Jackass Meadow
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"Where are we going?"
"Jackass Meadow," Dad said.
"Where?"
"Jackass Meadow."
I giggled and climbed into the backseat of the Dodge. Dad said “jackass” and didn’t even flinch! Who names a camping spot after a cuss word?
“Jackass, Jackass, JACKASS MEADOW.”
I knew I'd like Jackass Meadow. I couldn't stop saying it!
Our Dodge Town Wagon looked like a sandy stink bug with its rear jacked higher than the front. Dad outfitted the back with a fancy camping kitchen so Mom could make camping easier for herself. He made drawers and compartments for all our gear, plus a dish-washing station so she wouldn't have to do dishes under a campground spigot. Everything had its place, and Mom made sure it stayed that way.
Brother and I had camping knapsacks sewn by Mom. Mine was mustard-yellow, and Brother's was avocado green. Anything we wanted to take camping would have to fit inside, with no exceptions. Mom didn’t like clutter. I packed my pink bunny rabbit, Old Maid, and a coloring book, my brand-new deluxe Crayola Crayons set with a built-in sharpener, and a pad of newsprint for drawing. When I wasn't collecting rocks or running wild with kids, I liked to sit at the end of a picnic table at our campsite and draw.
We arrived at Jackass Meadow late in the afternoon when the shadows were long and the air crisp. Between the windy mountain road and Mom's cigarette smoke, I made Dad pull over twice. As we backed into our campsite, I rolled down my window and filled my lungs with pine. A family of deer grazed nearby on the edge of Jackass Meadow.
“Jackass.”
“Jackass Meadow.”
Not wanting to get stuck setting up camp, Brother and I bolted.
"Dinner will be ready in an hour!" Mom’s voice faded. "Listen for the whistle!"
We understood. Mom wore her silver school whistle from when she was a teacher around her neck. She always brought it camping, along with matches and marshmallows. She blew it so loud and long that nature would stop in its tracks.
There were plenty of kids to play with. We found each other within minutes and became best friends for a weekend. We ran wild from campsite to campsite, up and down mountains, and explored every inch of the meadow. At dinnertime, jumbled names echoed among the mountains and trees, but for Brother and me, all Mom had to do was blow her whistle, and we came running.
After a dinner of hot dogs, baked beans, and potato chips, we sat around the campfire on folding chairs, listening to the rowdy campers nearby sing TV theme songs. Mom and Dad sipped wine and talked among themselves like they did at home on the patio every night. For kids, there wasn’t much to do after dark. I'd already located both dippers, watched falling stars zoom across the sky, and roasted a dozen marshmallows on a coat hanger. And a few more when Mom wasn’t looking. The only thing left to do was sleep.
Our tent was green, military-grade. It was tall inside and roomy. Mom and Dad's cots were side by side on the left, with their sleeping bags zipped together. On the right, Brother and I slept on squatty green bunk bed cots. I slept on the bottom for safety. I figured a bear would have a more challenging time finding me down low when Brother was right smack at eye level.
Brother and I had sleeping bags that looked like giant green tomato worms. Dad mail-ordered them from a catalog because they were quality, filled with down feathers, and rated A+ in a Himalayan blizzard, whatever that meant. I thought they were a shade of green.
I changed into my flannel nightgown and wiggled down to the bottom of my worm bag with my pink bunny rabbit. I felt safe. When the air got stuffy, I wiggled up enough to breathe fresh air and watched the campfire shadows dance like puppets on the tent wall.
Brother was in a feisty mood that night. He kept jiggling and bouncing above me. I thought his bunk might collapse onto mine if he didn’t quit.
"Would you stop that!" I said.
That made him shake harder and laugh. "It’s an earthquake!"
Because he wouldn’t listen to me, I shoved the underside of his bunk with both feet. Brother flew off his bunk and landed in the middle of the tent. He laughed and pulled me from my bunk, taunting me into a sleeping bag fight. And there we were, two sparring tomato worms jumping, pushing until Brother got too rough.
"What's going on in there?" Dad’s voice cut through the tent.
We scrambled onto our bunks, stifling giggles into our pillows as his flashlight swept over us.
"Knock it off, you two!" he said.
Dad zipped the tent door shut.
Soon, it was too quiet for me. The darkness made me feel anxious and alone.
"Are you awake?" I whispered.
Silence.
Brother was already asleep. He was lucky like that.
When the darkness pressed in, bears crept into my mind. Daytime didn't bother me at all; it was after sundown, when my imagination ran wild. I watched Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom every Sunday night. I knew if a bear could peel a car like a tangerine for an ice chest, the thin walls of my tent weren’t going to stop a bear from getting in. To me, every snap of a twig or rustle of a bush became a bear lurking. I couldn’t stop worrying. Only when Mom and Dad came to bed did I finally relax, safe from bears and from Brother.
In the middle of our second night, I had to go to the bathroom badly. I tried not to think about it for a long time, but I couldn’t hold it until daylight.
I hated outhouses. I loathed the Daddy Long Legs that congregated near the ceiling, intertwined clumps of tangled legs. The stench made me gag. I’d hold my breath, open the door, and lock it behind me. Did you know you’re not supposed to look down the hole? I always did, just to be safe. I’d peer into the soupy bowels of darkness and stink, watching for a leprechaun or a troll. My worst fear was him pulling me down into my worst nightmare. I’d do my business fast, pull up my pants, and bolt out the door before my lungs exploded.
"Mom. Mom. Mom," I whispered in Mom’s face, careful not to disturb Dad.
Sometimes I doubt she knew what she was saying, but she said it.
"You’re old enough to go to the bathroom by yourself. You know where it is. Just take the flashlight, and you'll be fine." Mom rolled over.
I took the flashlight off the hook, unzipped the tent flap, and stepped into the blackest of nights. With the click of a switch, a comforting beam of light shot into the forest across Jackass Meadow. I fired it around our campsite and at everyone else’s until I felt sure I'd scared off any bears that might be lurking. When I pointed my beam to heaven, a bazillion stars winked as if to say they were watching me. That made me feel good. After all, I was nine years old, and the outhouse wasn't that far. I could smell it.
The outhouse door was locked, but the inside glowed. I hobbled and went in circles until a lady with a hissing lantern emerged in her pink bathrobe.
"Aren’t you a little young to be out here in the middle of the night?" she asked.
Holding my breath, I hurried past her into the outhouse and locked the door. The spiders were steady. The pink lady was outside when I finished.
“Let me walk you back to your campsite, sugar,” she insisted, and I let her.
The next morning after breakfast, Dad went on a hike. He loved wandering in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, like John Muir. He'd climb one mountain, scout for the next, and explore all the spaces in-between. He said hiking was a religious experience, a mountain high that revived his soul and cleared his mind. Dad liked camping, but he loved hiking.
With his floppy hat tethered under his chin, Dad carried a compass, a pocket knife, and a chunk of beef jerky in his pockets. From his belt hung the canteen he had worn during the Korean War.
Sometimes, Dad let me tag along on short hikes. We didn’t go far. Dad was a geologist and liked to tell me about rocks. Sadly, every diamond I found turned out to be quartz. My pockets were full of geological treasures and a bouquet of blue feathers when we got back to camp. But on this particular morning, Dad wanted to go hiking alone. I watched him disappear into the trees on the far side of Jackass Meadow.
“Jackass.”
“Jackass Meadow.”
When breakfast dishes were done and our campsite organized, Mom relaxed in the shade with a paperback and a bottle of root beer with a straw. Brother was long gone. The last time I saw him, we were brushing our teeth behind the tent when he spat his rinse water all over my shoes on purpose. I complained, and Mom didn’t care. She told him to go play.
The morning sunshine made me warm and lazy. At the picnic table with my newsprint and crayons, I sketched Jackass Meadow, angular pines in deep green, violet mountains, and chartreuse grass. In the teal sky, strange clouds hovered like flying saucers. I’d never seen clouds like that before, and a shiver crept up my spine. I boxed my crayons and listened. Something wasn’t right. The Scrub jays had quit complaining. The ground squirrels vanished into their burrows. It felt as if Mother Nature herself had decided to hold her breath under that alien sky.
A terrible wind ransacked Jackass Meadow that day. I heard it in the distance as it rumbled through the treetops like a giant wave. The closer it got, the louder it roared until a spinning column of dirt touched down in the middle of our campsite. That devil of a wind, hungry for my drawings, stabbed me with pine needles and sucked my hair into its vortex. Sand blasted my teeth. Then, it uprooted our tent like the earth was made of butter, a green jellyfish with tentacles, spinning in the roar, tethered by a single tent stake. Suddenly, a violent gust set our tent free. I watched it somersault across the campground and into the meadow with our cots, sleeping bags, and my pink bunny rabbit inside until it wedged between two pine trees on the far side of Jackass Meadow.
Then, it was still.
Brother slid into camp like a bad dream. His eyes were enormous. Behind him trailed a scraggly bunch of boys and a muddy Labrador.
"Did you see that?" Brother stood and slapped the dirt off his pants. "That was the biggest tornado ever! That sucker plowed right through Jackass Meadow like this!" Brother re-enacted the event, twirling and flailing his arms until dizziness forced him to stop. He looked around.
"Hey, where is our tent?" he asked.
“Jackass.”
“Jackass Meadow.”
Mom's face burned red. Her eyes shot laser beams at Brother for existing at that moment. Through clenched teeth, she fired curses at Dad, off hiking while she was left in the middle of nowhere with two kids and a goddamn tornado!
Brother and I dragged our tent back to camp. We did our best to dismantle everything, but no matter how well we rolled, squished, or stuffed, nothing went back into where it came from. For once, Mom didn't care about perfection. She grabbed the gear, crammed it into the back of the Dodge, and slammed the doors like a bitter farewell.
"Get in the Dodge," she barked.
Brother and I climbed into the backseat of the Dodge with our knapsacks, afraid to breathe. He and I played Old Maid while Mom sat in the front seat, blowing smoke out the window, and tapping her foot.
A few hours later, Dad emerged from the forest with a walking stick. I saw him but didn’t say anything. Dad was a towering man, but at that moment, he looked small among pine trees and granite peaks behind him. Crossing the meadow, he poked the ground for soft spots with his stick. Butterflies meandered around him. Dad was leaving behind his holy space, his peace, to rejoin the world.
"What happened here?" he asked.
Mom rolled down her window and let him have it.
The next day after work, Dad dismantled the back end of the Dodge. All the camping gear disappeared into the storage shed among the black widows. We never camped again, but Dad never stopped hiking. Sometimes, he would leave Happy Acres early on a Sunday morning to escape into the wild quiet of the mountains while the rest of us stayed home.
“Jackass.”
“Jackass Meadow.”
