[For part one click here]
We had made it.
It was, as the saying goes, all downhill from here and I’d never been so glad. My family trudged wearily down the hill and tried to find a good camping spot. It was surprisingly difficult. There were plenty of level clearings, it just so happened most of them were filled. With other people.
So much for solitude.
But not far from the trail we found a decent spot and everyone could finally sink to the ground. Believe me, we were not above sitting in the dirt at this point. I unslipped my backpack and savored the feeling of only holding up my own deadweight.
“We need to get some water,” my Dad pointed out, and with a sigh a and creak I stood up to go to the lake. The first step felt like I was going to rocket into orbit. Without all that weight, I major overcompensated and nearly skipped right on my face. The affect lasted for a few minutes, letting me know I’d really done a number on my muscles, like when as a kid you spend all day on the trampoline and feel yourself bouncing still in bed that night.
We would have liked to rest there longer, but again, the bugs motivated us to action. And after all that toil to get to a beautiful scenic lake, we rewarded ourselves by setting up our tents and promptly napping in them for the rest of the afternoon.
I’d brought my MP3 player and had the music playing near my ear, cracking up with my sister when Bastille started crooning “How am I going to get myself back home?” over the tinny speakers. But that was tomorrow’s problem.
After everybody passed out for a few hours, the Eiser household emerged from their tents, dazed and drowsy. Once you actually got where you were heading on a backpacking trip, I wasn’t sure what you were supposed to do. Make camp, I suppose. We had brought our dehydrated meals with us, so dinner seemed the natural next thing. However, more pressing problems soon intervened.
Your first time going to the bathroom in the woods is memorable, mostly because it’s so dang awkward and hard. It’s a well-known fact that men have this bit of uncivilized living locked down, but for women? My aunt once summed it up as, “Women pee like elephants.” Your best shot really is to find some secluded log to hang your bare behind over and pray something doesn’t bite it. Our father handed my sister and I a shovel and a roll of toilet paper and wished us luck. We searched a long time to find somewhere that didn’t feel like whizzing in God’s amphitheater but eventually, time wearing on and things becoming urgent, practicality prevailed over modesty.
Thus refreshed, my sister and I were able to return to camp and focus on the real Eiser family camping activity: eating. And you would think this would be another horror story about dehydrated foods but I was so hungry then that to this day I think that was the best reconstituted beef stew I’ve ever eaten out of a paper cup with a plastic spoon. It was an experience never to be fully recreated.
I’d love to say that after that we all relaxed by the fire and had a jolly time, but this was August and it was dry, so there were no fires allowed in the Cascades even if we’d had something to burn. Eventually, the bugs and our tiredness and the failing light drove us back into our tents and we all called it a night.
We’re spoiled, you know, sleeping on mattresses in our level, heated houses. The night was quiet, very quiet, and quickly also became very cold. My sister and I were using our dirty clothes in a plastic bag for a pillow, but she eventually pulled out her second pair of shorts to put over the lower half of her legs to form a sort of pants cocoon to sleep in. It’d have been funny if it hadn’t been so ridiculous. And I could. Not. Get. Comfortable. It was like gravity was relentlessly pushing me into the rocks in the ground, which, even if it had been level, would have been rough enough. But gravity was also pulling me. Every few hours I found myself too far to the foot of the tent and had to inchworm my way uphill again. I kept waking up, drifting off, waking up. It was hard to tell what time it was. At some point, I was wide awake though, because THERE WAS SOEMTHING MOVING OUTSIDE OUR TENT. My sister, in true fashion, rolled over and decided to deal with it in the morning, while I laid wide awake, in true fashion, clutching my sleeping bag as “whatever-it-was” started rubbing against our tent. I stayed awake, in mute terror, until it went away.
It was the longest night of my life. When the dawn finally crawled over the hills I was awake to greet it with raccoon eyes and I could have wept. I don’t know how much I actually slept, but I didn’t have to keep trying to sleep anymore.
I went down to the lake to get water for breakfast, and there was a fine mist hanging over the water. The world was absolutely still in that moment, just me and the lake, and the early sunlight reaching towards the surface and blushing its way up the cliff face. I paused by the water. So that’s what these moments are I thought, and as I put my pan into the water a frog jumped in and swam away. I shrugged, and pulled out the frog water anyways. I was getting used to things.
The coffee was awful, which was not an encouraging start, but after taking our time with breakfast we broke camp and started the journey home. Mercifully, what had been all uphill yesterday was downhill today. We found ourselves, though footsore, with enough breath for conversation. We talked about yesterday, and nothing else, and I provided profuse and numerous apologies. (I’m still apologizing actually.) I kept walking, digging my walking stick into the ground and pulling myself forward as much as pushing with my feet, until finally, unbelievably, we reached the stream we had first crossed yesterday, a hundred years ago.
I pulled out my flip flops and eyed the stream dubiously, recalling last time I’d crossed it. I’d have to be careful. Cazi, sensing we were nearing the end of our quest, was under no such cautious compulsions and promptly fell on her butt in the water. My Dad picked her up by her backpack with one hand, and they made it across. I was still shambling halfway over when I felt the current tug on my sandals and –oh no!– lost one to the water. I tried to grab it but in so doing –oops!– there went the other, and they both floated merrily as you please to where, I assume, they are still in Bumping Lake to this day.
Leaving me barefoot in the middle of the river. But what are you going to do? I just crossed it the rest of the way, and put my socks back on over muddy toes on the other side.
At any rate, we were in the homestretch now, and saw a glint of metallic light through the trees as we came up on our parked cars and the pure relief I felt was indescribable.
We’d made it. After all that, we’d survived our adventure. We drove home, cleaned up, and swore we’d never do it again.
We did do it again, but that’s another story.