Troy Story - How I Got This Way

Backpacking

Everyone needs to get away and relax at one time or another. With all the business of life weighing us down it is nice to get away from it all. I can’t think of a better way to do that than backpacking.

I had graduated from college a couple of months before and had been steadily looking for a job without success. My brother Charlie and I had both decided that we had had enough and needed to get away.

It was a beautiful August morning, and the asphalt hadn’t started bubbling on the street yet. It was time to load up and head out.

There wasn’t much room in my 1978 Trans Am. It was a great car if you wanted to get to work in record time, but for hauling people or stuff there wasn’t much room for anything, except your rear end in the seat and maybe a couple of grocery bags in the back. The trunk was large enough to hold the spare tire and one small suitcase. There was no way we were going to fit two large backpacks in there, so we decided to put them in the back seat. This was no small feat. The backpacks were large and heavy. They were between seventy to eighty pounds, and the backseat was small, so small that with my seat back far enough that I was comfortable to drive there was about three inches of leg room in the back seat. The car only had two doors, of course, as it was a muscle car. We wrestled, pleaded, begged, shoved, threatened, and finally succeeded moving the backpacks out of the house to the car. Now we had to get them in it. After much effort we managed to get the backpacks into the back seat and strapped them in with the seat belts. We wouldn’t want those things getting away from us, now, would we? Especially with all the work it took to get them in there in the first place. And after all of this, they were still in one piece. I can’t say as much for the two of us; we were already exhausted, and the trip hadn’t even begun.

After a two-and-a-half-hour drive, we reached the trailhead to our destination. We got out and stretched and wrestled the backpacks out of the back seat of the car, strapped them on and started off.

The trail to the lake is about four and a half miles long and gains 1600 feet in elevation. The first little bit is flat and easy, (except with a seventy-five-pound backpack, which really starts to get heavy when the trail gets steep, and this one does). But as we arrived at the lake, all complaining about the hike was forgotten.

Wapiki Lake is one of the most beautiful lakes I have ever seen, and one of my favorite places on earth. 

Upon reaching the lake our first mission was to find a campsite.

Charlie and I hiked up a small rabbit trail and over a little knoll to discover what was to be the perfect campsite. It dropped down from the crest of the knoll a slight bit and settled into a tiny meadow. There was a fire pit right in the middle, with two small logs on either side placed at just the right distance to roast your front side and freeze your back. Every couple of minutes one of us would call rotate to try and make sure that we cooked evenly.

We had a great view of the lake, but the trail was obscured from our view.  We found a nice place to pitch our tent and cleared all the sticks, pinecones and rocks. We set up the tent and set about preparing lunch. After lunch we broke all the rules our mother told us and decided to go swimming. We walked down to the lake and stood on the rocks. What a beautiful day. It was over eighty degrees. The sky was blue, the mountains tall and the lake clear. The sparkles of sunlight dancing off the ripples were so bright they pierced your vision. I had been to Wapiki Lake before, and I knew a little secret about it. The water is freezing cold.

The lake sits at 5241 ft. elevation. I dove into the lake and was no sooner under the water before I was scrambling to get back to the surface. After a lot of anxious splashing, I hopped back on top of the rock.

Dude! I said, Jump in, it’s nice and warm.

Oh really, how come you did the wild man dance and then hopped back out?

It’s a technique that I have been working to perfect since the first time I came up here.

You’re pretty good at it.

Thank you, but it’s a rather difficult maneuver so you might not want to try it. You might hurt yourself and I’m not going to pack you out!

With that Charlie stepped up to the rock and stared into the water. He took a deep breath and dove in. It was a beautiful dive! A little shallow though. The cold could take your breath away. Not bad for a first timer. He skipped around on the water a couple of times and then popped right out of the water. I think he hovered there shivering for a couple of seconds before he landed back on the rock.

How come you didn’t tell me it was so cold?!?

I didn’t want to spoil the surprise! Besides, I figured that the fact that I turned blue would have tipped you off!

HA, HA, very funny!

We sat on the rock for a while, warming in the sun, trying to eradicate the hypothermic effects of swimming in the lake.

We noticed that it was starting to get late, and since the sun goes down earlier in the high country we headed back to our camp. After changing our clothes, we gathered some sticks, and I proceeded to make a small campfire. Charlie started up the backpacking stove to make some dinner.

I don’t know what it is that makes food taste so good when you are camping. Even simple food tastes fantastic. We had macaroni and cheese, and some ice-cold Kool-aid. To us, it was a delicious gourmet meal.

As we cleaned up from dinner, we noticed that it was starting to cool down rather quickly. I pulled my sleeping mat out of the tent and sprawled out on it next to the campfire. What a beautiful night it was. The sky was clear, and the stars shone like a million Christmas tree lights. Charlie and I just looked at the stars and only occasionally made a comment. We noticed that a breeze had started to come up. It was chilly out and we had zipped our coats up tight. All of a sudden, the wind started blasting at us; it felt like it was blowing straight down. The fire was dancing around like crazy, and the sparks were like a million fireflies. I jumped up to grab the water and put out the fire. The tent was whipping around and snapping in the wind. Then, just as suddenly as it came up, the wind died. It was perfectly calm. There was one difference though. The temperature had risen about fifteen degrees. I pulled my coat off and looked around in the dark waiting for some big hideous beast to devour us, because something was very wrong! It felt as though something fundamental in nature had been disturbed. Both of us were kind of freaked out by the strange happenings so we held a short meeting and decided that it must be time to hit the sack. Besides, we would be much safer in the tent anyway.

As with most backpacking trips, I was out as soon as my head hit the pillow. Unfortunately, Charlie didn’t have it so easy. He said something about somebody sawing logs with a V-8 chainsaw.

Sometime in the middle of the night, Charlie heard a rustling noise outside the tent, and it seemed to be getting closer. I had heard it too. I’m actually a light sleeper, although Charlie will tell you that I still hadn’t run out of gas for the chainsaw. Finally, he couldn’t stand it any longer.

Troy Charlie whispered. Did you hear that?

Yes, I did. I said, perfectly coherent, as I sat bolt upright in bed, and stared into the inky blackness.

Charlie sat there with his eyes bugged out, his face white as a sheet, staring at me like he had seen a ghost.

I think it’s a raccoon I said as I listened intently.

Charlie, still totally freaked out by the whole thing, started to creep slowly backwards away from me, his eyes open so wide that they seemed to illuminate the inside of the tent.

What’s the matter I asked quizzically? It’s only a raccoon.

Tha, tha, that’s not possible Charlie stammered.

Sure it is, I replied, raccoons live all over this area.

Not that! he said.

His eyes were so dilated that I was starting to wonder if he had a brain tumor or something.

He kept saying, That’s impossible, that’s impossible.

It sounded like he was talking to someone else in the tent all the while staring at me. I looked around, didn’t see anyone else, I don’t know how they could have fit into the tent anyway.

What’s impossible, I asked.

It’s impossible for someone who is asleep and snoring like a thunderstorm one second, to sit up and answer a question totally coherent the next!

I wasn’t snoring, I heard the raccoon before you said anything. I retorted in a whisper.

I was hearing that noise again. Charlie had totally forgotten about the noise outside and by this time he had moved back far enough that the side of the tent was bowed out, the fabric stretched to its very limit. I wasn’t so sure that he wasn’t going to try to chew his way out.

Go back to sleep I said.

I haven’t slept at all! Charlie responded with excitement in his voice.

By now he was talking loud enough to wake the neighbors, and they were camped across the lake!

The next morning, he told me that he didn’t get to sleep until about 4 am, and he was still looking at me like I was some kind of monster. I don’t know why; I don’t snore that bad!

Well Charlie, I don’t know of a better way to clear the cobwebs out than to take an early morning dip in the lake! And with that I grabbed my towel and headed down for a quick dip in the ice-cold lake.

Radio Flyer

No single piece of childhood equipment can evoke such emotional memories as the Radio Flyer. That’s right, the little red wagon. Just the sight of one brings back painful memories.

Wagons have many uses. For example, you can haul stuff in them, or you can force your little brother to push you around in them for hours. I remember once piling a whole lot of sand into the wagon and storing it there for about a week. Upon returning to use the wagon, I discovered that a couple hundred flies had taken up residence in the sand. The disturbance I created caused them to unbury themselves and slowly fly away in a seemingly endless stream. My shrink says that the nightmares should go away soon.

Before we go any further, we need to talk about the different types of wagons. Wagons all serve the same purpose. That is to haul kids and their belongings around. The Radio Flyer of course is a very popular type of wagon. It’s red, with white wheels and has Radio Flyer painted in white on the side. I consider it to be the Chevy of wagons. My brother Conan and I had a neat farm style wagon. It even had stake sides on it just like a real hay wagon...well, until my cousin Jake accidentally backed over it with his 1941 Ford hot rod. There are even Pro Street wagons. For those of you that are deficient in automotive terminology, they look like dragsters. But the ultimate wagon, must be the Wagonbago.

Unfortunately, no one makes these, so you must make them from scratch. The first things you will need are wagon parts, such as wheels and axles. These were made readily available to us by my cousins back tires. Next, you need a frame for the wagon. Conan and I looked around for a while before we spotted one of my dad’s acquisitions. It was twelve feet long, eighteen inches wide, and three inches thick. I don’t know what type of wood it was, but it took all that a couple of seven and nine-year-old boys could muster to turn it over so that we could nail our axles to it. We had to use nails because we didn’t have any nuts and