Mouse Creek campsite.
Please remember the name. Visit Foss Lake state park in Oklahoma and stay at the Mouse Creek site. Hope that it is the same for you as it was for me. Take someone with you.
When I get to the ranger station at Foss, there is a fifteen mile-per-hour wind tearing across the plain. One door is bolted because the gusts will slap it open and closed otherwise. On a post nearby, there's a map of the park with a great big circle that says "Bison." I look into the field behind the ranger's house and see rolling grasslands but precious little else. Tipping my bike against the pillars outside, I straighten up and smash my helmet into a piece of wood holding up the low roof. Thwack. I make a mental note to not stand up when I come back to get on the bicycle.
Inside the visitor's center, there's a stuffed white deer in a tasteful diorama, a great shaggy bison head on the wall, and a mammoth tusk (possibly a plaster cast, but possibly not) stretched across one corner. The water from the bathroom sink tastes like old pipes and reminds me of high school, but I fill two bottles anyway. As I leave the bathroom, a receptionist walks out from a back room and catches sight of me.
"Oh, hello! You driving through, or looking for a campsite?"
"I'm trying to camp for the night, yeah." I saunter over to the counter as she rifles through her papers for a map.
"These are our developed campsites with power and water hookups, and these are our primitives. What are you driving?"
"A bike. Like: a bicycle. That one." I lean over and point out the door.
"Oh! You with someone? No? Well, we're glad you decided to come to Foss! I hope you really like the park."
"Hey, listen: the sign outside said there'd be bison. Do you know where I could go to see them?"
She looked at me, then leaned forward over the desk, rotating her torso just a bit to her right, looking out the back window of the visitor's center. "Yeah, I thought so," she said, then stood back up to look me dead in the eye.
I flicked my head to see what she was seeing, and fifty bison standing in the field outside revealed themselves as if by magic.
"Huh."
"Yeah, hard to miss, aren't they?"
The woman looks thoughtful as she ponders Mouse Creek. "You know, I can't think of any wind breaks there. Maybe you'd better find one."
Grandpa always used to say "The wind goes down when the sun goes down," and most of the time he was right. So I'm not worried. Even if I can't find a thicket or a grove between me and the blast, the sun sets in a few hours. I'll be fine. I deal with the wind for a final two-mile sprint to Mouse Creek. As I roll by, I can plainly see no one in the rv parking. I can see no one in the boat ramp. I can see no one in the tent campsites. I'm alone. Hope that it is the same for you.
The toilet, however, is locked for the season. Maybe visit before October 15, in any case.
I wade into the lake. The day is still warm, but it was never hot enough for this kind of shock. My gasp reflexes kick in and don't slow down, and I splash some water on my chest and head to get used to the idea. It takes me five minutes to work up sufficient courage to finally dive out, skimming the surface and getting fully wet. The bottom is still only three feet away, forty feet out. I sit and shiver, just long enough to contemplate Lake Superior and how lucky I am to be in Oklahoma instead. When I do get out of the water, I'm quite pleasantly cold.
Out of the water, the warm, dry wind substitutes for my towel. I'm dry before I finish two postcards. In the West, a few clouds hang low, and a flock of birds in the lake take off in a huff, fly a crazy loop, and land again. The trees over me whistle and shake with a clatter like bones. Once I write to my whole family, I get restless. I find a windbreak. A thicket north of the rv parking blocks enough wind that I can't feel it at all, even though a tree sixty feet away is thrashing in it.
The water at the campsite doesn't work, but one farm faucet is letting off a thin trickle. The electricity is still on. I charge my phone. There's a moment of indecision in me as I watch the sun set. (I periodically and frantically whip out my phone to take pictures as it keeps getting better.) Should I really camp in the thicket? It will definitely be warmer overall, but it's sixty five degrees and the south wind promises no chill. And all my belongings are already by the lake. And I look out across the grass that covers the point to my east. The sound of it—like a thousand thousand leaves gently sliding past each other, the softest white noise in the world—and the sight of it—a patchwork masterpiece of long grass and yucca and tiny sunflowers and sage, a southwest masterpiece never done justice by painter or photographer—convince me to stay. The sunset grips the world around me, a golden hour to end them all, a titanic visual baking the prairie vista into an altogether more rapturous scene, (and one small boy, flipping his phone out to try again to capture it) and the wind gusts nearly constant, changing only to remind you that it is there.
This place, this night, this campground was perfect for sitting up irresponsibly late with a bursting love or a blood-bound friend. I've only had a few perfect nights like this, and I know them: they make talk easy. Very quickly, you realize that the promise of an early bedtime has long since been abandoned and you can't remember the first story you told. Every time the other person speaks, it's sorcery, and every time they pause, you have something to add. If I had someone I cared about knowing, even if I didn't know them, the wind would tear through our fire and make it flutter and sing, and we would stare at it and bare our hearts because this is exactly the night to do such a thing. Maybe we would never speak of it again, maybe we would remember it fondly, but no matter what, no soul can live through such a night without reaching out.
I have known only a handful of such nights in such places. If you visit Mouse Creek, hope that it is the same for you. As for me, I have no one. My grief is well-hidden, I like to think, but in moments like this, it manifests and controls me. I recognized the night, felt its magic, knew its power, and fiddled with my phone instead. I don't write. I don't call a friend, a family member, an ancient crush, a lost connection. I distract myself. I reach out to strangers to make me laugh so I forget how hollow this moment is. The wind tears its way through my hammock all night. I'm sufficiently warm that I don't care; I actually welcome the company.
In the morning when I wake up, it's dark. I gather my camp, I make breakfast, and I sit in silence. But once I look up, I see the most delicate red on the purple of the eastern clouds. I take my breakfast with me and I walk to the top of the ridge, overlooking the sea of grass, overlooking the tongue of the lake in the west. I walk to where I can see the sunrise. Where last night, I had an tempestuous explosion, in the morning I get a careful composition. The attitude of the sky is quiet, almost breathless. The wind, which has been racing all night, dies in the space of five minutes. The world is still. Venus hangs low. The constellations vanish. The clouds gracefully, imperceptibly brighten. The spell is unbroken. I wish I had someone with me who could gasp and point and say nothing.
Please, stay out too late. Find the night just warm enough that you're tempted to build a fire. Feel your heart race as you laugh at someone who desperately wants you to laugh. Tell a story you didn't remember you had. Reach out and find another human soul with you, vibrating with a temorous note, resonant in the darkness and harmonizing with your own. Visit Mouse Creek and hope that it is the same for you as it was for me, but do me one better. Don't let life catch you alone.
No comments:
Post a Comment