of children playing Walk the Logs.

  In the distance, ever the Marine, Roger summoned the troops in his drill sergeant voice: “Kiddos, over here!” When they had gathered in front of him, he asked, “Who wants to be eaten by a bear tonight?” He looked around at the stunned faces. “No takers? Fine. Then help me hang the trash way up in this tree. Which one of you can get this rope over that high branch up there? Winner gets M&M’s!”

  For the next ten minutes, Roger officiated while the kids competed in a game of Bear Keep-Away. In the end, they all got as many M&M’s as their little fists could hold.

  There were no losers that night.

  Sitting there, I felt like I used to feel when we had a full moon in Redlands, where I could smell the orange blossoms and watch the moon rise over the mountains. It would be such a big, huge moon. It would look as if it were going to roll over the mountains. I used to have this feeling that I could just unzip my chest and that great big moon would come in, and the mountains would come in, and the orange blossoms would come in.

  That was how I felt on the shores of Yellowstone Lake that night. I smelled the trees, and I could see that lake out there. I took a deep breath, pulling in as much of it as I could. This is it.

  The shroud of night was black all around, and there were billions of tiny lights in the sky above. Our tent glowed faintly, lit from inside by squiggles from headlamps. Muffled giggles wafted through the flimsy tent walls as the kids tussled in sleeping bags, exuberant and exhausted.

  Crouched in the doorway, Dave took one last look around camp before crawling into our tent and flopping onto his sleeping bag beside me. “My arms are going to fall off,” he whispered. “We are coming back.” And then he was asleep.

  I wish I could say that I became instantly wise and relegated my fake legs to a waterproof bag for the rest of the trip, but I must confess that my pride still got the better of me. Every morning I made Dave help me get my legs on, lever up, and, while clutching his arm with a viselike grip, stumble down to the water’s edge, where he would manfully sweep me off my feet and fling me into the canoe, in which I would pretend to be the queen of the Nile for another day.

  Landing at our campsite on day two was much the same as the first day, but with less wind, waves, and wetness. After Dave extricated me from the canoe and plopped me down on the beach, he, Roger, and Carla hauled out all the bags and started setting up camp. The kids, who ended up wearing their life vests nearly twenty-four seven, jumped out, eager for their next adventure.

  “Last one to find an arrowhead is a rotten egg,” Tiffany yelled. With that, all four of the kids plopped belly down on the soft sand. Mother turtles about to lay a clutch of eggs could have taken lessons from those kids.

  “You’re a rotten egg,” Leif said, digging frantically.

  “Someone smells like a rotten egg,” Heidi yelled, screwing up her face, crossing her eyes, and laughing as though she was having the most fun any child had ever had.

  “Yeah, who farted?” Tiffany asked, giggling and digging faster.

  “Backseat thunder!” Brian yelled.

  “Backseat thunder!” Leif echoed.

  All of us adults broke out laughing. That’s what we got for eating ten dried apricots at a time for days on end. At least it wasn’t diarrhea.

  While the kids played and the other adults set up the tents, I found the perfect place to construct our kitchen. There must be a word other than kitchen to describe where we cooked. Mess comes to mind. To our credit, we did try to be picky about the sites. We looked for a flat space under a canopy of trees and with a nice long log or two for seating.

  I reached for one of the wooden boxes that held our food and cooking gear and started pulling out large heavy-duty trash bags full of the prepackaged meals Carla had meticulously put together. Inside were smaller white trash bags, indelible ink marking each with a day of the week. One by one, I unpacked them: “breakfast,” “lunch,” “dinner.”

  Our large ice chest sat off to one side, but within a few butt-walk paces. I moved back and forth across the kitchen, making sure everything was out and within easy reach. The top of the ice chest served as a compact table just big enough for a stack of aluminum plates, plastic cups, inexpensive eating utensils, and a roll of paper towels that was always falling into the dirt. Roger’s homemade plywood box with hinged top was stocked with essentials: seasonings in tiny containers, cooking oil, knives sheathed in a cloth with slots, aluminum foil, two dented pans, a nondescript coffeepot, a tiny camp stove with fuel bottle, and a beat-up frying pan.

  It looked organized. Sort of.

  Peals of man-size laughter and the thumping of back slapping regularly interrupted the squeals of joy from the beach.

  “I still can’t get over that . . . what do you call it—a port-a-poop?” Roger said, ribbing Dave as Dave headed off to find a private, more remote place to set up the port-a-potty he’d engineered. By day two, I’d figured out that I could just butt-walk out of the tent to pee in the night. I just needed to find a place with a small, flat rock and the right slope. If I put my right leg on the rock, I could hold myself up and pee without getting wet. Why couldn’t I have been born a guy?

  “That’s about the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen,” Carla said, with a good-natured laugh. “Just dig a hole and go behind a rock!”

  “Yeah, sure,” I replied, laughing and rummaging through one of the boxes, looking for the stove. “Watch the one-armed, no-legged lady dig a hole and poop in it.”

  Carla headed toward me, grabbed a bag labeled “day 2 snack,” and sat down on one of two rough logs opposite me in our pine needle–carpeted dining room. She popped a handful of fruit and nuts into her mouth and gave me a sideways smile. Suddenly, we were back in college and everything in my life was how it was supposed to be.

  Except for the stove.

  That tiny, wobbly one-burner stove. Its eleven ounces were easy to lift with one arm, but using it almost required eight. Three skinny aluminum legs spread out to provide a base, and three blade-thin arms extended on top for a pot to sit on. Set up, it was pretty flimsy looking. But once it produced a flame, I became a consummate water boiler and knighted myself superintendent of all matters related to boiling and stirring the pot.

  Sitting in the dirt, I tore open a bag of prepackaged rice and dumped the contents into the water I’d lovingly pumped from the lake and brought to a boil. Then came the hard part: stirring very carefully, with one hand, an eight-inch-wide pot on a teensy-weensy burner that wanted to do nothing more than tip over and burn me and fling its contents—our supper—onto the dirt floor of my kitchen. No five-second rule here. I’ve got this. Yay, I have a job. I wasn’t useless after all!

  Every day was an adventure: warm afternoons, cool nights, tearing down and setting up camp, paddling, fishing, swimming, digging, log hopping, wrassling, campfires and campfire songs, backseat thunder, laughing—so much laughing—and so much gentle lapping of waves, stillness, and quiet space to think and feel and see.

  Legs on, looking like a normal, able-bodied mom in my plane seat, kids conked out beside us, I looked over as Dave turned to me, pencil in one hand, notebook in the other, and said, “Okay . . . next time. Here’s what I’ve got: Allen wrenches, hiking poles, four Therm-a-Rests, two tents, four sleeping bags, tarp, stoves, fuel, matches, water pump
, two kayaks—”

  “Kayaks? I can’t paddle.”

  “I’ve got an idea,” he said, before going right back to his list. “Three paddles, kettles, frying pans, water jugs, Ziplocs, backpack, boat shoes—two pairs—rain jackets and rain pants, blue foam pads, sunscreen, bug repellent, throw rope, anchor, dry waders, break-down paddle, long nylon pants, bilge pump, lightweight rain shelter, kayak dry sacks. That’s my list. What’s on yours?”

  “Numbers one through ten are to figure out a better way to make my camp pants. Those knots have got to go! Next time, I’m going to take a pair of jeans and fold the legs up backward under me to make a three-layered butt pad. If we sew them all the way around, they’ll be sturdy and will keep the dirt out. I love nature, but I don’t think I need to be that intimate with it.”

  “Great idea. And I’ve got some ideas for how to improve our port-a-potty. They gave us a lot of crap about it, but did you notice that even the king and queen of the wilderness used it?” Dave asked. The corners of his mustache twitched upward, and he continued scribbling notes as the plane gently sped us home through the clear blue sky.

  “Well, you couldn’t beat the view from that throne,” I replied. “Hey, since you’ve got your paper and pencil out, food for thought: less oil, but more teriyaki; soups; meats for lunch, like sausage and jerky; bagels; peanut butter; extra granola for snacks. Likes: tortellini; that jalapeño cornbread; regular corn-bread; spicy couscous; and definitely more oatmeal, carrots, and hot chocolate.”

  The kids slept off the adventure behind us as I leaned against the airplane window. We’d done it. I’d butt-walked in the dirt, somehow managed to poop and pee in a semire-spectable fashion, cooked on the pine-needled ground, filtered the water, and watched my family have the time of their lives. Dave and I continued to talk and scribble notes, energized by all the adventures we could now see in front of us.