Let's climb on board the way back machine and try to find some good memories:
Welcome to 1998! Please keep your hands inside the car at all times and remain seated until the ride comes to a complete stop...
I had finally gotten the man of my dreams, but all was not well. I had recently quit my job delivering auto parts and was skipping rapidly from one crappy low paying job to another. After the drama went down with vapid girl my sweetie fell off the wagon...well, that's kind of an understatement. He didn't just fall off the wagon and land in the dirt; he fell off the wagon, through an open manhole and directly into the sewer. He wasn't just drinking again, he had decided to start dabbling in crack too. Oh joy. One evening he was acting completely unstable and ranting but I didn't know why. I had plenty of experience in dealing with drunk people, but he wasn't acting like your average drunk. I knew there had to be something else supplementing the alcohol but I didn't know what. Now I knew and I was wondering what I'd gotten myself into.
This new development led to our first fight. He'd crossed a big line for me and I had a screaming hissy fit and ordered him out of my apartment. After he went downstairs I saw some of his stuff sitting in my place, scooped it up and angrily stormed down the stairs to dump it in his apartment. Unfortunately I didn't notice the plastic runner on the hall stairs was wet and I went ass over tea kettle down the steps, landing in a heap at the bottom under a pile of clothes and other sundry items. It knocked the wind right out of me. He'd heard the thump and came out to see what happened. I was laying there gasping and bent into a position normally attainable only by master yogis and he scooped me up, helped me into his apartment and sat down on the couch with me in his lap, gently rocking me and stroking my hair while I quite literally cried on his shoulder. The fight was immediately over and he decided he probably didn't need to be smoking crack after all.
All of this went down just as we were getting ready to go on a camping trip together and now I was nervous and not sure I wanted to go. He was pretty excited about it and in the end I threw caution to the wind and got ready for the trip anyway.
I had no idea where we were going - just that I was driving, and it was 6 hours away in northern Minnesota. It was just going to be a short trip because I was set to start a new job as a shipping clerk the following week. We piled into my thoroughly packed caprice at 3am and off we went. One of the nice things about leaving at that ridiculous hour was that I had the roads all to myself until we got to Duluth, and once we passed the small towns in the iron range we were again the only people on the road. It was a long drive and about half of it was in the dark. No problem. I'm very familiar with the stretch of road between the Twin Cities and Duluth and there's really not much to see. It's a long stretch of road lined with stands of trees acting as wind breaks, punctuated by the occasional random casino and the beginnings of urban sprawl between the cities.
We filled the time talking about anything and everything - the loknar, the Blues Brothers, Tower of Power, the month he spent in Hawaii...do I stay on this road or take that one, and then the sun started coming up and we were surrounded by trees and foggy mist. It was just covering the tops of the trees and it felt like we were driving under a giant white silk sheet. It was surreal and beautiful. We pulled over for a moment to get out of the car and enjoy it; standing on the trunk of the car trying to touch the bottom of it with our fingertips. I was surprised at how quiet it was. It was like we were the only people on the planet. A few minutes later the fog was disappearing with the morning sun and we were still a few hours away from our destination - time to go...
I remember it felt like I had been driving forever - "Seriously, are we sure we aren't actually in Canada now?!" "No" my sweetie replied, "just a little farther." Up ahead, the road curved to the right and as we reached it a parting in the trees revealed a river sparkling in the sun like it had diamonds floating on the surface. I gave a happy little gasp of surprise and my sweetie smiled. He said the other side of the water was Canada and that we were very close to our campground now.
Soon after that, he was telling me to take the next right and we were there! This, he told me, was the smallest state park in Minnesota. His dad had brought him camping there when he was a teenager and he'd loved the place. I could see why. We picked campsite #12 to call home while we were there and wasted no time in setting up the tent and finding some firewood. Then we grabbed the fishing gear and walked down the path from our site to the river. The shore of the river is covered with huge boulders and I remember having a good time hopping from one big rock to the next while my sweetie got his fishing pole ready. He looked over at me and said "This is how you catch a walleye" and cast his line into the water. I laughed and said "no way!" and then I saw the end of the rod bounce. Now it was his turn to laugh - he actually reeled in a walleye! "Way" he said and gave me a wink. If I didn't already think he was the most awesome dude on the planet before, I did now.
We climbed the path back up to our site, got a fire going and ate walleye for lunch. We had a great time exploring the park by day and each other by night. I fell in love with the place - it was so quiet compared to the neighborhood we lived in. No cars blaring hip hop driving by, no car horns, traffic jams or screaming neighborhood kids. If you stood still and listened, all you could hear was the sound of the river rapids, the crackle of the the campfire and occasionally a train over on the Canadian side of the river. It's very rustic; no electricity, running water or street lights. At night you could see a million stars, it was the first time I'd ever really seen the milky way in all its glory.
All too soon it was time to leave and we were wistfully packing up our site and preparing to hit the road. We didn't want to leave. The trip home was filled with as much talk as the trip up, except that this time we spent most of it planning our next trip to the park. We made notes to remember this item or that, what had worked out well and what hadn't. We also decided that campsite #12 was 'home' and we'd somehow make sure we got it every time we went there.
We made one more trip up there in '98 - this time in September - and we brought another old friend of mine, the dungeon master. We claimed site #12 again. The dungeon master found a site down near the river and was pleased to discover a healthy population of toads and other critters to play with when he wasn't exploring the trails or hanging out at our campfire. My sweetie was an expert at fire tending and I was an expert at watching it. I enjoy the flickering flames and watching the embers glow and fade hypnotically and my sweetie enjoyed keeping the display going, poking the fire with a big stick and occasionally adding new logs to the pile. When he wasn't fishing he spent a fair amount of time dragging fallen birch trees back to our site and chopping them down into firewood, but he seemed to enjoy it. I went hiking with my camera and hauled the occasional log back as well. As before, we had a marvelous time and the dungeon master loved the place as much as we did.
Back home in St. Paul though, the rest of the year set the tone for the next several years of our relationship. My sweetie had made good on his promise to leave the crack alone, but his drinking was spiraling out of control. Weekend binges had become week long binges. He lost his job over it. We had a lot of arguments followed by a lot of make up sex. I was simultaneously in love with and infuriated by him on any given day, but the one thing I was certain of was that I didn't want to be without him...
No comments:
Post a Comment