jumpingfish

Yes, I’m still still talking about hiking the Napau Trail…

We got to marker #10. Trudy sat down to read from the guide.

Here, the couple from Arkansas who were ahead of us on the trail turned back when a sign for #16 appeared and confused them.

Now, you must understand who it was that I was hiking with. The fair and industrious Trudy not only was our intrepid tour guide for the day, but she is a geologist who once wanted to be a volcanologist. This is in no small reason why we were vacationing on this particular island in the Pacific. And it was certainly why we were hiking this particular trail that wound thru the pahoehoe desolation. Confusing sign or not, we had no intention of turning back.

At marker #12, Trudy said, “Oh yeah, I wanted to read this story to you.” (Clearly she was surreptitiously skipping ahead in the guide book between the stops.)

So she told the story of Jeffrey Judd who during the Mauna Ulu eruption drove out to the site and hiked onto the active lava channel to collect some samples. She told me how as he was collecting his samples, this 22 year old volcanologist broke thru the surface and sunk up to his knee in hot lava. Out in the burning wilderness alone, clothes on fire, burned, he had to hike out by himself. He survived, but he spent three weeks in the hospital. “Those were the best years of my life,” the guide quoted him as saying today.

There was a fire in Trudy’s eyes. No, we were definitely not turning back.

I have a lot of things to catch up on, a lot of thoughts scribbled on paper that I ought to convert into bits. This is one of them: some scribbled notes from a late March camping trip to Huntsville State Park…

1. The Night Before

It rained a little last night. It was barely noticeable at first, starting silently then coming down faster until there was an unmistakable patter of drops on the tent.

I hopped out of the sleeping bag and climbed into my jeans and dashed out to stash a few things in the car and to cover a few things and to put a few things away.

And with all things secured, I crept back into the tent and fell soundly asleep until day started to break and the birds began to sing.

2. The Morning After

“Come have some bacon!” we said to Melody as she walked over to say good morning. And to Cody who had several slices. And then to Steve.

And then we said it to Cody again, which led me to put more slices on the skillet. And several more. And then yet more. Cody’s appetite was outstripping my ability to cook.

Still, eventually we all had our fill of eggs and bacon and tortillas and coffee.

The perfect way to start a camping day.

3. That Afternoon

The sun came out in bursts between fleeting clouds. At moments the forest was aglow in spring-green with blooming Dogwoods in the understory of the Oak and Pine and Sweetgum trees. And then at moments dark clouds would pass overhead and a storm seemed imminent.

But then a breeze would stir, and the wind would blow across the water at the foot of the hill, and the rushing breeze thru the Pines would blow away the darkness, and the sun would come out again, warming our skin, casting shadows at our feet as we sat in the blissful comfort of our camp chairs reading and writing and thinking that this was the perfect way to start a camping afternoon.

1.

Perhaps it wasn’t the best time of day to be digging in the dirt. But there were other things to do earlier in the day, and so I showed up at 2:30 with the 100+ degree sun beating down on the little patch of ground where some digging needed doing. It was indeed a little patch of ground, just a few feet of packed soil with weeds and Bermuda grass that needed clearing.

The ground and the weeds and the grass held tightly to each other. Separating them required some effort. Yesterday things started with the mattock and gradually moved to a garden fork. But today it was a long handled shovel, frankly the tool I should have been using all along. (What was I thinking?)

Inch by inch, the shovel sliced thru the dirt as the sun beat down and sweat ran down my face, dripped off my nose, drenched my shorts and soaked my shirt. But on the other side of the driveway was a patch of shade and a mercifully cool breeze and a chair in which to sit. I visited the chair often.

“It’s a good thing you don’t do this for a living,” my aunt once told me. “You’d go broke.”

It’s true. I would. But I don’t.

2.

The dogs dashed out the door into the pouring rain. There was no thunder to rouse them. The rain was anomaly enough.

“We need fifteen minutes of this,” said the fair and industrious Trudy as she looked down at her phone to mark the time.

After a while, the downpour eased.

“Five minutes,” Trudy called out, “not enough time.”

Nothing but a light drizzle remained, and the sun was threatening to come out. But then it started raining again harder than before. Another five minutes. Maybe ten.

“I bet you haven’t seen a day-long rain in a while,” Ken said to me the other day.

“No,” I said. “Haven’t seen one of those since I moved here in ’82.”

He laughed, but it’s true.

Fifteen minutes of rain. We’ll take it.

3.

At the end of day, the cloudy skies cleared and the sun went down. The sky lit up in hues of pastel blue and pink.

Dusk advanced from the east, passing overhead, chasing the pink away, turning the clouds into wisps of purple/grey.

Four swallows raced in great circles beyond the silhouettes of the Live Oak trees. Somewhere down the block, Nighthawks were beginning to sing.

Standing beside the street where the brutal sun of summer beats down on it every day, the Texas Redbud stood in the gathering gloom with its deep green leaves curled up in places, holding glistening drops of water from the rain. 

And just before night descended, a spider spun a web between the Redbud branches, a gentle breeze buffeting it back and forth.

The frogs are croaking along Onion Creek. I know this, because we were there yesterday.

We walked through the woods in the shade with the dogs sniffing at the trees and bushes and pokey things along the path. And we came to a trail that we hadn’t taken before that went back and forth and down across a bridge and though a poison ivy infested woods down to the creek.

We stood there and looked out on the water, amazed that in this heat in this place in summer so much water would be there, amazed that there would be frogs croaking.

But they were. And they are. And they do. 

1.

There were five of them: three boys around 7 years old and a younger boy and girl. Their parents were on the other side of the playground. The kids were playing with a yellow tennis ball.

The oldest of the three boys told the other two where to stand.

“Here,” he said to one, “you stand here.”

And then he walked over to the other and told him where to stand. They formed a perfect equilateral triangle.

The little boy and girl were waiting to be told where to stand, but that’s not what the oldest boy had in mind. Instead he told them to go over to the other side of the playground. The little boy was particularly unhappy with this and began to pester the big boys. 

The little girl was willing to play by the big boys’ rules. “You stay away,” she said gently to the little boy as he kept reaching for the yellow tennis ball. And she began to push and pull him to get him out of the triangle.

At this point, the game changed for the little boy. It was no longer about the ball. Instead, be turned to the girl with a big smile on his face and began to chase her. And when she ran away, it just made him chase her more. So in that way the three older boys finally got to play fetch.

2.

They weren’t very good throwing or catching, and the ball would frequently roll off into the gravel beneath the swings or onto the grass on the hill. But they were enjoying themselves and enjoying the fact that the little kids were gone.

And then an errant throw, and the ball rolled into a thicket.

All three boys dashed up to the trees and shrubs and looked poised to scramble in, but they pulled up short. The Juniper and Oak and stabby things mastered them, and they stood there puzzled. Two moms came up to help, but they were of no help.

This was the scene: three boys, two moms and the two little kids all gathered at the edge of a thicket peering in, all seven trying to figure out how to retrieve the yellow tennis ball.

“The yellow ball!” one of the little kids shouted to one of the mothers. “The yellow ball!” But neither mom was up to the task.

3.

I stood up from where I was stretching on the sidewalk. 

The sun was getting low. I had cooled down from my run. And it was time to drive home anyway. So I got up and walked over to them with sweat running down my face.

“I’ll get it,” I said.

I turned around and backed into the Juniper and Oak and stabby, leafy margins of the thicket into the dark leafless interior with snapping branches and poking limbs grabbing at my shirt. And I picked up the ball which was all of five feet away.

The moms were grateful. The three boys were grateful. And the little kids ran around cheering and proclaiming that I had sticks and other stabby things in my hair.