[lumberjim]

There were places where the water that ran along the face of the rock wall had eroded the wall away, and created overhangs with sand bars at the base. You could wade or swim across the river, and park it on the sandbar or mini beach and soak in the sun, tuck back into the shade, whatever.

There was a fairly large one of these near our campsite, and for a little while, Troll and Jen moved their tent to it in order to have a little “privacy”. You had to wade across thigh deep moving water to get to their little beach, which was no big deal, as we were constantly in and out of the river all day long anyway. At night, however, after sitting around the fire for too long getting toasty warm, it was not quite so pleasant. In that part of the country, it gets very hot during the day, but then can drop to 45 or 50 degrees at night around that time of year. The first night, shortly after having said goodnight to Troll and Jen, and slipping into our tent for a little R&R, we were shocked by shrieking coming from down stream.

We both charged out of the tent and ran down to see what was afoot. Both of them were shivering by the side of the river using the last faded drops of light from their flashlight to try to see across to their camp. They had attempted to cross, but something had touched their toes in the water, and they were now too afraid to cross. We basically ridiculed them into crossing, and Jen shrieked the whole time. I have a new appreciation for just how loud humans can be. Things are louder at night to begin with, what with all of that silence around, and having a sheer stone face nearby can redouble the sound, but goddamn. It was loud.

It was a night that I remember fondly, and I miss both of those guys, and have no way of contacting them, and will most likely never meet them again. That sucks. I hope they stayed together. Jen was slightly resistant to Troll, because he was little and dirty, but he was so ebullient, and likeable, that she had a really hard time keeping him at bay, and finally had given in to his advances. It seemed to me that she still had the perspective of a rich kid, but was cognizant of it. Her “training” was telling her that he was beneath her, and she was beautiful enough to do better, but the real girl in her loved Troll because he was so funny and cute. One morning when Troll had left his pants outside, and was naked inside the tent, unwilling to brave the chilly morning air, Troll was shouting to Jen to get his pants. She was refusing. “GET MY PANTS!”.... "no.” You could hear him smiling inside the tent. “GET MY PANTS, BITCH!” “oh, now you’ll never get them!” and on and on. This is a phrase still repeated at my house. “GET MY PANTS, BITCH!” I yell, when I want Shelby to get me something, and she doesn’t want to be bothered.