Immortality comes with aches and pains

When I was a boy I was immortal.  I knew that I was bigger, stronger, and faster than most.  I had fought with the best of them (my brothers Barry and Jeff).  I lost a few more than I won, but not that many and after-all there were two of them and only one of me. 

I knew that I could move a mountain, build a bridge, or accomplish anything that I set my mind too.  I know my brothers felt the same.

Since then, days, weeks, months, and years have flown from my future into my past.  And I at first grew to understand that while not immortal, I was at the least charmed and relatively undiminished by the passing years.  In fact, I grew stronger and more capable if anything as time ticked in my ear.
My physical “prime” was a bit delayed as I launched myself off a roof top around 21 and tore up a few muscles and crushed some bones.  And so, though I looked my fittest and strongest in my early 20s, I was in my late 30’s before I hit full peak strength.

In the early morning of our summertime break from school, my brothers and I would get up, run our paper route, returning home about when Mom and Dad headed off to work to find Dad’s list of our chores for the day.  Once we reviewed that, we could figure out how much time we had to goof off and still get the chores done.

Being health young males, the first thing we did after assessing the chore list was….immediately begin procrastinating.

Yep, in the time honored tradition of nearly every male to ever set foot on this planet, we believed in never doing anything now that could be put off and done later.

So we would cobble up some breakfast, sit down and watch TV.  TV then and TV now are two very different animals; and not just because one had all the colors of a Zebra while the other has all the colors of two overlapping rainbows.

TV was black and white, in our case for several years after color was the rage.  TV consisted of three broadcasters, ABC, CBS, and NBC.  Selection was minimal. And since we found no interest in New York lifestyle issues, we pretty much had only one real choice; The Jack Lalaine Show.

Jack’s parents were a French couple who had moved to San Francisco where Jack was born.  He was a short  man, and in his youth, he worked out a great deal. Enough that he looked like a triangle balanced on its point.  Enough to win a number of competitions including Mr Universe.  If the man had any fat on him, it was artfully disguised as muscle.

He didn’t have a six-pack.  Oh, it was there alright, but you couldn’t see it for the rest of the abdominal muscle stacked on top of each other.  He was none too tall, in fact probably shorter than 5’-6”. 

But he was so ripped that he made Arnold Swartzenegger look spindly.

We used to laugh at Jack on his exercise show.  We were old enough to have PE at school by then. 
We knew what exercise looked like, smelt like, and felt like.  And Jack, he was simply sitting in chairs and lifting his legs, or standing up and whirling his arms around, or leaning over and tying his shoes.

Yep, we would sit in front of the TV laughing as our cereal milk periodically spewed and dribbled out of our noses.  Next to the Three Stooges, or Laurel and Hardy, it was the funniest thing on TV.

And in my late teens I was a pretty decent shot with a rifle (see “Things that go Bang – Part IV).   Good enough that I could take three shots with standard iron sights at 300 yards with my 1907 Mauser and the three holes on paper could be covered with a 50 cent piece.

Back then my brothers and I used to snicker and laugh at the old men out at the range struggling to get a group even after wasting their money on big scopes mounted to their rifles.

In my late teens I could work the morning long hooking and tossing 150 lb straw bales onto flatbed trucks. 

In my late thirties I could grab a 950-1050 pound 55 gallon drum, pull it up on just the near side rim and roll it across concrete for a hundred yards or more. 

At 40 I hoisted a 124 lb backpack onto my shoulders and set off for a 6 miles hike at 9,000 feet.

At 45 I could lay hands on a 5’ long 24” diameter fresh sawn redwood log section, roll it up to my thighs and then lift it onto a shoulder and carry it across rough ground to throw in the back of a truck.

Suffice it to say that I never met anything I couldn’t move, including some 185 cubic yards of mountain behind my house.  Figure total weight moved with shovel and wheelbarrow at right around 500,000 pounds while reshaping that hillside.

But as I said earlier; days, weeks, months, and years have flown from my future into my past.  And while I am still standing here, I am not the same me that I once was.  Since the days of my youth I have learned that like any other living thing, I will have phases and will grow, peak, weaken, and then die.  I suppose every individual has to learn this for themselves.

But in learning it, I realized I owe a few apologies.

Jack, wherever you are pumping iron at weights I will never know, I am sorry I laughed at you.  Six months ago I couldn’t have used my left arm in a Nazi salute if Hitler and his henchmen had been standing in front of me with their Lugars out and cocked.  Yep, standing in the middle of a room and swinging your arms in windmills does the body an amazing amount of good.  As does sitting down in a chair, standing up and walking around it, only to sit down again.  The man was decades ahead of his time.  And while he seemed old to us back then, I have worked it out and he was only in his late 40’s.  But he understood how older folk needed to move - to be able to move.  And God love the man, I dug up several of his old routines from the internet and use them daily.  I even have hopes of being able to bend over and tie my shoes again someday.

And those old-timers out at the Livermore Rod and Gun club.  I know now that I was just an idiot snot nose kid.  Cause now on the high side of 60, while I can still place three shots close enough to cover by a 50 cent piece, it is only through the miracle of modern optics, and the luck of a still reasonably healthy nerve system.  Because without the optics, heck, I can’t even see a paper target at 100 yards, much less 300 yards.  And I know a large percentage of folks my age that couldn’t hold their hand, much less arm, steady to stay out of the fires of hades.  Thus are the ravages of time on the body’s various systems.

And just this last Christmas, I wanted to take a roll of canvas fabric down to a nephew.  So I called up the younger cross street neighbor to help me load that 190 pound roll in the RV…and I let my son and nephew unload the dang thing.

So while my joints and sight, and muscles may be fading, I can at least console myself with the fact that my brain is thinking clearer, if not quite so fast.

© 2018, Marty Vandermolen, All Rights Reserved

Peace

I have been asked many times in the past week; “how does it feel to be a grandfather?”

You see, my daughter just gave birth to my first grandchild.  And family members, and those whom I work with, and those whom I know, all want to pass on their good wishes and to a small degree (I suppose), share in the joy of the event.

Thus, naturally, knowing that this is my first grandchild, they ask; “how does it feel”.


I must admit that at first this was difficult to answer.  In part because I tend to be a “controlled” individual who doesn’t share emotions widely.  And in part because I really wasn’t sure what it was that I felt.

For me at least, having a grandchild impacted me differently than having a child.  With my son and daughter, there was this instant connection or at least yearning for a connection from me to them.  And there was fear, lots of fear.  Would they live, would they be happy, would I be a loving and loved father, would I fail to see or sense or do something that would cause them harm.

Yep, as a father, holding that new born in my arms spun the mind up with plans, and needs, and demands, and responsibilities.


And “Proud”; people have suggested “proud” as in “how’s the proud grandpa”, but proud is not mine to feel; after-all, what did I have to do with the situation. 

No, Proud is the distinct purgative of  Allison and Kris, they have a right to be proud, they made a decision to bring a new life into this world and they made sure that their personal life-styles and habits were appropriate to provide the best probability for a healthy child.  They made sure that nutrition and exercise, and sleep, and stress, and all the other controllable issues were understood and modified to meet the best guidance the medical profession could put forth. 


But, last week and the week before, I was blessed with far too little time to hold my granddaughter. 
There was of course the all-important time that she needed to be held by my daughter (her mother), and the different, yet equally important time that she needed to be held by her father (so that he could become a basket case of stress).  After-all those two need to be her world; they need to have the bonds that bring the physical and mental nourishment that will sustain her throughout her life.

And there were of course the grandmothers and aunts and uncles who all deserved their time as well.


So as I said, I was blessed with all too little time to hold this new being of infinite opportunities for the betterment of the world.


And while the time that I did have held none of those worries that had haunted me as a father, there definitely had been feeling there, lots and lots of feeling. 

None of it was concern about if I would hold her right, no stress of if I would provide enough to care for her, and teach her, and bring her to the fullest bloom of her desired potentials.

Nope, that time was simply filled with….”nothing but feeling”.


Oh, there was the old familiar deep feeling of total and complete protection, and there was the warm full sense of wonder and love that had been part of holding my own children.  But absent were all of the worries, concerns, panic and stressful feelings of old.


So, now back in my work-a-day world, and separated from my granddaughter by hundreds of miles, with people asking how it feels, I have had time to think about and define what I felt, and how I feel, about being a grandfather.  And I find that I can tell you in a single word.

Peaceful.

Yep, thinking back on the time that I did get to hold her, I realize that the feeling that I could not then describe was peace.

Peace.  As in “all is right with the world” and as in “there is nothing more important, more necessary, or more rewarding, than simply sitting and holding her in my arm and gazing enrapture at her mouth, fingers, toes, eyes, and ears.

Peace that a new beginning of promise has come to my world.  Peace that new dreams will be crafted, new goals will be set, and new emotions will be experienced.

Total, complete; warm the heart and sooth the fevered mind, enrich the soul; Peace.

©2018, Marty Vandermolen, All Rights Reserved

World’s Greatest Disciplinarian – Part 1

Sometimes in life, while you are pursuing one goal, you accidentally find out that you are uniquely suited to excel at another.

That very thing happened to my father.

When he came back home after serving in the army his passion was geology, but so many WWII veterans had pursued geology with their GI Bill education that Dad realized that he would have to embrace another field, or live on stone soup. 

In the army he had been involved in communications and radios and realized that the blossoming field of electronics would prove to be a sound base to build his career upon.  And so he moved the growing family to Klamath Falls and enrolled in the Oregon Institute of Technology, intent on becoming an electronics engineer.  After a couple years he realized that he had learned enough that if he left school as an electronics technician, he could earn a good living for himself, my mom, and two older brothers. 

So, he filed for his Electronics Technician Certification, made a couple sandwiches, and hitchhiked the 375 miles from Klamath Falls to Livermore and sat in an interview for a job at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore California.  The formal job offer traveled from Livermore to Klamath falls faster than Dad’s thumb managed it. 

He moved the growing family down to Livermore and added an additional boy to the family shortly after arriving in town.  Three boys and no girls in the family, and the next thing you know, while Dad had been going to school to learn electronics, he spent more intense time and effort trying to raise three sons than he did working.

And so it turned out that while he thought he was focused on being a good husband, father, and provider, he accidentally became the world’s leading discipline expert.


I say accidentally because it surely wasn’t part of his life plan; I refuse to believe that when he was 16 or 17 he said to himself: “Self, you know, the thing you want most in life is to spend some significant portion of every day for 20 years struggling to create acceptable men out of puddles of protoplasm and by so doing become the world’s expert in disciplining boys”.  Truth be told, like most young men between 15 and 25 raisings pack of boys was the last thing on his mind.

And I know that whatever thought he may have given to having boys when he was 16 or 17 it wasn’t: “Yep, three wild uncontrollable boys, that’s just what I want; one wouldn’t be any problem; and while two would demand my best, I could certainly handle two; No, it’s only if I have three pint-sized savages to protect society from that I can truly test my capabilities”.

Never happened; He was far too smart for that; At least back when he was 16 or 17.  And yet, sometime between 17 and 27 things changed for him, or changed in him. 

Mark Twain once noted that “When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” 

Either my father used the years between 17 and 27 as exceptionally as did Twain’s father, or, more likely he found himself bamboozled by a pretty smile and alluring eyes.  And the story of Mom and Dad getting together and married is a story all in itself; and in all honesty, there is more than a little Alluring eyes, plotting, and the jaws of a trap involved.  But, sooner or later, most men knowingly walk into that trap.
Now maybe by 27 Dad was already beginning to lose some of his reasoning skills.  Perhaps the odd synapse misfire here and there was already beginning to plague him, I really can’t say, but one thing is for sure, at some point, he lost his ability to reasonably extrapolate the logical consequences of siring a complete gang of boys all by himself.
A Gang, literally and figuratively.  Three wild-eyed, uncontrollable, savagees with far too many smarts and far too little common sense.  Think about it, three energized mini-men who had none of the usual societal controls.  Awfully egotistical he was.

John Dillinger?: one man.

Bonny and Clyde?: Two anti-social savages

The Vandermolen Boys?: Three monsters dedicated to doing “it”.  Whatever that was at anytime of any given day.

In fairness, I suppose instead of blaming it on my dad’s failing reason, I should blame a fair portion of this on my mother.  For after all, if there is anything in the world that can turn around the thinking of a young man, for good or bad, it is a young woman.  Or suspend thinking altogether for that matter. And after-all she is the one that wanted to try a third time for a girl (see: Mom Wants a Girl).

Whatever the cause, Dad found himself with more discipline on his plate than was reasonable.  And not because Mom didn’t help.  Yes, at times we heard from her; “Wait until your father gets home”.  But in fairness, as I recall it was only after a particularly agregious act on our part when she had already issued some form of pumishment but still wanted to prolong our agony.


Now I have to hand it to Dad.  He was more than a “one trick pony”.  Yep, he could figure out more ways to punish a boy than you can shake a willow switch at. 

I don’t know if he got all that creative simply to relieve the mind numbing boredom of issuing the same punishment three times a day every day, for months at a time; or if he really thought that by mixing it up he would somehow get through to us.

Let’s see, there was the old standby “the belt”, “digging holes in the yard”, time-out in our rooms (often without dinner), standing on a top fence rail, straightening nails, and of course the classic “pencil dot on the wall” among others.

And no, mowing the lawn, cleaning out the gutters, washing the car, sweeping the garage, weeding the garden, cleaning up the dog dung, washing windows, vacuuming the house, and washing dishes were not punishments. 

They were work a day chores that we did in exchange for the groceries we consumed like a flash mob of locusts, or for the clothes we wore, and a dry place to sleep. 



Dad spent more money on belts than all the rest of his clothes combined, and he always bought them used.  In fact, I think one of the reasons he was such an avid garage sale fanatic is that at nearly every garage sale you went to you can buy up old belts for 3 for a quarter back then.  And Dad bought those things in bulk any chance he got.

Want to know anything about the physics of rotational motion?; the tinsel strength of cow belly versus splits?; the average wear of a 3/16th inch think piece of leather?  Ask my Dad.  He ran extensive studies on the subject.  Nightly.

He wore out belts with astounding regularity. 

And he optimized them too.  Trimmed those things he did.  Reduce the wind resistance, improved the impression…..in more ways than one.



When he was short on belts; or when his arm was suffering another bout of tennis elbow, rotator cuff tear, or bursitis of the wrist.  Say after a long rainy season when the garage sales had been few.  Or a brief uptick in “experiments” my brothers and I had been running.  Dad shifted to the pencil dot on the wall.

I know, doesn’t sound very intimidating, nor particularly harsh.  But truth be told, I would rather dig several holes in an old dirt driveway than have been given the old pencil dot on the wall routine. 

Come punishment time, Dad would have us stand facing a wall, up close, nice and straight, like tin soldiers on parade.  Then he would take a standard pencil and make a small round dot on the wall, just a bit more than an inch above where our nose level was.

The punishment was to put our nose on the dot and stand there.  Straight-backed; hands at our sides.  Never leaning against the wall, just touching it lightly with the tip of our nose.  Right over that dot.

The only way to do that is to raise you heels up off the floor by just an inch.  Now standing full up on the balls of your feet is easy, but raise the heel just an inch and hold it there?

Tired set in in a minute or two.

Fatigue set in shortly thereafter.

Serious discomfort was close on its heels if you’ll pardon the play on words.

And delirium and delusions weren’t far behind.

15 minutes of that will put some calf muscles on you, you bet.

Dad’s favorite timeline was 30 minutes

Thanks to that and backpacking, most of my life my calves have been larger than most women’s thighs.

© Copyright 2018, Marty Vandermolen, All Rights Reserved

You Only Get So Many Wins

I have a personal theory; 

“In any relationship; ‘you only get so many wins.’”

You and your spouse are at odds over (fill in the blank)?
- You only get so many wins.

You’re arguing with the Boss about how the job should be done, or when?
- You only get so many wins.

Your demanding how your kids will behave (clean the room, do the chores, homework, music, friends, etc.)?
- You only get so many wins.

In every relationship that you have, with your parents, with your siblings, with your teachers, with your mate, with your friends, heck, even with your pets.  You only get so many wins.



Now I’m not saying don’t fight for what is important.  You have to have your standards, and you have to stand up for what you believe in. 

But, be smart, make sure that when you stand up, when you fight, when you insist that it is your way; make sure that it’s an important enough issue that you are willing to spend what may be your last relationship win on it.

Copyright © 2013 Marty Vandermolen All Rights Reserved

Come-Uppance Just Don’t Taste Quite Like Strawberries. - Part 3

So there we were, smugly carrying our Strawberry shortcakes down to Mr Ramsey’s campfire.

Well, truth be told, we didn’t quite get to his campfire before the smugness was blasted off of our faces, rather at the speed and intensity that Ramsey blasted by us on the trail.

For there sat Mr Ramsey, carefully carving his way through a fresh broiled T-bone steak sitting on a plate right next to a piping, steaming baked potato, topped with melting butter, sour cream, and minced green onions.


We must have sputtered something about his steak because Mr amsey said: Well, I packed up all the stuff yu dad said I should have and the pack only weight 50 pounds, So I pulled out the dried food and packed steaks butter and sour cream in dry ice for my dinners.  That and a few books brought me up to a reasonable 150 pounds.”

Our jaws dropped again I suspect.  150 lbs? the guy was carrying one of us AND our back to boot, and running down the trail.  So while his statement left us with a new wonder, it did clear up one little thing; it was no wonder he slept so late in the mornings.  He was still suffering from a “real food coma”.

Well, we had been bested again.  And what with being ½ way through our trip, and fairly sure that the score might get run up higher, but even if it did, none of those points was going to be on our side of the board.  This man had shattered our concept of what stud material looked like.

Mr Ramsey invited us to sit down and “break bread” with him.  We did, and it started him to talking.

Turns out Mr. Ramsey was actually Captain Ramsey.  And while yes, he was in the army, he was in a very specialized part of the army.  He was in command of the Army’s LRRP group in Vietnam and had just finished his third year long deployment with orders to rotate back in at the end of the month.

He was afraid he would get too soft and thus worked out the time to be out backpacking in the 9,000-13,500 foot ranges of the Sierras.  We were his third group that summer.

Captain Ramsey opened the eyes of a bunch of naïve scouts that summer, in our troop and others.
LRRP in the Army of Vietnam era stood for Long Range Renascence and Patrol.  They were referred to as “Lurps”.  These guys made the green Berets look like a pack of momma’s boys.

When Captain Ramsey was deployed with a team, he jumped off of the skid of an insertion helicopter wearing a backpack that came in at 160 pounds, PLUS he was carrying his weapons, ammunition, and water on top of that.

He and the team would then stalk through up to 35 miles of jungle a day, staying out for up to 3 weeks at a time in enemy territory, radioing in contacts, setting up ambushes, and generally creating havoc.  He described their movement as follows; “the first man only looks forward, he is responsible for the 45 degrees to his right and the 45 degrees to his left, the second man walks sideways – left side forward and watches 45 right and 45 left, the third man walks right side forward doing the same for the other side, and the last man walked backwards.

BACKWARDS. Backwards for up to 35 miles a day!

Spending three weeks at a time with only 4 other guys hunting and searching for the chance to engage an enemy group of up to 10-15 to one odds?

These guys were kings of the badasses of all time.  Even the Delta forces were in awe of them.

Suddenly we felt a lot better about getting our doors blown off on the trail.

That night and all the remaining nights of the week found us boys clustered around Captain Ramsey listening to his stories of patrols, firefights, and survival in the jungles of Vietnam.

© 2018, Marty Vandermolen, All Rights Reserved

Come-Uppance Just Don’t Taste Quite Like Strawberries. - Part 2

A couple summers later, our father got a call from the Boy Scout Council. 

They asked if the troop would make room on our annual 50 mile backpack trip for an adult Eagle Scout by the name of Ramsey.  We were told that Ramsey was in the army, on leave, and wanted to see some of the Sierra’s.  After meeting with Mr Ramsey, our father and the Troop adults agreed to have him along.

The first time we boys met Mr Ramsey was the morning we left for our annual 50 Miler.  He seemed nice enough; he told us boys to just call him Ramsey, and told the adults that he appreciated being allowed along and not to worry about him as he had brought his own food and would sleep off to the side, not wanting to disrupt our routine.

On the first hiking morning, our fast group was running as per normal.  We were pulling out of camp while the rest of the troop was finishing breakfast.  Ramsey had set up his sleeping bag a bit removed from the rest of the group and on our way out of camp we noticed he was still sleeping!

As the morning wore on, we got to talking and I remember one of the guys saying: I sure hope that guy (referring to Mr Ramsey) knows how to read a map, cause sleeping so late he won’t likely roll into camp until dark.

About 15 minutes after that comment, the hair on the back of my neck stood up.  About 3 minutes after that I heard a boot scuff ground way, way back behind me.  About 30 seconds later Mr Ramsey blew by our group like we were walking backwards.  I mean that man was in a full on sprint.  Flying.  Pack strapped down tight and hardly moving as his legs piston pumped his boots into dust explosion after dust explosion.

Within less than a minute he was so far gone that we couldn’t see or hear him.  Within 5 minutes there wasn’t even any dust to betray his passing.

We all just stood there stupidly and stared at each other.  It was just about 10 o’clock; we had been on the trail for a little over 2 and a half hours.

We rolled into camp at 12:15 that day.

Mr Ramsey’s camp was set up, the clothes he had worn when he did the low level flyby were washed and hanging from a line, Ramsey was asleep in the dappled shade down by the lake.


We considered it a slap in the face.  I mean, we were the backpacking studs, the Champions, just who did he think he was.  We were the ones who could walk away from any adult we had ever met.  There had been a challenge issued, whether Mr Ramsey knew it or not.

The following morning we were up at first light.  And we hustled through our morning chores.  We started kicking up trail dust maybe 15 minutes earlier than usual.  Ramsey was still snoring.

We pushed each other, something we normally had no call to do.  We stepped longer, walked faster, rested less.

About 10:30 the hair stood up on the back of my neck.  This time when Mr Ramsey passed us there were two differences.  The first is we only looked like we were standing still instead of walking backwards and the second was the faint smell of ozone in the air.

As before, when we got to camp, his area was made up, freshly washed clothes hung on a line, and he was asleep in the shade.

This was getting humiliating.

The following morning we leap through our routine and hit the trail before full light.

We hustled, bounced, jostled, and jogged as fast as we could.

But still, before 11:00, the hair on the back of my neck stood up and Mr. Ramsey passed us like an express train passes a grazing cow.

And again, camp and fresh washed clothes greeted us at the assigned lake.


The situation was intolerable.  Our pride was wounded; we had worn up blisters on our feet and stiff knees and ankles.

Thankfully the next day was a “layover” day and we could catch our breath and tend our wounds, both physical and psychological.

During the morning’s laziness we hatched a new plan.

If we couldn’t beat him hiking, we would make him envious with our gourmet cuisine.  Well, with our desert anyway.  So that afternoon we spent a great deal of time searching our brick sized and shaped rocks and one nice large thin flat piece of granite.  We tore down the fire-ring in our camp, and rebuilt it.  We built is about 2 feet round at the bottom, tapering up to about 1 foot 12 inches above ground, then a quick shift back to 2 feet inside all the way up to the top which was closed off with the thin flat cap piece.  In essence we had made a granite oven that was to be fired by coals.

You see, by this time it had become painfully apparent to our bruised ego’s that we were not even close to being in the same league as this “old guy” when it came to hiking.  He had certainly proven that he could literally run circles around us while we were on the trail and still beat us.  So we had fallen back on the tried and true, If you can’t beat ‘em one way, beat ‘em another.

Now back in the early-70’s backpack meals were nothing to write home about.  Fresh food was okay for  an overnight trip, but on week-long events, you had to carry simple dried food.  Freeze-dried was just coming to the market and most of it was astronomically priced.  Standard dried meat and vegetables and pastas had and still we the mainstays for meals. 

And our dinner which was going to be Chili-Mac was certainly no great shakes, but we had planned ahead and spent some green to  bring a few packets of freeze dried strawberries, some pancake mix, and some Dream Whip; all intended to be a breakfast one day.  Well, we changes plans. We figured to add some sugar to the pancake mix and cut down the water a bit.  In so doing we expected to get a reasonable semblance of shortbread, and if we cut down the water to rehydrate the berries, we should be able to make up some Strawberry Shortcake with whipped cream…all out some 30 odd miles from the closest trailhead. 

Yep, if we couldn’t beat his feet, we would beat his taste buds.


We carefully tore down the top half of the oven and cranked up a fire.  While it was burning down to coals and super heating the bottom layer of rocks we cooked our Chili-Mac and then while the oven master rebuilt the oven I made up the short breads.

Ah, even now some 40 plus years later I can remember how good those shortcakes smelled cooking.

We all chortled with glee as we pulled them out of the oven, perfectly golden-brown, thick, and hot. 

We split them like English muffins and ladled out the strawberries and slathered on the dream whip which had been cooling in the small creek flowing into the lake.

We picked up our deserts, put on our smuggest faces, and non-chalantly headed over towards Mr Ramsey’s campfire.

© 2018, Marty Vandermolen, All Rights Reserved

Come-Uppance Just Don’t Taste Quite Like Strawberries. - Part 1

My brothers and I considered ourselves to be backpacking studs.

With a capital S.

Back in the days of our mid to late teens we could make tracks with the best we had seen or heard of.  We could roll out of bed at first light, wash, dress, make and eat breakfast, wash dishes, pack up camp, and by the time the sun rose, the only thing remaining in our night’s camp was a faint bit of dust that had been gripped by the playful fledgling day’s air currents and not quite settled yet.

Yep, trail or no we could blow across 13-15 miles of up mountain and down; over boulders and snowfield, across rivers and streams.  And all before noon was very far gone.  Twelve-thirty usually found us with camp set up and out on some lake swimming just after we had chewed the last of our homemade beef jerky.  Thick, crusty, and delicious as it was, it mostly got wolfed so that we could get in the water sooner.

The soles of our feet were callused and toughened to the point that we could nearly go without boots.  Heck, in town we would regularly walk blocks and blocks barefoot just to make sure our calluses stayed thick and resilient for our next trip.  We trimmed out nails hard to make sure they didn’t hang up on some imperfection in our boots.  Boots were rubbed and folded, and stretched and wrinkled nights around the campfire until they were as supple as our skin.  And most nights around the campfire the smell of paraffin completed with pine and smoke as Snow Seal was buttered on thick and melted into the leather until it could absorb no more.

Our calves were so thick that the tops of them could get sunburnt during the noon hour, and the bottom of the muscle never saw the sun.  We swam in lakes that had glacial ice floating in them, and jumped off of granite cliffs into water that while crystal clear, the bottom was too far down to see, and certainly too far down to reach.

We added fresh fish to our meals, and fresh roots and berries to our dinners.  We cooked over more fires than stoves, and regularly handmade granite ovens to bake cake 25 miles from the nearest car.

We were trim, and muscled, strong and quick, and the tougher it was, the more we liked it.

A small group of us, usually Barry, Jeff, and I and along with any Moxon’s and maybe Chris Bystroff would break away from the rest of the troop and follow a different path.  Every night during dinner we would sit around and plot alternate routes that would get us to the same night stop as the officially agreed to route.  These side trips started one year when the map indicated that there was a crashed bomber from WWII high on a ridge across the valley from the trail the adults had plotted.

We broke off from the group as soon as we stepped into the valley, dropped down through the trees to cross the raging rock-strewn San Juaquin River high up in the John Meir Wilderness area and started an angling climb up towards where that plane wreck was supposed to be.  One of the adults saw us and yelled for us to come back, but we just pretended we couldn’t hear them and kept up a pace that we knew was fast enough that no one would even try to chase us down.

We reached the plane, crawled in and around what was left, imagined ourselves (or at least I did) a gunner, or pilot, or navigator on that fated last flight.  Blistered paint was pealed, and ailerons were flexed up and down, and we stayed long enough to eat lunch in the shade of the one remaining attached wing.

Oh sure, we caught hell for it when we rolled into camp about the same time as the rest of the troop that afternoon; but the price proved small and the experience remained huge.  That was the first of many unofficial side trips we took.  We took some to sled on glaciers in our cut-off jeans and bare chests in the July or August sunshine; we took others to stand atop some peak that all other backpackers just stared up at while walking past; and still others to take a shorter (though often more arduous) route to the coming night’s camp.

The adults didn’t let up the pressure on us to conform to the planned route, and they threw up halfhearted impediments to keep us from breaking away, but in all truth, I think they wished they could go along with us, because they never triggered the nuclear option of suspending us from backpack trips, or even splitting us up.  One time they took a good shot at it mind you, but it wasn’t good enough.

That morning as we were getting ready to tear out of camp, Leroy Greene called us over to where the adults were making breakfast to inform us that they had made changes to the days plan and that we were not to leave until they finished up.  After cooling our jets what seemed like forever, the troop was finally all ready to hit the trail.

Our group which normally left first, was told that we would have to hike in the middle of the troop.
This way the adults had some slower boys and adults in front of us, and some slower boys and some adults behind us.  We were fairly, neatly trapped.  Or so they thought.

Now one of the problems of hiking in a group of slower hikes is that most often, part of their speed issue is that they take too many and too long of “breaks”.  On this occasion, the first break was called after only 30 minutes on the trail, and that gave us the chance we needed.  During the break, we broke out the maps and scouted the terrain and vegetation based on the topo map.  We immediately saw our chance to break out of the group about 1 mile ahead.  We made simple quick plans.

So, when the break was over and everyone was back on the trail, we immediately began our plan.  As the group in front of us moved down the trail, we slowed up just a little bit so that they were walking away from us, creating a gap in front of us without an adult in the gap to keep tabs on us.  Now the adults in the front group didn’t think a thing about it, we were after-all behind them.

And the Adults in the group behind us couldn’t see that there was a gap growing up front, and so felt secure because we were in front of them.

At a preselected location on the trail, we boys kicked it into high gear.

We blew away from the back group in a cloud of trail dust, and sped towards the group in front.  Just on entering a long meadow with several twists and turns, we stepped off to the right side of the trial and cleared our way into the far side trees long before the trailing group came to the same point on the trail.

We were free again.

Now I can’t tell you what it was that we did that day, it may have been sledding, it may have been a bit of stream fishing, it may have been nothing at all.  What was important to us at the time, was that we were free, on our own, and the unquestioned champion backpackers.

© 2018, Marty Vandermolen, All Rights Reserved