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Sunday, September 1--

8:45 p.m.-

The umbrella helped the fire stay vital but was of little other utility, except to direct smoldering smoke into tear ducts and deflect rain onto our heads. I was naked under the raincoat, but for briefs. Caleb had swim trunks and a T-shirt over his nudity. EZ, naked too, wandered back and forth in the campsite mostly unnoticed. Skewering trails of lightning lit up our scene in edgy bright moments, showing the silver river molten and meadow grasses hunched low under their heavy load of rain.

We stood by the fire, Caleb and I, and transferred the umbrella back and forth as our arms tired.

We stood without talking, what's there to say?

It was glorious inconvenience.

A cool rainy day cheated us out of camping two weeks ago, but this time we had determined to get it done, since summer was running out quick and Caleb is scheduled to resume high school as a senior on Tuesday. I tuned in the Weather Channel after work to see what had become of the prediction for possible evening thunderstorms. Nothing had changed and radar showed a colorful bulk of hoopla lowering out of the northwest toward our intended campsite, but still a hundred miles distant. So we went.

The sky was mostly clear, not glowery or threatening as we passed upriver. Old stump in the shortcut was under water, showing the level had risen another inch. We negotiated through Summer Office, exiting into the main channel just ahead of a pontoon laboring low under holiday revelers. Up under the bridge, through shallow flats, and around into the sharp turning meanders, past Grand Sandbanks--EZ barking and pacing great gusto--and we're there. The west had turned gray and rumbled mildly with thunder.

Got out the tent. Tarp down, poles inserted, stakes pushed into the soft soil--"OOPS," said Caleb. I looked over and saw him, shorter and grinning chagrined by slipping off the bank and into the water while putting a stake down.

He climbed out, soaked sneakers and socks and jeans dripping wet to mid-calf.

"It feels kinda' cool," he assured me. "Sounds neat too." He squished past to bare his feet and roll up his cuffs.

Tent up; time to inflate the airbed. I have a foot-operated Sportsman's Bellow^® manufactured for this purpose, but prefer doing it through two lungs and two lips, using the excuse of no room in the boat for space-wasting weight and a lazy-man's gadget. It seems fitting when one is, by choice, going out to suffer all manner of discomfort in the wild, gain back a sense of esteem by blowing up his own pallet. So I did. And immensely enjoyed the dizzies and sat for long spaced-out minutes waiting for new oxygen to replenish my dull-witted brain. Caleb sat on a canvas camp chair and blew discordant squawks through a grass stalk held between thumbs, then scrounged for tinder sticks in the trees. EZ waded the river and ate grass along shore so she'd have something to throw up later. Thunder graduated from sophomore to junior in the northwest.

I finished my mattress blowing, then tried to insert it into the tent. A circus act not amusing for me. The tent is too narrow to shove a full-sized bed in horizontally; too high to slide it through vertically. Diagonal works, but not really. The rope running from peak to ground out front gets in the way when I'm not looking and pulls out its stake and the front of the tent collapses flat onto itself. Still under the influence of too much carbon dioxide in my head, I get out my knife to slice an episiotomy in the tent peak to permit passage of the bed. Caleb sits chuckling in my chair. EZ is grinning there too, sitting by his side where he'd called her to sit, so she too could advantage my entertainment. I reconsider the plan, reinsert the tent stake and get the tent back into order. I pick up the mattress for another attempt and hear a "thud" against aluminum. Rounding our bend, ten yards out, come three men in a tub. With oars. It's a tiny boat holding two boys, front and back, and a man rowing in the middle, square bow pushing wake an inch above sinking. He sees what I'm trying to do and the audience I've got, and stops rowing and points. All five of my spectators pause to see what comes next.

"Whatta' you lookin' at?" I pretend to be merely airing the mattress out, which I've just finished doing, so retract its tip back out of the tent, drop it on the grass and lay down for a nap.

The sky is darkening and thunder becomes more serious. The man resumes rowing. Caleb and EZ walk off for a pee. Letting out a few breaths from the air bed, I fold it in two like a moldy green bun and shove it through the tent entrance screen, then throw blankets and pillow and Caleb's tightly rolled sleeping bag in out of imminent rain.

Boat unloaded to make room for firewood, we go in search of standing deadwood among the big trees near shore. Nothing shows itself upstream or down as did the great supply Chelsea and I found last time. We set up on shore where a lone leaning dead maple can be seen. I cut it up. Caleb finds smaller stuff, hauls and breaks and throws it close to the boat. Thunder is loudening. The sky is deepening. Mosquitoes go crazy.

They have been in the news lately. Mosquitoes carrying West Nile virus have allegedly shown up and murdered crows and sickened civilians, even unexpectedly killed two people in the southwestern corner of my state. It is possible the one that just bit my calf has injected me with death. Headache and fever are probably mutating deep down in my veins, sending out venomous portenders of doom. I'll be dead in the morning.

Wood loaded, no room for EZ. But the campsite is only fifty yards upriver so she'll have to walk. Caleb pushes us off. EZ stands on shore watching us go, then sits. Seems mean, what I'm doing and Caleb, who has inherited a big heart for hurt, watches her being left behind. I start the motor and put it in gear. She leaps off of shore and wades into the water, then trots ... deepening, paralleling land, swimming through hurdles of curdled swampy muck to get at us. But she catches on and re-achieves shore, splashing through grasses and grinning to see us afresh just as we land back at camp, where she shakes swamp smells and decomposed fish smut onto Caleb.

Back down to Grand Sandbanks for clamshells. EZ finds a few and drops them on shore. So does Caleb who, gripping his rolled up jeans high at the waist, flips them into the boat as I idle alongside.

7:45-

"Better get a fire going, quick."

No paper. I'd forgotten to bring it. Only a yellowed damp scrap under the pile of old wood left from the camping trip with Chelsea. It'll have to do. Caleb does a fine job dismantling and rebuilding when flames jeer and glow out. Then removing graham crackers he kindles scraps of their box to flame with small wood on top. It's about six inches in diameter, but it's fire and we can build on that.

I unload the wood and saw up fire-sized lengths. The wood is humid from rain two nights ago and burns reluctantly. Thunder booms louder, the sky is like night through the trees, then suddenly overhead, roiling black and gray round-bottomed butts like a pack of ducks is passing over.

"Maybe it'll blow over," I ridiculously suggested. Lightning banged in the north.

Wind, pushed by impatient forces, blows through. Light rain began. I took off my shirt and shorts and put on a raincoat. Lightning zipped between clouds; thunder followed the same path, never touching ground. Rain quickened, night crept into our midst. I raised the umbrella over my head. The fire sizzled and hissed heavy steam, so I held the umbrella over it. Of course I knew the smoke would be diverted into my eyes and I'd stand there stinging and cursing and tilting the umbrella so the smoke could draft up and away. The fire rebounded. We took turns covering it.

It was fun. "Interesting" is a better word.

"Wouldn't it be interesting if a tornado came through?"

"It'll be funnier if one does," Caleb retorted, opening a beer.

Sheer wrinkle-wet feet standing on trampled grass, rainwater running down bare legs, rain jacket hoods echoing pitter-pattering plastic. Watery beer swigged from a splashy wet can. Waiting for it to end.

Wading up to the knees in black burning river, remarking that we should swim, illuminated by fluorescent blue lightning. I don't know why we didn't and regret not taking the lead, a rare opportunity lost. Caleb surely would've remembered it the rest of his life. I will.

Back to the fire, overheating our shins, stepping back, bowing slightly so the umbrella suitably defends the flames. Wearying of the onslaught. Nowhere to go but inside, tent drooping with rain-shiny weight, dispirited nylon fibers and all ropes slack. Caleb whittled wiener sticks earlier. But the grim reaper is here and food's not worth the trouble of heating.

At 10:00 I suggested I'd had enough. Caleb agreed. I fetched the dry towel from the boat tote. We threw off our rain jackets and crawled into the tent, drying heads and arms and legs, laying down, studying mold-specked yellow nylon eighteen inches from our heads and someone's logy engorged mosquito walking upside down along a seam of the tent peak. EZ curled up at the foot of the mattress. Rain pounded outside. Don't touch the tent! We munched Nacho Cheesier Doritos and melted Hershey bars on our tongues, then flicked off the light and laid listening to simmering rain and rolling thunder.

Still raining at midnight. I arose to pee out the zipper, wishing I'd brought the Pee Pipe inside. EZ sat patiently against my shoes until I was done. Lying back down, listening to Caleb jabber grammatically complete no sense sentences, feeling tiny wetnesses mist onto my chest.

The rain continued until about 3:00 a.m., though it's hard to know when it stopped for good, since the trees dripped until daylight.

Monday, Labor Day--

Awoke at 6:45 to EZ sneezing outside and making sounds like breakfast. (I assumed Caleb had let her out while I slept. He assumed I had, but she must've let herself out through the bottom screen zipper and forgotten to close it.) So I got up to join her in the fresh lightness of day, sun across the river peaking through eastern trees, boat wallowing water in her stern, everything dripping and sparkling, a pool of yellow raincoat outside the tent. Poured tepid coffee from the Thermos and stood in bare feet.

7:05-

Caleb snores inside the tent. I've managed to get on shoes and socks (still dry beside the bed), and set into bailing the boat with the insulated Mega-Mug which usually serves me my beer. In thirty minutes I'd half emptied it. Caleb blurts "Wow" behind me on the bank, barefoot and bleary-eyed. I had the same reaction to the river's height, an illusion fueled by all the rain we'd endured during the night. But the stump mid-river still shows its tip as it did yesterday. I returned to bailing, he to eat humid graham crackers and cold marshmallows. Not the same as the S'mores we'd been denied last night.

I suggested he start a fire, a grim prospect since all the paper was gone and the wood was still drenched wet. Tear shreds from the graham cracker box, which, though not wet, is droopy damp from a night in the "dry goods" cooler. We must start very small. Tiny twigs atop torn cardboard corners. Try lighting it. Cardboard flares along one edge and goes out. He lights it again but it goes out. He's doing everything right. Collect more twigs, rearrange the fuel, more cardboard beneath. It smolders, glows along a tear and loses its light. I join in and gather more tinder and instruct Caleb to get the toilet paper from the tote. He does, wads up a few squares and jams it under our pile. I light it, but all it does is consume itself quickly, without flame. We make another few tries. During one promising flare-up, Caleb, confident of success exclaims, "We got us a fire!"

No.

After a half-hour of trying every trick, I surrender and go get the gas tank out of the boat. Caleb likes this idea, especially since it was his recommendation earlier, but discarded by me as what losers and lazy city folk do. Unnecessarily ridiculous, what the testosterone deficient resort to.
I removed the screw top and splashed two doses over the works. Caleb giggled. Then stopped giggling as I held out the lighter to a spot two feet away and exploded our foe into "whoomping" hot action.

"It's a good thing you lit it. I would've stuck the lighter right down inside."

Though it appears the fire is dependable and homey and ready to enjoy with fresh pressed red gingham curtains, it's not. Gas burns quickly and mocks us. As it abated we fed it more twigs and discovered that stripping bark off the larger sticks ridded it of water held in like a sponge.

Breakfast was supposed to be bagels toasted over the fire. But they were thrown into the river when mold was discovered greening an end of one. So wieners and marshmallows it was, heated over a substandard fire that refused to flourish despite regular applications of lovingly split wood.
We played Frisbee in a field of aromatic foxglove across the river. Then took a chill swim. Packed up camp and motored a mile upriver, parked and played Black Box, a short-lived but clever game marketed by Parker Brothers in the late 1970's. Canoeists floated past on mirror-flat water. Eight elderly folks asked a question routinely inquired by other boaters even though no fishing lines or other fishy paraphernalia are apparent. "Catching anything?"

"West Nile," quipped Caleb and slapped a mosquito. Wrinkled smiles turned solemn.

Another family paddled past in a single canoe. Two small children with boxing gloves on were nearing the end of round three.

"How far is it to the bridge?" asked the dad.

"About an hour. Or two, depending on potty breaks and spankings."