“I want you to tell me something first: after you’re dead and buried and floating around whatever place we go to, what’s going to be your best memory of earth?”
“What do you mean? I don’t get it.”
“What one moment for you defines what it’s like to be alive on this planet. What’s your takeaway?”
— Douglas Coupland, “Generation X”
When my grandparents transferred to northwest Montana in 1960, my father bought the cabin from my grandfather for $100 and it became OUR cabin. Eighty-nine miles, exactly, over the Rocky Mountain pass from our house, it was a getaway world, away from work and school and the city and the heat of the plains. We grew up at the cabin in the Rockies, at least on weekends, and summer vacations. Grew up with Ponderosa pines, and Shooting Stars and Lupine and Beargrass, creeks full of cutthroat trout and frogs, unpeopled trails to mountain lakes and lookout towers and alpine meadows, and night skies clear and brilliant with the Milky Way and sometimes the Northern Lights. In the evenings my dad lit the Coleman lantern and we’d play cards, Shanghai and 31 and hearts, until it was time for bed. Mom would read us a story, usually “The Terrible Ollie”, and when she was done my dad would throw a few last pieces of wood into the stove and turn down the lantern. We’d watch in the dark as the lantern slowly went down until there was only the glow of two “panther eyes”.
Then as we grew up, and moved away, the trips to the cabin were more often alone, or with friends, and finally with families of our own.
In May of one year, I was talking to my sister long distance, and she told me that she and her boyfriend, my parents, my buddy from growing up, and my brother and his family were all going to meet at the cabin for my brother’s birthday in June. “It would be sure nice if you two could come up and join us,” she said, and I agreed, but didn’t think it very likely, two airfares from Arizona, with a new house payment and all.
“I hope you all have a good time,” I wished her.
I talked it over with the wife, though, the boss of the money, and she surprised me, saying yes, we could afford it. Furthermore she thought it was great idea, which really surprised me. So I called Frontier Airlines, and made reservations, but to my brother’s home town, not my parents’. I’d called him the night before; we’d decided on a surprise birthday gathering.
The family reunion at the cabin was a big success, and a surprise I think for my parents and sister, and more than a little bit cramped, with all those people jammed in a one room cabin. But we didn’t care – we had fun playing cards, and all held our breath when my sister’s boyfriend said “Shit!” in front of my mom. Even “The Terrible Ollie” came out again. Once again Ollie managed to steal all the treasures from the troll across the lake, and fooled the troll into chopping off his own daughters’ heads, and fooled the troll’s wife into baking herself in the oven, and finally made the troll look into the rising sun, and he exploded. That Ollie.
The next morning, in the middle of June, my brother’s birthday came very cold, and no one wanted to be the first out of bed to build the fire. Finally my brother got up, and took his two year old son with him, outside, for a trip to the outhouse, or to the truck for new diapers, or something. Shivering under the blankets, we all waited for him to come back and start the fire. But he didn’t come back in right away, and we started wondering what was going on. Finally I got up and pulled back the curtains on the front window to see what was happening.
It had snowed overnight, in the middle of June, and there was about three inches of beautiful wet snow perched on the pine branches, the green meadow grass in front of the cabin, and on my brother’s red pickup. And as we shivered, and watched through the window, my brother was having a snowball fight with his two year old son.
There’s my takeaway.
Author/Copyright: Tiger, of tigerwhip.com fame Date written: 06/06/1994