he relishes.
Although seven months pregnant with their baby daughter, his wife Jolyne has agreed to stay home and play single mom to year-old Creighton this week. This brainy, cuddly redhead knows the annual trip to the backcountry is lifeblood to these men.
Mike loves freedom. It’s why he loves Montana: “They’re not gonna tell you what to do. You don’t wear helmets on horseback here. They figure you got common sense.” His ideal trip would be off by himself in the backcountry on a horse with a dog at his side, but he’ll go with us for this trip, his twenty-ninth.
Jack has been nearly as often. He’s the chortling uncle you’ve always wanted, ever-willing to play games, and the first friend you’d turn to in crisis for counsel wise beyond his years. He’s gotten time off at the taco shop—a job he likes since it gives him plenty of time to read philosophy and ruminate. He also enjoys dealing with the public. He can bike to work, the food’s good, and it’s locally owned, all of which deeply matters to him.
While Mike’s at the outfitters, Jack and Don build a handsome campfire. A computer and marketing whiz for AAA, Don loves gadgets, technology, and camping with his kids. This, however, will be the longest camping trip he and Lauren and Derek have taken, but he seems prepared for anything.
Ro and I marvel at this skill set. Growing up in our house, we were lucky to get the plaid tin cooler packed with baloney sandwiches for our trips up to the lake.
We lean back in smoke-and-sooty spider-foldy steel-and-poly camp chairs. Jim slots red Solos into our cupholders, cracks a well-chosen single malt, and passes the bottle. We heave a communal sigh. We’re here. It’s begun.
A bouncing lance of light crests the hill. Mike’s back. He pours a couple fingers in a red Solo, swigs, and says, “We spend tomorrow in camp.”
“What happened?”
“Outfitters said too many in our party canceled.” Some of Jim’s friends and in-laws decided at the last minute not to come. “Had to give another group our horses. We go day after tomorrow.”
We sit and sip. Immediate relief we’re not riding at dawn. Only postpones the inevitable, though. How will I do? How will I hold up?
“Well, I’m gonna wash up. Where are the towels, Jim?”
“Hand it to her, will ya Jack?”
He offers a hand towel.
I laugh. “Joker. Could I have a bigger one, please?”
“That’s it. That’s our towel.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No. We keep it simple. Just the one.”
“For nine of us? For six days?”
“It’s all we ever use.”
“Why didn’t you let me bring my towel?”
“I honestly didn’t think you’d need it.”
He’s serious.
“Jim, I need a towel.”
“Okay, Mike—when you head into Seely Lake tomorrow, pick one up, will ya?”
“Sure.”
“Thanks, Jim. Thought I’d have to pull the gauze out of the first aid kit.”
“Oh, we don’t bother with that.”
“No first aid kit?”
“Naw. Few Band-Aids are enough.”
Ro and I are dumbfounded. We shore don’ wanna be quiverin’ womenfolk burdenin’ them saddlebags, but since when is safety sissy?
“Jim, this is wilderness! Mike, for us greenhorns, please get a first aid kit tomorrow.”
“Oh, all right.”
They are so casual. They are not trying to impress us with their macho. They all had to impress Grandpa Bill years ago. Now it’s just how they travel.
It’s good Ro and I have Big Agnes. We change into our pajamas and whisper our shared astonishment. The ground’s lumpy, but the stars are beautiful. I want to leave open the mesh panels to look all night, but Ro is more experienced.
“If our sleeping bags get wet, they won’t keep us warm.”
She’s no good when she’s cold. I’m no good when I’m hot. We zip up and into sleep.
The Family Journal
That scuffed-up, cattywonkus house by the winding wild of Minnehaha Creek is physical bedrock to our family landscape. It’s the only home Jim and Ro and I ever know. Even Mom and Dad have never lived so long in one place.
Before they landed in Minnesota, Dad’s work as a sportscaster had led them round the Midwest: Omaha to Kansas City, Tulsa, Des Moines, and Sioux City. Each of The Olders was born in a different city.
By the late ’40s, Dad was such a successful radio personality he was offered a job in New York, sportscasting for a major network. After talking it over, he and Mom concluded that New York was not a good place to rear children. (She was pregnant yet again, this time with me.) Instead, he took a new job as DJ at WDGY in Minneapolis. They liked the City of Lakes, and he’d no longer have to follow teams on the road.
One night in December 1951, shortly after moving house, Mom feels familiar contractions. Dad knows the signs of labor, but not Minneapolis. He puts Kako in charge, helps Mom down the icy sidewalk to the car, hops in, guns the engine and speeds down Nicollet Avenue, deliberately running red lights until a patrol car pulls him over.
“My wife,” says Dad. “How do I get to the hospital?”
“Follow me.” Cherry-top spinning and siren wailing, he escorts us to the hospital. I arrive safe and sound, with a bit of fanfare.
After four boys, everyone is glad for another girl. Mom especially. They name me after her beloved aunt. But newborn joy is snuffed by the shock of Dad’s heart attack a few weeks later.
Mom can’t drive, nor has she friends in this new city. For weeks, she’s forced to take the Nicollet Avenue streetcar to visit Dad in the hospital. She’s gone several hours each day, and what a frigid hell she must suffer, waiting alone in subzero air at the shelterless stop, aching with postpartum soreness, exhaustion, and hormones and icy with fear for her husband’s life. Tears freeze in Minnesota even when they never leave your eyes.
That means Kako, thirteen, has to make meals, clean the house, get Pogo and Tom off to school, and tend two-year-old Skip and infant me. Much of my early care, then, is in the hands of my sister and brothers.
Dad’s physical heart slowly recovers, but at this time, post-coronary protocol means abstinence from any kind of exertion and exercise. Dad had been a sportsman—a swimming and diving champ. Though he takes up fishing and swaps cigarettes for a pipe, his broken heart never recovers from that loss of vigorous physicality. It must be hard to have a houseful of
