Tuesday, January 16, 2018

switchbacks/rumspringa

I stopped in for beer because I had to wait for a train, and I saw a little sign with an arrow, so I pulled over and parked the truck. Inside a tiny shop, a man in a yellow sweatshirt flapped open the blanket-curtain separating the back room from the store. Vian. The town must have been Vian. His sweatshirt said Wolverines, the high school sports team. I could hear a tv from the back room, could just see a recliner. The place looked grubby and cozy.

The beer selection was mainstream, not a microbrew or craft beer in sight. I grabbed a six pack of Lone Star in cans and a six pack of Shiner. I asked about ales, but didn't get much out of the talkative clerk/proprietor. He offered up some Grolsch he had in the back, and I took it. He insisted on helping me carry my purchases out to the truck, maybe just to see if I was telling the truth about going camping in the mountains in January. Taylor watched us from the front seat of the truck. The liquor store guy said he could tell she was a kind dog. He whistled at my paper tag and told me to make sure I stopped at all the stop signs, because small town cops don't have much of anything better to do.

The train had passed. I got back on the road, heading for the Ouachitas. Another hour or so on the pavement, then 3 miles down a dirt road, and there I was.

My imaginary friend came without his wife. She's my other imaginary friend. It was too cold for her this year, and he was running the 50k. He opened beer bottles for me with his wedding ring. He told me I'd meet more friends of his at the top of the mountain. I found the bottle opener after a while. Other friends showed up. I made new friends.

People set up camp. People sleeping in their vehicles, people hanging hammocks between trees. One guy had converted his Honda Element into an enviable dirtbag RV, complete with shelves along one side, blacked out windows, and a bed that he could stretch out on - and he's 6'2". I asked. I was jealous. At least one sprinter van prowled the dirt parking lot, but I didn't get a look inside.

It was bitterly cold. I was giddy with cold. I went into the woods to scavenge firewood and scratched my face and my hands on the brambles. Dora served spaghetti at the edge of the parking lot. Runners and volunteers balanced plates and beers while we stood around the fire, grinning at each other. It felt like we were getting away with something.

Taylor wailed when the runners took off the next morning. She doesn't like it when she doesn't get to run. There's no explaining to a dog.

I got to my aid station a little later than I meant to, and all the water was frozen, but I had a pot in my backpack that I'd meant to use to make soup, and we used it to thaw out some water, me and my new friends on the top of the mountain. We shivered and grinned at each other. I laid out olives, cheese and crackers, homemade baked goods, and handwarmers. My new friends cooked quesadillas, logged runners' bib numbers, and we all cheered. I burned the shit out of my thumb on the water pot. There is a shiny line across the pad of it today. I keep digging my fingernails into it. A strip of skin will come off eventually.

I sent Taylor down the mountain with some friends so she would stop sulking and protest-napping. So she got 8 miles in. I was down the mountain before she got done, and she came running to the finish, OSU coat swinging, so excited. She curled up in her chair by the fire after that and couldn't find much reason to complain. A tired dog is a good dog. The other humans and I stayed up talking and drinking beer, building the fire up, melting our beer bottles in the fire, passing around the whiskey, staring slack-jawed at the stars whenever we turned away from the fire. Or maybe that was just me. The stars are so bright out there. The sky is so clear. I stood as close to the fire as I could get without burning, slowly turning, trying to keep all my sides from freezing. I put Taylor to bed in the truck and stayed up longer, still talking.

I don't know how cold it was. Cold. Freezing. It was a test of will when I went to climb into my sleeping bag. I knew I should strip down, change into something clean. I parted with a layer, shivered, pulled off another layer.

Sunday morning crept up on me. My imaginary friend and my new friend were making breakfast before I wriggled out of my sleeping bag and back into layers and layers of wool and fleece and jeans. Someone noted that the campsite had dwindled down to just our three Tacomas. I felt like we'd won something.

I stopped at the first Tote-A-Poke I saw, and I was disappointed that it didn't have any vending machines in the bathroom. I bought coffee and gas and a pack of cigarettes. The clerk asked to see my ID, for the cigarettes. She handed it back and said she'd thought I couldn't be more than twenty five. I laughed and said my beauty secret was going two days without a shower and camping in the back of a truck. I'm forty. Rumor has it, I was put down three months ago.

I drove until I saw the pink building with the giant T-Rex sculpture out front. The dinosaur held a metal handbag that said "GONE SHOPPING." I stood in front of the closed store, trying not to look too weird, smoking in front of the signs that warned of video surveillance, staring at the oddities, until the cold got to be too much again and I had to get back into the truck. My imaginary friend drove past and I felt very uncool to be caught staring at the thing that was meant to be stared at. Like a sucker.

I didn't take any pictures. My iPhone was dead most of the weekend. iPhones don't like cold, and I never remember to put my phone in a warm pocket.

Maybe next year.

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