Another Friend

I recently went on a weekend trip to my cabin in the woods with a relatively new friend who is an architect that grew up in St. Louis. I work for him sometimes on an old house that he is restoring, and have gotten to know him fairly well. He is a smallish fellow, and sort of a Constitutional scholar. He had heard about the cabin in conversations with me and had made it a point several times that he was interested in going to see about it, so one weekend I took him up to my parents for a day trip, when he saw it the first time, and then two weeks later he and I went up to spend a weekend. I never saw a fellow so un-camp ready (with the possible exception of a fellow who brought an umbrella once). I do believe you will relate to his story.

Late Friday afternoon, after the workday was finished, I picked him up at his house. He had mentioned bringing along some hip waders, and a few other things I thought were odd, but in my mind I thought: “I have a big van, and he can bring whatever he likes that would make him feel OK about the camp out.” He grabbed a sandwich, and a few things. A common friend of ours stopped by for a half hour. It was almost two hours before he got what he wanted and we were in the vehicle and moving north. We needed to get a few groceries to stave us over, and so we stopped at a grocery store and picked up some essentials, and made it to Camp just about dark (it was the longest day of the year, or at least the day before that). I lit a fire in the old wood stove, and within an hour the damp of an unused cabin melted away to a warm fireside chat. The temp was just above 50 degrees outside and the fire felt good. We wandered outside to take a look at the spectacular night sky that can only be seen from an open field deep in the woods, and the sounds of the night began to waft our way. “What’s that? A couple of foxes. “What’s that?” A whip-o-will bird. What’s that? A deer getting water at the creek. “Did you hear that?” Yes, it was a bullfrog. Honest to goodness, this fellow had never been in the woods in his life. How do you suppose I could resist an opportunity to fill him up with just a little baloney? The fireflies were across the fields by the tens of thousands. The road way we had driven in on had twenty times as many as were in the field, and it looked like a lighted path to the road less taken. I mentioned that my uncle John had called them “spook lights” when we were growing up. He said: Each one of them is a spirit trying to find his way home. No comment. I mentioned that my uncle John had lived in a nearby place, that we had just passed through, and swore that he had seen a ghost/man drag a huge chain down the stairs of the hotel there, out the door, and down past the mill stone, around by the creek, and then right into the earth just under the old bridge. Nervous laugh, and “Well, some people believe anything” I said I don’t know whether to laugh or not at things people say. I had once been on a hay rack ride over by where the old cabin used to set, and my dad and I were taking the tractor and wagon home, when we saw two spook lights of our own. They moved faster than an airplane, but were only fifty feet over the tops of the trees, and then just stopped right over the hay field, which was just out of our sight. We killed the engine on the old John Deere, and could hear a sound that sounded like a huge transformer coming from my dad’s hay field. I had wanted to go to the house and get a gun, but my dad suggested that a shotgun would only piss off someone who might very well be an alien. By the time we got to the field, all we were able to find was a big smashed down triangle in the field, where something very heavy had set recently. The weeds were smashed all the way flat, and were just beginning to rise back to their place in nature.
As you know, timing is everything, and just about then a bobcat began to make her noise. I don’t know if you have ever heard the sound before, but it sounds like a woman in dire straights. Sort of a high pitched scream that goes right through you. My friend said: Did you hear that? I said, my brother Bill and I had heard that when we were children, and always believed it was the sound of a headless lady who had been killed and beheaded by highway men at the turn of the century. He said: That is just pure BS. What was it? Truthfully, I told him it was a bobcat. He said: That is more frightening than the goofy story ever could have been. We need to go inside and leave the stars out here for the night. It had been a long day for us both, and we had both worked, so we made up our beds and let that be a day.

The morning sun brought a relative thunder of birds singing the sun up. I am a light sleeper, and got up to start a fire to take the morning chill off, and get some water boiling for my tea. I started a fire in the big fire ring out by the buckeye tree, and hung up a hammock between two trees for taking the mandatory afternoon nap that goes with my idea of ideal camping. My friend eventually woke up, and we had a breakfast fit for bachelor kings. I made pancakes, bacon and eggs, and had my second cup of tea. Since the fire was already going, I decided to bake off a couple of old iron skillets that my wife had gotten at a yard sale that were caked up with years of cooking grease. As they became cherry red in the fire the years melted away from them. After a coating of new oil they looked much as they probably did fifty years ago when they were new. We use the cast iron skillets and pots to cook in as everyday cookware, and the addition of these new ones will add to our cooking enjoyment. My friend had brought an iron skillet of his own, that his mother had given him, and that had come from a great aunt, or some such, and we put it in the fire later in the morning. When it came out of the fire, it had a red coloring that came off on our hands when we tried to clean it, and it somehow never actually got clean. We decided that at one point someone must have painted it red and hung it in the kitchen as an ornament, and then just cooked with it until it became black with use. At the time this must have been done, the only red paint available was lead paint, so we put it back into the fire and built and especially hot bed of coals to make sure this stuff was all the way gone from his family treasure. More paint came off each time we fired it, but it took several more tries before we were satisfied that no one was going to be poisoned by using it.

Mid morning found us with fishing poles in hand on our way to the old fishing hole in the Ellison Creek that flows nearby. As we came to the creek and started down over the bank, we surprised a yearling whitetail deer. He was so startled at our presence that he leapt fifteen feet straight away from us, and landed right in the middle of the creek. He shot out of there in a shower of white tail and water drops glistening in the morning sun. No one knows who was more surprised. As I mentioned earlier my friend shakes a little and fishes very seldom, so tying trylene knots in fishing line was beyond him. I made up his tackle, dug some worms, and pointed him to where I knew there to be fish, and began to fish myself. I caught a little bullhead (catfish) and threw him back. My friend was not content to let the line actually lay in one place long enough for a fish to find it, but kept moving about and catching his hook on a limb or a tree, or a something, and then I had to go re-string him up. He got a very large catfish up to the bank one time, and then the fish wrapped the line around a log and got away. I threw my line up under the shadow of a tree that had fallen across the creek, and my line landed on the back of a very large fish, which took umbrage and leapt out into the middle of the stream in a single bound. I found myself fixing things more than fishing, and the sun was getting up pretty high, so I suggested lunch, and we headed back to camp to make our noon day fare.

We had gotten some pretty nice cuts of steak on the way up there, and decided that since the fire was still hot from our morning chores that it would be a very good idea to just stick the meat on the marshmallow sticks and roast it right then and there. That seemed to work well, and we salted and peppered them, put them between two slices of bread, and whoa, what a good lunch. No fuss, no muss, no dishes, just burned meat on a stick. What could be better? My friend had brought along a book on constitutional law, and after such a lunch, I thought rest from our labors seemed natural. After that, I went up to the big house, and got the riding mower and mowed the grass for a couple of hours. There are four or five acres that I keep mowed, so it takes a while, even on a big rider. As evening came, the bugs came out. We had had the foresight to bring chemicals swearing to be sufficient to kill each and every mosquito in the surrounding area for months. In fact nearly all insects were supposed to leave the immediate vicinity at the mention of the pesticide according to the commercial. I sprayed it, and it worked. One of those thinks you don’t really believe will happen did. They all left. Amazing. Well, we began our evening meal, and this time decided to have the good steaks that we had brought. We set up the grill on the big fire ring outside, and cooked our dinner to as near a perfection as possible. I am certain I have never had one that tasted better, except for one time in Omaha, near the cattle lots. At any rate, it was first rate, and we sat and talked about things on our minds for several hours by the fire. The sun went down, the birds became quiet, the frogs began their mating calls, and the foxes began to howl at the moon, and chase their fellows through the wood very noisily in pursuit of some unknown prey. A deer jumped in the creek, and by the time we got to where the sound came from the tracks were filling in with water, but Mr. White Tail was long gone.

Inside the cabin again, just before bed, my friend said there was definitely some animal upstairs walking about. I looked several times, but was unable to see what made the sound, but he was insistent. I didn’t put too much stock in it, but soon enough a big mouse came wandering down the wall behind him, and when he caught a glimpse of him out of the corner of his eye, he leapt up and said. “Did you see that”? Well of course I did, but I pretended not to have, and he described the largest black rodent since the plague. It had been a little Grey wood mouse, and many times smaller than his show of size by his hands. At any rate, I was not interested in a mouse, and had had a full day. So up the ladder I went, and was out with the foxes in my dreams before my head hit the pillow. As it turned out, I had left my tackle box open just outside of the door, and around three in the morning some marauders came slinking up to the cabin with permanent black masks in place. I woke up when one began to scream at the top of his little lungs. He had gotten a fishing lure out of my box and stuck a three pronged hook just under his nose. I was down the ladder, and had the light on him before I even knew what I was looking for. It really was an awful scream. At any rate the little fellow was doing his best three stooges imitation, with two friends following close behind for support. He was leaping. He was twirling. He lay on his side, and kicked his way around in a circle. All the while screeching like a banshee. Now it would have been a shame to miss a thing like that. I am certain that you are not about to be able to buy tickets for anything quite as entertaining.

Once the sun and the birds got their early business out of the way, I started making some bacon and eggs on the stove inside the cabin. The smell was outrageous, and who could sleep through a thing like that. At any case, my buddy got up and around and we began our morning feast. I had opened the door because of the heat from the stove, and we were sitting about eating and getting ready for the day, when who should appear in the doorway, but the bat from hell. He flew in uninvited, and circled my friend sizing him up for a breakfast of his own. At least that is what my friend thought. I thought, Oh a bat, and went back to my cooking. It finally landed behind the couch on the wall, and I do believe my friend’s breakfast had been ruined. Well, being a good host, I got a broom, whacked the bat, and then swept him out side where he belonged. Apparently I had hit him a little hard, and he appeared not likely to recover, so he went the way all good bats go, and the foxes will have a little feast when they come to see what the noisy people were doing over in the big clearing last night.

The trip home was relatively quiet, as we both considered our lives, and how they were very different. He had not done badly for a first time in the woods, and most probably better than I would have done in the big city among the art and the architecture. We stopped at a flea market about half way home and picked up an electric waffle iron that was exactly like the one his dad had used all the Sunday mornings of his growing up years. He bought it because he knew his older brother had dibs on that one when the time came, and now he would have that memory just as if it were his dads, and when they both become senile, no one will really know which one is which, and they can argue about it like it was important.
We got back to civilization about ten thirty in the morning, and began doing things we need to do to get along with those around us. I certainly will never tell anyone he knows that he sat up all night with his sleeping bag huddled around him waiting on the return of a monster cabin mouse.

Steve Forrester
June 2003