Forum

Flashback Series: Tales From The Flat, Part 1

Oh, the things we discover when we camp with someone for the first time . . .

In the 1990’s, I used to chase the gold a long, long ways north and west of where I currently live, and the last section of the journey was a series of rough logging roads that was hard on vehicles and on nerves (if you’ve ever almost been killed by a logging truck, you know of what I speak).

After our arduous journey, we selected a spot where some of the original gold rush miners from the 1870’s had camped. It was a nice level spot with a creek on one side and the river on the other, the river about 30 feet down on the left, the creek located in a gentle draw on the right.

We went through the tiring process of unloading everything from the back of the truck, so that we could set up the outfitter’s wall tent. Once we’d put together a portion of the steel inner-frame, we hauled the white canvas up over the sidewall and roof supports. Next, I ran inside to lift up the remaining sidewall struts and poles, in order to set up, adjust, and stabilize the wall legs while my partner steadied the tent. After our canvas home was up, we covered the whole thing with a massive silver tarp as extra protection from the sudden downpours that frequently occur in those remote mountains. Then, we secured the tarp and the tent walls with ropes and stakes, and lastly, set up our mattresses, bedding, and the wood-burning stove my partner had manufactured himself (he used to supply the GPAA with stoves for their Alaska trips).

We set up our base-camp on the flat treed area of older growth spruce, fur, white-barked birch, aspen, complimented by (along the banks of the bordering creek) thick stands of green-leafed willows and alders. Nestled amongst the trees, here and there, were several old log cabins, none of them inhabited, and an abandoned Hudson’s Bay store. However, all possessed great character. Likely each structure had many tales to tell, being located in such a rich, storied goldfield, one where the Argonauts had chased the gold for well over a hundred and twenty years. On a related note, the old road we had journeyed in on ran right through our camping flat, and was still in use by the locals to get to the upper lakes for fishing, and to get upstream to their mining claims.

With the camp set up, I finally felt how truly hammered I was from lack of sleep, adrenaline drop, and road exhaustion, brought on by sixteen straight hours of night and day travel on terrible roads, plus near-death encounters with logging trucks! As the long summer night was beginning to wane, all I wanted to do was crawl into my sleeping bag and drift off to blissful sleep. That is what I wanted, but that is not what happened . . .

A long, restful sleep was not to be that first night. Even though I fell asleep easily, I was soon jarred from my dreams to discover something shocking about my partner: his snoring alternated somewhere between the noise of a fully-revved chainsaw, to that of a fully engaged Jake-Brake (engine ******er brake) on a semi-trailer! I tried pushing on his air mattress to interrupt his screeching midnight symphony, but he only snorted, made puckering and slurping sounds, and then hurried on to compose whole new measures to his masterpiece.

Mercifully, my brain came to my rescue: I remembered hearing somewhere that a sudden, loud noise could jar a person from their deep-sleep snoring, leaving them in a lighter state of sleep with no snoring. In desperation, I whistled as loud as I could. (I can perform a loud, ear-splitting whistle on command, call my horses in from half a mile) My partner shot bolt upright in his sleeping bag, wildly scanning every corner of the tent, completely unaware of what had torn him from his sleep. I lay there as quiet and motionless as death, eyes closed, the perfect picture of an unconscious tent mate. As nothing was amiss in the tent, he quickly settled down to drift off to a soundless sleep.

For about fifteen minutes . . .

After that short reprieve, he launched into a whole new musical composition whose noise surpassed his former cruel and unnatural level! I genuinely felt he would wake the long-dead miners in the historic cemetery two blocks away. So, I whistled again, with a renewed, desperate effort. Once more, he sat bolt upright, and again, I remained motionless and silent. This time, the snoring ceased for the night, and I slept like the dead in the cemetery two blocks distant.

Upon waking the next morning, my partner was in a reflective mood. It took him a bit of time to come out and state what was perplexing him so deeply. After fidgeting a bit, he said, “Do you realize you whistle in your sleep? You woke me up last night, and I just couldn’t get back to sleep!”

Truth is indeed stranger than fiction.

All the best,

Lanny