Elsbeth and the Wise Old Man
Most people like to stop at West Chickenbone Lake campground that sits right on the shores of the lake, and they had stopped there before. The five campsites sit along the curve of the sandy shore. On this hike, Elsbeth and the Old Man were hoping to see the aurora borealis and wanted a clear view of the night sky, so they diverted to East Chickenbone Campground. It is perched atop the ridge where fir trees cling sparsely to the exposed rock ledges. A few sugar plum trees cling to life there, too. The Old Man chose the most exposed site for the best views of the stars and the night sky, knowing that it was also most exposed to the elements, which could prove the least prudent option in spring.
Site three had a makeshift table, a large boulder that must have been dropped on the ridge by the receding glaciers, and around it are smaller rocks, rustic seating, likely dragged there by backpackers who recognized the possibility of the boulder, its flat side up. The Old Man did not have his Bible along as its weight was an issue when backpacking, especially since he no longer needed it for purposes of survival. The arrangement of the seating seemed to him reverent in a manner. He would have set his book on the table had he brought it along. Instead, he set up the tent while Elsbeth took the half-mile walk down to the water source. The he sat, examining the lichens on the sides of the rock table. The top was bare, likely from being put into service as a table a long time ago in terms of campsites, but just recently in geologic time which was responsible for its presence on site.
His life was so different now after the military, the transition into civilian life, and then through a bout of cancer into early retirement. Now he was the Wise Old Man, a moniker bestowed on him by novice hikers who came to value his advice after he helped them repeatedly. He chuckled about the name–Wise Old Man. Who would have thought! His early life started out in the inner suburbs of Detroit until his parents migrated to the outer suburbs to isolate into their church community that sought perpetuation of their beliefs through early marriage and large families. He felt for the other men who ended up at thirty with ten children to support, yet they ostracized him for falling away because he didn’t marry and take on all of that. He didn’t want to be that old that early.
At the waterfront, Elsbeth stepped onto a large stone a foot from the shore and dropped the filter’s hose from into the small ripples of Chickenbone Lake. Grey minnows darted from under an overhang of the bank seeming to taste the end of the filter tube hanging into their water. Rhythmically, she pumped the water into the series of six bottles, placing each into the daypack that she took along for that purpose. As she pumped, she watched small insects and flies disappear from the surface of the water as fish rose and took them silently. They were sucked into the fishes’ mouths soundlessly from below or scooped and they rose and swallowed them. She was glad she had taken her collapsible fishing pole, not that she liked eating the fish as much as she liked casting for them. Catching them wasn’t even all that important, and the Old Man would deal with gutting them if she caught any. She appreciated that he would.
Atop the ridge, the Old Man set up for dinner, assembling the stove and pot, and digging out his dehydrated beef stroganoff. He didn’t pick anything for Elsbeth as she could do that for herself. He liked the quiet. East Chickenbone lets a person alone with their thoughts. He also liked the sense of having the high ground, a good vantage point on the world around him with a little bit of cover to duck behind.
When Elsbeth was twelve she enjoyed fishing for speckled trout in the creek behind their house. At that same age, she heard the howls of a coyote pack for the first time. One evening after nightfall, she and her siblings, all six of those who were old enough to be outside, had been sitting on the ground among the apple trees a few yards from the back door when the eerie howls pierced the night. They seemed so close, as though they were just outside the ring of light dimly radiating from the bare bulb in the socket. Elsbeth froze in place. All her siblings bolted into the house while she remained, stuck like a statue. She could hear her own heart pounding in her chest.
Only three years after that, she would be a mother, her future closed off, and an extended family who washed their hands of her. She would be on her own.
She trudged up the hill from the water source fully aware of why others avoided this specific campground. The hill seemed long, especially after the hike into the campground that day. A little winded, she turned right at the junction to head further up to the campsite. Then she looked for the trail to the right again near the benchlike rock at the campsite marker. She took a moment to sit on the bench, setting down the water next to her, letting her heartrate subside and her breathing relax. It was only a short distance along the trail and past the outhouse to the turnoff to their tent site.
At the campsite, the Old Man watched as Elsbeth walked with measured steps into the campsite carrying the six liters of water in the Nalgene bottles bulging in the strained daypack. Without ceremony, she dropped it onto the rocky ground and headed to the tent. A few moments later, she reappeared carrying the fishing pole and a packet of teriyaki chicken.
“You want to eat or go fishing first?” She asked.
“Let’s eat first,” he said, “then you can go fishing. They might be more active in the evening.” He poured water into the pot and lit the stove. “Does yours take eight ounces?”
“Yup,” she replied. She interpreted correctly that he was not interested in fishing.
The camping stove heated the water to boiling in under five minutes. As soon as her pouch was filled, he refilled the pot with the correct amount of water for his meals.
They were quiet through dinner, enjoying the silence except for crackling grasshoppers and the lack of cleanup because they ate directly from their pouches of food. Ready for a peaceful walk, they headed back down to the water. The Old Man sat on the bank while she cast her line again and again into the placid surface of the interior lake. She worked her way patiently from left to right and then back to the left in an arc with her repeated casts. Fish rose and plucked flies from the surface, but none responded to the barbless spoons and spinners she tried, one after the next to no avail. Silver, gold, bronze, feathered, sparkly, dull. She was comforted by the casting, uninterrupted by the need to deal with any fish.
The Old Man watched her motions, smooth and patient. Cast and reel, rhythmic and slow. Cast and reel. He didn’t like fishing. He did enough of it in his early retirement, and he caught fish, which of course he had to clean and freeze because he caught more than he could eat before they spoiled.
Elsbeth reminded him of a girl he dated in high school. She was good company. Planning to attend college, she had not been trying to find a husband. With him, she enjoyed the light-hearted moments they shared, whether that was at a concert or riding roller coasters at the theme park, with the lights and delighted screams in the twilight. His parents disapproved. They had wanted him to date a good Christian girl from the church. They tried to fix him up with a few different girls of whom they approved, but he felt the girls’ mothers’ pressure on them to “reel in” a husband. He knew they would comply if he promised, but he would have been looking at a life sentence at thirty, having conceived of at least a half dozen children.
Elsbeth went fishing before, too. She landed speckled trout from the stream with the log in her childhood. They weren’t big fish, ten to twelve inches. Pan fried in butter they were delicious. No one cared if she cooked them at the stove when she was twelve and thirteen, so she did. And she ate them, too. Here on Chickenbone Lake, there were no speckled trout, just pike, she thought, and whitefish, both of which were too big to try to cook on a camping stove and fires were not allowed. Far better to cast to no avail than to feel the strike and risk having to keep and process the fish. She was pretty sure that the Old Man agreed.
Pleasantly skunked, she collapsed her rod. Leaving it on the shore for a moment, she dropped the expandable bucket into the water to fill it. No need then for them to come back in the morning for more water for the day’s hike. They could filter from the bucket and set out early.
Handing the bucket to him, she asked, “you ready?”
“Yup.”
They walked single file back up the hill and to the right again, him leading with the sloshing bucket in hand and her bringing up the rear with the pole and her small tackle tin.
That night, the auroras streaked across the northern sky in green and pink waves. Elsbeth and the Old Man sat on their camping chairs, eyes fixed overhead captured by the dance and sway of the light that seemed to follow an inaudible melody.
Into that silent melody was interjected a lone howl of a wolf, echoing across the ridge. Then silence. Another eerie howl responded. Then another yipping and howling. Conversing.
She reached her hand toward him. He took it. Tucked it under his arm and enveloped it and her.
Later in the night when they were settled into the tent, the rain started, a steady splatter gave way to hail and then changed back to rain. The sound on the tent splattered and pecked and splattered again. Deep in their down bags, they slept well.
