Hierophany

I.  Getting There.


Leaving 9:25a, cloudy...we're listening to the radio...the market is mixed, I did a bit of work this morning, B is driving..."I Touch Myself," I have an inexplicable memory of getting off a plane when I hear this song, of disembarking at the moment when you say "bye now" to the stewardess...and I remember my mom saying she thought this song was "stupid," which I don't dispute...but the song was a success...I'm talking about it, hearing it, however many years later—20 years?  1994 or so?—I can't remember who sings it...the Divinyls?... It's playing on 90.7 HD2: HD radio in the Subaru...I miss the Jeep emotionally, but not functionally...It's an eclectic mix on this station, one song was a collection of racket, like bad Beach Boys mixed with poseur Middle Eastern rhythms.  As we cross the Meramec River close to its Terminus with the Mississippi, we enter Jeff Co. and Arnold—where Pat got Frozen Castles for our camp at St. Francois State Park.  And the Heartless Bastards come on.  This song goes out to you, P Hole—thanks again for that ride home from pool Wednesday night.

This is a good time to be on Interstate 55—it's about half the volume versus last time I traversed it, three weeks ago plus six hours en route St. Francois S.P.  We'll go past St. Fran on our way to Sam A. Baker.

I can start to see some hills peaking out due south, lightly cloaked in a foggy mist.  Silver Hills, is what Ida called them...

...I'm in here and I'm not talking...
"You don't have much to say," she says.
"No, I don't."
"Then why'd you come in here."
"I came in for him.  He—his dad died.  He just found out, a couple hours ago."
"Jesus."
"Yeah.  He wanted to come in here.  I don't know.  It's not where Ida ended up.  Or if I had—I'd be a lot drunker than he is."
"Maybe you should buy him a drink."
"Maybe."
"Maybe you should buy me one, too."

And...scene!

Just riffing there, a little fictionalized memoir.  But which parts are real, and which aren't.  Ah-ha-ha-ha-hah.  It's 10:07, sixty-seven degrees.  To Farmington, a mile away.

Fort Find It.  Dillo.  We're about to pass St. Francois State Park, which is on the left.  See ya.  No Francois but we will be fishing, swimming in, and floating the St. Francis River.  We pass a metal fabricator.  We pass Cherokee Landing, an outfitter.  It was that name we saw painted on the sides of canoes putting in on the Big River at St. Francois S.P.  Bonne Terre.  A used car lot displays a pink polka-dotted-elephant.  I think of that National song, "Pink Rabbits."  Drinking pink rabbits in some kind of chair.  Is the singer drinking pink rabbits or is his erstwhile flame drinking them?  Does it matter?  A little sun for the first time all day.  Still rocking the 90.7 HD2, so-called "Exponential Radio."

Farmington.  There's a turnoff via 221 for "Arcadia Valley," the constituents of which I've largely heard—Johnson's Shut-Ins, Taum Sauk State Park—but I've never heard it called Arcadia Valley.  St. Joe State Park is over that way, too.  I was telling B that St. Joe is an ATV destination.  And that it's also polluted.  Past Farmington we crossed the St. Francis, and we just crossed it again.  We also lost the signal for exponential radio.  We're on 67, headed south.  It's two lanes each way, separated by a healthy gray median.  There is a steady feed of cars and trucks but the traffic is not heavy.  Plenty of room out here.  There's rain out to the west, somewhere.  South, too.  But we press on.  Sprinkles.  S bar F Scout Ranch.  I say with nearly complete confidence that I've never been on this road before.  In college, for the rock class or two I took, we came down 67, and eventually made our way on over to Johnson's Shut-Ins and Elephant Rocks—but I don't believe we were ever this far south.  Coppermines Church.  It's 10:57.

The median, past Fredericktown (which makes me think of my father, whose middle name is Frederick, oddly), is no longer green.  It's lined with a maroon, igneous rock blasted out of the earth not far from here.  And it's been sprayed, because there is no green at all, just dead brown weeds in some spots and parched white grass in others.  It's twenty-eight miles yet to Highway 34, our turnoff.  To Poplar Bluff, 61 miles.  Does 67 go all the way to Arkansas, B wonders.  I don't know.  From the glove compartment I remove a map of the great state of Missouri.  The answer is "yes."  Twelve Mile Creek.  The map indicates we are about to pass through Mark Twain National Forest.  And it seems there are camping options there—Silver Mines, one of the Arcadia Valley constituents I did not know.  Every day, every day.

A mobile home in a state of decay.  Collapsed, flattened, the stuffing turned inside out.  Immobile.  Trucks going the other way turn up mist in their treadwake.  It rained here, very recently.  Between the raindrops we shall go, dancing wanly, to and fro.  I am pondering the Twain Forest.  I've always regarded it as some sort of alien land, inhospitable, a dense green nowhere.  A small sign on an unmarked road advertises, "Camping—Paw Paw Park."  We'll pass on that.  I suppose the campgrounds within Mark Twain Forest would be listed on recreation.gov, like those along the Current.  The Feds have got their paws all over Missouri parks, haven't they?  A sly move, I'd say.

Smoke on the near horizon.  We're hurtling downhill toward the origin, but I can't quite see it.  Some local is burning a pile, apparently, out behind an old "Fireworks City" store.  The speed limit is 65.  Having two lanes in either direction, so that the enterprising can pass us on the left, is a big plus.  Wayne County.  But there's no one behind us anyway, hasn't hardly been anyone behind us since Bonne Terre.  There's something in the road up ahead.  It's a blown-out tire, one big piece and lots of assorted shreds.  Cedar Creek.  A sign for a conservation area.  There is some blue sky to the west now.  It's 11:19.  I think that conservation area was Coldwater Conservation Area.  Lodi.  That tells me that we have already traveled through much of the swath of Mark Twain National Forest that I saw on the map.  But I never saw any signs indicating as much.  Strange.

Camp Lewellen Boy Scouts Camp.  "I guess they own the property," says B.  It's kind of like a Social Precurity system for boys, involving outdoor activities and other endeavors facilitating preparation.  Here's the land, gents, do something with it.  We see the turnoff for 34—Piedmont, Marble Hill.  The road has slimmed, the median is just a parapet now.  We're...veering...right.  We see signs for Sam A. Baker State Park.  We see signs for Clearwater Lake and Dam, an Army Corps of Engineers production.  Maybe that's a place for us to go with Tyler when he's got the boat.  An old sign for "Camp Wood, 15 stks, $5."  We cross the St. Francis River again.  This is the takeout point for the float, I realize.  The 34 bridge.  The river looked OK, not really hustling much, but just OK.

Ragwort and Queen Anne's Lace alongside the road, an unnamed creek.  A place called "The Back Table," with billiards on offer.  We're on 143N now.  NV Circle Ranch, full RV hookups.  Now we're hemmed in by forest, no more red clay.  Five hens.  The Winking Owl, some sort of store—the sign said closed but the door was open and a guy stood along the doorframe smoking a cigarette and watching us as we coasted by.  Sam A. Baker, we're here.


II.  Shut-Ins.

We hiked the Shut-Ins trail but veered off somewhere along the way.  The Shut-Ins are somewhere along Big creek but I don't think we arrived at the right spot.  As I was walking along I knew I hadn't seen any blue blazes in a while but we could hear voices of river play and we followed them.  Big Creek is clear, cool, and it moves—the recent rain probably helped put it in a good light.  I gradually worked my way in and as I leant more and more of myself to the water I could feel my cultivated toxins flee further and further up my body until they were all in my head and then out the top of it as I finally put my head under.  It was a restorative bath.  There is a moment every year when I have a craving to go put myself into a body of cool water.  But I had never before identified this urge as a craving for a specific form of forced, physical catharsis.  If I miss any aspect of swimming laps it is the simple fact of placing myself under water.  I miss the shock of immersion.  It is a powerful, benign, constructive act.

It's past five here on Friday night.  We have tunes going—vintage Tom Petty.  "She's gonna listen to her heart.  It's gonna tell her what to do-oo-oo.  Well, she might need a lot of lovin' but she don't need you."  A dog a ways away, a yipper, is going crazy.  That's not nearly as bad as Hatfield and McCoy waking up at cross-purposes amidst their hungover family reunion about a campsite block away.  Right when we got here two guys over there were throwing down—like, for real.  And we're looking at each other thinking, "What did we get ourselves into now."  Someone, maybe the camp hosts, called the park ranger and he was over there pretty quick.  Ohhhhh: now we're getting hit with some tasty camp cook smoke.  B says it's burgers.  For lunch we did cured meat, Triscuits, English sharp cheddar (eat it, Russia), cucumbers, and carrots.  Not bad.  The summer sausage was courtesy of Milwaukee.

It's humid, there's no sugar-coating it.  But there is a breeze stirring now and we're on the other side of two hours of hiking.  It's time to kick back and dip into our finest provisions.  There are remnants on our site of an epic silly string battle—blue vs. pink.  The loser I imagine had to shamble his or her way through dank patches of poison ivy and a minute army of poison dart frogs to the St. Francis River for a dunking, in view of our site, number five.  I don't know for sure, I haven't even spent a night here yet, but it seems to me that Big Creek is nicer than the St. Francis River.  I've the notion that when Big Creek is floatable—which isn't often—it's a lot like floating the Current.  We had planned on doing the five-mile of the St. Francis tomorrow but we are probably going to audible and hike along Missouri's tallest mountain instead, Taum Sauk.

I'm into my second Shift, a pale lager from the New Belgium brewery in Fort Collins, CO.  B is working on Weed and water.  Dinner is Castles.  I bought 20 sticks of firewood at the park store for $6.34 (including tax).  In terms of volume it's equivalent to three of the pre-wrapped bundles but only about half the price.  Let's see, though, how it burns before we go around patting each other on the back.

A melange of topics I wanted to talk about but won't get to before I fall asleep: Bugs on the Mudlick Trail drove us batty; the hosts told us about putting dryer sheets in our hats; site 87 here looked good; there's a tiny kid at the site across the way that loves tearing up and down the road on his tiny tricycle.  There's lighter fluid in the air.  B likes the smell of it, she makes the wafting motion with her hand, as if she were testing a rue.  "What kind of trees are those?  I feel like they're California trees."  Yeah, I tell her, I was gonna say they were ponderosa pines.  At eight o'clock exactly we went down to the river.  The moon looked so peaceful, lofted there above it all, nearly full.


III.  Sat Morn, 6:21.

It was not a very good night's sleep.  We got bit by the late arrivals bug again.  They pass their site, turn around, come back (going the wrong way now on the one-way road that loops through the campground), and fumble around with their tent in the last of the day's light.  B and I both fell asleep pretty easily but as I drifted in and out of sleep I was aware of kids giggling and screwing around with their flashlights in the neighboring tent.  Eventually B and I were both awake and I figured it was 9:30. I was incredulous when she told me it was three.  I got up.  It was just two young girls over there, eleven years old maybe.  At one time there was a mom, or an aunt, or some adult because we saw her and one of the girls carrying a huge air mattress down the road to their new abode.  But the old lady was gone now.  The two girls went over to the bathroom.  The bathroom that's near us is duplex style, one flush toilet on either side, clean enough.  The girls both went in to the left half.  When they came out I started walking toward them and they froze.  I kept my voice down and I didn't get mean.  I asked them to listen.  What did they hear?  Nothing.  Crickets and frogs.  I told them the only reason my wife and I were awake at this hour was because of them.  They really were the only people in the campground making any noise, and had been for hours.  One of them apologized, the other one didn't say anything at all.  It struck me that they didn't know any better.  I blame the mom, or whoever the adult is who puts two girls in a tent and walks away.

I hate to do this, I really hate it.  But I'm staying on the Complain Train because just as I sat down to write this—let me back up.  We didn't pick a very good site.  We're too close to the bathroom.  The doors are quite loud against their frames when someone exits the bathroom and lets the door swing closed behind them.  I heard that sound once or twice at four or five this morning.  I didn't want to put earplugs in because there are these frogs down in the boggy area along the river that are nocturnal and make these crazy banjo-croaking sounds all throughout the night.  That's the kind of sound I can only hear when I'm sleeping out in nature, that's why I do this.  I want to hear the crickets and the katydids chirping and blirping and buzzing and just before it starts to get light I want to hear the birds that are getting up earlier than anyone else.

Along with the thudding doors is the bathroom's exterior light, which lights the area outside the bathroom a little too well.  And then there's a little parking area just to the side of the bathroom.  There are eight spots, including one handicapped spot.  As I sat down to write I saw a large mini-van parked there with MN plates.  Someone popped out of it right as I sat down to write this, a young lady.  Then another young lady popped out the other side.  I'm thinking they just decided not to stay in a tent last night, they'd just sleep in the van instead, they don't like sleeping in tents, whatever.  But over the course of the next fifteen minutes six more people clambered out of that van!  Eight people, I'm not exaggerating.  A mom, a dad, and half a grade school class.  There I am getting out of my tent in the morning, after listening to little LaVerne and Shirley play grabass all night and I crush a Doubleshot and get to thinking I'm gonna enjoy some peace and quiet while I write about yesterday a little bit.  And I grant that these people talked hushedly as they took their turns going into the bathroom, but it's a sliding door van, a mid-nineties model that rolled off the assembly line long before the push-button close was invented.  And those doors made a sound like a manual garage door being shut.  Do the math on how many times the door has to open and close as eight people go to and fro to use the bathroom in the morning.

I'm feeling a little snakebit right now.  I reiterate that this was not a very good choice for a site.  But between the left-to-themselves-to-screw-around late arrivals and the Minnesotan Octagon I'm sitting here thinking WTF.

I don't want to be a whiner—whining, or being "whiny", is a trait someone has called out in my recent travel writings.  I want to accentuate the positives.  I need to regroup and restate the objective of my travel writing.  I'm here to describe things.

Our site backs up to a marshy, fensy, woodsy bank that rolls a bit until it reaches the St. Francis River, about thirty or forty feet away.  The river at that point doesn't look to be moving much.  [Editor's Note:  I need to mention two things.  First, B asked me to define what "fens" are.  Fens are "low-lying wet land with grassy vegetation; usually a transition zone between land and water."  Second, what I have described just now as the St. Francis river wasn't actually the St. Francis River, it was a spring-fed sideshoot of the St. Francis River, a sort of side-channel that itself feeds into the St. Francis River about 100 yards away, at which point one enters the St. Francis River via the boat ramp and is met immediately about their feet by delightfully cool water from said side-channel/spring.]  An ADA spot, number 6, empty, is at my right (north).  Site 8, two down from us on the the other side of the ADA site, was reserved for last night, tonight, and tomorrow night—but as of this writing it is empty.  Directly across from our site is that parking lot.  It abuts the island circumscribed by the loop road running through this side of Campground 1.  There are dozens of tall, stately, well-looked-after pines standing over the interior part of this loop.  I have a small tree book—it used to be my dad's, or his dad's, but I snagged it—and I need to start carrying it.  [Editor's Note: Egads, I just went to go look at the little tree book but it's not there in our bookshelf.  I got rid of it, I am kicking myself.]   These trees are maybe 160 feet high.  Skinny.  Sparse of limb on the way up.  The bark is notable.  It reminds me of fish scales. [Editor's Note: Quick list of candidates includes red pine and shortleaf pine.]


It was humid yesterday, but the sun made its breakthrough eventually and stayed around 'til sundown.  It was wet when we got here.  There were puddles on the concrete pad under the picnic table.  We did a once-over of some of the other sites in Campground 1 and some of them were heavy with standing water.  You could not have camped on them last night, probably not tonight either.

It's buggy here.  Flies at the campsite were pestering us right away.  House flies, or a rabid version of house flies that like to bite people.  We deeted up and that fixed the problem.  On our second hike yesterday, an attempted loop hike comprised of taking the Mudlick Trail from its northern trailhead and eventually cutting into the Fire Tower Trail, we were besieged by the sort of gnat that wants to house itself in either your ears or your eyes.  They might have been the same little pests that were trying to get at us along the swampy Shut-Ins Trail earlier.  They were even worse on the Mudlick Trail.  I've never been bothered like that by gnats.  I was wearing my bandana as a sweatband but I re-fashioned it to cover my ears.  I was thinking I could have used earmuffs or one of those bands that skiers wear to keep their ears warm.  My ears were plenty warm on the faux-hike; I was trying to take a landing spot away from the little buggers.  We walked for half an hour and turned around.  I can handle hot but hot and bugs was too much.  I was expending more energy trying to wave away and swat at the gnats than I was hiking.  Nonetheless, we hiked for a total of two hours yesterday and I'm satisfied with that.  If we're really going to Colorado in September, and if we're hiking while we're there, I need to get in shape—and quick.  

I consider this a mixed-use campground: RV sites and tent sites.  It's mostly RVs.  But at some sites there are both RVs and tents.  Across from us and one over is a family of six that took an electric site but is not in an RV—they've got one big tent and one small one.  I like their set up.  B and I were talking about them a little.  I think the guy is the father of all four but the woman is the mother of just one, the little tricycle kid.  Some of the kids are much older, in their teens.  B is moving around in the tent.  She wanted more sleep.  I wasn't very comfortable—my neck was stiff.  So I figured I'd just get up now and nap later.  It's like that movie, that terrible movie, "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead."  Here she is, the B-ster.  It's 7:09.  I've had my Doubleshot.  Maybe it's time to get our morning cookfire going.
There is a boat ramp 150 yards from here. [Editor's Note: Recall that at this point I still haven't realized that the water right behind us really isn't part of the river "proper", but is instead a spring-based tributary.]  There is river access there.  I wasn't expecting much, based on the sense I got of the river from the snatch of it I can see from our site.  It shapes up somewhere between here and there I guess because it is beautiful down there.  The water is clear, and rippling, and cool.  Not spring-fed cold, other than right when you step in, but cool.  It's split at that point by a picturesque gravel bar and the entire view is expansive and peaceful in both directions.  It feels a lot like the river access we enjoyed at the Round Spring campground on the Current River.  We walked down there at dusk last night; the moon was up and nearly full.  I wanted a photo but I didn't have my camera.  I started to walk back for it but my legs were heavy by that time and the moment (last light) was going to pass before long so I stayed put.  I had a cigarette and enjoyed the view.

It's time to get a fire going.  It's time for eggs and bacon and toast and more coffee.  There's something I forgot to mention—the raccoon that came up from the banks ten feet away from us last night, at gloaming, and wasn't afraid of us at all.  I was so glad Squirt wasn't here.  It's 7:18 in the morning, Saturday, August 9, in Sam A. Baker State Park in Missouri.


IV.  Taum Sauk.

It's Saturday, 1:18 pm, we're heading south on 21/72.  We have been to Missouri's highest point, Taum Sauk Mountain.  We did a hike there, in Taum Sauk State Park.  I thought we were going to reach the acme somewhere along the trail but the "highest point" marker is actually set off to the side before you even get to the trail.  The trail was a three-mile loop that took us roughly an hour and forty-five minutes.  The signs leading to the trail indicated the hike would last three hours, that it was a rugged and difficult trail, and that caution was advised.  Indeed it was a strenuous hike but the sign oversold the difficulty.  At the beginning, a hiker could go right or left.  We went right.  The best vistas were on the "right half" of the trail.  Approximately halfway around the loop are some falls, the Mina Sauk Falls.  If it hadn't rained Thursday and Friday, these falls probably would have been dry.  It's a good hike.  The bugs were back at it, but it's that time of year I guess.  B said she had sprayed her hat with deet but still they hounded her ears.  I was swatting at them, as they buzzed my ears, and with the practice I had gotten in yesterday, I was crushing quite a few of them.  But there are always more, and they never stop discovering you as you make your way along the trail.

The drive from Sam A. Baker State Park to Taum Sauk State Park was about an hour.  It's 143N to 49N to 72/21.  Little towns, timber, Baptist churches.  Windy, curvy, rolling roads.  Big Creek makes at least a couple of appearances.  The weather has been good.   Humid, partly cloudy.  Warm.  At times on the hike along Taum Sauk there was a breeze.  Now we are going south on 49, jogging through Annapolis.  There are a lot of stone walls out here, all along this drive.  There are some stone houses.  Even along a curve on 72/21 south of Taum Sauk State Park there is a pretty stone wall lining the outer edge of the curve defining the road.  The stone is...I'm note sure what kind of stone it is.  It's an igneous rock—whatever the earth spat up and slobbered itself with around here.  I want to say dolomite but that's just dilettante.  I really don't know.  It's reddish.  Round.  We just went over Big Creek for the first time on this, our return trip.  It's a clear little riffler that Big Creek.  Very inviting.

There was a rattle in the car, upfront.  B, who is obviously driving, was fiddling with this and that in the console and I asked her what the heck she was doing.  "Trying to figure out what that rattle is," she says.  I looked for it.  I couldn't find it.  I thought maybe it was the CD that's in the CD player (the CD player holds six CDs, but we have only one CD in there).  The radio/stereo was off.  I wasn't going to eject the CD but then B did.  The rattling did not stop.  When she popped the CD back in, it started playing.  So now we are listening to The War on Drugs, "Living the Dream."  In the last several days I've had two people tell me, in response to me asking them how they were doing, "(I'm) living the dream."  Chalk it up to zeitgeist.  It's a pretty cynical remark, though.  I don't think either of the two people who said it really meant it.

I just figured out the rattling.  It was the sunglasses in the sunglass kitty up top.  143 and 49 intersect in Des Arc, which has 177 people and a general store.  We cross Big Creek again.  This is a road with moguls.  There have been large swaths of road recently replaced.  Signs pronounce "Fresh Oil/Loose Gravel."  The swaths are large rectangular patches of pavement that have been replaced wholesale.  There is no pothole patching here.  The road, overall, is in decent shape.  Better than "fair".  Iron County.  The St. Francois Mountains are the range that Taum Sauk Mountain is in.  I have to take a minute to comment on the whole St. Francis vs. St. Francois thing that is going on in this part of Missouri.  There is a St. Francois State Park.  And there are the St. Francois Mountains.  According to many websites, and based on what I have already written in this camp diary, the river that runs through Sam A. Baker State Park is the St. Francis River.  Notice I've dropped the "o" there.  But if you go to the Sam A. Baker State Park website and pull up a PDF map of  Campground 1, it identifies the river running along the south side of the park as the "St. Francois River".  I went to the Army Corps of Engineers Site vis-a-vis Lake Wappapello, fed by said river, and they call it the St. Francis.  I don't know which is which, I really don't.  As far as the St. Francois Mountains are concerned, I'll be direct and tell you that they're really just big hills.  They're really pretty, though.  Even up close, the way that the milky green and white lichens cover the red, igneous rock is something I can keep in my mind.  There aren't too many people on these roads.  I drove to Taum Sauk State Park.   You must know that; otherwise I would have written something about the drive up there.  I can only crutch on B so much.  And on that drive to Taum Sauk I only once had someone riding my bumper.  It was a nice change of pace.

There aren't many camping sites at Taum Sauk State Park.  There is no shower house.  You're really on your own out there.  The Boy Scouts had descended en masse on the park's special use campground.  They must have had 15 tents packed in there.


V.  Sat Eve, 5:30.






—Southeastern MO,
August 2014

I.  Friday at Site 88.
 ...In which Pat sets up his erstwhile tent, an igloo type, smaller than his new one, saying it [the erstwhile tent] is a little musty because he hasn't used it since Wisconsin...And in which Jack buys a couple of bundles of wood from a guy on a golf cart... 

One of the campground hosts is circulating on a golf cart asking if campers need firewood or ice.  Fire and ice, fire and ice.  He was wearing a shirt that on the back announced in green lettering something to the effect, "The Little Bug That Kills."  I've my cache of wood in the back of the car still, in lawn refuse—"Kraft" paper—bags and it's a scenario I've fretted before.  A park ranger, or in this case a campground host, asks me whereabouts my wood is from.  For the record, ninety percent of what I got is from St. Louis County.  College City, to be exact.  Some of it's from my own yard.  A lot I got from the College City park's woodlot.  A fair bit is from a certain St. Louis County park, where someone downed a tree, cut it up alright, and left it to rot.  Nuh uh.  I grabbed a lot of it.

Missouri has this problem with a specific beatle, the emerald ash borer, which is infesting ash trees and killing them.  Moving firewood—ash especially, but any hardwood generally—is how the beatle is is spreading its reign.  There are counties in mostly southern parts of the state that are subject to quarantine—you're not supposed to take firewood out of those counties.  St. Louis County is not a quarantine county.  But where we camped along the Current River, at Round Spring?  That's Shannon County.  And Shannon County is a quarantine county.

And, well, I brought some wood back from that trip.  Now, before you cuff me, I want to point out that the wood I brought back from there was wood we got from the general store down by the campground.  It was the bundled, pre-split, cellophane-wrapped variety you will see sitting out in front of gas stations from here to everywhere.  And my big point here is: I have no way of knowing, and no one else does, where this wood I brought back from Shannon County originated from.  It could easily have come from a different county than Shannon County.  I admit making the mistake of not burning what I bought.  I never should have brought it back.  But you're also not supposed to leave any excess wood behind at your campsite.  We had too much and after the Odysseus Float the day before we didn't even have a fire Sunday morning.  So I took what was left, wrapped it in a garbage bag, and headed for home.

*BREAKING NEWS*
I just bought a couple-a bundles.  The host puttered up on his golf cart and asked, "You got plenty of wood."  I do have plenty of wood but I said, "I could use a couple of bundles."  I figure I want to be on record as having bought some of the "local wood"—which gets me back to what I was saying.  I asked the host where the wood was from and he said, "I...don't know."  He looked at one of the bundles and read off the address of the place listed on the little piece of paper that's tucked into each bundle.  "New Florence, Missouri," he says.  Which means nothing.  That's the address of the business as far as I know—not the location from which the wood was taken (or stored/seasoned).

My point: Does  have any idea where this wood is really from?  Who is regulating these supplies of wood that land at gas stations and campgrounds?  Because I'm here to tell you: This wood I just bought is the same "brand" of wood that I bought when B and I were at Meramec State Park earlier this year.  Meramec is at least several counties away from here.  But, oh, go to the Missouri State Parks website and you'll see that the "Firewood Advisory" is in full effect—don't move firewood.  Hello?  This stuff I just bought is "moved firewood," courtesy of Midwest Hardwood Farms, purveyor of "seasoned oak firewood."  (Not that it matters but New Florence, MO is 116 miles from St. Francois State Park.  College City is 60 miles from here.)

If we are going to get serious about the emerald ash borer then any firewood sold on any level (wholesale or retail) in Missouri needs a stamp, or a sticker—kind of like fruit—identifying where the wood has been.

I've got to digress from my firewood sermon for just a minute to tell you about a seven-year-old kid at a campsite not far from here that hates his tent and hates his brother, too.  I want to sniper rifle this kid.  Without him, the ambient noise here would be perfect.  There are a couple of DeadHeads right across the road, thirty feet from me, who have a sort of Robert Plant-led jam band going on their stereo that I wish was actually a little louder, to counteract the racket that this kid is making.

A car comes around the bend...a baldish guy in a black wagony/hatchback looking car...but darn it's a VW Golf, not a Forester.  Ohh—here comes the ranger in a car that looks kind of like a cop car.  I don't feel unsafe here.  Most of the sites are occupied.  There are numerous camp hosts and right now it's a parade of cars, trucks, and trucks with RVs in tow coming by looking for unreserved sites.  Six days ago it was just this site and one other that were reserved on this entire side of the campground.  Now the place is packed.  I'm amazed.

But let me get back to the emerald ash borer because, as it so often happens, Shakespeare was right.  One of his best aphorisms was about the persons who "Doth protest too much."  In other words, part of the reason I am so animated about the emerald ash borer is because I have a confession to make.  The guilt is eating away at me.  Remember that wood I brought back from the Current River campsite?  Some of it I had already unbundled, and split, in preparation for a fire Sunday morning (which never happened).  But there was another bundle that I never even un-cellophaned.  I had it still wrapped in a garbage bag and sitting on a rack in my garage.  I did not cut the cellophane off until B and I went on our next camping expedition, to Klondike Park in St. Charles County three weeks later (and also, as it happens, three weeks ago).

When I took the edge of my camper's axe to the cellophane at Klondike, the cellophane split open, and the wood "unbundled."  As it did so, something green scuttled out of the bundle.  I was fearing as much, so I was ready for the possibility that some little critter would come tearing out of that bundle when I loosed it.  But this little sucker was quick.  Its size was about right for that of a borer (a half inch from head to tail).  I stomped at it and then I stomped and tried to rub and swipe at the grass real hard with my foot where I saw the little critter flee to.  But I'm only about half-sure that I killed the thing.

So that's my story about how I messed up bringing that wood back from Shannon County.  And that's why I also believe that as far as Missouri and the emerald ash borer goes...it's only a matter of time.  I'm a firebug, a wood-luster.  But I'm also fairly aware of the problem and I have been somewhat mindful of best practices.  I'm also a camper, though.  And when I'm going to some place to camp that I've never been to before, I'm never sure I'm going to have enough wood when I get there.  The camp hosts make it pretty easy here by bringing by wood on their carts, but that's a luxury that I've never before seen at any other site.  Plus, I need kindling to get these big pieces of wood to catch.  Sure, I can split up the pieces that come out of the bundles but that's hard work.  I want to do that work before I come camping.  Not when I'm out here.  Part of the problem, too, is that campers at Missouri State Parks are SPECIFICALLY PROHIBITED from going into the woods for any reason.  As I drove into the campground, one of the camp hosts, the lady with eyes like big round grapes listed for me the park ranger's pet peeves.  "Let's see," she says, and I can tell it's a list she's run down a thousand times and has become tired with.  "Only two vehicles to a site."  And she pauses, uses her eyes to search upward in their sockets for the next item on the list.  "Don't go into the woods."  The eyes go left to right this time.  "Quiet time is ten p.m."  She purses her lips, tilts her head at me.  "The speed limit is ten miles per hour.  Oh, and don't park on the grass."

I want to get away from the wood for good now and turn my attention to other matters.  It's 7:20 and dusk is getting warmed up.  Someone is chopping wood.  A girl scooters by.  Two kids two sites over contemplate wiffle ball.  I've had a Red Hook Longhammer IPA tall boy and a Santa Fe Brewing Saison 88, which has to be only a handful of saisons available in can.  It's pretty good.  Five-point-five by volume.

I swat at a mosquito.  The grape-eyed lady host comes by with her husband riding shotgun.  I'm thinking that if Pat doesn't arrive tonight I don't know if I'll even have a fire.  I might need one, though.  I'm two-and-a-half beers in and I haven't eaten since lunch.  The park gates close at ten, at least that's what posted.

Hey, lookee there!  Pat is here at seven thirty-six.



II.  Saturday Morning.

...In which Jack wakes up with a bit of the crikey...Pat sleeps in...and Jack gets a question by text from Bobby, who is arriving imminently...

I awake to the sound of other campers getting their morning fires going.  That's change for the better!

Me and Pat closed this place down last night.  How perfect the weather was.  A bit of haze maybe, and that was probably campfire smoke.  I had to put on long sleeves, which I have put on again just now.  It is chilly here!  In St. Louis, in July.  I walked to the showerhouse and back a few minutes ago and I was wishing I had my tuq—my beanie, my little winter cap.

I am marveling at how much of this campground is awake at 7:35 on a Saturday morning.  On my walk I saw no fewer than three people wrapping themselves in their blankets as they sat fireside.  Pat is not up yet.  B is leaving College City right now.  There is a bit of exceptionally high cirrus.  It was bright, light, and right when I awoke.  Never have I been scooped on a beautiful morning by so many campers in my own campground.

I ate three White Castle sliders last night, that was all.  Pat bought them, frozen, from the Shop 'n' Save in Arnold.  He let them thaw on the way down.  I haven't had a lower-maintenance, better-tasting meal out of a pie iron.  Three Castles each.  He had another sixer but I was content.  Eventually we went for a walk, out of the camping area, and down to what I'm calling the prairie, a natural tallgrass field interspersed with dead cedar.  The stars were held back just a bit by the haze.  The moon was a quarter full.  We were the only people still stirring at one or so.  On the way back I had a wild hair to explore the "Deer Trail," a short trail in the park.  But once we were on it we realized it was going to take us within close proximity of several campsites.  My ankles were popping and resounding and we were both stepping on the occasional twig. Pat, to his credit, said, "You know what?  This is not a good idea."

So we turned in.  I jotted some gibberish [that turns out not to be legible].  I slept with both sides of the fly rolled up and pinned back.  Sometime since our last camp I had been doing a search for a good photo of our tent, the Spitfire II.  While doing so I stumbled upon a photo of a Spitfire where the fly seemed to be rolled up and held in place with pieces that were part of the fly itself.  And wouldn't you know—that's what those loops and knobs on the fly were for, and have been all along.  So much for the magnets.

I drank a Doubleshot as I walked to the showerhouse.  I overheard talk of bacon but all I whiffed at one point was some strong, dark campfire coffee.  I have good things to say about our new air mats.  This is rocky ground here but you wouldn't know it levitating on one of those Thermarests.  It is a bit dewy this morn.  A few dogs are going now.  Some bird in a tree is croaking.  I did not hear any birds last night but I did hear two barred owls hooting and huffing at each other quite early, at six-thirty or so, while it was still quite light, down by the prairie.  I thought to myself that they are coming out before dark because it's getting late in the mating season and the males know that the time is short now.

I was down by the prairie because I was looking for the river access.  It's about a 15-minute walk.  I slipped on an inclined "trail" leading down to the river.  In hindsight it was really more of a slide.  I banged my knee decent, and my hand was smudged up where I broke my fall.  I washed it off, and rinsed my knee, in the river once I reached it.  The river is real pretty in the spots where it's moving well, like a stream of good thoughts running through your mind.  But it's shallow, and stagnant, and murky in other spots.  It's no Current, but I never expected it to be so I'm not too disappointed.  There are plenty of campers here who swam somewhere yesterday.  I could tell some of them had swimming because they still had their swimming suits on.  In other cases, I saw beach towels hanging to dry.  I'm wondering where they swam exactly.  I don't think it was at the precise point I visited.  Could it be the creek?  I want to take the car out and cruise this park a little to see where everyone is enjoying himself.  Then I'll know for sure.

I'm not lying in Pat's hammock.  It's a fine hammock.  I hear: kids (the same kid from yesterday), some insect in a nearby tree that sounds like a squirrel scratching against bark as it screws around on a tree trunk, a campfire crackling and popping (is there a better sound?).  Every ten minutes a car goes by on the loop.  My head hurts a little.  I am dehydrated.  I ate two Kind bars.  Last night I got into the Old Bardstown a shade too deep.  I told Pat about my faux-resignation.  He and I camped together one other time where it was just the two of us—in the Huzzah Valley in September 2012.  I had my Spitfire with me back then but much else has changed.  I was just a camping baby then.

Bobby texted and asked if we had a DG basket.  I said Pat had his.  So they'll get here around 11 I think.  What I'm most curious about—and what I seem to have lost the energy to worry about—are Procter and Brodie next door.  Those are the dogs one campsite over.  Squirt is about to get dropped into a world that will have his head spinning non-stop once he gets here. I pray it goes OK.

Pat asked to see inside the VW van across the street.  He introduced himself to Tim, and then to Chelsea.  There is a bunkbed in that bus.  I told him they were playing music.  He said, "Phish?  Grateful Dead?  String Cheese Incident?"  I told him about how it sounded like a jam band with Robert Plant as lead singer.  Now I really want to know who it was.  It's going to bother me, not knowing.

It's peaceful here.  Pleasant.  I, with my cracking ankles and hushedly bantering with Pat as we walked, was the loudest person in the campground.  Imagine that!  These folks are early to bed and early to rise.  That bark-scratching bug is still going.  Plus a titmouse or chickadee.  This many years and I still get their sounds confused; as birds they are brothers.  I do smell some bacon now.  B said she'd cook when she got here.  Bacon and eggs and pie-iron toast.  Those Castles last night.  Oniony, the hint of cheese, in a toasty bun—nom nom.  How did Pat even know that a store would sell frozen Castles?  Makes me think of the Beastie Boys.  Sitting around a campfire rapping, eating Castles.  "We went to White Castle and we got thrown out!"


IV.  The Rest of Saturday.


...In which Serena and Boston both covet a hammock, Jack enjoys a hot dog that he cooks over an open fire, Squirt doesn't get killed by the pit bull next door, "Slag Dam" is identified as potentially being a great name for a band, Bobby cracks his first La Fin, square roots are introduced, and all but one go swimming... And about which, unfortunately, Jack does not write anything until the following day...


V.  It is Sunday And I am Back Home.

...In which I try to recap everything that happened, even reaching back again to Friday night...

It is Sunday and I'm back home and clear of mind and I know this will be a trip I won't have written much about, sobeit.  I enjoyed some one-on-one time with Pat.  I can't recall what it was I was doing when he got there.  I had just bought some wood from the camp host as he was making rounds on his golf cart.  That's one of the sounds I'll remember—the brake on the Club Car getting released, the cart gaining speed as it powered off.

Pat had the Cards game going on KMOX when he pulled up.  I've had a lot of good friends, and most of them are part of my past.  Those that aren't are a thousand miles away.  Having Pat drive up with his windows down and the game on the radio was a silver linings playbook.  I couldn't get KMOX clear enough on my little Sangean but I had scanned the list of the Cardinals radio network beforehand and I had spotted Park Hills, 104.3 FM.  With the aux cord running from the headphone jack and dumping into the Braven portable bluetooth speaker, the connection was 100% high-fidelity gametime, baby!  We drank beer and listened.  He drank his Pabst real slow.  Whatever it was I was drinking I didn't drink it slow.  He ate some dried fruit.  He offered me some but I declined.  Then he pulled out those Castles.  See, Pat and I have very different ways of doing things.  I have my word-processed camp list, over which I agonize in the week preceding a camp, checking items off with a Sharpie once I have packed them.  He grabs his camp totes and knocks over the Shop 'n' Save in Arnold on his way down, collecting such items as: Spaghetti-Os, Castles, store-made Hawaiian bread deli sandies, tea, Frappuccinos, Ice Mountain water jugs, and dried fruit.  And pumpkin seeds.  I was sluggish drunk—an unfortunate state—as we walked down to the prairie, where we stayed for just a bit, to see what the sky looked like from there, how open and infinite it might seem.  But the haze obscured it just enough to keep us from being amazed.  We debated then, and then again on Saturday, what portion of the haze was simply campfire smoke that had drifted to the prairie from the campground.

There is so much to say, and I'm in a groove talking about my night with Pat—I told him about my resignation, and my retraction.  And I know I've said some of this already and this is just redundant but I think I'm saying it better this time so I'm not going to stop.  "Pride in your job," he says, "that's good."  Phil says about how people rarely really talk, and he's right but Pat and I accomplished talking Friday night.  A lot of times when it's me and Pat—like  a lot of times when it's me and just about anybody else, except maybe B, and some of the times with Roy—a lot of times other people will talk and I won't say much, mostly because I can't think of anything I really want to say.  But I talked on Friday.  I told him about how I think people can be classified in one of two ways: either they are politicians or they are not.  The daily nature and grind of work tends to bring out the politician in all of us—because there is money at stake—and we spend the rest of our time trying to prove to ourselves we are who we were before we got dressed in the morning.  Except there are some people who like what happens to them at work, when they are "playing the game."  Those are the people that actually go on to run for office. 

*

I didn't feel real well on Saturday morning.  I got scooped on waking up.  I slept with the fly open.  Did I say this already?  Maybe.

B got there around nine.  Me, B, and Pat on Site 88 at St. Francois State Park just north of Bonne Terre, MO.  Bobby and Rosie arrived at 11:30.  I'm fading here.  I'm not going to do Saturday justice.  Boston and Serena loved that hammock, the one I got from my father-in-law, whose name is also Jack.  The kids fought over the hammock, swung in it.  At one point they were banned from it (wisely, by Rosie) before I and/or Bobby took out a can opener and opened that can of worms back up.  There was a great spot for it, not far from our fire pit.  I slung it between two trees that were about eleven feet apart.  A success, and a test.  This morning when I awoke I saw that it hung with the weight of someone.  Serena.  It makes a good bed—especially for a little one. 

The Big River, which runs through the park, and its sandy rock beach were a treat and the highlight for me from Saturday.  There was a moment when I stood at the water's edge with Boston and Serena, talking with them, answering their questions, trying to tell them things, and having them actually listen to what I was saying—I will remember Serena sitting on the beach there, one of its sandier spots, and grabbing globs of sand in both hands and building it up around her feet, saying she was stuck—no! she breaks loose!—that's a moment I haven't shared with two young people in some great while, maybe not ever in my adult life, sorry to say.  They're good kids.  Well-behaved and smart.  Smart in different ways.  When Boston came over to say goodnight on Saturday night and didn't just say goodnight but actually hugged me, that wave of warmth went right to my heart.  It was a very tender act.  The sort of thing I'm guessing a lot of us were capable of at some point in our lives, but have since lost the capacity to muster by wont of age and disappointment and fear and everything else that goes along with being older and not younger.  One of the odd things about Boston is what I perceive as his accent.  I have family in Massachusetts and many things he says remind me of the way people in New England talk.  He has a mind keen for math.  Pat was teaching him about square roots.  The first example was that the square root of four is two.  But that proved to be not such a good example because the next quiz was about the square root for nine, which Boston guessed as four-and-a-half.  So Pat changed his tack and started doing a progression, e.g.: "What's eight times eight?"  "Sixty-foaar."  And then, "OK, then, what's the square root of 64?"  "Eight."  I was enjoying it.  We're out at some campsite in the old mining hills of Missouri and Pat is teaching a kid how to do square roots.  It doesn't get any better. 

Getting in the river with them...the downed tree like a telephone pole underwater, first kind of scary but then useful as something to pin yourself against so as not to get carried away in what was, for a shallow river, a surprisingly capable current...getting rocks...Pat telling them about geodes...an older, local guy coming over to Serena and showing her a rock with geodes in it that he said were "river diamonds"...her getting shy just then...Squirt managing his third camp of the year, I never would have believed it...that milky pink pit bull on the beach on the clothesline leash that swung from a limb up above...Pat having Boston do timed runs to a campsite two hundred yards away...That's it, that's all I can do, I'm fading for real...Goodnight, y'all...



—Bonne Terre/St. Louis, MO
July 2014