Goldbug

My mom still has a box of things I wrote in the first grade. I may be one of the few people in the world who could, if asked, produce every single document I have ever written. Well, at least every document I wrote from first grade until 12th. Since being in college I have been less careful with the documents I save. You see, as an English major my job is to write. To save everything would mean lots and lots of documents. My mom still wishes to read my writings, and so this is my chance to show my mom something I wrote this week.

My English 450 class has us making, designing, editing, and writing for class magazines. When it came time to sign up for magazines, I was hard pressed to find articles I was interested in writing. One, though, seemed perfectly suited to me: describe a hike in Idaho.

Allison and I had done a lot of hiking, and I felt that I was seasoned enough to provide a good article on the subject. After signing up I received an email stating that they expected my article to not only describe my favorite hiking spot, but also use humor, descriptive language, and provide motivation to new hikers. "Oh Yeah," they added as a side note, "your article should be less than 400 words." This is not exactly what I had in mind when I signed up for the article, but I'd have to make it work.

While not perfect, this is the article I turned in. This was supposed to be my rough draft (I will still consider it that), but they apparently liked it enough to publish it as is. Like I said, this is my rough draft.

“Allison! Wake up! Did you hear that?” She bolts up. Eyes wide. All semblance of sleep on her face now transformed into terror. She doesn’t speak but her eyes are asking a thousand questions.

“What is it!?” she finally whispers.

“Something just hit our tent. Something big.” I was struck with fear. No blinking. No moving. My loud, nylon sleeping bag will give me away. My hand slowly moves towards my twelve inch, solid steel Mag-Lite. I see her hand reach for the hatchet. We’re armed--I will blind them as she puts the hatchet through their skull.

We’d arrived in the early afternoon and quickly found our spot under the trees. The stream trickled ten feet away as we set to work staking our tent. We knew it would be nearly dark when we returned from our hike.

Shortly after our marriage Allison and I promised ourselves to go camping every weekend--a tradition we’d kept for nearly three months now. We had hiked in many lovely places throughout Idaho but Allison always wanted to show me her special hike. Located between the cities of Challis and Salmon, the Goldbug Hot Springs lay in a secluded stretch of mountainous poplar and aspen forests.

We often gauge a hike’s quality by the number of people we pass along the way. Using that as a guide, I found this hike excellent, for we passed only one hiker along the way. As the trail meandered through meadow, desert and mountain, I reflected on the diversity of God’s creations and the beauty of Idaho. While the first two miles meandered up a slight gradient, I was surprised to meet a rough, mountainous portion that had me on hands and feet for the last half mile.

“It’s totally worth it,” she kept reminding me. “We’re almost there.”

Worth it it was. Upon climbing over my last boulder I came face to face with a dozen small bath tub-like springs, perfectly sized for a few people in each pool. The water was perfect. The upper pools were scalding, the bottom pools were warm, the middle pool comfortably hot. Nothing could be better than ending a perfect hike with a warm soak in a natural spring. We had the springs to ourselves to watch the sun set between two mountain peaks. This is a memory we will keep forever.

We hiked back to our camp in the dusk exhausted: ready to eat and ready to sleep. We climbed into our sleeping bags while still chewing on the last bites of our hot dogs. We were asleep within minutes.

Waking in the morning with mag-lite still grasped tightly in my fist, I pondered over what had happened during the night. No trace of animal, man, or branch. Then, as I rolled over I heard it again, the same rustling of tent against something hard. The exact same sound that had awakened me and kept me awake for hours. The sound of my hand hitting the side of our tent.