Traveling North in my Memory

 

Ever tried to mentally put yourself back in a particular place and time? Some events you can't forget. Whether they be for good or ill they are hung in your mind forever. Other occasions ‘not so much’ as that phrase is used today.  

Today I tried to remember a specific camping trip but couldn't.  There were so many outings to “the wild” that they all blend together. Thinking about life on a grand scale, having that many experiences in the woods with good friends (and these trips were always communal) was not really a bad thing.

Most camping trips I recall were up north. Up North for people who don’t live in Michigan is any place at least 5 miles north of your home and preferably on water be it a pond, creek, lake or one of the inland seas that touch northern Michigan (Huron, Superior and Michigan). For me Up North meant you had to at least pass Grayling before putting stakes into the dirt. Up North means an old CCC camp site or a state forest campground. Up North was synonymous pine smell and moving water.

I did not camp as a kid. As a result going camping was initially foreign. Camping trips for me began immediately after I moved back to Lansing after law school in Detroit. On any given weekend in summer we could jump into a car and head up north. It was a ritual that truly belonged to Michigan. New Jersey has a day trip to the shore. But Michigan is so big a trip to get out of the house that it requires a weekend to do it right.

Our camping tools evolved. Initially we slept inside a pup tent just big enough for two sleeping bags. It was only a couple feet tall and you couldn’t sit up inside. The tent was a leftover from our 1978 trip in a car named Thunder Road. We had gone to Oregon to find America. We still have that tan non-breathing nylon fire trap stashed up in the rafters of the garage.Bought it at Woolco, remember Woolco? 

We also had cheap assed cotton batting sleeping bags. After one too many chilly nights, those were replaced with LL Bean sleeping bags. Just because something like a road trip is a spur of the moment decision does not mean it has to be uncomfortable, not when you have the right equipment and a good attitude.

From the pup tent we migrated to a Eureka dome tent for our accommodation. The dome claimed to comfortably sleep five. Three was more honest. The claim of five was only true if your idea of comfort is that everyone has someone else’s body parts stuffed up near your face I would draw a diagram but this is being created on Word and I don’t know how to do that. Instead I will describe the situation.  

Imagine a circle. Place four bodies in it with the shortest campers being on the outsides and the tallest being on the inside. Running atop these four bodies curved to conform to the top edge of the circle is body five. Routinely body five would be at everyone’s heads. If this camper were at the foot of everyone they would get kicked repeatedly during the night.

Configured like this for sleeping the shorter people on the outside got zephyrs of halitosis or foot funk odors respectively. On camping trips personal hygiene standards are lax and generated these kind of smells. People forget tooth brushes. Meh. Feet get wet because it always rains on camping trips. Let me repeat that, it always rains on camping trips in Michigan. One of the two middle sleepers gets a strong intermittent methane breeze.  Camping trip cuisine such as BEER, and BEANS elevates the chances of GI distress and gas production. Only one or maybe two campers (depending on how drunk the smelly person sleeping on that curved right angle from everyone else is) get a decent night’s sleep.

Finally we bought a big ass tent with poles that created a huge rectangle. I don’t think we've used it more than a handful of times. But the mega-tent fits four cots.  This refugee from a revival will also provide a comfortable distance between all campers. This concept of personal space is a much diminished one when you are out on the weekend but on a camping trip you will take what you can get. 

There are common elements to all the camping trips that cascade before my mind’s eye.  Beer. Rain. Mud. Campfires. Boom boxes (first cassettes, then CD). Also there was usually a purpose tied to the trip most often a canoe excursion down one of the many rivers of Michigan. Every so often we would sleep out at the end of a small spit of land poking out into the Great Lakes and we would make our goal a winery tour on the Leelanau Peninsula. Those events often ended in a stupor, so they were limited.Wine and cheese and a long and winding road back to the tents don’t mix well.

On any trip we planned with more than an hour of advance notice, we did some prep work. On Thursday night the car got packed. A large Coleman cooler, a small Coleman stove, a Coleman lantern and some Coleman fuel would get smushed into the trunk. Packed in addition, sleeping bags, pillows, shorts, T-shirts, jeans and leather jackets.  

If there was time we would make a quick trip to Meijer and buy some food. Initially it was hotdogs and bags of chips we would grab as foodstuffs. Later it became chicken breasts, greens for a salad and dried cherries to go with each. Nothing is quite as tasty as a chicken breast wrapped together with dried cherries in aluminum foil cooked in the coals of a camp fire. On Friday as soon as work was done we would jump into a snaking line of cars headed up north on the only freeway from here to there, U.S.-127. We would stop about 20 miles up the road and grab a burger, fries and a pop and we would boogie on heading up north.

Depending on where you were heading, you passed a number of landmarks. My favorite was Woodhenge. It was just a stone’s throw from the trip's start. This was a barn that somebody started (I have been told) and then never finished. A number of warped and twisted but rather tall polls stands to the right of the highway. There was a marker for the 45th parallel indicating that you were halfway between the equator and the North Pole. There was Big Buck Brewery, which was one of the first microbreweries to make a splash in Michigan. If you headed off to Lake Michigan you could pass the gas station where the guy had the bear chained out back as a tourist attraction.

In early summer it doesn’t get dark up north until 10 or later.  If you got off right when work was over you set up your tent in the fading light. If you got there slightly late someone else was already making the fire. Hopefully this time they wouldn’t burn their eyebrows off when the white gas that soaked into the firewood caused a fireball. You swept the ground where you pitched the tent with your feet to ensure stones and sticks wouldn’t poke you all night. The tent popped up easily when the magically connected tent poles snapped together and were slid through the small flaps of nylon on the outside of the tent. You unrolled your Thermarest mats and let them inflate. You slung your sleeping bag in and grabbed a beer and pulled up a stool and sat around the fire.

Some trips were long, once we circled Lake Huron. Truly I once spent a Sudbury Saturday night. Another year we traveled across the top of Lake Superior to Thunder Bay and to the Valhalla Inn. It was there that I learned you shouldn't drink a beer in a hot tub when you are tired. Some trips took us back to the same campgrounds again and again. It was also there where we visited the birth place of the real Winnie the Pooh.

Some trip endings were pushed to the last hour of sun on Sunday because you were just having so much damn fun. Some forays were scuttled by rain on Saturday. There is a very clear olfactory memory for almost every Michigan tent camper.It is the one of pulling a damp hoodie out of a black garbage bag that served as your dirty clothes hamper for the weekend. The odor is stale going on mildewed. There are equal parts soggy wood smoke and Harp beer scents rising from the hoodie. Yup rain was the enemy.

Some trips were cosmic. Ain’t nothing quite like watching the northern lights kick up as you stand on a lake shore looking out into the blackness now growing into surreal light. The dancing green/green blue curtains sweep across you and keep you staring upwards for hours.  

A camping trip made you drop the phone. A camping trip made you step away from the computer. A camping trip puts you in touch with real honest people.  Sitting down on those small aluminum stools around the fire the second night of the weekend you talked about jobs, life, love, hopes and aspirations. Connections were restored in the dancing firelight and beer bottle clinking. Connections that would last a lifetime.

Honestly, I was trying to remember one camping trip. In the end, I will remember a lifetime filled with fun and joy.

Here Comes the Rain Again

On these dark rain filled Lisboa nights at the tail end of winter I often end up walking to the supermercado. Every time it gets dark, I need to get one thing, or another, from the store. Most often it is something I will need for breakfast the next day say a liter of skim milk.

As I negotiate the wet and slippery polished stone sidewalks I find myself repeating a behavior I haven’t actually needed to do for about forty years. My right hand thumb taps against my forefinger, a finger that together with my middle finger are curved slightly inwards toward my palm. I am unconsciously knocking the ash off a phantom cigarette.

I will never smoke a cigarette again. But it is not too difficult to remember the feeling of inhaling the warm smoke of a Marlboro red on a damp cold night. Perhaps it is because there are so many folks in the over 40 age bracket that still smoke in this city.

As I walk down the hill to the clean and bright grocery store, I smell cigarette smoke from the old men with their collars up. They are sitting outside the small Portuguese outdoor cafe. I will smell cigarette smoke wafting out of the windows of the purportedly smoke-free Airbnbs I pass. I will smell cigarette smoke from shivering scrawny men from Africa and the Middle East standing in the shadows of an empty parking lot.

As the mist moves back to actual rain I zip up my waterproof shell and pull up my hood. Those actions trigger another memory. I remember cupping my hands to shield my cigarette from the rain when I was standing on a street corner in my little hometown three thousand miles from here.

When you live long enough, you will realize how alone you are. It may come when you are walking alone on a rainy street remembering a behavior you gave up long ago. Realization may be brought to you when you are driving in traffic and the radio plays a song you haven’t heard in twenty years. Awareness may come to you as you wait for sleep havingsaid your prayers, your appeals, to whatever may reside in the imperceptible ether, requests and pleas you have made with doubt lingering.

But we soldier on, we travel on facing darkness. There is only one way out of the human experience so we have no other choice. It is probably best if we try to travel the road from womb to tomb savoring the moments when the sun breaks through the clouds.

A Little Bit of Rainy Day Tourism Fiction

 [The writing prompts for today were twofold. Start a story with an apology. End a story with a question. I did both.]

"Sorry"

She heard the apology but wasn't sure what it was for. In this almost stranger's kitchen the old man moved to and fro. Outside the world crawled. Looking out the kitchen's window into the apartment block’s courtyard, she saw small drops of rain steadily falling. Everything was wet. The sky was grey. The rain muted the pastel colors of all the buildings.

A loose apron hung around the man’s neck. There was a colorful picture of the Barcelos' cock and “Bon Dia” stitched on the front of the dangling garment. Could there be any clearer sign that she had arrived in Portugal? Gray haired and wearing wire rim glasses this man, her host, roamed the kitchen. He held a heavy pan. Last night when he made her a welcome to Lisboa grilled cheese and prosciutto sandwich he told her it was purchased from the neighborhood ‘fine’ cookware store.

She wondered if those were John Lennon style glasses he was wearing. However, given she had paid scant attention to the Beatles, they were so before her time, she couldn't tell. The pan appeared an ideal vessel for cooking an omelette, except for its weight. The man cracked the eggs and mixed them with two ounces of milk in a coffee cup sitting beside the gas stove. Taking the cheese and ham from the refrigerator he diced them on a small wooden cutting board to sprinkle on the cooking omelette. He pulled out a spidery red pepper and used an arched eyebrow to silently ask if he should dice it and throw it in. Just as silently with a left to right to left head shake she told him no.

"I have to apologize to you. This will not be the prettiest of omelettes. In all the cooking shows you see the chef easily flipping the omelette. Try as I might I cannot do that in this pan. I will simply have to use my spatula and sort of flop the eggs over. The taste won’t be any different, but on the whole it won’t be pretty. This concoction will be somewhere between an omelette and scrambled eggs. Are you OK with that?"

The old man’s guest at this breakfast table nodded in agreement that it would be OK. Beggars can't be choosers. She was not paying for breakfast nor for her room. Her host, the man preparing her the first meal of the day, was putting her up gratis for a couple of nights on this leg of her trip to the Iberian Peninsula. The gent walking about the kitchen was actually a friend of her very close friend, well her mentor back in the States. Apparently the two men shared a house in graduate school. When she asked for stories of life in the house, both claimed allegiance to a secret oath never to reveal what went on in the purple house they called Marvin.

She believed the old man seemed safe. He was married and had adult kids. There were family pictures everywhere. His wife was finishing up a trip to Barcelona and would return tomorrow. He had said a couple of times, “I think you'll actually like my wife better than me. She is way more interesting than I am. She knows all the hidden spots to hit for the best pastries. She knows where the pocket museums are. And she is more polite than me." Adding to her sense of safety her room could be locked from the inside.

Walking to and from the stove, the refrigerator, the coffee grinder, he kept talking."You know the asshole in chief made a speech last night. Obviously, I didn’t listen to it because it came on at one in the morning here. Even if I'd been in the same time zone, I would not have listened to that doofus. After breakfast, I may look at the Post to see if there was anything earth-shattering that we exiles need to know.

One of the most delightful things about living in the EU is that you can turn off the US news cycle for a day or two." Having said this he looked at her with sad eyes. His sad eyes were clearly those of an old exile running from his country's turn toward madness. "You may not have a country to go back to when your three months are done. If need be you can always stay here until the end of 90 days Schengen will tolerate you for."

The kitchen smells became more delightful. With care he placed a bottle of fresh squeezed orange juice in front of her. Pushing the lovely pulp filled juice in her direction he retrieved a small clear glass from an upper cabinet, and put it next to the bottle. He turned back toward the gas stove.

Facing away from her he spoke again. "I know you’re keen to get the rest of your travel underway, but it’s going to rain for the next four days in a circle 200 miles in any direction. If you stay here you can dry off in this warm kitchen after your daily explorations. Trust me there are palaces and museums enough to fill four days. On the other hand you could head out into the mud of the countryside and be miserable. At least I think you’ll be miserable."

Truth be told, she had weighed the same considerations. Being a friend of a friend of her host, she decided not to make the first overture to extend her stay. She was more than glad he offered.

Her host moved the spatula in the large pan to push the edges of the omelette in as it warmed and started to congeal. Looking directly at her he continued talking. "If you head west you’re heading to a small town in a quasi desert. In summer it’s so damn hot. In summer you only go out to see the sites before 10 in the morning and after six at night. But it's winter and the rainy season and so you could putter around all day in that gray and brown cobblestone landscape. I mean what’s really over that way except for some big rocks sitting in a muddy field that are older than Stonehenge and a chapel filled with hundreds of skulls? The way I see it your real choices are between old wet stone churches. If you ride over there you get to peek into one with skulls. If you stay here you can wander through 20 skull-less Igejas."

The whole time he talked, her host was in motion. He bent over the stove, moving the pan about on the burner. Pulling some boiled potatoes from the ‘fridge he asked if he wanted some hash browns. She shook her head no. Back they went.He dropped two slices of bread into the toaster. He clicked on an American-style drip coffee maker. He wasn’t a whirling dervish, but he was focused in his movements. She heard the toast pop up and the smell of the browned bread mixed with the smell of the brewing coffee and it was delightful.

She pondered what he had said. The trip out to the city with the bone chapel would require either hopping on the train or grabbing a bus and wasting a couple of hours. Doing that on a rainy day wouldn’t be too bad, but she wasn’t sure of her accommodations when she got there. There was a nice bed and good food right here. She thought it might make sense to stay here another day, maybe two given he had extended the offer.

She was about to say she would stay an extra night when her host pulled the full pot of coffee out of where it had been brewing. "Heads up. It’s a blend from Cabo Verde. Bet you've never had that before. Are you up to visiting another palace today?"

"Are you coming with me when I go?" she asked, indicating with a question she was not planning to leave his hospitality, at least not today.