Just being here, ready for a campout, reminds me of the last camping trip I went on with my dad.
It was last summer in Hayward, Wisconsin, way up by the Minnesota border. We found this great campsite right on Lake Chippewa. I remember that day so clearly, kicking back in camp chairs, Dad cooking burgers over the campfire while I paged through one of my hiking magazines in the fading daylight. I remember everything we said and did, like it’s a movie in my head.
“Hey, Dad, I found this article with a list of potential hazards on the Appalachian Trail,” I said to him. “You want to hear it?”
“Of course.” He flipped the burgers with a spatula and sent grease sizzling into the fire. “We need to be prepared.”
“Okay, let’s see. ‘Mosquitoes, biting flies, poison ivy,’” I read out loud. “Are you kidding me? You call those hazards?”
“I don’t know. Poison ivy all over your face and body and nether regions? I’d call that a hazard,” Dad pointed out.
“Yeah, but come on. Just wear heavy duty bug repellent and stay away from shiny three-leafed plants. That’s like Hiking 101.”
“You’d be surprised how many boneheads think they can hike the trail and don’t know what they’re getting into.” Dad took off his Chicago Cubs cap, the one he wore all summer long because he thought it would give our team luck, although it seemed to have the opposite effect. He scratched his head and smashed the cap back down. Black hair stuck out in tufts over his ears.
I scanned the rest of the list. “‘Severe weather,’ duh. ‘Steep grades,’ also duh. Ah, now we’re talking. ‘American black bear’ and ‘venomous snakes.’ Those are hazards I can respect. Oh, and here’s the last one: ‘Diarrhea from drinking water.’” I glanced up at my dad. “Seriously?”
“Hm. Black bears and diarrhea. I’m scared already. Maybe we better just pitch a tent in the backyard.”
Dad scooped the burgers onto buns I’d set out on metal camping plates and handed me mine.
“We should definitely do it.” Dad took a big bite of his burger. “Hike the Appalachian Trail.”
“Well, yeah,” I said. “We’ve been talking about it since I was twelve.”
“I know, but I think it’s time we actually made some plans.”
I stopped mid-chew to stare at my dad. “For real?” To tell the truth, I always figured the Appalachian Trail was a dream we liked to talk about, but that would never happen. After all, it’s over 2,000 miles long and crosses through fourteen states. To do that on foot would take an entire summer at least. There’s no way my dad would take that much time off work.
“For real.”
“When?” I popped the last bite of burger into my mouth.
“Next summer, after you graduate from high school. That would be a great way to celebrate, don’t you think?”
“Well, hell yeah. That would be amazing. Let’s do it.”
The Appalachian Trail meant hiking through the woods of Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and finishing up in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. The hike itself would be incredibly cool. Also, for the rest of my life, even when I was old, I could work into conversations, Now that reminds me of the time back in the day when I hiked the Appalachian Trail.
“It would be a great way for us to spend some quality time together before you head off to college.” Dad threw another log on the campfire. The embers crackled and jumped.
College. This was the last thing I wanted to think about. Contemplating my future was like peering into a black hole. But Dad had expectations. College is just what people did. Everyone should have it all worked out by age eighteen: a list of goals, a total life plan. Yeah, right. I was terrified to tell anybody this, but I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t even have a clue.
“So, have you started your applications?” He tried to sound casual, but I was losing him. He was switching from Dad, my camping buddy, to Dad, the parent who knows what’s best, the one who says I better step up or obviously I’ll be a major disappointment. A subtle shift, but it was there, loud and clear. “It would be a good idea to get started on your essay this summer.”
“I know, Dad. Look, can we talk about something else?” I started to feel sick, dinner churning in my stomach.
“But, Danny, you need to get serious about—” Dad began.
“Yes, I know, Dad. ‘Danny, it’s time get serious about your future, your education, your career, blah blah blah.’ But it’s not like you can squeeze all your wise fatherly advice into one week and then disappear on another business trip.”
I felt bad as soon as I said it, but it was the truth. He was always out on the road even, I suspected, when he didn’t need to be.
Dad stared into the fire. He didn’t even try to deny it. “I’m sorry, son.”
Neither of us said a thing for a long time, just watched the wood burn down into glowing red coals as the sky grew darker. Crickets and cicadas started their night sounds and fireflies flashed signals in the tall grass by the pond. When I finally spoke, what I had to say came out so low I wasn’t sure he could hear me. Or if I even wanted him to.
“Dad, how come we never talk about Cole?”
He drew in a quick breath. For both of us, hearing the name out loud felt like a blow to the heart. “You know why, Danny.”
“No, Dad, I don’t.”
He took his hat off and raked fingers through his hair. “It’s your mother,” he said. “She feels responsible for what happened. I thought you knew that.”
“How could I know when we don’t talk about it? It’s like Cole never existed.”
Tears prickled behind my eyes then, as they do now, as I sit by the edge of Walden Pond and remember.
When I close my eyes, I can still see Cole that last morning when I glanced back at the house on my way to school. He was standing at the living room window like he did every day, wearing his Batman pajamas and waving good-bye. Everybody said he looked exactly like I did when I was two, with his gray eyes and hair all black and thick like mine.
That afternoon, when the guidance counselor came to get me, we were working on the isosceles triangle theorem in eighth grade geometry class. He whispered something in my teacher Mrs. Pearson’s ear, and then they both looked over at me. Somehow I knew something bad had happened, like a premonition.
At the funeral, everybody talked about what a terrible tragedy it was. An accident. Mom had been working on the garden like she did every May, planting flowers around the pool fence. Cole was doing what he called “helping,” using a beach shovel and a Tonka dump truck to push dirt around.
When the phone rang that day, Mom picked Cole up and carried him into the house with her. But when she went looking for a pen and paper to write something down, he ran back outside, probably to get his truck. He loved that truck, partly because it was my favorite truck when I was little, and I gave it to him. By the time Mom finished the call and realized he wasn’t playing at her feet like she’d thought, Cole had opened the closed gate around the pool—we still don’t know how he did that—got too close to the edge, and slipped silently into the deep end, still holding on to that truck.
Cole would’ve turned seven years old this year and been a second-grader, but his life ended the year I turned thirteen and Rosie was four. He drowned in the pool at our house in Evanston, and Mom was so devastated that we had to move. In fact, we moved three times in five years, each time to another house in a different suburb. On the outside, every one of those houses was really pretty. But inside those houses, nothing changed. Mom was drinking, Dad was leaving, and Rosie and I were trying to be perfect. No matter how many times we moved, we were still us. And to be honest, it wasn’t working out so well.
“Are you and Mom getting a divorce?” I whispered to my dad by the campfire that night in Wisconsin, unable to be silent on that too.
Dad looked down at his hands, rubbing dirt off his knuckles. “I’m…not sure. It’s complicated, Danny. I don’t expect you to understand.”
He
was right. I didn’t understand why my family’s world continued to fall apart and I was completely powerless over everything. Whether it was fair or not, I blamed my father for not making it better. He was the dad, and it was his job to make it better. Without another word, I unrolled my sleeping bag by the fire, turned away, and pretended to go to sleep. We didn’t talk about hiking the Appalachian Trail again for the rest of that trip. In fact, neither of us ever brought it up again.
At Walden Pond my thoughts are full of these things I’d forgotten. Like losing Cole and fighting with Dad. Camping and the Appalachian Trail.
If Cole had lived, we would’ve taken him camping, and I would’ve shown him how to do everything—like build campfires, find stars and planets in the night sky, and hunt for wild blueberries. But I never got a chance to show him much of anything.
Picking up flat stones on the shores of the pond, I chuck them at an angle and they skim across the surface, five, six, seven times. I was a rock-skipping champ. I would’ve taught Cole how to do that too.
I pick up a couple more stones from the edge of the water and examine them on my open palm. One is a perfect oval of quartz, smooth and white. The other is a chunk of gray granite, with rough edges and tiny mirrors of mica in it.
Maybe if I’m lucky, Thoreau will visit me in my dreams, so I can talk to him one more time. Sounds goofy, but I really want to know: if he were in my place, What Would Henry Do? Would he go home and face the mess he left behind? Or would he strike out on his own, start a new life and never look back?
A few feet away from Thoreau’s cabin site is a huge pile of rocks called a cairn that has been growing on this spot for decades. People who visit the site place rocks on the cairn, basically to honor Thoreau, acknowledging that he was somebody special, to say hey Henry, whassup, I was here to see you.
I set my gray stone on top of the pile gently, like a sign of respect. Or a good-bye. The smooth white stone I slip into my pocket, a tiny souvenir of Walden to take with me, wherever I end up next.
Then, instead of settling myself on the hearth of Thoreau’s former cabin like that first night, I find a dry, hidden spot to lay out the sleeping bag behind a boulder. The warmer weather has attracted a lot of random hikers, and I don’t want any company. Hopefully I’m still close enough for the spirit of Thoreau to know I’m here.
Please come, Henry. Please. I need to talk to you.
The minutes tick by, but time seems to pass slower here in the woods. The sky is sprinkled with a million stars, and the pines are silhouetted against the deep blue stretching over my head. An owl hoots from somewhere high in an oak tree. Some small animal rustles in the bushes at the shore of the pond. A mosquito whines in my ear.
I wait. And wait. The night stretches on before me and all around me, envelops me. It’s also waiting but for nothing, it turns out, other than itself.
A loud chorus of singing, twittering, trilling birds wakes me up the next morning, and I duck my head inside the sleeping bag to muffle the sound, but it does no good. The birds have decided it’s time to get up, and it’s pointless to try to get more sleep. Okay, okay. I’m up already.
Thoreau never came last night. There was no visit, no dreams. Nothing. I avoid the chilly morning air by hunkering down in the sleeping bag with only my hair sticking out of the top, listening to the songs of all the birds, like a crazy orchestra tuning up. Here in the woods, I can almost convince myself that my problems in the human world don’t even exist. Which is maybe what Henry has been saying all along. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity. Don’t take more from the world than you need. Don’t need more than you take. Somehow nature puts things into perspective.
“What the—are you kidding me? Hey, kid! Get back here with my stuff!”
From somewhere near the pond, I hear a guy’s voice thundering into the woods. At first I think he’s shouting at me, which makes no sense. Then I hear someone crash past me in the underbrush, not ten feet away. Popping my head out of the sleeping bag, I see some kid in a plaid coat, red scarf, and black knit cap pulled down low over his head running up the hill, a bundle in his arms. I scramble out of the sleeping bag and stand up to get a better look.
There, in the clearing by Thoreau’s cabin site, is a guy with bushy red hair, dripping with pond water, wearing nothing but a pair of drenched boxers and shivering with cold and fury. The guy breaks into a clumsy, barefooted run into the woods after the thief who apparently stole his clothes. After running just a few yards, he bellows in pain, grabs his foot, and unleashes an amazing tirade of creative cursing about what he intends to do to the thief, his entire extended family, and any domestic animals they happen to own. I’m so impressed that I just stand there, staring.
Spotting me there beside the boulder, the guy actually shakes his fist at me and says, “What are you just standing there for? Stop that bastard now, for the love of God!” He gestures toward the crashing figure, swiftly disappearing into the woods.
The insult and indignity of the guy’s situation strikes me. Besides, what else am I going to do, say, Nah, you’re on your own. You just stand there and freeze your ass off. I don’t care? Of course not. So I step out of the sleeping bag, slip on my sneakers without lacing them, and bound into the woods after the kid who was cruel enough to steal a half-naked guy’s clothes when he was looking the other way.
The thief has grown momentarily silent, maybe realizing that twigs breaking and dead leaves crunching under his feet give away his location. He must be hiding now, crouched behind a bush or a large rock.
But then I spot his red knit scarf, caught in a branch near his hiding place by a toppled pine tree, and all hell breaks loose as he gives in to the chase. He ducks behind a stand of maple trees, but I spot him at the top of the hill, trying to find a shortcut out to the street.
“Hey you, stop!” I shout, which is stupid of course, because this only makes him run faster. He stumbles on a branch, almost falls, and I finally gain on him. Reaching the back of his coat, I grab on, tackle him to the ground, and we somersault together in the leaves. I roll him over, pin him down on the dirt with my knees on his shoulders, and get a good look at him.
Huge blue eyes stare up at me, the bottom half of his face covered by the flipped-up collar of the plaid coat. A strand of long blond hair sneaks out from under the wool hat. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a minute. This is no guy. It’s a girl.
“Sorry,” I stammer, all embarrassed, until I remind myself she’s a thief, even if she is female, with long blond hair and pretty eyes. “I mean, come on, who steals a guy’s clothes?”
The girl blinks at me, dark lashes, eyes that look familiar somehow.
“Hank?” she says.
“Nessa?” My voice comes out something like a squeak. Stunned, I scramble to my feet away from her, and with her hands freed, she yanks the hat off her head, pulls the collar away from her face, and I see her huge smile.
“Hank!” she cries out, and she’s throwing her arms around my neck, practically jumping all over me. “I found you!”
Nessa is here, hanging off my neck, here in Concord, Massachusetts, and I’m too startled to convert any of the questions in my head into coherent sentences. I register that she’s a blond now—after the makeover Magpie ordered—and that although she’s still pretty, her hands, face, and clothes are filthy.
“Yes, you found me,” I say at last. “I…here you are, and I have so many questions about that.” I shake my head to clear it, like shaking off a crazy dream that makes no sense. “But you know, there’s a guy standing down there shivering in his underwear, and he needs his clothes back.”
She grins, but lowers her eyes like she’s at least making an attempt to be ashamed. “I’m sorry,” she says.
“Look, just give me his clothes,” I say. “I’ll tell him you got away, but that you dropped all his stuff. Okay?”
She shrugs, then nods. “Okay, Hank.” Before I can scoop up the clothes, she grabs my hand, her blues eyes searching my face. “Prom
ise you’ll come back?” She’s squeezing my fingers so hard it actually hurts. “Please?”
“Of course, I will. I promise.”
Nessa helps me gather up a denim shirt, black jeans, a pair of cowboy boots, and a backpack, and I jog down the hill to where the guy is pacing around the clearing with a limp, his arms wrapped around his chest, shivering even harder now, his lips turning blue. Close up, I can see the guy is older than I thought, probably in his forties. He has thick red hair on his chest and back, almost like fur, but it’s obviously not enough to keep him warm on a chilly spring morning in New England.
“The kid got away.” I tell him. “But the good news is that he dropped your stuff. Here.”
He grabs the bundle of clothes, and he’s still cursing like crazy under his breath, not that I blame him. He looks so funny, I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling.
“All I wanted to do was come to Walden Pond and emulate Thoreau by taking a morning bath in these sacred waters like he did,” the guy murmurs, eyes still blazing. “But then some asshole runs off with my gear. I bet that never happened to Thoreau.”
Emulating Thoreau, eh? I look at his drenched boxers. They’re pink, covered with red and white hearts, like joke underwear his wife or girlfriend gave him for Valentine’s Day. Nice boxers, I almost say out loud. As if reading my thoughts, the guy blushes and pulls his pants on, right over his wet underwear. “Okay then,” I say, hoping to spare either of us both further embarrassment. “Sorry this happened to you. Have a good day now.” I turn away, still fighting a smile.
“Wait,” he says hastily, and I turn back. “Uh, thanks. You did a good thing.”
Being Henry David Page 15
