[lumberjim]

One Saturday night, as we were all just falling asleep in our tents, we heard a car pull up and some (had to be) locals shouting and hollering. Then we heard gunshots. And then the locals sped off back down the gravel road. Everyone was OK. I guess the farm boys had heard we were in town and decided to give us a little scare. It worked. Another day, the Sheriff pulled down the road slowly looking closely at all of us as he drove by. I was away from our camp sight, but when I saw them slow down and stop near it, I hustled the girls down to meet them and prevent them from getting in to our gear. One officer had gotten out of the car and started walking toward our camp, and the car pulled forward to meet us. I arced off the path through the woods to intercept the cop that had headed for our camp. He was wandering around it looking into the tents, and peering around the woods. “Hey, what’s going on?” I asked.
“Runaway” he said. “ We are looking for a 15 year old girl who has run away. Her parents think she may have come out here.” Sounded like a lie to me. Just something in the way he said it. I think he was going to search our stuff, but when he saw me coming, he decided not to. Not that we had much other that a little paraphernalia to find, but I didn’t want the hassle. I stayed with that cop until he began walking back toward the car. When we got to the car, the girls had been talking to the cop in the car and were getting along nicely. The cops continued down the road to the main kitchen, where they told the same story, and heard the same “we haven’t heard anyone say they ran away, but there are probably a few 15 year old girls here, and who can tell if one is a runaway?” the cops didn’t bother searching very hard for her, which lent itself to my theory that they had just hoped to catch us at something untoward, or they just wanted to make their presence felt. We complained about the locals firing their guns , but they shrugged and said it could have been any one. Boys will be Boys.

The remainder of the time blurs for me except for two things. One night, one of the local residents came to visit. He was a hermit type and a little bit peculiar, but nice enough. I can’t remember his name or even what he looked like specifically. But, after hanging out with us playing guitar and singing one night, he invited us to his house the next. So, about 7 or 8 of us trekked along the top ridge of those rocks in the woods for about 2 miles until we came to a cozy little house that overlooked a long stretch of valley. We shared a joint with him as soon as we got there, and hung around his place as the evening faded to night. He made spaghetti for everyone, and I ate heaps of it. A general hungriness had settled over me since we’d been at the gathering, and this was a hot and delicious meal. I noticed that although the joint we smoked should have worn off by now, especially after filling up on spaghetti, I was feeling pretty high again. So I said so. Our host then informed us that he had put over a half ounce of pot leaves from his plants into the sauce while it cooked. Nice. That walk back to camp in the dark with no flashlights across the top of that huge rock shelf was intense. The moonlight was just enough to see by and I can remember looking up at some thin wispy and small clouds that were illuminated by the moon. Beautiful.