July Camping: Green River Lakes {a personal history}

I know you know we have a history with this place, Green River Lakes, Wyoming.  We were married there.  You knew that.  But also, we met there; in the Upper Green.  Fourteen years ago my man lived in a 1950's airstream trailer nicknamed "The Silver Bullet."  It was employee housing, parked on the Green.  He was a fisheries biologist.  I was a wilderness ranger.  It was a hot, dry summer and the west was on fire.  We fought forest fires together and as they say, the rest is history.

But there are so many more fingers to this story, all cradled in the palm of the Upper Green River.  Before I had even met my future husband, I was partnered with his brother's new bride to patrol the backcountry of Green River Lakes.  We hauled a pulaski and cross-cut saw on our ten-day packs, cut huge logs out of the trail and didn't see another soul for days.  We were wet, tired and driven.  By the end, my cheap government-issued jeans were held together with duct tape.

And then, a year or so later, my man and I found ourselves working together on the Green.  We were snowmobile patrol rangers.  We spent an entire winter in this drainage communicating largely by hand signals.  I have a pair of earrings made from the ivories we pulled off a wolf-killed elk that winter.  Off-duty, we lived together in a tiny attic apartment in a tiny town.  We married the following summer.

But even before that--long, long, long before that--my step-dad's parents owned a small cabin on the Green, just before you get to the Forest Service boundary.  They had sold it long ago, but my step-dad (a born and raised Wyomingite) always wanted to come back.  So when I was just a kid he traded a sculpture (he was an artist) and a little cash for some land about an hour away from that cabin on the Green.  Slowly, he scraped together a cabin of his own.  And slowly, he made it bigger.  He spent his teacher's summers at that cabin.  Off and on, one or another of his kids would live there and work or ski or marry and move on.  I moved there after graduating from college.  I stayed in that rustic, remote cabin for three years, until I met my future husband.  So I suppose you could say that if a long ago couple from Cheyenne, Wyoming had never owned a little Cabin on the Green, my husband and I would never have met.  Such is the fate of the world.  Such is the binding ties of a place.      

::  ::  ::

We hadn't been back since I was pregnant with Hazel.  My mom and her dog came for a July visit, and so we went camping.  We stayed in the campground, paddled our canoe across the lake, hiked and fished and paddled back.  We roasted corn over the fire and my mom made "hobo packs" (veggies and meat in tinfoil and cooked in the fire)--something she'd remembered eating over campfires long ago.  We found out mosquitoes love Hazel and she reacts strongly to them.  We had three days, two nights.  On our way home, we stopped at another, smaller lake along the Green River.  Paddled more, fished more.  

I am no poet, but I'd started a quick just-before-my-head-hits-the-pillow list of our camp experiences one night in the tent, and it turned into a silly, rhyming poem, which I'll share with you:

::  ::  ::                          

Sunscreen sticky,
sandy toes

Dirt-crusted sweat,
marshmallows

Paddling and
wooden oars

Blistered palms,
campfire s'mores

Quiet lake
smooth and still

Waterfalls roar
on a hill

Smokey fire,
burning eyes

Mosquitoes bring
a small demise

Fishing a high,
unspooled stream

My mother sits
in a dream

Restful (more sunscreen!)

Peaceful (more bug-spray!)

Wakeful (Hazel has to pee!)

Meditation.

These lakes.

This stream.

Life's dream.

::  ::  ::

By the way, a few days after we returned home, I found out Wyoming's Governor is currently taking public comment for two proposed dams on the Upper Green River.  I understand that water is precious, but damming this wild river, in this wild place, is abhorrent.  Click here to send a quick comment (takes 60 seconds).  Comments close Monday August 4th.  Pass it on.    

::  ::  ::  

And a few more outtakes for the hell of it.  Mentally, put this to the tune of "Let it Go," which is pretty much what Juniper and Hazel were singing (yelling?) every single time they stomped and splashed and tumbled along the lakeshore.  I love their go-juice.  Their "This is the Best Day EVER!" vibe.  It's contagious.  

^I also love Hazel's broken-arm toddler run.^  

^Grandma running!^

I know, we need a dog...  

Let it go.  

Under the Tetons 2

(Click here for the first installment.)

The second time out, we camped in a small, quiet, tent-only campground on Jenny Lake. This time, it was more about the fishing.  

^Juniper, plying the lakeside, found a spinner.^  

For us, staying in a campground is like going to the suburbs: we are surrounded by neighbors--something far more exotic to my kids than mountains, lakes and trout.  Juniper stopped every single person with a dog, firing off questions: "Is that your dog?  What's her name?  Are you the owner to this dog?"  And, "My name's Juniper and this is my little sister Hazel.  I'm four and she's two."  Hazel would stand nearby, shifting from side to side, looking up, scrunching her nose and repeating Juniper's same questions in her toddler garble: "Is dat yo dawwwwg?"  At least half the campground knew us.      

:: Notes from my journal(!):

At camp: Juniper bounces around, starts a conversation with anyone who will look at her, which is pretty much everyone.  Camping is really fun this year.  We're back in a tent.  The kids are learning the tricks of the trade, like how to find your way back to camp in a homogenous forest.  They are climbing rocks--Juniper scaling them like a gecko, Hazel getting frustrated and whining, "But I don't know howwww!"  They balance on the beams of fallen trees.  Juniper splashes in lake water slightly warmer than liquid nitrogen and not until the sun sinks behind the peaks does she say, "Mom, I think we should go back to camp now.  I'm getting kinda shivery."  

^J bug, practicing her camera-smile.  Note the chocolate around her lips and marshmallow above her eyelid.^ 

We are in the campground of yesteryear.  Tiny, one-car parking spaces, large tent sites, spaciousness around picnic tables and firepits (so many campgrounds these days have a tiny communal area and huge parking space).  The road through camp is so narrow and winding, you'd hit a boulder or tree if you dropped your attention for a second.  And thanks to that, the rare car moves slowly.  Kids play on the road, in the road, on the other side.  We don't worry.  It's the first time I've been to a campground like this in years (of course we couldn't with the trailer).         

:: We are still working out the kinks of car camping.  I don't think I've ever been good at car camping--not since I was a kid camping with my dad.  Packing for a ten-day *backpacking* trip I could do in my sleep (or could have, anyway).  In the old days, my version of "car camping" was to load my backpack and throw it in the car.  But we learn with every trip: the white-gas stove runs out of gas, so to avoid a late-night trip (with elk all over the road) to the nearest store, it's wise to have more on hand.  There are four of us and one eats like a teenage boy, so we could use a bigger pot.  You should never be without a potty chair (running down the campground road carrying a 45 pound kid who eats like a teenage boy = not fun).  And since we're nearly always in grizzly country, we are strict about NO FOOD IN OR AROUND THE TENT, and we have designated "tent/sleeping" clothes (i.e., NOT the same clothes in which we eat s'mores).  We camp in the mountains where it's cold, so I may want to remind my husband to bring a jacket if I don't want him wearing mine.  And my family is sure to catch fish, so it might be nice to have a place to keep them (instead of emptying the cooler of high-dollar chicken-apple sausages and greek yogurt).  Like I say, learning with every trip.  

:: The fishing:  

:: Hazel, on a flopping trout moments before the end: "The fish is waving good-bye!"  After we thank the trout and break it's neck, Juniper gets into the scientific exploration of gutting fish.    

She especially likes the air bladder. 

:: The best fishing holes did not have the most kid-friendly banks, however.  

:: Tonight, me: "Hey honey, what do you think about this picture?  I was really just trying to show how much Juniper has picked up speed since last year.  But all I could get was a blurry shot."  

My man: "Yeah, that's because she's really picked up speed." 

'Night y'all.