August Perfection

Or almost. The vivid and smoke-free skies of yore, yes, but now you can’t swim in Odell Lake, for heaven’s sake.

And it had taken me some resolve to decide to bring my new swim suit and take the plunge. But the blue-green algae has made it up here, at over 5,000 feet, and it is toxic. But we haven’t had an August without severe forest fires for at least four years, and everyone was happy. Amongst the mountain hemlock and Noble fir that crowd my campsite, I’m lying across Janet’s couch, and the temperature is just slightly cooler than my own skin. With no insects at all, the top is popped, windows unzipped, and her side door wide open. Bug-free perfection there. And, I’m listening to the fading rumble of maybe the third train going by up the hill from me since I got here this afternoon. The main crossing of the Cascades for freight and passenger trains going from Washington to California is just off in the forest nearby. There will be at least a couple in the night. I seem to remember the last time I was here, at Shelter Cove Resort, 31 years go, (well, 31 and a half, since it was in February) that I heard the trains and was completely freaked out. I couldn’t figure out where in the woods the earth-shaking sound was coming from. Everything looks about the same since way back then.

I am here for a true ‘vacation.’ I will vacate my overwrought mind for three nights and three days of wandering about on foot, maybe paddling on the lake, who can say? No internet, not good cell service.

Upon arrival, I was in my camp chair with a beer and my novel Of Human Bondage, by W. Somerset Maugham, and heard someone strumming folk songs in a minor key on a ukelele, singing away in an untrained baritone. Finally I got up and wandered to the campsite from which the singing came from, eager to see if it were an Eastern European man, because what American would play and sing live, in a campground, just for his own amusement?

I lurked in the trees, listening, and quietly clapped at the end of a song. Joe and Pam, in their 70s, invited me to come sit down with them. They are snowbirds between Bend and Yuma and Pam showed me her prized hat, with many buttons pinned around it, the largest by far with the word PARASITES, and President Trump’s face along side a tick and some worm thing, and a joke about ticks. Trump being a luna-tick. I smiled. She will not say his name, however. And no, not from the Iron Curtain, they are plain ol’ Americans. We both listened to Joe play and sing, and he eventually went and got a mini-banjo for the really folksy songs.

I thanked Joe for the music and Pam for the visit, and walked down to the common area to see if there was a bonfire, and passed the corner out of the camping area that has an unexplained display of gnomes that I imagine one could add to each year, if one felt so inclined.

There was no sign of life at the fire pit, but I enjoyed the quiet dusk, and walked out on one of the docks.

I am waiting for full darkness, so I can take a cup of ginger tea out there and look at stars. It is probably the end of the Pleiades meteor shower too.