Tag Archives: Work camping

Jul26

Tan Man

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The parking lot was still pretty full, so I was telling folks to find a place to park before they paid the fee.

I was contemplating the trees when Tan Man walked up to pay me. He was at least 60 years old and was not wearing a shirt. His skin was darkly tanned and beginning to look leathery. I didn’t really want to look at his saggy nipples, so I tried to avert my eyes while taking his money and writing his day pass.

There was a guy with Tan Man. The second guy was tall, with a belly so large it held his orange t-shirt away from his body. I was sitting in my chair, and from my vantage point, I could see the expanse of his belly exposed between his t-shirt and his shorts. I didn’t really want to look at that either, so I was glad when they went off toward the trail.

Some time passed, but I’m not sure how much. I’d been reading my book, writing day passes, collecting parking fees, not really paying attention to the time. I looked up, and Tan Man was standing in front of me again.

He asked me if I’d seen the guy he’d been with earlier. He said they’d been separated.

I said I hadn’t seen him, not adding that I’d had my nose in my book and hadn’t really been watching the pedestrian activity.

Tan Man got very animated. He told me he’d lost the other guy. He told me that he’d left the trail and hadn’t been able to find the other guy when he returned to it. He told me the other guy was from New York City and really stupid. (Tan Man had some sort of East Coast accent himself, but I didn’t really want to talk with him, so I didn’t ask him where he was from.)

He said he’s been back to the car and the other guy wasn’t in the car. He asked me if he should drive off and leave the other guy. It seemed like a weird question, but I thought he was just joking or being melodramatic.

I said, NO! That would be really mean.

He said he thought maybe the other guy had hitched a ride out of there. He said he thought he (Tan Man) should maybe just leave without him.

I told him I doubted the other guy had hitched out. I told him if the other guy had come to the parking lot, gone to the car, and found no one there, he probably would have asked me if I had seen his friend. I also said that if he’d hitched out, he probably would have asked me to tell his friend that he was leaving.

Tan Man seemed reassured and calmed by my thoughts on the matter. He thanked me for the advice.

He told me that he’d made friends on the trail, that he makes friends wherever he goes. He told me that someone had filmed him on the trail.

About that time, a young man walked up to put trash in the garbage can. Tan Man told me this was the guy who’d filmed him. Tan Man greeted the young man, and when the young man responded, I heard that he had an accent. I couldn’t tell where he was from by his accent, but I guessed that he was from somewhere in Europe.

Tan Man asked the young European man where he was going next. The young man named some places, ending with Las Vegas. Tan Man told the young man how much he was going to like Vegas, then asked the young man how old he was. The young man said he was almost 16. Tan Man was concerned that the young man might not be allowed in casinos. Then Tan Man started telling the young man about some amusement park ride in Vegas that he would really like. The young man was grinning, but I couldn’t tell if his expression was one of amusement, discomfort, or confusion. Finally, Tan Man ended the conversation (which was more like a monologue) by telling the young man If you like women, you’ll like Vegas.

Tan Man told me he was going back out on the trail to look for his friend, to tell him to wait at the car if I saw him.

More time passed. I heard yelling but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. I identified the yelling voice as Tan Man’s. He was yelling the words, Stay right there! Stay right there!

Tan Man came running into the parking lot. He said he’d found the other guy on the road. He thanked me for my help. The last I saw of Tan Man, he was zooming out of the parking lot in his car, racing to pick up the other guy.

The next day I was telling my co-worker about Tan Man. I wasn’t far into the story when I realized Tan Man was chemically altered! I don’t know if he was jittery on coffee or tweakin’ on crank, but in retrospect, I don’t think he was in his natural state. The main indication that he was not in a rational state of mind was his quickness to decide to leave the person riding in his car 40 miles from the nearest town just because they’d been separated on the trail. That’s not a reasonable decision within the time frame involved.

I’m glad I was there to talk some sense into Tan Man. The guy with the big belly probably doesn’t even realize how lucky he is that I was there. It’s not like he could have hailed a cab to take him back to his hotel. If I hadn’t been there, Tan Man might have left him stranded in the forest.

Jul24

Marijuana in the Workplace

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Most folks who pull their cars into the parking lot have had their windows up during their journey. When I step up to the car, the driver typically rolls down his/her window to hear what I’ve got to say. (Sometimes in an unintentional slapstick moment, the driver accidentally rolls down the window of the passenger behind him/her, and confusion briefly reigns.)

Shallow Focus Photography of Cannabis PlantOccasionally, when the window goes down, my nose is invaded by the strong aroma of marijuana. I want to say, It smells goooooooooood in here! However, I try to maintain a professional demeanor and pretend I don’t know that everyone in the car has been toking all the way up the mountain and is higher than the trees they’ve come to see.

The other day when the window came down, the smell of pot hit me right between the eyes. It wasn’t just the smell of pot. I was hit by the feeling of pot. I felt my brain bounce. This was a high grade medical contact high.

I couldn’t even talk! I tried to say There may not be room in the parking lot for your car. What I actually stammered was closer to There may not be room in your car. I walked away feeling like an idiot, but the people in the vehicle were probably too stoned to notice any weirdness on my part.

I don’t smoke weed, but I sure enjoy the smell of that secondhand smoke.

Image courtesty of https://www.pexels.com/photo/shallow-focus-photography-of-cannabis-plant-606506/.

 

 

Jul23

Cows in the Meadow

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Little Boy Blue, come blow your horn.
The sheep’s cow’s in the meadow…

For my day off on Tuesday, I went halfway to civilization where I pick up my mail. The post office is in a building with a restaurant, bar, general store, and gift shop. The building has internet access, so on my days off when I don’t want to deal with the heat and people in Babylon, I go twenty-five miles, buy a cup of coffee and a meal, and spend eight or nine hours using the internet. The food is decent (not great, but decent), and there’s one booth with an electrical outlet next to it. I’ve gotten friendly with the woman who’s the waitress and the cook all morning, and we chitchat a little when she comes by to see if I need anything. There’s never been a crowd any day I’ve been in there, so no one seems to mind if I take up a whole table for a whole day.

It was after five o’clock when I packed up and headed out on Tuesday afternoon, so it was close to 6pm when I got to my campground.

The first thing I noticed upon arrival was that the half of the gate still standing at the entrance to the campground was blocking half of the road. I stopped the van and got out to investigate.

Sometime back (I don’t know when exactly), a huge tree fell and smashed half of the gate, which is meant to block the access road when the campground is closed in the winter.

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This photo shows the tree that fell and destroyed half of the gate into my campground. The brown metal pieces are the remains of the gate. The gate seems to have been made of strong and sturdy metal, and the tree just SMASHED it when it fell onto it.

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This photo shows the side of the gate that’s still standing and is tied to a thin-branched bush with yellow plastic “caution” tape.

To hold open the half of the gate that’s still standing, someone had tied yellow plastic “caution” tape to the gate and to a thin-branched bush.

What I found when I surveyed the scene was that the “caution” tape had broken and allowed the gate to swing across the road. I swung the gate out of the roadway and managed to tie the remainder of the tape to the gate, holding it out of the way.

I’d only driven a little ways down the road when I looked to my left and in the meadow saw faces–cow faces! By cows I mean cattle. I’m guessing they were females because I don’t think bulls usually run around with the ladies, but I did not check bovine genitalia.

There seemed to be a lot of faces staring at me, but I didn’t get a head count.

I had an idea that if cows were in the meadow, their people must be in the campground, but when I got to the campground, I found it deserted.

I wasn’t sure what to do. Bovine invasion had not been covered in our training. Was it ok for them to be in my meadow? Did I need to report their presence, and if so, to whom? I figured my best course of action was to drive the three miles back to the neighboring campground and ask the other camp hosts what I should do.

The other camp hosts didn’t seem worried about the cows and said I didn’t need to report them to anyone. The man half of the camp host couple said he’d worked on a ranch. He told me these were half wild mountain cows who don’t see people much. It seems like they’re turned out to fend tor themselves during the dry summer months, then are probably rounded up for the winter. These are probably some of the same cows I’ve seen on the road on my way to and from the hot springs.

The camp host man said I shouldn’t let myself get between a mamma cow and her calf. He said a mamma cow separated from her calf could be as dangerous as a mamma bear separated from her cub.

He also said if the cows were bothering me, he’d come and chase them away.

The cows were not bothering me. I just needed to know if I should report their location. And I’m not scared of cows! My uncle raised cows when I was a kid, and I’ve been around cows, petted them above the nose and between their eyes. I’ve even been licked by big sloppy cow tongue. And while I wasn’t going to trek into the meadow to try to pet a half-wild mountain cow, I think I could make enough noise to scare them away if they came up to my van and bothered me.

The cows are actually rather shy. I wanted some photos of them to include with this post, so I grabbed my camera. Like reclusive Hollywood stars, they turned their faces, then shuffled into the trees on the perimeter of the meadow. Like a paparazza destined for failure, I gave up after a few blurry shots.

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One of my blurry shots of shy cows.

On Friday evening, a couple of young women (who were perhaps a couple) checked into the campground. I told them about the cows (which I had seen over the ensuing days but had failed to photograph). As the women headed to the meadow on a late afternoon walk, I heard noise from the area. The noise was too loud to have been caused by two skinny humans, so I figured I must be hearing the cows. Sure enough, when I looked that way, several shy bovines were hustling into the trees, but one bold black one stood out in the open and stared at the two young women.

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A bold black cow. (I took this photo a few days after the events written about in this post.)

As we all stood still, an amazing thing happened. Cow after cow came out of the trees. They strode away in single file. The cows in the line walked away slowly but purposefully. Where they were going, I don’t know, but they seemed to have a destination in mind.

I didn’t dash to get my camera. I was afraid sudden movement on my part would cause cow consternation, and I didn’t want to upset anyone. Maybe I’ll get another chance at photos. Or maybe we’ll only have a couple of blurry cow photos to look at.

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I took this photo of cows in the meadow a few days after the events written about in this post occurred. There were about twenty cows in the meadow when I took this photo. I had to  use the zoom on my camera to get this shot. I could not get close enough to the cows to get better photos. Whenever they heard my footsteps, they looked up at me. If I got too close, the cows moved farther away.

 

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Two bold cows. While most of the cows in the meadow were black, there were a couple of light brown ones. Some of the black cows had white faces.

 

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I saw a lot of cow butts much like this one while I was trying to take these photos.

 

All photos in this post were taken by me.

All photos in this post were taken by me.

Jul19

Nice Campers

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The nice campers stayed in my campground several weeks ago, but I’m just getting this piece edited and posted.

I had some nice campers this weekend.

One little family was Mom, Dad, and a young daughter, maybe five or six years old. When I went over to write their permit, the little girl immediately handed me a drawing she’d done of the trees. Sweet!

The whole family was nice, and I talked to the parents about what they might want to see in the area. Later, after they’d visited a nearby trail, I asked them now they’d liked it, and they said they’d had a really good time.

On Saturday evening, I saw the dad walking up to my campsite with a saucepan covered in foil.

He asked if I had eaten yet, and I lied and said no. I wanted whatever food he was offering, just to eat something different from the things I always cook for myself. Turns out he was offering me homemade cauliflower-spinach-leek soup. I grabbed a bowl and had him pour it all in as I thanked him profusely. As he was walking off, I took a bite and called out after him, This is amazing! It was so good! I haven’t been eating many vegetables out here, so my body was so happy to get some really delicious ones in that soup.

Before the soup, when I returned to the campground after working at the parking lot for four hours, there was a tent set up and a car parked on site #9, the site right next to mine. There is nothing separating my site and site #9. Since I’ve been on site #10, three times people have chosen site #9 when there were other sites available. I don’t understand why campers would want to be right next to the camp host if they could avoid it. Maybe they like the flatness of site #9. Maybe they expect the camp host to observe quiet hours. Maybe they think I am going to protect them from bears or other campers. In any case, I had next door neighbors.

Before I could even get out of my van, a middle-age Asian man was standing next to it looking at me. When I got out of the van, I greeted him and said I’d be right back with the paperwork to check him in.

Turns out he is a linguistics professor from Seoul, Korea who taught at UCLA fifteen years ago. Currently, he and his young wife and her mother are traveling in the United States. We had a pleasant exchange. I checked them in, then I went to my campsite and went about my life.

On Sunday morning, I was sitting at my picnic table, writing. I looked up and saw the grandma-age Korean woman (the mother/mother-in-law) standing next to my van. Then I saw her looking in the open passenger side door and thought, What the fuck! But I smiled and said hello and she said good morning and I said good morning.

I said, Do you need some help?

She said, I don’t know, which I figured meant no or (more accurately) I don’t know what the hell you’re saying.

She moved closer to the van’s open side door, but then she turned her attention to me and made a gesture that said May I look?

I nodded and said yes. I don’t really mind people looking, but asking my permission to look is very important to me.

So she looked into my van and said, Your house very nice.

I thanked her.

She wandered off, but soon came back with her son-in-law. He said she wanted him to tell me my home was very nice.

I thanked her again.

The woman kept pressing the palms of her hands against her cheeks and looking at me. I wondered if she were trying to tell me my face was dirty.

But the son-in-law translated that she thought I was glowing because  of this beautiful place where I was living and working. It was a lovely sentiment, although I suspect my face is more likely to be dirty than glowing.

Then the mother-in-law saw the eleven little beaded stretchy bracelets I’ve been wearing since Madame Chile sent them to me. She took my arm and pushed up my sleeve so she could see them all, ooohing and ahhhing the whole time. Then she pushed up her sleeve and showed me the chunky silver bracelet she was wearing.

The linguist started asking me about hiking trails, so I pulled out a map and spread it on the picnic table, and his mother-in-law wandered away.

After the professor left, I decided I wanted to give the mother-in-law one of the hemp bracelets I made. After a few tries, I found a bracelet with a carnelian stone that fit her. I fastened it around her wrist. Her fat little arm with soft, delicate old lady skin made me think of my grandmother whose skin had the same qualities in her later life.

Once I gave her the bracelet, the woman was definitely my friend. First she came over because she’d gotten a splinter in her hand. I grabbed my tweezers and pulled it out, all the while wondering if camp hosts are officially allowed to perform first aid on campers. Then she came over to my campsite to get water from the jug on my picnic table to clean whatever she’d just spilled on her jacket. When the water alone didn’t clean the spill to her satisfaction, she poured some of my Dr. Bronner’s soap onto the paper towel she was using to scrub up. In a little while, she came back to pour water from my jug into her bottle. When she came over the last time, I think she put some Dr. Bronner’s peppermint soap on her toothbrush. (I wonder how that worked out for her.)

The whole time she was coming over to use my supplies, I was trying to cook pancakes. While it was very sweet of her to want to interact with me, it was also awkward because we couldn’t talk to each other. She tried to communicate, asking me You middle age? and You single? I had to answer yes to both of those questions.

I got the feeling her daughter and  son-in-law were ignoring her, so she was coming over to me for attention.

Before they left, the daughter came and told me that her mom said my house was cozy, and I told her that he mom was a nice lady.

I felt lucky to have two sets of friendly campers in one weekend.

Jul15

The Fourth of July (Part 1)

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The Fourth of July turned out to be pretty low key after all. It was actually the third of July that stressed me out.

I arrived at the parking lot at nine in the morning, as instructed. The parking lot was mostly empty, and I got a spot for the van right in front. The lot was normal weekend busy, not absolute chaos busy.

I was expecting nine groups of campers, and when I returned to the campground, five groups had arrived. I started going from site to site, filling out permits and handing out car passes and the glossy pages on which the rules were printed.

The people at the first site were friendly and gave me no problems.

The group at the second site was a bunch of dudes, and their leader immediately began questioning me when I said they needed to pay $7 per night for the extra vehicle on their site. Here’s how it works: One car is included in the basic campsite fee, but each additional vehicle on the site costs an extra $7 for every day it’s there. The extra vehicle fee is explained on the reservations website, but I think most people don’t bother to read the details. They’re not pleased when I drop what they see as a surprise charge on them.

In any case, I collected the $14 for the extra vehicle on site #7, and I moved on, feeling a little flustered.

About that time, the people staying next to me on site #9 arrived. The universe has yet to send anyone I really want to hang out with to be my next door camping neighbor. These neighbors were a mother, a father, and two young sons. The father, a man in his mid-30s with an accent (German? Russian? Eastern European?) and a stern demeanor was their spokesman. I greeted him, and he immediately wanted to know if he could put his tent here, if he could park his car there. He tried to park his car right up on my van, but I told him it had to be on the other side of the wooden block separating site #9 from site #10. He said their friends would be arriving soon to share the campsite and where would they be able to park?

When I untangled myself from Mr. Authoritarian Father Figure, I went to check in the campers on site #6. They were a group of young, attractive gay men. (Especially attractive was one of the Australians who was J. Crew model gorgeous. Every time I looked at him, I thought, Put your eyes back in your head, bi girl!) As I filled out their permit, I realized they’d been given a 50% discount on their camping fee using a pas the company I work for doesn’t honor. When I went back to the van, I double checked my information, and sure enough, we don’t give discounts on that card. I had to go back over there and tell them I’d present their case to my supervisor, but they might end up owning an additional $22. Awkward! They were cool about it, which made me like them, AND they knew they owed for the extra vehicle, earning them bonus good camper points.

While I was checking in the guys on site #6, I saw the folks arrive on site #4 and set up their tent. I checked in the family on site #5 (mom, dad, and vocally bored preteen boy) with no problems, then went back to the van to drop off paperwork and pick up blank permits.

Before I could gather the blank permits and get out of the van, the woman from site #4 (young, pretty, wearing glasses and a light blue dress which would have made me think she was Amish if it hadn’t ended above her knees) was standing right outside my door. She said she’d seen the sign on the information board near the restrooms that says campsites cost $20 a night…I told her campsites are $2 a night more on holidays.

She said, Oh. Is this a holiday?

I blinked my eyes rapidly, trying to figure out if she was from a country other than the United States of America. She had no discernable accent.

I said, Yes. It’s the 4th of July weekend.

She said, Oh. That’s a holiday?

I told her it is. I did not tell her it’s the biggest holiday of the summer season, the biggest holiday (ok, maybe second to Christmas) in the country in which we were standing. How could she not know that the 4th of July is a holiday? (Maybe she was Amish. Or a space alien.)

She said she’d been charged $57 for two nights on her campsite. I grabbed my reservation list and showed her that she (or more accurately the fellow she was with, in whose name the reservation had been made) had been charged $44 for two nights of camping. I suggested the additional charges might have been reservation fees. She asked if she’d been charged $13 in reservations fees. I explained I had no idea, since I don’t work for the company that makes reservations, and I don’t know their fee schedule. I suggested she look at her confirmation letter (which she had not printed) or call the reservation company when she had cell phone service.

The she told me something had come up, and she and the guy wouldn’t stay the second night of their reservation. She asked if they could get a refund on the night they wouldn’t be staying and if there was a cancellation fee involved. I told her I didn’t know, since I don’t work for the reservation company. I told her again she should look to her confirmation letter for that information.

I told her I’d be at her campsite soon to check her in, and I’d bring with me the form she needed to fill out to request a refund on a reservation. Of course, when I looked through my paperwork, I saw that I didn’t actually have that form. I wanted to get the form from the camp host in the campground next to the parking lot when I went to work down there the next morning, but the woman said they’d be leaving early the next day. I mulled over the situation while I checked in in the folks on sites #2 and #3.

Those two sites were taken by one party of three older Asian couples. One of the sites had only paid 50% of the normal camping fee because the reservation had been made using a Golden Age card. When a Golden Age or Golden Access (GA) card is used on a reservation to get a discount, the camper has to show the card to me. Since the card only provides a discount to a person actually camping on the site, I have to be sure the cardholder (and the card s/he is holding) are indeed on the site. I had a moment of worry when the man half of the couple couldn’t find his GA card in his wallet. I knew if he couldn’t produce the card, I was going to have to ask him to pay the other half of the camping fee, and I knew that was going to be a pain in the ass. His wife saved the day by producing her GA card, so all was well, especially since the man half of one of the other couples paid their extra vehicle fee with no complaint.

(To be continued…here: http://www.rubbertrampartist.com/2015/07/16/fourth-of-july-part-2/.)

Jul14

Clusterf*%k

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When I arrived for work at the parking lot at 11am on the Saturday before Independence Day Weekend, it was already a clusterfuck.

All of the front parking spots were taken. There was a crowd of people milling around my co-worker. Some of the people in the crowd were standing in the roadway and wouldn’t move so I could drive the van through. I had to honk my horn to get them out of the road.

As I slowly drove around the parking lot loop, I didn’t see a single empty parking space. I did, however, see a tent set up in one of the picnic areas. As I tried to decide if I should stop the van in the roadway to talk to the person I could see standing in the tent, an unattended dog trailing its leash trotted across the street in front of me. I decided I did need to find the dog’s person, so I put the van in park and left it right where it was as I went after the dog.

The dog trotted toward the tent, and I called out Is this your dog?

A voice behind me said it was his dog and apologized for letting it get away from him.

As he reached for the dog’s leash, I took the opportunity to call out to the woman in the tent, Camping is not allowed here.

She screeched, We’re leaving! We’re leaving! We didn’t know!

The man behind me echoed her, telling me they didn’t know they couldn’t camp there. That’s when I realized the man and the dog belonged to the woman and the tent.

If the couple had bothered to read the signs near the self-pay station (which I suspect they had conveniently overlooked), they’d have seen the one which reads, “No overnight camping.”

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This is the board near the entrance with the informational signs, including “No overnight camping.”

IMG_3210I got back in my van and continued to look for a parking place. There was nothing. Some people had parked on the edge of the road, just barely leaving space for me to drive the van through. When I tried to tell them it wasn’t such a great idea to park there, they haughtily told me there was plenty of space for other vehicles to pass. I shrugged and hoped they wouldn’t come crying to me if their car was scraped or crunched by a giant truck or massive RV. No one did come crying to me, so everything must have turned out OK.

As I slowly made my way back to the beginning of the loop, I heard a loud cracking noise. I thought someone was shooting off fireworks or maybe firing a gun. I didn’t even try to find out what was going on, but my co-worker did. He told me later he’d heard the noise too and also thought it was fireworks or a gun. He went looking and found a man standing on one of the big boulders in the parking lot, repeatedly cracking a bullwhip. I didn’t think there were any rules against such an activity, but our supervisor told us later it’s considered a projectile and there is a rule against it.

When I got tot he front of the parking lot, I jumped out of my van and told my co-worker there was no place for me to park. I told him I’d put the van in the overflow parking at the nearby campground, then walk back to the main parking lot. He was preternaturally calm in the face of the chaos.

Turns out there was no room in the overflow parking at the campground, and I had to leave my van in the second overflow parking area.

When I got back to the main parking area, my co-worker and I started warning people who drove in that the parking lot probably couldn’t accommodate them, but they could pay us the $5 parking fee on their way to the trail  if they did find a spot. I also warned people not to park anywhere “stupid.”

I found out my co-worker saw the people in the tent when he got to work and had already told them they couldn’t camp there. One thing I still don’t understand is why the tent was up when I arrived at 11am if my co-worker told them no camping when he arrived at 8am. Even if he didn’t talk to them until 9am, it shouldn’t take two hours to take down a tent and pack up a campsite that had been occupied for less than 24 hours.

It seemed like I’d been at work for a long time–talking to people in cars, writing day passes, and collecting fees from people who had found spots to park–when an older lady told me there was a smoking, smouldering campfire near one of the picnic tables. Can you guess which picnic area the campfire was in? Yep, the one where there had earlier been a tent.

I told my co-worker what the woman had told me and said if he’d go check on the fire, I’d take care of the front.

He briskly walked away and quickly returned. The illegitimate campers had gathered rocks and used them to construct a fire ring to contain their illegal fire. However, in their haste to leave, they’d left what remained of their fire smouldering. I don’t think there were any flames, but there was smoke, and presumably embers, which could have been blown away and started a wildfire.

My co-worker grabbed his large Gatorade bottle filled with his beverage of choice and took it to put out the fire. He said when he poured the liquid onto the remains of the fire, there was hissing and more smoke, and the water boiled and bubbled.

He decided to hop on his dirt bike and ride down to the campground to get water out of their tank. He wanted to be sure the fire was “dead out” (as the Forest Service signs say).

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While he went to get more water, cars continued to enter the parking lot.

While I was trying to collect fees and write day passes, a woman approached me and asked where she could go hiking.

I am not a hiker. I enjoy walking on flat ground for about a mile, but the thought of a long, strenuous hike does not excite me. (Once in Utah, friends convinced me to go on a “little hike” with them. We ended up temporarily lost and very hot, and I had a head cold. When one of the friends commented, oh well, none of us are miserable, I raised my hand and declared that indeed, I was miserable.) Because I don’t like to hike, I haven’t really made it a priority to find out where to hike. I figure people who like to hike should do their research before they come out here or get information at a ranger station or buy a mp or find someone who likes to hike to talk to.

I made two hike suggestions to the woman; she’d already done both of them. Since that was the entirety of my hiking information, I hoped the woman would go away, but she did not.  Since I hadn’t  been able to answer her questions, I pulled out a topographical map of the area for her to look at. Of course, she couldn’t just look at the map and make some decisions for herself. She had to ask me if the little tree on the map was a symbol for a sequoia  grove. (After consulting the map key, I said it was.) Then she wanted to know how far it was from this place to that place. (I told her she should find the map’s distance key and consult it.) In between her questions (to which she could have found her own answers), I was hustling back and forth from cars to her. I’m all for helping tourists, but I don’t feel I’m responsible for reading a map for them and telling them which hikes are best when I’ve never been on any of the hikes. (You can bet I wanted to tell the woman to take a hike, but that would have been really rude.)

While I was still trying to satisfy the woman so she’d leave me alone, my co-worker zoomed back into the parking area and went to finish quenching the fire. It occurred to me that while we were working quite literally to put out a fire and keep things in the parking area running smoothly,this woman was insisting I give her information I didn’t even know. I was relieved when she was finally satisfied enough to walk away.

Jul10

Water

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There’s no running water in my campground. There’s no water at the trail head parking lot. There’s no running water at the campground next to the parking lot or at the campground twenty miles up the road. There’s not water on this mountain.

I buy my own drinking water when I go to civilization; I pay thirty cents a gallon from a dispenser in front of a grocery store. There’s a big tank of water on my campsite. The company I work for trucks in that water from campgrounds along the river. It’s safe to drink and I am allowed to drink it, but I don’t like the taste, so I only use it for cleaning and putting out campfires.

Tourists are often shocked when I say there’s no water on the mountain.

Many campers aren’t too surprised that there is no water at the campground. It’s not so uncommon for a remote campground to have no potable water. However, almost everyone who visits or stays at my campground wants to know about the tank.What’s in it? I tell them it’s water for cleaning toilets and putting out fires. Then they want to know if they can use some, even just to wash their hands. I have to tell them no. It’s a complicated legal situation when water is provided to the general public, so I’m not allowed to share. Besides, if I let one group have a little to wash their hands, another group will want some to wash their dishes, and pretty soon I’d have none for cleaning toilets and putting out fires.

People at the trail head often seem flabbergasted when we can’t provide them with water.

One day in the parking lot, a woman and her adult daughter were standing a few feet from me. I overheard part of their conversation.

The mother said to the daughter, something something restroom?

The daughter said, not unless something something.

The mother said, well, I’m sure something something.

The mother looked over at me and asked if we had a water faucet. I said, no ma’am.

She said they just needed to wash their hands.

I said, No ma’am. There’s no water here. There’s no water at the campgrounds in the area.

She looked at me with a confused, pained expression on her face. She clearly did not understand how we could not provide for her liquid needs. She looked at me as if I were speaking in a foreign language. Or lying. Or lying in a foreign language.

One day as I was coming out of the parking lot restroom, a man asked me where the water fountain was. I said we didn’t have one, that there was no water. He asked if there was a faucet where he could fill his water bottle. I told him no, repeated that we had no water in the parking lot. He asked if he could get water at the campground next door. I told him the campground had no water. I told him there was no water on the mountain. He said, interesting, but he didn’t seem to believe me. I think he thought I was lying just to be rude.

My co-worker told me on a recent weekend morning a woman rode up to the parking lot on a bicycle. He said she looked tired, hot, and thirsty. She asked him for water. He told her there was not water available in the area. She went from car to car asking people for water. Someone finally gave her two bottles.

Sometimes when people ask me where they can get water, I tell them they can drive fifteen miles to the nearest general store and buy drinking water there. The way folks look at me, I know they’re thinking, you’ve got to be kidding.

I get it. Until I started living in the rural Southwest, it never occurred to me that Americans in the 21st century lived without running water. I thought everyone got their water right from the tap. Turns out it doesn’t always work that way. Lots of people have to haul water for drinking and bathing and washing dishes.

Sometimes when tourists ask about water here, I tell them how once there was water on the mountain, but now there’s not. Weird, isn’t it, I ask them, that one day there could be water and the next day nothing?

It’s a concept city people really should think on.

Jul8

He Was Just…Odd

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The other morning a family came off the trail. I believe they were a father, a mother, and a young adult daughter. I have no recollection of what the man looked like. Both women were average size; both were pale and freckled; and both had bangs and long, straight hair down nearly to their waists. On second thought, they could have been sisters, but I feel confident they were related.

They approached me and had some questions I couldn’t answer, things like which tree on the trail was the tallest and which one was the biggest around. That information is not included in the brochure we give visitors, so I sure as hell don’t know.

As their questioning ended, my co-worker returned from whatever he’d been doing, and the older woman said, I just wanted to let you know…We saw a man on the trail, and he was just…odd.

My co-worker and I looked at her with great interest. An odd man on the trail? Such a situation could add some excitement to our day.

I told him good morning…,she trailed off, not telling us if he had responded by ignoring her or telling her to go fuck her mother or in some way between the two extremes.

My co-worker and I waited for her to describe some odd behavior.

He had grey hair in a ponytail and a beard, and he was wearing a white shirt, she went on (un)helpfully.

Maybe he had come from the campground and was just out for a morning walk, she speculated, still not explaining what she found so odd about the guy.

Then the man (husband? father? brother-in-law?) with the women said that as the guy walked over the bridge, he had hit on the railings.

This behavior did not strike me as odd. Unusual perhaps, but not really odd. There was no report that the man was talking to himself or invisible others. They didn’t say he was fighting invisible monsters/mobsters/dragons/aliens. They didn’t complain that the man was exposing his genitals. What was so odd about him?

We just wanted to let you know…He was just…odd.

Had these people never been to a city, never seen any real oddness?

They certainly didn’t realize that my co-worker and I are probably two of the oddest characters they’ve ever met. We’ve just learned to hide it pretty well during short, public encounters.

I spent the rest of the day hoping the odd man would emerge from the trees so I could meet him, but I never noticed anyone fitting his description.

Jul7

Bill Clinton, Rude Lesbians, and a Hypocrite

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Surprisingly, my time at the parking lot ended as it started, with some guy trying to talk to me about Bill Clinton.

The first guy was waiting for the rest of his party to meet him at the front of the parking area when he started telling me that in his opinion Bill Clinton had included too much land in the national monument, protected too many trees from logging. While I’m not fan of Bill Clinton (or any other President, politician, or pork barrel so-and-so), I am a big fan of trees, and I didn’t give a rat’s ass about why this guy thought folks should be allowed to cut down more of them. Luckily, a car pulled in, and I jumped up to help them, effectively truncating the guy’s impending rant.

At the end of the day, a group walked up to the front to pay their parking fee. (When they’d pulled in, I didn’t know if they’d have space to park, so I told them to pay after they’d found a place for their giant truck.) I’d already packed my chair and my backpack into the van, so I showed them the self pay envelopes and where to drop theirs once they’d put the money in.

The old man with the group looked at me and said, Were you here 18 or 20 years ago when Bill Clinton….

I interrupted him and said, Nope. I wasn’t here. I’m not from California. I’d never even been to California twenty years ago.

My rambling left the guy momentarily speechless, and I jumped into my van and made my escape.

I. Do. Not. Want. To. Discuss. Bill. Clinton.

In between the two Bill Clinton guys, I had two cars of rude lesbians. No, I did not witness these women engaged in any sapphic activities. However, I’ve spent enough of my life drinking at lesbian bars (RIP Charlene’s), going to lesbian potlucks, reading lesbian literature, and hanging out with lesbians searching for some sapphic activity to have a pretty good idea of what side of the fence these women were on.

The passenger in the first car interrupted my information spiel to ask if I could renew their campground car pass. I said no, that their camp host would have to do it. She told me in a snotty little tone that their campground didn’t have a host. I said she’d have to wait for a patrol person so do it because I couldn’t renew it.

When I tried to resume my information spiel, the driver said in an angry voice, I know all that! I’ve been here many times!

Ok, great, I said, handing her the day pass and trail guide and walking off.

Seems like if she’d been there many times, she wouldn’t have had to holler at me halfway across the parking lot five minutes later, asking if there were restrooms on the trail.

I said no, that the only restrooms were in the little house in the middle of the parking lot.

She yelled back, saying she knew about those restrooms, but wondered if there were any on the trail.

I just said no ma’am, and left it at that.

The women in the second lesbian car were not verbally rude, but they tried to zip around another car whose driver was paying the parking fee. Such attempted zipping around seems like an act of aggression to me. Even if they didn’t know I was collecting a fee (and plenty of people figure it out by stopping long enough to read the sign which states the fee), even if they thought I was just shooting the shit with the people in the car ahead of them, they should have waited for me to wave them on if I had no business to conduct with them.

The hypocrite was in one of the last vehicles I collected a fee from. He was driving a big truck, and between him and the passenger, I saw a tall piece of clear plastic which looked to me like the pitcher of a blender. I thought it was some sort of trucker blender one could plug into the cigarette lighter and use to blend on the road.

Are y’all making margaritas in here? I teased.

The driver and the passenger both seemed confused.

Is that a blender? I asked.

Turns out it was a lantern, hence the tall piece of clear plastic. The lantern’s battery had run out the night before, so it was plugged into the cigarette lighter (at least I’d gotten that much right), charging.

Oh, I thought y’all were making margaritas in here, I joked again.

We don’t drink, he said, and I thought oh great, I’ve stuck my foot in my big ol’ mouth again. Then he added, We’re Christians, the implication being (I guess) that real Christians don’t drink alcohol.

As all this talking was going on, he’d handed me a $10 bill, and I was trying to hand him back a five. When I pulled out the five, three more came halfway out with it, making it look like I might hand him $20 in exchange for his $10 bill. I said oops! and shoved the extra fives back into my little accordion file.

That’s when the man showed his true colors and said something about how he’d keep those extra fives if I handed them to him.

I said, No you wouldn’t because you’re a Christian. If I gave you too much change, you would return it to me.

The he tried to say he meant he would keep the extra money if I gave it to him freely. (I didn’t think in the moment to tell him that the money wasn’t mine to give away, so if I gave it to him, it would still be stealing.)

Give me an honest drunk over a Christian with selective morals any day.

To read more about the parking lot, go here: http://www.rubbertrampartist.com/2015/06/09/parking/ and here: http://www.rubbertrampartist.com/2015/06/13/wackadoodles-in-the-parking-lot/.

Jul4

Wet Dog

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This incident took place several weeks ago, before I moved to my campground, when I was still filling in at the larger campground.

I made it back to the campground on the afternoon of my second day off ten minutes before the snow started. Twenty minutes after the snow started falling, there was a dusting on the ground and on the branches of the trees. After that, the eerie fog rolled in. I turned on my little propane heater and read for a while before going to sleep.

In the morning, the sky stayed grey, and the fog clung to the tops of the tall trees. The air was cold even after the snow melted, and I did my paperwork while sitting close to the heater.

Around three o’clock, I felt like a pretzel with cabin fever after spending hours curled up on myself in the van. I put my jacket on over my uniform (which was on over my long underwear) and went to sweep restrooms.

I was working on the four-plex of vault toilets near the front of the campground. I’d done the two women’s toilets  and had just walked around to the other side to do the men’s. I looked across the small concrete porch to the other side of the building and saw a…creature…looking at me.

The fog had me on edge already, and I didn’t think there were any campers in the campground, so my brain didn’t immediately register the grey, fluffy-headed, pointed-eared creature as “dog.” My brain sort of thought “bear” and sort of though”Ewok,” but mostly thought “SURPRISE!” I yelled, not a full-on blood-curdling scream, but a yell loud enough to alert the dog’s person.

The woman came over. I blamed my edginess on the fog, which was true. I also told her I didn’t realize anyone was in the campground. She said they’d only been there about ten minutes. I complemented her on their tent assembling skill, because their tent was already up.

The woman told me she was there with her husband. They only lived about twenty-five miles away, but it was their anniversary, and they’d decided to go camping to celebrate.

People are different, and thank goodness for that. (One of my dad’s right-on little nuggets of wisdom is If everybody liked the same thing, there wouldn’t be enough to go around.) But if I were having an anniversary, I would not want to spend it in a tent in a wet, muddy, cold, foggy campground. (I’m more the comfy warm bed type.)

I asked her about the dog’s parentage. He was mostly husky, she said, but his father had been part timber wolf. He was a big, grey, handsome, friendly dog. He was running around the otherwise deserted campground, and it was beautiful to see. He was one of those dogs that is just a natural athlete.

He particularly enjoyed running alongside the golf cart as I drove. He ran with me when I went to the group site area to sweep the restrooms there. I could see how wet he was from running through the soggy meadow and moving through the misty air.

I wondered how those people were going to have anniversary sex with a big, wet dog in the tent with them. For the sake of their marriage, I hope he spent the night in the truck.

The fog had me on edge...(This photo by me.)

The fog had me on edge…(This photo by me.)