Cabin

Spring Break II

Two days after the Libya intervention, and Japan imploding, and it being hard to keep abreast with the world, we run for cover to a cabin in the woods. She never knows anything much about news stuffs, but I try my best for both of us to stay well informed. It is my conscience, then, that takes the brunt of tragedy and terror and overwhelming injustice, while she smiles and collapses into headphoned bliss. Or perhaps I am the conscience, deliberately severed off so she can siphon information into my person whenever she wants. It’s difficult to tell whether I have said enough yet to have my own conscience, or whether we’re still attached. I hope we’re not still attached. She is an embarrassment to general knowledge.

Still, for 3 days in Spring Break, I too abandon my social callings and succumb to an indulgent, tree-bound rest. The cabin is in Washington’s Gifford Pinchot National Forest, and it takes just over an hour to get there by car, during which time we listen to Monty Python on the radio, share strips of dried mango (heaven?), and gawp out of the window at the roadside waterfalls. While host dad Kevin tells us about the Native American salmon docks all along the Columbia River, we cross into Washington without even realising it. The countryside seems suddenly like the Scottish Borders – uniform sitka spruce and long, unwavering roads through the trees. The similarity, then, bit by bit unpicks itself, and the trees turn yellow, bending old-man sinewy arms under drifts of moss. Kevin stops the car when we reach the end of the road, as it condenses into a mud/snow track and lowers itself down into the forest. We pack up the sled, and Kevin sets off at a pace, dragging on foot the full load of our food supplies, water, and battery packs, amongst other survival essentials. The idiot falls over 4 times over the course of a 1 mile ski into the cabin, and claims ‘cross country is much more difficult than downhill!’ I of course have prior experience in both forms of skiing, and overtake her, and host mom Karen, and host sister Amelia within a bare minute of setting off (all this ‘host’ business begins to sound rather sinister). Later, I transcribe a section from the idiot’s diary which details, in her accustomed style, first impressions of the forest. I would provide a section here, for your general amusement, if it wasn’t for threat of violence and food sanctions. She can be quite protective about her writing. And I guess it’s understandable: if that was my writing, I would keep it firmly under wraps – far too sparse and simple, kind of grotesquely bare, and with none of my linguistic jouissance (I learnt this word today). It gets worse as we go further into Washington. She thinks she’s Raymond Carver, and everything is all he says/she says, and with sentences like matchsticks.

The entrance to the cabin is marked by two halves of a fallen tree, forming a noble gateway into the garden. I arrive just after Kevin and help make up the fire in the wood burner, so that by the time the others get there the heat is already up by 10 degrees˚F. S’alright for some eh. We open all the windows to let out the damp, and Karen lights the paraffin lamps with a lighter like a toy gun. Kevin intermittently barks the progress of the temperature dial as it flickers towards the intended goal of 70. Amelia teaches the idiot how to play cribbage, then we make popcorn in an old-fashioned popcorn maker with a turning wheel, then we drink sweet tea with double whipping cream and then we discover the beauty of the kumquat. The idiot takes an almighty nap before supper, the heat in the cabin having by this time reached the doze-inducing mark. As far as I can gather, she and Piper the Airedale nap for most of the visit, except the latter remains curled up in front of the wood burner and reminds me of an oversized Norfolk Terrier, while the former is less hairy and more annoying.

That first evening is spent tying two blankets together to make a hybrid blanket of warmth and happiness, eating enchiladas, dancing to Michael Jackson and toasting marshmallows for s’mores (see entry on January 30^th). I refrain from reading Kevin’s New York Times – even the supplements – and sink further into a slack temporal slow lane. The next morning, Tuesday perhaps, Karen leads us on a ‘tromp’ through the forest, over tree roots as soft and thin as slow worms. We make a snowman that looks like Caesar, and stand next to the steaming creek, and consider that this is what it is like to be an outdoorsy type of person. The idiot tries to catch things on camera. I wish she would give that up; she knows it’s just a tick, and only of use to facebook. Karen says that there are certain environments to which each human being is most suited, and that snow and trees make her breathe in deeper. Feel more engaged. In the afternoon, Kevin lends the idiot his old wooden and leather snow shoes, and we tromp in the other direction towards the summer campsite. During the prohibition era, the hollow used to be the site of a hotel ‘retreat’ for the benefit of ‘cleansing waters’.

We eat teriyaki chicken and chocolate brownies for dinner, before a dram of cinnamon whiskey, more of Kevin’s beer, and a round of backgammon. I look at the idiot’s face once in a while, bloated by food coma, but also smiling with talk and good company and escape from school. She had left all her work behind, purposefully limiting her reading to the Spring Break gift from Gianmarco – The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares. And I read through some of Amelia’s Roald Dahls. The Twits is still the best.

We leave on Wednesday morning, after Karen’s novel interpretation of Toad in the Hole for breakfast – puncture hole in slice of bread, place in hot pan, crack egg over holey bread, ensure yolk falls in hole, distribute egg white evenly over surface, cook, flip over, serve, and munch. Packing up takes a good hour of sweeping, washing, and shutting everything down. I am loath to depart, and therefore procrastinate in desperation over my designated tasks. But all at once we’re skiing out and nothing can be done. The idiot is silent. Kevin and Piper pound on ahead, and you can hear Kevin shouting ‘get!’ through the trees, pronouncing it like ‘git!’ It is our favourite Americanism. On the journey home we stop off at some of the waterfalls; Multnomah looks like it’s been extracted straight from Rivendell. We try stare at the same spot of falling water for 25 seconds, and hallucinate breathing rocks.

Once back at Reed, the idiot enrolls for her final year of university at UEA, and I take my first shower in 3 days. Reality bites.

Consette x