Fire-Horse-66

I'm back after a long hiatus.

I wish I could tell you it's because I was sailing the Caribbean on my yacht, but no. I was doing a lot of what I'm really good at doing which is working more hours than I should.

In the time I have been gone, it would be easy to say that nothing happened in my life, but that would be a lie. Sometimes it feels like nothing has happened, but when I look back, a lot has happened.

Only a week ago I was at the vet with my old kitty Joon, a sweet and gentle kitty that we have had for many years ... that final trip to the vet ... that horrible trip ... that heartbreaking trip .... that trip that I never want to take again. We brought her lifeless body home in a cardboard box and I buried her under the apple tree the very next day. I still cry when I think of it, but worst of all is the regret I feel. "I should have kept her another day" I think to myself. I could have spent more time holding her and feeling her frail old body purring in my arms, but I didn't. It's too late to change my mind and give her more time. The feeling is sickening.

What else has happened? Little things, bigger things, unimportant things. Just things.

Midnight has just rolled around and now it is tomorrow, my day off. I think I'll have a nap and be back later. Maybe a little rest with brighten my spirits?

Last night I went to bed early. It was only 7:30 pm. The sun was still up and my bedroom lit up with the glow from the window. I was very tired. I thought that if I went to bed right then, I would wake up at 3 am, bright eyed and ready to start my day.

I was wrong.

I slept straight through until 6:30 am. I woke disoriented and confused. Was the sun still up or was it up again? Had I only slept a half an hour or was it morning? I had to check my cell phone.

It was morning.

I remembered most of my dreams right away. They were still fresh from the night.

I was camping in my tent with my 2 sons and our dog. There was another family camping next to us. We were camping somewhere on the open plains ... Kansas or North Dakota. The land was flat and wide open for as far as the eyes could see. Storms were brewing and closing in. We sat beneath our thin canvas of protection as the wind picked up and howled around us. The clouds grew dark and ominous. They started to swirl in a circular motion. There was a low rumble or growl. Tornadoes dropped out of the clouds. There were many and we were terrified, unprotected, and vulnerable. The first wave of tornadoes passed. We survived. The adults conferred with each other, deciding to move camp while we had a chance. A second volley of tornadoes descended upon us.

The night of terrorizing tornadoes continued until morning. I awoke exhausted.

It was not the first night of tornado dreams for me, and I doubt it will be the last. They seem to come more commonly during times of emotional stress. Maybe it's time for a little R&R.

 

When I finally got to bed last night at nearly 3 am, I lay there with my faithful dog Daisy beside me, and listened to her breathing. She was sound asleep and every few minutes her feet would move like she was running and chasing something. "Get it!" I whispered, quiet enough so as not to wake her but loud enough to infiltrate her dream. I wondered what she was chasing in her sleep. Sometimes she lets out a muffled "woof" while she chases things in her dreams. It's funny when it happens and I try not to giggle too loud and ruin her sleep.

I told myself to go to sleep but my mind kept wandering. It wandered back to our recent vacation. I started to giggle in the dark. Daisy stirred. "good girl" I said out of habit. I reached over in the dark and petted the soft fur on her neck and I let the memories of our first 3 days of camping play itself out in my mind.

The first day of our vacation was driving. The ENTIRE first day. We left home at 6 am and arrived at our camping destination at 7 pm. We were fortunate to get the very last tent spot available at the campground and pitched our tent. Once our tent and camping gear was unpacked, I went to the little campground office/store and purchased 2 bundles of firewood. It was late in the day and what we were looking forward to was a little relaxing around the campfire before going to bed.

It was not the first time I had started a fire. I knew the concepts. I knew how to stack the wood and where to put the tinder to get the fire started. I prepared the empty metal fire pit with the logs in a tepee formation and started the wadded up paper underneath on fire to get things going.

The paper burned and went out. The logs did not catch on fire.

We added more paper and some thin little dry sticks. Again, once the paper and little sticks burned, it all went out without starting the logs.

"Well", I thought, "I guess I'll have to bring out the lighter fluid". I produced a small can of lighter fluid from our vehicle. After adding another pile of paper and small twigs under the logs, I doused it all with the lighter fluid. The flames were bigger this time! Surely they will catch on fire.

No luck. As quickly as the flames grew high, they died quickly when the fuel was gone.

An elderly woman who had an RV parked next to our camp site had seen us attempting to start our fire without success and came over to offer assistance. She had a large container of lighter fluid. She doused the logs with it and we threw in a match. Again the flames reached high and quickly died. Over and over again we doused the logs with fuel and watched the fuel burn away. The logs became charred and even made a few small embers, but light into a real campfire it did not.

The wood was green. It had been cut the day before with no time to dry out.

After 2 hours of trying to start the green logs, we gave up and went into our tent, frustrated and tired. We climbed into our sleeping bags and got comfortable. The campground was full and some people remained awake. We could hear them walking around, talking and laughing. After 20 minutes, we saw a glow outside of our tent. We thought it must be another camper with a lantern on their way to the bathroom after dark, except ... the glow stayed in one place. My son got out of his sleeping bag to investigate. He peered out of the tent door and said "You're not going to believe this, but out campfire is burning. It's a nice big fire."

"You have GOT to be kidding me!" I exclaimed.

Since we had gone to bed and had no plans to get up again to sit around the fire, my son went out to extinguish it. You can't leave a fire burning while you sleep.

The next day we woke feeling refreshed. It was another day and we were in the Rocky Mountains, and life was good!

We spent the day driving and hiking in Yellowstone National Park. The sun was shining and it was warm. We had packed up our tent with plans to stay at another campground on the south side of Yellowstone, but when we got there it was full. We continued on into the Teton National Park, through Jackson Hole, to another campsite in the Bridger-Teton National Forest. It had been another long day and we arrived at our second campsite just after 8 pm. We set up our tent and camping gear and gathered what appeared to be dry tinder and logs from the nearby woods. Needless to say the wood we had found was not dry. It was damp from a previous rain and wouldn't catch fire any faster than the green wood from the night before. We still had a bundle of the green wood, but again it would not light. We used the rest of our lighter fluid, paper tinder, and other small flammables we had along and still we had no campfire. Once again we went to bed without a campfire. This campsite was off the beaten path, out in the mountains where there were no stores, no cellular service, and no conveniences. It was just us and the nature.

I woke at 2 am that night. My muscles ached from sleeping outside and I was cold and tired. I sat in a chair beside the fire pit and looked up at the sky, brilliantly lit up with millions of stars. Out in the woods, away from city lights, the sky was bigger and brighter than life itself. It was beautiful. Still, I was cold and decided that I needed to start the fire. It wasn't just an idea, it was a challenge. I HAD to do this! I would prevail!

One of the items I had packed for our trip was a small propane camping stove with 2 burners. I set it up and started one of the burners. The logs were still stacked in a small tepee pattern in the fire pit so I took a small dry stick about as big around as my thumb and held it over the propane fire. The stick burned and crackled over the cook stove, but as soon as I moved it across to the fire pit, the flame would go out. Over and over again I tried. For hours I tried. I burned the cardboard box that the propane stove came in. I burned the last of the paper towels, the paper towel roll, and a small paper journal I had brought along to write in. By 5 am, I was almost ready to give up, when I remembered something that I had brought along. Before we left on our trip, my sister had made me a small pine box. It was made from scrap lumber and designed to give me an idea of how big the treasure would be. It was 10 inches by 10 inches, by 5 inches, and made of solid dry pine. DRY PINE WOOD. I dug around in the dark looking for the box. I found it next to a clip board I had used to hold the paper I had brought. It was made of pressboard. I brought the wood box and the clipboard over to the fire pit. With a blank piece of paper out of my sons sketch book, I lit the paper on fire. The clip board caught on fire and burned below the edge of the wood box. The wood box caught on fire, then the green wood from the previous campground caught on fire.

Finally, on the morning of our 3rd day, we had a useful fire. Victory was mine! Overwhelmed from the effort and the cold and the weariness, I cried. When I was finished, I woke my sons and we sat round the large fire, warming ourselves and roasting hot dogs for breakfast.

I don't know what time I finally fell asleep, but I was smiling about our campfire follies just before I drifted off to sleep. Next time, we'll be prepared. Next time ... Zzzzzzzzzzz

I'm wide awake.

I came home from an evening shift after 9 pm, puttered around the house, took a stroll around the neighborhood, cruised the web .... and now it's 2 am and I'm not the least bit sleepy.

It's really strange for me to be up at this hour. I'm usually a morning person. My brain wants to think about weird stuff at this hour.

One of the cats is racing through the house at high speed. I hear her paws galloping and sliding across the linoleum in the kitchen ... racing through my bedroom ... zooming up the stairs ... sliding on the wood floor in the room above my head .... then the sound of running paws getting near again as she shoots down the stairs, through my bedroom and across the kitchen linoleum ... power-sliding into the dryer in the back porch with a metal thud. There's a sound following ... a leaping sound, followed by a clawing sound. She's climbing the window in the back porch like a lunatic. She likes to go all the way to the top and stand on the curtain rod. I don't know why she does this. Maybe she feels like the "All Powerful Kitty" up there. She's not a normal cat. That's all I'm saying.

The dog was whining at me earlier. She was hinting that I should go to bed. She always sleeps with me, keeping me warm, but she doesn't like to go to bed before I do. When she whines I tell her "Go to bed if you're tired. I'll be there in a bit", but she doesn't listen. She just gives a heavy sigh and curls up on the carpet nearby. She's an old dog so she doesn't stay comfortable on the carpet for very long. She keeps moving to a new position and giving me sideways glances to see if I'm going to bed yet. Finally I go to the bedroom and tell her to get up on the bed. She does and I kiss her on the head and rub her ears. "Go to sleep" I say before I go out of the room again. She stays there, probably grateful that I made her go someplace that's comfortable.

Back to the computer ... Facebook, email, DeviantArt .... as if anybody else is up at 2 am and posted something since I last checked 30 minutes ago.

I go to the kitchen and make some toast. I toast it to the perfect level of toastiness, spread a thin layer of peanut butter on the slice. An ice cold glass of milk is next. I like to drink milk out of aluminum or copper glasses because I think it tastes colder out of a metal container than it does out of a glass one. I sit down to eat. After 1/2 a slice of toast, I'm aware that the dog hasn't moved off the bed and into my view. The smell of toast and the sound of my taking bites from it are close to where she's lying, and she's not moving? Usually she would be off the bed and lying somewhere in my visual field, staring and drooling, looking away if I look toward her like maybe I hadn't noticed that she's been staring. She must be too comfortable on the soft bed to go back to the hard floor, not even to beg for peanut butter toast. I walk into the bedroom and she is lying on the bed but her head is up and her ears are perked toward me with a look of anticipation. I tell her she's a good girl and give her my other half slice of toast. She munches it happily.

"I'm really lucky to have such a good dog" I think to myself as I walk back to the living room.

Back to the computer. Finish this dA post then go to bed, tired or not, I need to get some sleep. Tomorrow is my day off and I have a lot of things to get done. I cannot sleep all day. I better set my alarm.

Good night all!

The last time I went fishing I was about 5 years old. I went with my dad and we fished in the Sheyenne River just a few miles South of Lisbon, North Dakota. From what I recall, it was nothing impressive and we mostly caught bullheads. Since that time I have been too busy with other things in life to bother with fishing.

Since deciding to search for Fenn's treasure, the idea of fishing has been more frequent. Fenn was an avid fly fisherman and spent a lot of time in the mountains fishing in the rivers, lakes, and streams. I do know some people who go fishing on a regular basis. Each one of them reports it to be one of the most relaxing pastimes; To be out in nature, enjoying the scenery, catching delicious fish, and pondering life.

My previous boyfriend considered himself quite the sportsman. He and his brothers would go fishing, deer/pheasant/goose hunting depending on the season. In my boyfriends mind, it was a manly pastime. Women were not welcome. Once when I asked him if he would show me how to catch fish, he scoffed at me. I can't remember exactly what he said, but it was something along the lines of "We invited some women to come along with us once and all they did was whine and complain the entire time. We're not taking any women along with us again". I dropped the subject after that.

I don't need him. I can learn to fish on my own. I've already looked online and found a lot of information and videos. I might make a lot of mistakes in the beginning, and maybe it will take me a while to get the hang of it, but I am confidant that I will be able to accomplish the goal. It's never too late to learn something new.

My fish is going to be bigger than his fish. Take that! LOL

I have planned another vacation for mid October. The summer crowds should be over by then and I can have the camping sites all to myself. I can practice my attempt at fly fishing and try to land some big trout or bass. Don't worry, there will be pictures.

Who deserves to relax in the nature? I do!