Bear Lake 2009 happened without pictures taken this year (our camera was lost--until we came home and Ryan remembered where he had "put it away"). In a way, it seems as if I could just use pictures from the last time we were there (2008), or even the time before that (2007), or really any other year. It seems as if not much has changed.
I (and now we) have been camping in the same little canyon for 30 years with little variation to the original camping trip.
After my little brother died (Cody, 2 years old), and we had dealt with all the tangible things you have to deal with, my Dad packed us up and took us camping. He took us to St. Charles Canyon where we would return year after year. (We would be camping on the anniversary of Cody's Birthday/day he died/my Birthday--but as a child I never put this together, I think this was a good way for my parents to deal with this day).
And now we return year after year. We still take rice krispie treats, graham cracker cookies and homemade strawberry jam. We still play hours and hours of card games. We still make a daily voyage down to the lake with blow up toys. We still wash our hair in the freezing cold mountain water. We still use the same red table cloths (that my Mom made to fit the picnic tables at the campground). We still sit around the campfire and talk for hours into the night while watching the stars. We still hike.
My Granddad would often take me for a hike. I loved hiking with him, he would sing some crazy songs and tell me some even crazier stories and we would just enjoy each others company and our surroundings. In 1981 we reached the top of the mountain that we spent so much time hiking. I don't know what Gramps reasoning was, but he gathered a bunch of rocks and started to make a big solid rock pile. Gramps had picked up an old plastic soda bottle (Coke to be exact) off the trail on our way up. He tore the wrapper off of it and on the backside wrote:
July 9-1981
Leslie Austin
Les Austin
Then he rolled it up, tied a piece of grass around it and put it in the bottle. He buried this bottle in the rock pile. Then we started down the mountain. I don't remember if I told anyone of that at the time, but the next year we returned to the same spot and dug out the bottle, as we would do year after year.
Of course the hikers would change, in 1982 Brian's (brother) and Eric's (cousin) names appeared next to mine and Gramp's. My Dad's first trek up there was in 1983. Sometime we used scraps of paper found on the trail or out of someone's pocket, once we used a comic strip, another year is a wedding invitation (Eric and Stephanie's), my favorite is a piece of paper out of the notebook that we were keeping score of a Rook game on (yes, Gramps and I won!).
A few years ago, instead of leaving the names in the bottle on top of the mountain, I carried them back. I have them in my drawer now, with the intent to return them to the bottle once I had photo copied them.
This year we took the hike up the mountain. (By the way, this is an awful hike, straight up--never a break, fallen trees over the so called trail, and lots of nasty bugs. When I was a teenager I called it a Rambo Run, NOT a hike.)
This is where the picture would have to be a new one. The rock pile no longer stands. It seems as if nature has finally triumphed over Gramp's monument. We found the fallen tree that it was built next to, we even found some of the rocks, but it was clear that the rock pile had slid down the mountain.
In the immediate years following my Father's and Grandad's deaths I was worried that I would be crushed if nature took my "bottle". But I am glad to report no such thing. It was an amazing time with amazing memories. And luckily I have the bottle and all the year's messages (except for maybe a 1 or 2 of the most recent years) tucked away safe and sound at home.
Life changes.
We have added to the fun up St. Charles Canyon. We have an all day beach day and go like crazy on the wave-runners. We hike to the "mossy place". We play hide and seek when it gets dark (and scary). We eat chili and scones and make bad jokes about eating beans. We play Hearts. We have added new people to the family (I hope Tim had fun!). We eat smores, and more smores, and more smores.
We left a new bottle this year--a plastic water bottle. Maybe next year we will add our names.
