CAMPSONG

Here We Go

Nothing like camping with the Bylers. Picture this: Jennifer perched for whatever reason on a small piece of firewood, my brother and I propped up on rolled up sleeping bags against the wheel-well of our Dark Red Mistsubishi car which resists every attempt to be nicknamed telling stories of regrettable but fortunate heartache around a flickering fire under a giant thousand year-old Sitka spruce next to a river, deep mineral gray from the glacier 17 miles up-stream. When the stories of heartache were finished we talked about food, about politics, about not caring and being happy. We slept late and moved slow out to the beach where the giant logs of driftwood are piled slowly rotting for a thousand years.

We spent the afternoon on an old skinny log for no apparent reason, we were thinking that Dustan would go swimming but it didn’t happen and eventually we made our way down to some sea stacks and arches where waves pound on and on in little carved channels washing over the little pools of anemone and star fish and crabs. An old woman told me that I “sure am sure footed,” but I didn’t climb the craggy cliffs like Dustan and instead we squatted over the little pools and looked for a long time.

Dustan did eventually swim for a little bit and we disrupted some really amazing rock sculptures which were impossible to put back together no matter how hard we tried. We ended up at a little local restaurant in Port Townsend eating poutine and fruit de mer until we were stuffed and happy. Then finally waiting for the ferry to take our car back home we saw a big 4 foot sand shark under the street lights in the shallows of the Sound and Jennifer did not believe us, but this, and not all the other lies we told, is the truth.